Private schools and song thrushes

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The other day I walked past the scene shown in this photograph and fell to thinking. My first thought centred on the song thrush that was singing its heart out from the top of a roadside tree even though it was ten minutes to eleven in the evening. Was this, I wondered, due to the fact that light remained in the sky or was it because of the street lights' illumination? Perhaps it was the combination of the two light sources that prompted its nocturnal canticle.

My second thought was one of despair. How long, I wondered, will our country have to suffer the dead weight of private education delivered by our so-called public schools? Is there no political party prepared to look at the clear evidence that private education not only impedes our country's economic progress through the values that it imparts, is one of the main causes of inequality that affects the rich every bit as much as the poor, and is a form of schooling that doesn't even deliver the educational goods that it professes to offer? One would imagine that a socialist party would give some thought to the issue, but no. You'd also think that parties of the right that espouse market values and a "survival of the fittest" culture would have no truck with a school system that produces students with inflated examination qualifications (see the link between average quality of university degree achieved by pupils of state and public schools with the same school examination grades), or that promotes advancement through socio-economic selection and networks rather than ability. But no, our private public schools continue to flog their wares to the well-heeled, the buyers and sellers profit, and the country continues to suffer from their self-interest.

The domed chapel shown in silhouette was completed in 1901. It serves Giggleswick School, "a co-educational boarding and day school", that charges fees to educate pupils. It is one of the many private educational establishments that I think our country would do well to dispense with for the better education and prosperity of all.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.9
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A Marian monogram and more

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The remains of original medieval painting is reasonably common in English churches though often it is in fragmentary form; for example details that have been uncovered during a restoration. However, there are some churches that retain fairly extensive schemes of wall painting, more have traces on roof timbers and quite a few, especially in Norfolk and Suffolk still have their painted rood screens. This kind of painting has sometimes been subject to sensitive restoration but often it appear to be entirely original work.

I recently came across a painted rood screen in Cambridgeshire at Ickleton church. The artwork was not as extensive or detailed as the East Anglian examples - there was no attempt as figure painting for example - but what it did have that caught my eye was a pair of fine monograms that were painted in colours that I really like. They were on the nave side of the rood screen doors. On the right was what is often called a "Marian monogram", one of the ways in which a couple of ornate letters (here Ms) decoratively entwined are used to represent the Virgin Mary. On the left was another monogram with the letters IHS, the semi-Latinized version of the first three letters of Christ's name written in Greek (IHΣOYΣ).

The two main colours the designer had chosen were fire-brick red and bottle green, reversing the colours on each door and using gold for the main lettering and for highlights in the cusp flowers and the surrounding leaf-like decoration. It is simple, effective and the colours are very well chosen. It is something of a minor tragedy that the puritanical outlook of the Reformation largely banished colour from English churches. Wall paintings were white-washed over, roof timbers were often painted too, or the colour was allowed to fade.  Pulpits, rood screens, reredos and other wood was similarly stripped of colour. It was not until the 1840s and the influence of the The Oxford Movement; of architects such as A.W.N. Pugin and writers and critics of the standing of John Ruskin, that colour on a medieval scale began to be seen again in English churches. It was principally the new buildings that were so adorned, and even then not all welcomed it. Many saw it as "Roman" and continued to prefer the more austere browns, blacks, greys and whites that had prevailed for a couple of centuries. It takes examples such as the woodwork in today's photographs to remind us that our churches during the medieval period were much more colourful places than they often are today.

photographs and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 30.1mm (81mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 2500
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The co-operative public

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It's not often that someone who I want to include in a "street" photograph actually co-operates with me and poses. Usually I get my shots on the run, pressing the shutter at what I hope is the "decisive moment". And, truth be told, what I, and most other photographers who take shots in the street actually want is people to ignore the camera and go about their business. I don't do much in this field of photography but my best images - this one for example - have always come about in this way.

