Oxford - More Words Than Pictures

Before I run out of November, I need to publish a November post if I am to stick to my goal of at least one post a month in 2024.

These posts are intended to be a mix of pictures and words (the blog is sub-titled a photographic experiment with words and I am a writer, after all!) and to celebrate ten years of this blog. Over the year I've therefore aimed to create links to previous posts of the last ten years, or to capture some of the places and things that have left their mark on me and/or my writing (a bit like my book Years Ago You Coloured Me, which is also about things that leave their mark).

I was involved in a literary event at Somerville College, Oxford (my old college, if you are wondering) this month. What a wonderful way to combine images and words, I thought. What a wonderful opportunity to take photos of a town and location that have meant so much to me, I thought. I can nip out and about during breaks and take some wonderful photos of the place, I thought. No matter that I only have a phone camera with me. It takes good pictures in daylight and when it's bright and sunny... It'll be a nice contrast to the many, many photos of Cambridge that have appeared on this blog over the years.

The event took place on the day Storm Bert arrived. It was neither bright nor sunny and it was way too wet to keep nipping out to take photos, even if I had had the time, which, as it turned out, I didn't. The many intended photos became a few - a very few.

Here, therefore, are the grand total of five photos taken of and in Somerville College (often from inside looking out, because it was dryer that way) on Saturday, 23rd November 2024 using only my phone camera.

London by Phone

All photos, care of my Google phone (other makes are available, just not to me).

Tourist in My Town (Yet Again)

Jesus College

The following photos were taken in Cambridge (and on the car journey out of it into the adjacent South Cambridgeshire rurality) on the same day as The Painted Church photographs. Take a look at, and a read of, the previous post to get a feel for my tendency to be touristically photographic in my own town. It's a trend I've maintained across the 10 years of this blog.

In the meantime, this is what the lens of my camera saw:

The Painted Church

As befits a post in the commemorative 10th year of this blog, this post has a number of links to previous ones.

Over the years, I have produced a number of "Tourist in my Town" posts, which basically gave me carte blanche to wander around Cambridge with a camera, just  like a tourist. Examples of this are the 2017 Tourist in My Town - Turrets and Towers and the appropriately named 2019 Tourist in My Town 2019. There are others.

I also have a thing about the Arts and Crafts movement, as you may have gathered if you have seen last year's Kelmscott on A Rainy July Weekend .

So, what better way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this blog than to be a tourist in my town, yet again, and visit Cambridge's own Arts and Crafts church.

This is All Saints' Cambridge, The Painted Church You can click on the link to find the church's website, and you should. All Saints' needs the love. In summary, and to borrow from the website:

"The Painted Church is one of Cambridge’s hidden treasures, designed by George Frederick Bodley. It remains one of the finest examples of Victorian Gothic in the country, both for its exceptional hand painted walls and for the spectacular stained glass."

To accompany images of the "interior decoration which showcases the work of master decorator Frederick Leach of Cambridge and his firm of decorative artists" and the stained glass by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb, Charles Eamer Kempe, Douglas Strachan and Ward & Hughes, there are images of ecclesiastical fabrics created by Watts & Company (no relation - that I know of). The church was hosting an exhibition of the company's work on the day I visited.

Grockle Me

Hayle Estuary

This month, for a short week, I've been a tourist in someone else's county, namely Cornwall, and specifically the area between Hayle and St. Ives. Armed only with my phone camera (I was travelling light) I took a surprising number of pictures. The weather was variable. The picture quality is variable, but they are all absolutely Cornwall. Here are just a few of them.

St. Ives

St Ives

Tate Modern - St. Ives

Tate Modern

Barbara Hepworth - Tate Modern

Another view of the Barbara Hepworth

Old Cross - Lelant

Hayle Estuary

St. Ives

St. Ives

St. Ives

St. Ives' Harbour

A St. Ives beach

St. Ives' Harbour

A beach - St. Ives

Hayle Estuary

Hayle Estuary (nighttime - looking across at Hayle)