River

No snow here at the coast but it surrounds us on most sides. It is very cold here though, especially when the wind is blowing. I took some photos on top of the common the other day and it was freezing cold with snow flurries. When I got to look at them the cold was in no way apparent and they could have been taken on a mild summers day. It's hard to get certain conditions into the photos sometimes. Here is a film that I shot in July last year. Not a flooding river but it's quite a way up and is busy washing away the roots of the trees on the riverbanks, making them unstable. Many fully grown trees from the Exe have washed up along the coast due to this process of erosion and are now happily stuck on the rocks around here. Everything looks so green in this film, mostly because it rained almost daily for about nine months last year. It was the second highest amount of annual rainfall on record in this country and must have been the wettest nine months, I should think.

Green Man - Ottery St. Mary

Ottery St. Mary Church is an unexpectedly magnificent construction for what is only really a minor Devon town. In design it has been described as a miniature Exeter Cathedral and shares a similar cruciform plan.  From the outside it could easily be mistaken for Victorian Gothic, perhaps dating from the mid 19th century, and although rather large it is otherwise unremarkable externally. It is in fact the real thing, having been consecrated in 1260 and with most of the major building work carried out between 1335 and 1350.

Tucked away in a chapel at the back of the church is this wonderful painted and gilded green man. Carved from stone and sited just above a door frame at the height of about seven feet he faces eastwards, towards the light of the morning sun. Although easy to find he is in some ways hidden by the myriad of forms, light and shadow that meet the eyes of the visitor here, and he could easily be missed by the time we arrive at the chapel.

Keep Calm?

purple reign

These are the photographs I was taking when my camera decided to stop working. The camera was fine but then an unfamiliar error message came up informing me that I was going to have to spend about £300. I took it back to the shop explaining exactly what was wrong and they wanted £160 to fix it, not really worth it on a four year old £300 camera. I tried mending it myself but could only remove three out of the eight tiny screws that held the underside cover, so I couldn't remove it and have a tinker. The camera has been regularly covered in sea spray and rain for the last four years, so I suppose that I've had a good run on it for the money and I have heard of  DSLRs conking out after only about two or three years. Some of the Nikons cost up to about five grand each, so my replacement body at £260 isn't too bad of an investment.

I had an interesting day out last week finding myself unexpectedly having to be driven to the other side of Crediton to shovel horse shit for somebody. Knowing the area quite well I navigated us down some lanes for a shortcut and was very surprised to see how dreadful the damage has been in the last year. Continual rain has caused the lanes to subside, erode and wash away completely in places and all are covered in the most alarming of potholes. I've never seen them in a state anything like this before.

On the way back my driving companion had to make a detour to a scrapyard in a place that I used to live in but haven't been back to for about 18 years, I lived there for about three years. Almost nothing had changed and I found the experience mildly disturbing. There's an odd feeling of spookiness and dislocation, almost as if you're a ghost and you're haunting the place yourself, or somehow floating in a memory made real again. Not only did it seem peculiar that nothing had changed  but it also felt a bit like the intervening years hadn't actually happened at all, and I was just somehow back there again as it was before. All very odd and certainly not worth doing very often.

The weather here today is dark flat and drizzly with intermittent fog and it will be dark at about 4:30. Anyway I'll be back to taking pictures as soon as I'm able. The news is as dreadful as it usually is. I'm sure you've seen it. There's been proof and demonstration if any were ever needed that the people at the top are very powerful paedophiles who have control over the media, law etc. The police have so far arrested a few aging minor celebrities as a distraction for the public, it's rubbish really. I had my hopes up a few years back when the haute de la garrene stuff came out, only to see the victim statements ignored and some of the forensic evidence turn out to be a coconut. The media told us that there was nothing to see and it all had been a big mistake. So after that I didn't have my hopes up very high, but it's still encouraging to see so much being written on the internet, the place of information so disparaged and ignored by the MSM. Keep up the good work people, keep plugging away and we'll get these bastards somehow.