However, recently as I was passing a shop window I noticed someone inside decorating the display area. Moreover, a large, metallic mask was still on show. It occurred to me that the conjunction of the two subjects might make a shot, especially since the decorator couldn't be clearly discerned and the reflection of the street was adding an interesting depth to the composition. But, as he carried on with his work he went behind the mask a little too much and I couldn't get the shot I wanted. This was one that included a person reflected in the glass looking at what I was doing. But then the decorator looked up, and perhaps sensing my predicament, stepped to his right and posed perfectly allowing me to have the two people, superimposed, on the left of the frame and the mask on the right. This image won't be everyone's cup of tea I suppose, it pleases me, the slightly out of focus mask notwithstanding. It reminded me a little of a shot I took in Floral Street, London, a photograph that also includes a "real" person and someone who is reflected, but features a skull rather than a mask! That example is another image that I consider to be one of my better street efforts.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Bridge End Garden, Saffron Walden

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Bridge End Garden in Saffron Walden, Essex, was largely created in the 1840s by the Gibsons, a wealthy Quaker family with links to banking and brewing. Unusually, it didn't adjoin their residential property and they would have had to walk a short distance to enjoy its beauty.

The Garden is subdivided into seven smaller, themed areas that include a Dutch garden, maze, rose garden and kitchen garden. It features a number of carved plaques and statues that date from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, some made of Coade stone. A brick pavilion and a larger summer house also remain from the 1840s. Given the distance between the family home and their garden these small buildings would have been not only pleasant places to sit but also essential places of retreat from inclement weather.

The gardens suffered a gentle decline during the twentieth century and towards the end of that period were in need of attention. In 2003 a major programme of restoration was undertaken by the local community with the help of Heritage Lottery Funding and sums from other charitable bodies. Over a five year period a transformation was achieved. The aim was to return the gardens to very much the condition they exhibited at their flourishing best. So, species were planted that were available in the 1840s and the restoration of the built fabric was undertaken with sensitivity to the original materials. The kitchen garden restoration was part of the second phase of work and two Victorian-style greenhouses were installed. One of these has soft fruits such as peaches, nectarines and apricots, the other features citrus fruits such as orange, lemon and lime. Part of one of the greenhouses is used to grow annuals to display in the newly constructed plant theatre.

The gardens are open to the public, free, and offer much of interest to the visitor. They are a fine example of what can be achieved by the goodwill, effort and imagination of a community working together for a common and shared goal.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 47mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/40 sec
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Mending the wind turbine

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The theoretical output of a wind farm does not equal the actual output. Anyone who lives in the vicinity of a site with multiple turbines will know that frequently, while most of them spin and generate their electricity, one or two stand stationary, unco-operative, almost looking like they are sulking and refusing to join in. It's at these times that you see a van parked at the base of the sullen turbine, the entry door at the tower base open, with a worker inside persuading it to join its comrades in making their joint effort at energy generation.

However, sometimes the fault is of a nature that requires more than tinkering with the innards of the beast: the problem resides high up in a location that can only be accessed from the outside. In these circumstances workers with a climber's skills in abseiling are called upon. One recent morning I was cycling in the sunshine past a wind farm when I noticed a cable like a long, slender thread, hanging from the top of a motionless turbine. There was not one but THREE vans parked at its base. Clearly a three van problem was no ordinary hitch. I stopped and looked up at the hub and as I did so noticed the head of a man appear. He slowly worked his way round to the front of the turbine and began to abseil down the vertical blade. At that moment a second man appeared and followed him down, but on the opposite side.

