Chartres, a walk by the river.

As promised. Sorry I've not been around, life rather getting in the way. As it does.

Chartres: walls, and things on them, doors and windows.

I think I must start turning out the picture posts a bit quickly now, or else it'll be time for our next holiday before I've finished posting about this one.

John of Salisbury, Abelard's pupil, Becket's secretary, Bishop of Chartres, a great and gracious spirit by all accounts, the first really to speak of the shoulders of giants.

At twilight, ghosts

from the Vendôme porch, drift down the Rue St Pierre. They are ill at ease in their 15th century finery, they wander in search of a Book of Hours to make their home...

Herringbone bricks among the limestone,

doors,

and windows,

an amphibious spot,

and a faint heart,

limestone and limelight.

Tomorrow, perhaps, a walk by the river...

Yes, I'm still going on about Chartres, but I have to tell you about...

... le Clos Chedeville, the Bed and Breakfast where we stayed (the website has nice pictures of the interiors, and a good English translation).


It was possibly one of the best B&Bs we've known, and we've been to a few. If you're going to the town, I couldn't recommend it too highly.

The family were discreet and lovely, and the rooms, both the bedroom where we slept and the enormous breakfast room, were full of charm, and interesting objects and furniture in the case of the latter. the breakfasts were enormous, so we often filled our pockets with brioche and croissants for later - with permission of course!

We soon made ourselves at home...

(you can just see Mol in the corner of the pic, by the door, thinking 'I'll have that bloody Welsh springer if he comes any closer...')

And the very comfy bed, and cool limestone floor, were much appreciated after a hard morning foot slogging around the town (all dignity abandoned, Tom will curse me for this, Mol won't care).

It was completely enclosed in an enormous space, full of trees and established garden and birdsong, including a cuckoo, though very near to the centre of the town, with at least three different houses within it, two of which belonged to the family, plenty of parking space, and a secure gate with a code, so we almost exclusively left the car there and walked everywhere, saving ourselves petrol and parking fees. We had our own little space to sit on the terrace, where we could take in the Friday night boule game and generally enjoy the life of the place, without feeling either intruded or intruding on.

Three other dogs lived on the premises, including the aforementioned Welsh springer, and a wonderful old man yellow labrador with a great broad smile and an attitude that went beyond benign, who, by some inexcusable oversight, neither of us took a photograph of. Mme Chedeville always asked if Molly had slept well and been comfortable before thinking to ask us the same question, thereby endearing herself to us greatly.

But one of the best things about it for me was that it seemed to be situated in some kind of salvage yard,

(there are som box elder leaves in the one above...)

cum ecclesiastical heritage site, cum former cemetery.

The camera and I were in paradise!

I don't know why, but I never got around to asking Mme Chedeville the history of the place, and why they had a load of gravestones and other bits of church archaeology in their garden. Perhaps I felt it would take away some of the magic and mystery...

Labyrinth

More than one person to whom we mentioned our trip to Chartres said 'Isn't there a labyrinth there?' or similar. Labyrinths seem to be something people are aware of these days. Google the Chartres labyrinth, and you'll find all manner of sites and references, from academic specialists on mediaeval art and architecture, to marvellous and faithful replicas, like the ones at Grace Cathedral San Fransisco, to the wildest of New Age claims for the power of labyrinths in general and the Chartres one in particular.

Indeed, there has been a lot of dubious nonsense talked about Chartres in general, and not only in recent times: Black Madonnas, sacred geometry, druidic origins etc. I am wary of adding to it, and have been inclined to avoid it, largely because I didn't want my sceptical hackles to rise and spoil things for me. Pseudohistory annoys me even more than pseudoscience, mostly because I think it misses the point; experience of the numinous, the tranformational, the transcendant, even an inkling that a place is special and could possibly be instrumental in bringing about any of the former, don't need daft and spurious hypotheses and conspiracy theories to give them validity.

