Stained Glass Sunday - l'Église St. Gervais et St. Protais

I have so many photos of stained glass. For a Marxist Atheist I seem to have a perverse fascination with ecclesiastical glazing, though I am more a fan of Tiffany's glass, probably thanks to Shiela filling my house with it. The Tiffany exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg a couple of years back was mind-blowing, but of course no cameras were allowed inside, so duh. The photo at the bottom of this post is the closest you'll get unless you come round to my house to look at the catalogue.

Anyhoo, to save myself having to think of anything to write on a Sunday (and with apologies to rant fans for my having become addicted of late to photo-posting in favour of lengthy and splenetic romps through Roget's Profanisaurus) here is the start of yet another series.

I'm a huge fan of the light that stained glass casts on other surfaces and here is a nice example of that.
This is one of the many fine views available inside l'Église Saint Gervais et Saint Protais, tucked away behind Hôtel de Ville near the Seine in Paris.
One of the oldest Paris churches it is now adorned with magnificent modern stained glass thanks to a fabulous restoration made necessary by a German shell blowing the crap out of the place in March 1918, killing 88 people.

Here's the church from the outside. It's well worth a visit and not just for the stained glass; those buttresses are unconscionably spiffy, too. And of course, if you're of a religious bent you can always say hi to God while you're there.

Look out for more of the same on Sundays from now on … at least until I get bored and do something else.

OHMYGODAHORSE! WAAAH!

It's Saturday, so it's time for a Silly Statue (for no other reason than some gratuitous alliteration).
This one's in Rome (thanks to Phil for being a rugby fan and heading down to Italy to photograph odd stuff for me during the Six Nations Championship) and appears to depict a half-naked man with an oversized hand startled by a small horse emerging from a cave. Unless my eyes deceive me some inexplicable cacti and a laughing snake also come into the equation.
Obviously a huge amount of time and effort has gone in to depicting this tableau for our fuddled bemusement. One wonders why …
I've searched Ovid's Metamorphoses in vain for the story.
Any suggestions gratefully received.

Rules Is Rules

In St.James's Park in the heart of Westminster there is a small sign asking people not to sit in the fenced off area as the water birds like to roost there undisturbed. There is another small sign asking people (to little effect) not to feed the pigeons.
And that's all …
In Paris, however, they take their park rules seriously (as anybody who has ever tried sitting on the grass in Les Jardins des Tuileries will know from painful experience), and this sign is prominently displayed just about everywhere you look.
Do click on this picture to blow it up and take a read. There are some quite startling (and amusing) rules hidden away in there.
If you don't read French, type some of it into Babel Fish for an even more baffling experience.
Happy Friday, peeps.

More London Street Furniture

Paris Again … I Must Be Pining

So what do you think of when you think of Paris?
The Eiffel Tower? Notre Dame? Valjean and Cosette? Stohrer's macarons? The appalling abomination of a Mc.Donald's in the Louvre? Sydney Carton standing at the guillotine? The best bread and cheese in the known universe?

With me it's stairs … Paris is stairs, stairs and more stairs.
Friends' apartments are never on the lower floors; most are four or five floors up.
Elevators? Schmelevators!
This is why you so rarely see fat Parisians. Lumping your way down and then back up ninety-nine steps just to get a newspaper or a baguette (hi, Jacques-Arthur) keeps Paris slim and active.
I like to walk. A lot! But in Paris, after a good day's hike it's that last grunt up the final step before unlocking the apartment and falling into the sofa that's always the one I remember.
I can't wait to go back. My legs feel atrophied in England.

Paging Herr Doktor Freud

My current quest for something more interesting to post about than Norfolk leads me back to Paris and into le Jardin des Tuileries.
At first glance this statue is just a beardy guy enjoying the sunshine with a bunch of sparrows, but look closer and what the hell are all those scary little babies up to?
Weird!

WTF Monday

Spotted near Trafalgar Square the other day.

Sunday Siesta

Where In The World?

I'm getting a bit bored with posting photos of my neighbourhood. After all, I see it every day. I'm looking at it out of my window as I type. So from now on I might mingle into the mix a few photos from further afield, merely for my own amusement.

Like this one.
Anyone guessing both the city it was taken in and the identity of the guest photographer gets to walk round all day with a smug expression.
And no … it's not that obvious …

Form An Orderly Queue

Er …
Forgive my sudden attack of chicken-shit fever, but I was NOT going to be the one to go in there and tell the beauticians to Google "facials" and see what … ahem … comes up.
Having said that, it's supposed to be good for the skin, so …

Random Norfolk - Angels

These lovely guardian angels are high up on the south wall of Norwich's splendid Art Deco City Hall (see many a previous photo post) and were carved by Eric Aumonier, one of the artists - together with Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore and Eric Gill - responsible for those cool 1930s sculptures dotted around the London Underground system.