A photo opportunity such as this was too good to miss so I took out my compact camera and began firing off shots. Whatever problem needed resolving was one that required a long rod with a piece of strong, bent wire on the end because that appeared to be the main implement being used. With movements that varied between balletic grace and the shuffling awkwardness of a spider with a few missing legs, the men moved down the turbine blade to its very tip. Then, their work presumably completed, they lowered themselves the still not inconsiderable distance to the ground. As I reviewed my shots and got back on my bicycle ready to make my way home I noticed that the company name on the side of the men's van included the name "ibex" and a picture of that wild goat of the mountains. Pedalling along the drove road it occurred to me that, on the basis of what I had seen, some type of arachnid might be a more appropriate animal to advertise their undoubted skills.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Plant Theatres and Wikipedia

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I remember reading somewhere, a while ago, that it's possible to download all of Wikipedia (minus the images). Apparently it comes to about 10 gigabytes of data. That piece of information came in the context of an article about schools in parts of the world where there is no internet access. It seems some are putting the file on a hard drive that pupils at workstations around the school can access. It sounds like a good idea.

I've been impressed by Wikipedia since its inception. I like the idea that underpins the website - that people with an interest or knowledge of a subject can write an article about it and that others can edit it: that there are certain standards against which the articles are measured, yet incomplete articles can be posted and are marked as such: and that the project manages to be both successful and accurate without the involvement of a traditional publisher, university or established producer of encyclopedias. There are a few people who remain sniffy about its accuracy, the range of subjects it covers, etc, but the fact is it compares very well with commercial offerings on every count and is far more extensive than any other encyclopedia. I rarely go to Wikipedia in search of information about a subject and fail to find something useful.

But, it happened the other day! I wanted to find out a little more about Plant Theatres and I discovered that there is no Wikipedia article on the subject nor are there references to plant theatres in other articles - at least not to the kind of plant theatre that I had in mind. Today's photograph is one that I took in Bridge End Gardens, Saffron Walden, Essex. It shows a large, outdoor plant theatre. Such a device is invariably a tiered arrangement of shelves, often, as here, in a frame or "proscenium arch", designed to show off pot plants. They were popular in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in a number of European countries and were particularly used to display Primula auriculas. Smaller examples were used indoors or in glasshouses. The plant theatre shown is a larger version, outdoors in a walled garden and holds a variety of plants that are arranged, you will notice, symmetrically.

The web is a wonderful thing and has a happy knack of producing what people want. I will be interested to discover whether my blog post triggers a Wikipedia article about plant theatres because it appears that one is needed. I'll check periodically to find out.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Avro Vulcan over our garden

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It's not unusual to have military aircraft flying over our garden. After all, we live in Lincolnshire, the home of a number of RAF bases including some of the larger ones. Not too far away is Coningsby, a Typhoon base, so these fast jets are very familiar in the sky above us. Sometimes they are passing quickly over on their way to one of the firing ranges in The Wash. At other times they are simulating dog-fighting above us, one Typhoon following another, each seemingly trying to lock weapons on the other. Coningsby is also the home of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight so we frequently see their Spitfires and Hurricanes, the Lancaster and the Dakota, as they make their way to air displays or commemorative events. The training aircraft of Cranwell (the RAF's College) and Barkston Heath are regularly criss-crossing the sky above us. Less frequent, but reasonably regular are the AWACS and Sentinels of RAF Waddington and the Red Arrows' Hawk aircraft from RAF Scampton. Assorted helicopters - Merlins, Lynx, Apaches and Chinooks sometimes rattle over too on missions to who knows where.

If all this makes it sound like there is a continuous cacophony of aircraft noise over chez Boughen let me assure you that's not the case: there is plenty of quiet when all that can be heard is the wind in the trees and bird song. A couple of days ago, however, everything was drowned out by the load roar of jet engines low over the roof tops. I shot out of the back door in time to see an Avro Vulcan - clearly the only flying example, number XH558 - at very low altitude, perhaps less than a thousand feet, disappearing behind the tree tops then banking steeply to the left. Was it turning on to a south easterly route or coming round again? In the hope it was the latter I dashed in, grabbed my compact camera and returned outside in time to fire off a few hasty shots as it made its second pass over the garden. The main photograph was the second shot I took as it passed in front of a watery sun that was shining through a veil of cloud. The smaller image was taken as it was heading towards the sun. Both photographs are cropped. Looking at the Vulcan's website I learned that it was probably heading for Hastings on the south coast for an air display. What I can't understand is why it flew over my garden not once, but twice. Had the pilot heard that I'm an occasional photographer of aircraft? I doubt it!

