Truth and fiction - # 09/117

Don't believe everything just because it's on the Internet.

Alert readers will have realised that yesterday's gibbet was in fact a modern replica. But the site at a cross roads on the ancient Roman Army road once known as Ermine Street certainly does exist. You can read the true story of Ermine St. on the www. Just enquire about Ermine St.

The air station known as RAF Caxton Gibbet existed as an Elementary Flight Training station, but the main bomber airfield was at Bourn, not far away. You can read the true history about RAF Bourn on the www. Enquire about RAF Bourn.

I twisted things round a little bit to make up a piece focused on the horrible weather we are suffering.

The photograph today shows the Manor House at Caxton built in around 1590. You can read all about the long Roman and Medieval history of Caxton in Cambridgeshire if you simply enquire about Caxton Cambridgeshire.

As a very tiny baby boy I lived for a very short while in the magnificent old house, and unbeknown to me all the history was happening around me. That's true. And also true is the terrible grey, rain-filled sky you see in the picture, taken yesterday when I visited the house after many years away.

A blast from the past - # 09/116

Yes, it's a real gibbet. Today was a day I spent out and about retracing some of my past. You can see that the weather was HORRIBLE (this is normal: those grey skies seem to be permanently fixed. The climate has changed and there will never again be a blue-skied, sunny English Summer. I hope that's not true, but it certainly is bad at the moment.)

In researching the history of the Caxton Gibbet I came across one those amazing things that the Internet has brought to us - a complete listing of war-time airfields operated by the Royal Air Force and the USAAF in Britain PLUS the REALLY BIG THING, photographs of all the various different designs of control tower to be found on the old air stations.

It seems that there was once, now long gone, an "RAF Caxton Gibbet" - no doubt a bomber airfield; just one of the many scattered across Eastern England between 1939-45, and now lost forever, just like the English Summer.

http://www.controltowers.co.uk/Clist.htm

It's time for tea! - # 09/115

The weather has indeed been very unhelpful: the weather along with a load of other things that have got in the way of taking photos, and demanded my attention. The loyalties of "cyber-friends" have been severely tested.

The weather has driven me indoors and underground. Today I've been practicing some tricky stuff with difficult lighting.

Here's a scene straight out of the 17th Century. The light and shade, the textures of the wood and stone, the rough-cut carpentry, the odd angles, the primitive, massive metalwork, the way the light reflects from the flag stones, polished by 400 hundred years of footsteps are worth capturing (if you can!). It's a view of the servants' area underneath Ham House. Every day I stop and take it in. It's not just about a taking a photograph but about trying to capture and an atmosphere. The windows are so well placed as to provide natural light in the days before electricity. Visitors to Richmond should not miss it.

The other sentinel - # 09/114

Another! This time the goose is replaced by a little boy. How things can change within a matter of minutes.

I never tire of this scene. The shape of the white cottage and the way the brick house peeps through the trees fascinate me. We can probably say that the pond on Ham Common, after hundreds of years, has never looked more attractive than it does today. These qualities are in fact man-made, thanks to the love and care of various people and years of scientific and accademic effort to understand the improvement of wetlands, install drainage pipes, manage plants and handle so many other "urban issues". It's a great outcome after a lot of effort. A couple of hundred years ago it was more or less a village dump.

The Sentinel - # 09/113

Much dithering over colour or B&W, but I think the colour does it better. The tones seemed to be too much "dark or light" with not enough of that nice gentle grey in the middle.

Here is another variation of the view across the pond at Ham Common, looking due south. The Egyptian goose is guarding his brood of no less than 9 goslings. Mrs (or Mr?) Goose seems to have disappeared. I hope that it has not fallen victim to a passing car, or perhaps a fox. Yesterday's little chapel sits immediately behind the camera. Just swivel the camera round and you get yet another nice photo.

(Sorry about the weird sky, but that's how it is these days).

Three Windows - # 09/112

What's this and why?

On Ham Common there is a small church dedicated to the name of St. Thomas Aquinas. I like the way it looks. And as I looked at it this evening I was attracted to the three windows and the way they look, and tried to do them justice.

Now, the next thing. This is the church where the painter Vincent van Gogh (which name Americans like to pronounce as "van Go" - Why on earth do they insist on pronouncing it like that?) preached his last sermon after which the Roman Catholic Church kindly suggested that perhaps the priesthood was not the right place for him. He might be happier doing something else.

I only recently found this out and was rather tickled to think of the remarkable painter van Gogh preaching in a little church in England, right where I live, before he was sacked and became famous.

(Some of you may have noticed that my normal daily "sermons" have been disrupted. Have patience. They will, I sincerely hope, ease themselves back.)

Dark place - # -09/111

...............hermetic; and no escape.