The reason the picture looks a little stretched is that every brick in City Hall was made two inches longer than standard to reflect the proportions of the building (which is … er … very long).
A magnificent mélange of Art Deco bronze, stone, rare woods and hand-made brick, City Hall - while minimalist on the outside - boasts some spectacular sculpture and detailing inside, reminiscent of the Chrysler Building (the lifts are spiffy beyond words; I shall have to sneak my camera in one day) and the longest balcony in the country. It was also - somewhat distastefully - Hitler's favourite building in England and thanks to the misguided taste of that dismal failure of an artist was spared being bombed during WWII (he intended to use it as his centre of government after the invasion when London was flattened, probably dreaming of strutting up and down the balcony). What a dick.

Anyhoo … Angels. Enjoy.

Random Norfolk - Thirsty

We're back in my home village for today's post, standing on a boat house jetty on a summer's evening and yearning for a pint of local real ale.
You might be able to make out a pub just across the river, the excellent Coldham Hall. Unfortunately, living in the watery maze of rivers and lakes that is the Norfolk Broads, served with few roads and fewer bridges, it takes me almost forty minutes to drive there. Cadging a lift on a boat is all very well early in the evening but at closing time in pitch darkness it's either a swim and a squelchy trudge up the hill to my house (no thank you) or a very long walk home, which is why I only visit the place once in a blue moon.
Fortunately the beer is just as good this side of the river.

Bugs!

I liked the look of these thistles in the organic garden in front of City Hall. They were absolutely crawling with bugs and aphids but also with ladybirds making a yummy meal out of the browsers. All the plants in the garden look fantastically healthy; a great advertisement for non-chemical gardening.
Interrupt the food chain by killing the bugs and next thing you know there are no ladybirds, no birds and just a pretty flower in a dead wasteland.

I've not got a macro lens for my new camera yet so I had to stand on the far side of the footpath and use the telephoto for these. As usual, some people stopped and stared at me with dumb, slack-jawed expressions, trying to figure out what I was looking at. Ah, the TV generation; all imagination sucked out of them. Hey ho.

WTF Lundi

Continuing our Parisian theme from yesterday I present for your pleasure "Les Meerkats de Notre Dame."

Sunday Break

At last! Les macarons nouveaux est arrivé!
For some inexplicable reason macarons have never made it across the Channel. As with 24 month old Vieux Comté, decent escargots and proper bread, to enjoy these little suckers has always involved a trip across the ditch to the country we once owned and then lost but miss a whole lot more than America as the food is better.

But now (woohoo) a Parisian baker has transplanted himself to Norfolk and has started to appear at farm markets selling these mouthwatering beauties.
Yesterday morning I stood with him in the torrential rain discussing the new craze for "wasabi and strawberry" macarons (thank Pierre Hermé for that one). Unfortunately his range was rather more conservative but still utterly delicious so here on my dining table are two green tea and one coffee macaron, very likely the first to reach my village but certainly not the last.

Here - for those unfamiliar with such delights - are real Parisian macarons in their natural environment (the window of Stohrer's on Rue Montorgueil).
Bon apetit!

Found Art

Cute Coot Exhibitionist

 Hokay, so where do I build my nest? Somewhere away from predators and prying eyes. Hey, what about here?
Yup, right next to the bridge over the lake in St.James's Park, one of the most visited and photographed places in London.
Still, at least I've got a good view while I sit on my eggs.

Random Norfolk - Rubbed Brick Extravaganza

Currently undergoing restoration, this Georgian confection has to be one of the most bizarrely beautiful doorways I've seen. The arch takes rubbed headers and stretchers to extreme lengths of absurdity and yet still works. Even the tiny details are lovely, like the little cubes at the corners of the door panels.
Spiffy.

Random Norfolk - Gasometer

Random Norfolk - Market at Wells-Next-The-Sea

WTF Monday

London has some great street names. Just across the city from Old Queen Street is Mincing Lane.

Older readers will recall that Threadneedle Street - home of the Bank of England - was known up until Victorian times as Gropecunte Lane - home of an altogether more honourable kind of financial transaction than banking.

Random Norfolk - Shadow

Random Norfolk - Ding Dong

Random Norfolk - Spume

Spume. Yay!

 More spume. Yummy, frothy spume.
Lather yourself all over with its salty goodness.

Well just lately we've had "pollard" and "wrack" and "kine" so I thought I'd add to the list of tricky words to work into conversations with one of my all time favourites.
All together now … "SPUME!"

I feel a variation on Monty Python's Spam song is in the air.

Random Norfolk - Kine

Random Norfolk - Castle

Following up from yesterday's posts about the teeny tiny amphitheatre in the Castle moat and the comments they got:

This is the view from the main doors of City Hall, over the War Memorial and Market and up the hill to Castle Blancheflower, which has dominated the city for nigh on a thousand years. The teeny tiny amphitheatre is at the bottom of the moat on the opposite side.

Built in 1068 and never conquered, this view looking up the bailey from the moat gives some impression of its impregnability.
Of course the main reason it was never conquered is that all of our major rebellions and revolutions started here in East Anglia and went off and attacked other places, smashing their castles instead. We're still a bolshie bunch of buggers … blame Boudicca.