The flying hours of the engines of the Vulcan have almost expired and some airframe work is required. As things stand the plane is unlikely to fly after this year. I count myself fortunate to have seen it airborne in its last year and to have photographed it.

photographs and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/2000
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Kitchens old and new

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I don't keep abreast of fashion in interior design: it changes too often for the flimsiest of reasons for my liking. However, interior design - in fact design of all kinds - and the way it has changed down the centuries and decades is something that does interest me. I have the feeling, from my admittedly limited experience, that the aesthetic inspiration for many of today's cutting edge kitchens is the mortuary or perhaps the operating theatre. All those easy-clean surfaces of black and white tiles and stainless steel put one in mind of places where flesh is opened and saw meets bone. There was a time in the Victorian period when a similar approach was taken to kitchen design. In large country houses they were often laid out with ergonomics, industrial scale food preparation and easy maintenance in mind. Rows of Belfast sinks, scrubbable hardwood surfaces, serried ranks of utensils, heavily tiled floors and walls and enormous cooking ranges all suggest a similar kind of utilitarian rationale underlying their construction.

I was in one such kitchen recently. It is at Audley End, a large country house of the Elizabethan period and later, near Saffron Walden in Essex. The building is owned by English Heritage, is open to the public, and often offers activities in the Victorian-period service wing. This group of rooms features a kitchen, pastry larder, cook's room, servants' hall (now the restaurant), meat safe, game larder, coal shed, scullery, dry larder, wet laundry, dry laundry, dairy maid's sitting room, dairy and dairy scullery. In the house's heyday these would be filled with servants of many ranks and job descriptions producing all the food, washing and other services that were needed to keep the owners of the house, their family and their guests in the comfort and style that they felt they deserved. Today English Heritage stages reconstructions of some of these activities with, for example, staff in period costume making bread or other food using the implements available in the kitchen.

Today's smaller photograph shows one of these re-enactments. In the main photograph you can see all the shelves that can be glimpsed on the left of the smaller image. The rows of gleaming copper pans, shiny silver serving dish covers and the  contrast of the white of the pottery on the plain wooden shelves made an interesting composition for a photograph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11.8mm (32mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Boeing B17 Flying Fortress

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The only airworthy Boeing B17 Flying Fortress to be found in the United Kingdom is based at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) Duxford, Cambridgeshire. It isn't part of the museum collection but is owned by a charitable trust. Like quite a few aircraft of the second world war that are still flying it was constructed at the end of the conflict and didn't see active service. Until 1954 it was used for training and as a research aircraft at Wright Field and Hill AFB, then it was sold to France where it undertook civil work for the government, flying from Creil. In 1975 it was bought by a British businessman and brought to Duxford.

The aircraft was maintained and operated by enthusiasts and painted in the colours of the 457th Bomb Group, USAAF 8th Air Force that was based at RAF Glatton, Huntingdonshire (now Cambridgeshire). Since that time, despite funding crises, technical problems and the death of the guiding force behind the project, it has undertaken a regular programme of flying at air displays and commemorative events in the UK and across Europe. In 1989 the aircraft was one of five airworthy Flying Fortresses used in the film, "Memphis Belle", a William Wyler story about the first B17 to complete twenty five combat missions over enemy territory. The aircraft still carries on one side of its nose a painting of a woman and the words, "Memphis Belle". This a more modest illustration than the painting on the other side of the nose - "Sally B" - shown above.

