R's rue

 Where in the world was I this last week. The answer DC and NYC. It was a time of challenge and refreshment. A time I won’t soon forget. Maybe I will share some photos. In the meantime, I’m glad to be back where I can watch the green grass grow.  from R's rue https://ift.tt/6xlpRGa

As a roving amateur photographer, it's very tricky to get portraits of strangers. Whenever I do happen to manage it, I am most grateful. Mostly I have to stick to scenery and the physical environment around me but - if the truth be known - I would love to have gathered hundreds more pictures of people. And I am talking about willing strangers - not secretly snapped pictures of unaware subjects. I know I am not alone in being fascinated by faces - reading what's behind the eyes, trying to see into someone else's otherness. Throughout my life, I have doodled and my doodles are almost exclusively of faces. Yes, I have created thousands of faces with pens and pencils but to acquire photos of faces sometimes seems taboo. Anyway, today Phoebe was keen for me to show her a pictures of me stroking a tiger. This happened in northern Thailand in April 2011 but I don't think Phoebe believed me. With a little scrolling through my archives I was able to locate the picture quite easi...

 I’m back after a girls’trip. Glad to be back with you all. Love you all.  from R's rue https://ift.tt/EkiXYyM

In the summer of 2011, a year after my brother Paul had died, I went back to Ireland to see the family over there. I stayed in County Clare for a few  days before heading down to Cork, staying over night in a B&B in Tipperary. On the way down south, I stopped to take perhaps fifty pictures in geographical squares that had not been bagged either by me or any other Geograph contributor. One stop I made was in the main square  of Mitchelstown - a small town in  northern County Cork. It was a case of stopping, taking a couple of pictures and jumping back in the hire car.  I didn't even know who the statuesque fellow was on the plinth. It turns out that he was John Mandeville (1849-1888). In 1887, he led an uprising of tenant farmers in the town - protesting about increased rents and evictions. Three men were killed by police that day in what is sometimes known as "The Mitcheltown Massacre". For his part in the unrest, John Mandeville was arrested, tried and imprisone...

  What is life, 'tis all a vapour Tho' long on earth we both did stay Our time was wasted like a taper Fleeting soon it died away. Two hundred years ago, Thomas Harris and his wife Elizabeth were buried in Old Somerby churchyard. They both died in the 1820s having reached great ages for their time. Thomas was 82 and Elizabeth was 79. I am sure that their skilfully carved slate gravestone once stood upright but nowadays it lies horizontal in the grass. Possibly a modern health and safety matter. But what really caught my eye about their gravestone was the epitaph at the bottom. It seems devoid of religious content or any ambition to achieve an after-life state of being. It could have almost been written by the existentialist playwright - Samuel Beckett. A world without a benign "God" watching over them like a shepherd and maybe a pointless world too. The four lines do not make great poetry. They seem rather amateurish to me  but the meaning is clear. You can sense the ...

Yesterday, with nice weather promised, I was in the mood for an adventure and a day's walking in unfamiliar countryside from a town I did not know at all. I was up early in my cosy little room in "The Angel and Royal Hotel". It is a very historic hostelry that can trace its origins back almost a thousand years. Kings have stayed or held court there - including King John in 1213 and Richard III in 1483. Quite amazing really - just like the hotel's exorbitant breakfast prices. After my shower, I was out into the morning sunshine. The town was bustling with work traffic and secondary schoolchildren in their various uniforms. I made for Thatcher's birthplace and then afterwards snapped the top picture of St Wulfram's Church before heading to St Peter's Hill for an economic breakfast and coffee in the town's only Wetherspoons pub - "The Tollmarche Inn". St Mary Magdalene Church, Old Somerby By 9.30am I was ready to begin my long country ramble, pl...