Remembrance 2018

Photographs taken locally over the last couple of weeks. 

Lest we forget.

Arilx

Dancing at Whitsun

Somebody brought this to my attention on FB earlier this week. The song "Dancing at Whitsun" was composed by Austin John Marshall [to the tune of "The Week Before Easter"] and is written in memory of the women who upheld the previously all-male Morris Dancing tradition whilst their menfolk were away fighting in The Great War.

Arilx

Friday Finery

As usual I am behind with editing, so the photos of the costumes at the V&A have yet to "materialise" [did you spot the rather heavily laboured pun there!!]. Hopefully I will get back to it next week. In the meantime I have gone and done the only sensible thing when you've got a backlog....go and take more photos! I like to try and record some of the transitory images on my home patch when I'm driving around and have a gap between clients! Yesterday I revisited The Sun Oak in Horsham [https://gnatbottomedtowers.blogspot.com/2018/05/beltane-2018.html]. He's now resplendent in all his Autumn foliage. I plan to capture him in the Spring and Summer too next year so I have the full set of seasonal shots.

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend.

Arilx

Gnashers and Jaws

The Bear is one of the pubs which sits slap bang in the middle of Horsham [at one time it was an area where people enjoyed the cruel "sport" of bear baiting]. It's namesake has sat above the sign for as long as I can remember other than when the odd passing lorry knocked it off. Thankfully the area has now been pedestrianised so it's safe these days.

Over time the poor old thing has rather suffered from the elements and a few months ago it was taken down to be restored. I've rather missed the old fellow, so was delighted to spot him back on his spot earlier this week. Those new teeth though have made chuckle...he rather looks like he's been given a set of those celebrity veneers!

As I turned round I spotted this new-to-me piece of graffiti....I couldn't but help wonder at the similarity!

Having shared these images on our town's FB group they have caused much mirth locally! Sometimes you need something to lighten the mood eh!

Arilx

Are you sitting comfortably?

Actually sitting comfortably would be the last thing you would be doing I would imagine if you were wearing any of these....it makes our control pants seem rather tame by comparision and at least we can choose whether we wish to squeeze our feet into winklepickers or vertiginously high heels these days. It's of little surprise that women often fainted, struggled to breathe and digest their food. In the quest for the perfect hourglass figure many suffered permanent damage to their ribcages. You really did become a fashion "victim" in all senses of the word!

Tomorrow I'll share a few images of the glorious apparel on show at the V & A.

Arilx

Going at full tilt.

I heard a chap on the TV recently say "There's no point tilting at windmills." At the time I wondered what on earth he meant. I intended to look it up, but as you know life moves on and it fell out of my head.

This week I've read a short article about a quintain in Offham. This is one of those posts which the knights on horseback [and other young men] would ride towards at breakneck speed whilst trying to knock one end of the crossbar with their lance point  upon which would have been mounted a shield or something similar as a target. It was not uncommon for the rider to be unseated as the other side whipped round.  Known as 'tilting the ring' it was both popular at the Medieval jousts and a good way of honing the fighting skills and building up the speed needed on the battlefield. The homeowners who live around the green in Offham have it written into their house deeds that they must maintain the quintain and yes I now understand why it would be totally futile to trying tilting at windmills!

Arilx

Medieval Design

From the pages of the Medieval Bestiary today we have a mantichore....lion's body with a human head and the tail of a scorpion or a dragon and...

A blemmyae. A headless human torso with the facial features embedded into the chest.

Being a little greedy I wouldn't have said no to a monopod either....a fellow with one single foot arching over his head which can be used for shade or an umbrella in the case of rain. However, I'm going to have to visit Dennington church to see one in situ. We might think of all these creatures as being very peculiar, but when you look at some of the real species in nature maybe they're not so really!

These marvellous examples were in the V & A when I was waiting for my former blogging buddy Lovely Grey on Saturday. She's keeping well.

Arils