We saw the aircraft being prepared for flight on the morning of our visit to Duxford and were fortunate to see it depart to perform at a display at Cosford later in the day. My photograph shows the aircraft taxiing on tarmac before it went on to the grass to take off.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 270mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Airfix and the Dragon Rapide

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Like many men who were little boys in the 1950s and 1960s I made my share of Airfix models, the plastic kits of aircraft, cars, ships and much else, that are assembled with polystyrene cement and then painted, usually with Humbrol enamel paint. The Supermarine Spitfire, Avro Lancaster, Hunting Jet Provost, Hawker Sea Hawk, Blackburn Buccaneer and many other Royal Air Force and Royal Navy aircraft were put together by my not-so-nimble fingers. I favoured the classic WW2 planes and the newer jet-age models but I also attempted a couple of pre-war aircraft and biplanes. I recall making the Tiger Moth (see yesterday's post) and the Fairey Swordfish, a torpedo carrying biplane that served with some distinction during the second world war. My model-making years were few, you soon grow out of these things as well as seeing the limits of the exercise, but I enjoyed it and learnt quite a bit.

One biplane that became available in Airfix that I quite liked was the De Havilland Dragon Rapide. I'd seen these aircraft flying about, and though they were old looking and old in years, first flying in 1934, I admired their elegant lines and curves. However, I never bought the kit. In later years I had a flight in one and I recall the steep slope of the cabin floor when the plane was at rest. The other day, at the Imperial War Museum airfield at Duxford we saw two giving pleasure flights and watched a third, pristine example of this aircraft, being towed out of a hangar and onto the runway. We all commented on the high quality of the paint job and speculated that it had just been finished - there was no insect spatter and no exhaust stains. Later we saw it take to the air and I got a couple of photographs.

Interestingly, when I came to look up some information about the Dragon Rapide I discovered that the Airfix model of this plane was based on the freshly painted one we'd seen. Perhaps that, alongside the perfect paintwork, accounts for the fact that in my main photograph the aeroplane looks like a model!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 70mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Tiger Moths, preservation and technology

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I get pleasure and interest from seeing old forms of transport still being used for their original purpose. There's a certain satisfaction that comes from knowing that something constructed decades ago still works. Perhaps that feeling comes partly from the fact that many of the vehicles that we buy, use and discard today are so obviously manufactured for a limited life and in a way that precludes them working fifty or more years down the line. Modern computerised engine management systems, LCD displays etc with their purpose-made chips linked to software that will soon be obsolete mean that today's cars will be difficult for enthusiasts to run in the future. The sophisticated metals that aircraft manufacturers began using in the 1950s and 1960s are limiting the flying time of preserved aircraft such as the Avro Vulcan; the sole airworthy example's engines' flying hours have almost expired. Heaven knows how the aviation preservation enthusiasts of the year 2100 will keep today's aircraft with their head-up displays, circuit boards and the rest of their technological gizmos in the air.

The problems that face someone today who aims to keep an aircraft from the 1930s flying are of a lesser order. The technology involved in most aircraft of this era is much more basic, and components can be relatively easily manufactured if they can't be sourced from elsewhere. I was discussing this with one of my sons the other day as we watched  an assortment of old aircraft - Tiger Moths, Dragon Rapides, a Harvard, a Chipmunk, a Boeing B17 bomber and others - taking off and landing at the Imperial War Museum site at Duxford, Cambridgeshire. Today's photograph shows one of the Tiger Moths, an aircraft first manufactured in 1932. This example was built during WW2 as a training aircraft and after a long career in aerobatics, private ownership and storage is now used for pleasure flying.

