Tag Archives: cross

Apr 03 2025
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Brize Norton: the non-military bit

Wednesday 2nd April 2025, 5.20pm (day 4,969)

Brize Norton village, 2/4/25

As I type this on Thursday morning, my latest journey has ended, and so for the next nine days you will be seeing pictures of a lump of volcanic rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This will be a quite different environment from the genteel acres of Oxfordshire, the part of England that I had to transit through to reach my destination, seeing as I was flying out of RAF Brize Norton overnight. That being a military base, they were understandably touchy about deadbeat civilians like me coming in and happily snapping away at their installations for blogging purposes.

Here, instead, is the village of Brize Norton itself: a patch of quintessential Oxfordshire. With that thatched roof, I guess this scene might have looked much the same for two or three hundred years. Except for the one anachronism — it’s there, if you can spot it.

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Jan 12 2025
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Daily Post, Landscape

Resting in peace, on St Helena

Sunday 12th January 2025, 10.55am (day 4,889)

Grave and the Peaks, 12/1/25

I wasn’t flying from Cape Town back home, in case you were wondering, but instead to St Helena, for my fourth visit. Who can ever say these things for sure, but it’s possibly my last — put it this way, it’s the last, for now, for which I have the money, or rather, for which someone else has given me the money, in this case the British Academy (to whom thanks are due).

Whomever resides in this particular spot these days has definitely made their last visit to this remote little island, though. There are worse places to spend eternity.

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Apr 08 2023
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Daily Post, Landscape

The Mellor Cross (and Manchester)

Friday 7th April 2023, 1.00pm (day 4,243)

Mellor Cross, 7/4/23

Seeing as today was Good Friday this seems an entirely appropriate post for the occasion, but I swear that until I came over a rise on Mellor Moor, above Marple, and saw this cross, I had no idea it was there — it wasn’t marked on the map. Apparently it was first erected in 1970. It has a good view of Manchester, you have to say. (Passed on my latest County Top walk — of which there are more pictures on the other blog…)

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Oct 20 2021
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

Pigeon bouncers

Tuesday 19th October 2021, 1.30pm (day 3,708)

Pigeon bouncers, 19/10/21

Seen in St John’s Gardens, Manchester. This used to be a cemetery, hence the existence of this decorative cross in the middle, and obviously it’s a good vantage point to keep an eye on humans eating their lunch around the garden (as I was at this point). The impression given by these three pigeons, particularly the butch one on the right, is of nightclub bouncers, ready to pounce on any slight infraction of behaviour.

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Mar 25 2021
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene

Befitting the name

Thursday 25th March 2021, 1.40pm (day 3,500)

Cross Lee, 25/3/21

Hey, it’s day 3,500 of the blog. It doesn’t take a lot of mental arithmetic to see that I’m approaching the ten-year mark. At my own sweet pace. (As a multiple-of-50 day, the stats have had their latest update.)

Is the picture a representation of how I feel today? …..Yes, actually. It’s a government thing, a Covid thing, as so much has been lately.

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