For trivia freaks, the battlements are the very same that Monty Python used to fling its suicide bagpipers from (a lot of Python was shot in and around the city; Elm Hill deputised for mediæval London and Sartres' Paris, John Cleese's desk for the "And now for something completely different" in all but the first series was positioned just under the Castle at the top of the slope in this picture … you can see the old Bell Hotel behind him in the shows; the Hermanas holiday camp down the road at Winterton became everything from jungles to deserts to African villages … the list goes on. I suppose we were cheaper than filming in London).

This is my favourite shot of the castle. Spring sees the bailey a solid mass of yellow daffodils and they're followed by this scruffier, daisy-bespattered look that somehow seems in keeping with the long history of the place. Plus of course, the white flowers go well with the Castle's name.

And this is the view from the stage of the teeny tiny amphitheatre in the moat. The beautiful stone that gave the Castle its name of Blancheflower was shipped over from Caen in Normandy by William the Conqueror and both the Castle and Cathedral are built from it. As you can see, it scrubs up a treat (the Castle's nice and easy to clean but the Cathedral was recently wreathed in scaffolding for four years for restoration and buffing up).

Here's the Norman front door (it's not the front door any more and is usually out of bounds to the public, hence its unrestored state).
The Castle now houses the Tate In The East art gallery as well as a superb series of galleries showcasing the Norwich School of Painters and one of the finest collections of English painting anywhere, as well as a huge and fabulous museum (and a pretty decent café).

The main Castle Keep itself is left open for exhibitions. It's an awesome space; the stones around the archery slits are scratched with 900 year old graffiti.

The Keep used to house the Ancient Egypt section of the museum, but the mummies have now been given a cosier home and this Burne-Jones tapestry is just about the only permanent exhibit in there now. They change everything else round every time I visit.

Forgive the hurried Photoshop stitching; I just wanted to give some kind of impression of the interior space. Some of the soot-blackened walls have been left uncleaned to give a more authentic feel.
I love the Castle. You can go up on the battlements and down into the dungeons (with the inevitable mediæval torture museum … yay). It's a great place to spend rainy days.

Anyhoo … enough blathering faff from me; come on over and see it for yourselves.

Hey, I just found a better photo …

Petrea asked if the teeny tiny amphitheatre from the previous post is actually inside the moat and if the Castle is still there.
Here you go. I hope this answers your questions. The brick platform is the theatre stage and the Castle is the big castley thing way up on top of the bailey.
I'll post some more Castle pics tomorrow.

Random Norfolk - Theatre In The Moat

 Being an arty-farty kind of place, Norwich boasts many fine theatres, but this is probably the most charming: a tiny amphitheatre hidden away at the back end of the Castle Moat Gardens.

The stage is tiny, but the action tends to spill out into the moat.

Here's the "Coming Soon" board. Pop along and enjoy the shows. It's free and there are toilets, coffee shops and bars within a few paces of the top of the moat.

Random Norfolk - The English In Summer

It's summer. It's England. So …

Panama hat, shades, a pint or three of Woodforde's'Norfolk Wherry' (brewed just down the road from my village and - as the umbrella proudly states - "Champion Beer Of Britain") and the crack of willow on leather. The recipe for the perfect English summer afternoon falling asleep in the sun.

Or at least it would be if our village team were not so bloody good. Cricket is not supposed to be exciting, at least not at village level, but a happy mixture of slumming county players attracted by the beauty of living here and Aussie cricketers spending their off season at the boatyards and bars along the river gives us a pretty unfair advantage. It's a team made up almost entirely of ringers.

Gerry and I meandered down to the river end of the village along with his visiting German friends Üte and Martin and a bunch of local compadres to catch the season's big grudge match against Horsford.
Explaining the rules of cricket to Germans is almost as entertaining as trying it on Americans. Martin decided it was a little like chess but played on a geological timescale. Luckily there was good beer and also I won some red wine in the tombola so the combination of alcohol and sunshine eased comprehension somewhat.

And especially for our Colonial readers, the guy with his legs splayed, standing just to the left of the wicket is taking the field position known as "silly point", so named because he's suicidally close to the batsman and the ball is fucking hard. You can also have a "silly mid-on" and a "silly mid-off" should you choose.

 In case anyone's remotely interested, we batted first (it was a limited overs, one day match, not the full, five day monty) and racked up a creditable 263 for 3.
Then we casually and cruelly slaughtered the opposition. At tea they were 59 for 5 and shortly afterwards all out for 105. We have two top notch spin bowlers who were unplayably good (witness this catch behind).

 But the main attack came from our pace men. Holy shit, watching them bowl is scary.

Compare the wicket-keeper's position in the spin bowler photo with this one for the fast bowlers. It's kind of unfair to unleash that sort of speed on amateur batsmen, but hey … it's my team so I'm not going to complain.
Some seriously aggressive field placings led to some brilliant, diving, fingertip catches, especially from one of our Aussies at short mid-off.
This pic shows the ball (you can just about see it blurring) on its way to a find catch at second slip and the batsman about to head back dejectedly to the pavilion.

Anyhoo … A splendid win against our bitterest rivals, good company, good beer, good barbie, rather more Australian accents than you'd expect to hear in an idyllic English village, and a fair smattering of pretty weemen … Boffo all round.

Oh, and a Happy Fourth of July to all my Colonial friends!