I'm no specialist aircraft photographer: I have neither the lenses nor the inclination to pursue planes to the exclusion of much else. However, I'm not averse to pointing my camera at them when they come my way. I took a few shots of this particular Tiger Moth on the ground and several more when it was aloft. The main photograph is the one I liked best of the latter group. The aircraft's smallness against the dark, heavy cloud cover appealed to me more than shots where it better filled the frame.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Syrup, treacle and memories

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Recently, when rummaging about in my garage, I came across two empty tins that for several years served as pen and pencil pots on the desk in my study. They had moved house with us and eventually fallen out of use after I divided up a drawer to make a more convenient way of keep my writing implements organised. They are, of course, no ordinary pen and pencil pots but the empty tins in which we had bought black treacle and golden syrup for baking. The sugar refining company of Abram Lyle who manufactured them have stuck with, essentially, the same design for the tins since they first produced them in 1885, even surviving the merger with Tate in 1921 when Tate & Lyle came into being. The wonderful, ornate designs using green, gold, black and white for the syrup and red, gold, black and white for the treacle, are thought to be Britain's oldest unchanged brands. Metric weights have replaced the imperial pounds and ounces and a bar code label now features on the back, but in most respects the tins are the same as they always were and exactly as I remember them from my childhood.

In fact, the design of these tins was first drawn to my attention by a primary school teacher who was telling us the story of Samson from the Old Testament of the Bible. To enliven the story and give it greater relevance to our lives she asked us to look at one of tins and find out what it had to do with the biblical tale. We discovered that the illustration of the dead lion with a swarm of bees around it and the quotation, "out of the strong came forth sweetness", were derived from a riddle that Samson told and which can be read in the Book of Judges, Chapter 14.

Seeing the tins glowing in the dim light of my garage I thought that they might photograph well so I set them up with a black background and strongly directional natural light amd took this shot.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/4 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Wondering about words

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In a newspaper article I was reading the other day the journalist used the word "phoney" meaning false. Not unusual you might think, but it was a British journalist and I always understood phoney to be a U.S. word. That in itself isn't so unusual because English words travel both ways across the Atlantic to take up permanent residence each of the two main variants of English. However, it did prompt me to look up the word "phoney" in my Oxford English Dictionary (OED). It reported, unhelpfully, "Of uncertain origin", though it did note the word's origins in the United States. It was then, as sometimes happens, that a dim light came on in the recesses of my brain and I recalled the word "fawney". This word, I remembered, was British eighteenth century slang for "fake". A gilt ring being passed off as real gold was often described as fawney. Undoubtedly, I thought, there is a connection. And sure enough the web produced several references to the origins of U.S. phoney in British fawney. Can the OED, I wonder, verify this? For all I know it has already done so; after all my edition, like me, is getting on a bit.

The derivations of words popped into my head again as I was processing this photograph of dried Physalis franchetii that had been cleverly and effectively placed in the fireplace of a room in an old museum. The colloquial name for this plant is Chinese Lanterns after the similarity between the dried flowers and the Asiatic paper lanterns. It then occurred to me that there was a further interesting word that could be applied to the flowers when arranged in a fireplace - "flamboyant". Today this word usually means showy, colourful or florid, and wouldn't necessarily be thought especially applicable to this photograph. However, it derives from the French word for "flame" and originally meant flame-like in either shape or colour. Architectural historians use the word in this way, describing the flame-like tracery of Gothic windows as being in the Flamboyant Style. In the nineteenth century, both in Britain and the United States, the word was applied to things that had the colour of flames too. Consequently, it seemed to me unusual, but not unreasonable, to describe today's photograph with the words I chose.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/30 sec
ISO: 1600
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Rhododendrons, the beautiful invaders

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The rhododendron (Rhododendron ponticum) was introduced to the British Isles some time around the year 1763. It was valued as an attractive, evergreen shrub that in May and June produced multiple, large and showy flowers. Its popularity grew and in the nineteenth century it became a staple of large gardens, parks and hunting estates (where it provided shelter for game species) on the wetter, western side of Britain where the soils were acidic. As well as this particular species being widely planted it was also used as a rootstock for hardy, cultivated varieties. With this high level of interest the rhododendron quickly became established and started to spread. By the twentieth century it became recognised for what it was; a rapidly invasive coloniser, filling woodland floors beneath the tree canopy, spreading into moorland and heathland, a plant that suppressed and replaced native species and made forestry much more difficult and expensive. Today the Forestry Commission has programmes of control designed to subdue the rhododendron and remove it from areas where it is not wanted.

