The Spinnaker Tower and Gunwharf Christmas Tree, and a raindrop or two on the camera lens ;).
The ‘lipstick’ building, beyond Gunwharf Quays….
A statue and the Christmas Tree, with the lens raindrops more evident here…
The Spinnaker Tower as seen from Gunwharf Quays, approaching eight o’clock this morning…
Gosport as seen from near the Ferry pontoon, at around ten past seven this evening…
A multi-coloured Spinnaker, as seen from Gosport at around seven this evening
Looking north towards Whetstone…
Redwoods, on the eastern side of the park…
Pond with reflections…
Somerset House on the Strand, whose courtyard has recently opened as a seasonal skating rink…
A very mixed range of skating ability on display 😉
A moving walkway, connecting (I think!) the Northern and Piccadilly Lines at King’s Cross…
Starts today…illuminated sign outside the Royal Festival Hall…
Wagamama…beneath the Royal Festival Hall…
The very long-running “The Woman in Black” (I must have seen it more than twenty years ago!), at the Fortune Theatre, Russell Street, Covent Garden…
Morning at Portsmouth Harbour…
‘La Serime’ of Weymouth….
‘The Ship Anson’ pub, Portsmouth Hard…
A small graffito, in Sydenham Terrace, off Fratton Road, Portsmouth..
A piebald horse, grazing in a field, off Cartwright Drive, Titchfield…
Very similar composition to yesterday’s photo, but the blue sky was too much of a temptation, so I wandered back down to Titchfield village, and had a pint in ‘The Wheatsheaf’ pub whilst there ;).
Detail from Igor Andrukhin’s sculpture ‘The Horn of Plenty’ in West Street, Fareham.
Marilyn, Audrey, and a few cats…in a shop window (‘Room’) in West Street, Fareham.
St. Peter’s Church, Titchfield…taken during a lunchtime walk to the village.
An abandoned black mitten, in Portsmouth City Centre this morning…
Some upcoming events in Southsea and Southampton….and I might well’ve gone to the 10cc gig, but I’m meeting up with some old friends in Covent Garden that evening…
Some holly berries in the rain, in Titchfield at lunchtime today…
No apologies for today’s theme, of course; my maternal great-grandfather was a Stoker on HMS Aboukir, who died on 22nd September 1914, in the sinking of that warship, and my maternal grandfather, his son, was an Able Seaman, who died aboard HMS Lawford on the 8th June 1944…
The War Memorial in North Finchley, shortly before 11 a.m. today
Noor Inayat Khan, British SOE operative in France in WW2. A long-time heroine of mine, she was born in Moscow, on New Year’s Day, 1914, and was executed at Dachau on 13th September, 1944. A commemorative sculpture of her was unveiled in London’s Gordon Square on Tuesday of last week.
The British Navy War Memorial to Submariners who died in the two World Wars. Situated on the north side of the Thames, between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges.
Break of Day in the Trenches
The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.
(Written, June 1916)
Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)
yizhivika 