One can understand the enthusiasm with which Victorian gardeners adopted the plant. It is like no other evergreen shrub when it is in flower. Not only are the individual blooms very big, they are numerous and quite beautiful. When seen en masse on a large group of bushes the sight is quite overpowering. As a child I enjoyed seeing the purple flowers on the millstone grit rock outcrops and in the woods near Settle in the Yorkshire Dales. In later life I sought out the varieties that Victorian landowners had planted around Bleasdale and Abbeystead in Lancashire's Forest of Bowland: various shades of purple, red, yellow, orange and white could be found. Today I make a point of visiting Woodhall Spa to see the annual show of multicoloured exuberance. Were I a forester, of course, any pleasure I got from the beauty of the flowers would be seriously tempered by the cost and work involved in controlling their spread.

Today's main photograph was taken in the Yorkshire Dales. The shot shows something of the glow that each flower exhibits when seen against the dark green, shiny leaves. The smaller photograph was taken the other day in the grounds of the Petwood Hotel in Woodhall Spa. These rhododendrons, a pink cultivar probably closely related to the ponticum variety, were planted in the early 1900s - about a century ago - and today, in places, form veritable "cliffs" of blooms 25 to 30 feet high.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 250mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Afternoon tea at the Petwood

click photo to enlarge
I'm a northerner, born and bred. Consequently I have breakfast shortly after I rise - porridge and a cup of tea all year round for me - dinner is what I eat near noon, tea is a meal I consume around five o'clock (teatime) and supper is a small snack and more tea (cup of) an hour or two before bed. I often have a mid-morning cup of coffee or tea and a mid-afternoon cup of tea. The names I give to my mid-day meal and evening meal are not those used in the southern half of England however. In these parts, generally, what I call dinner is called lunch, and my tea is called dinner and is eaten later, perhaps around seven o'clock. Confusingly, in southern England an evening meal is sometimes referred to as supper. The southern way is to have afternoon tea of, perhaps, a cup of tea and a buttered scone to fill the hunger gap between lunch and dinner. These names are not regionally hard and fast because social class differences sometimes cause northern people to adopt the southern terminology. All of which is confusing enough for the natives; it must baffle visitors to our country.

One of my sons and his wife visited recently and while we were out one dull, damp and overcast day we stopped off at Woodhall Spa. In this large village is a memorial in the form of a breached dam that commemorates the members of the RAF's 617 Squadron, "The Dambusters", who gave their lives during the second world war. Since the end of that conflict thirty further members of the squadron have died and a new memorial has recently been unveiled that will commemorate them. Lincolnshire is sometimes known as "Bomber County" because of the large number of airfields that were created here during WW2. Today it continues to be the home of some of the RAF's largest airfields.

After a brief stroll round the streets and a viewing of the memorials we slipped into southern English mode and went to the Petwood Hotel for afternoon tea and cake. This former large house in the Edwardian Elizabethan-cum-Tudor "black and white" style, was built in 1905 for Grace Maple who became Baroness Von Eckhardstein and later Lady Weighall. In the 1930s it became a hotel and during the war it was requisitioned by the RAF as an officers' mess. The building contains much memorabilia from those days when pilots from 617 Squadron (who flew Lancasters) and 627 Squadron (who flew Mosquitoes) based at the newly created airfield of RAF Woodhall Spa spent much of their off-duty time there.

My main photograph shows afternoon tea being taken in one of the Petwood's large, panelled rooms that overlook the extensive gardens that were full of rhododendrons in flower. The smaller photograph shows a view of the building's south elevation seen from near the Round Pool.

photographs and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On