In truth, no one really knows much about the labyrinth, why it's there, what it represents. It may have been allegorical of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or something to be undertaken penitentially, perhaps on one's knees, or it may simply have been a kind of trademark flourish, a grace note, on the part of the masons who built the cathedral. Once there was a copper plaque in the centre of it with an image of Theseus and the Minotaur, but that was melted down to make Napoleonic rifles, leaving only the rivet holes.

Here's a plan of what it looks like. It's made from creamy gold limestone and a rich black marble from further afield. It was completed by the early 13th century, and has remained there unchanged ever since.

It is some 12m, 40 ft, across, and the path it contains is about 260m, 860 ft long. Any connection with the Cretan labyrinth is a false one; it isn't a maze, but a single path from entrance to centre, so you can't get lost in it.

In fact, most of the time you can't even see it, because it's covered in chairs, and those odd little low chairlike things, pries-dieux, that serve as kneelers in French churches (with the decline in church going, these odd items of furniture are often readily available at brocantes, Emmaus branches and similar; some friends of ours keep one or two around as occasional surfaces, impromptu magazine racks and the like...). You can see the centre of it if you know it's there.


The chairs aren't strictly necessary from a seating point of view, I'm sure of that. The number of services held which need that many places are relatively few, the part of the floor it occupies is the furthest from the altar, and the seats could be brought into commission when called for. Why obscure what is widely seen as one of the cathedral's most mysterious, appealing and interesting treasures, which so many visitors would like to see and experience? It may be, of course, for its own protection, the feet of too many people walking it might damage or erode it, but that seems doubtful.

However, on high days and holidays, they clear the chairs away, and allow people to see and walk it, though they bring out an imformation panel asserting the Christian authenticity of its meaning, and denying that it has any connection with paganism ancient or modern. The Friday we were there, a public holiday, was one such day. A number of people were quietly following its path, a few with what I thought were rather self-consciously prayerful and serene expressions and attitudes, many more were simply sitting and watching.

I had no doubt when I saw this that I wanted to give it a go. Happily, I'd read very little about its purported meaning and significance, and what walking it was supposed to do for you, so I was able to take it as I found it. I'm not going to come over all rapturous and epiphanic about it, it wasn't like that, but I'm glad I did it. I unslung the camera from round my neck - it somehow felt wrong to have it hanging there, poking out in front between me and the action - and put it away in my backpack, took a breath and started.

I suppose quite simply it induced a very direct sense of mindfulness. Concentration, distraction, sureness, a few wobbles, boredom and joy all came and went. Sometimes I had to make way for other people passing me, sometimes we acknowledged each other, sometimes not, sometimes I felt irritated by them, sometimes quite warmly towards them. After a time, at various points I thought to stop and look up and around me, to take in this window or that vista, to take stock of where I was. You don't really know when and whether you're anywhere near the centre until you get there; though you can seem at times, including right at the start, to be very near it, then the path will lead you off in the opposite direction, through wide arcs and sudden reverses. It sounds horribly glib and banal to say it's rather like life, but it's difficult to escape the thought.

And when you get to the heart of it, and stayed there a while, there's nothing to do but turn to and make your way back to where you started.

So where's the harm in that? Why the reluctance on the part of the church authorities to accept that people want to do this, people who might not be card-carrying Christians,* but who perceive that the labyrinth might have something to show them that a pilgrimage to Lourdes, a singalong of 'Un grand champ à moissoner' , or even paying one's respects to Our Lady of the Pillar, the North Porch or the Jesse Tree window might not be able to offer?


I have to say I have a passing sympathy with their point of view, I suppose. Having lived a short time in Totnes, I have some idea how crass, loud and intrusive so-called neo-pagans and their gnangnan, (thanks Setu for that wonderful word!) can be; rather as I have some sympathy with the 18th century clerics who dug up the labyrinths of Amiens, Reims, Auxerre and elsewhere, not for their soulless rationalist vandalism, but for their exasperation at the labyrinths being made a playground by noisy children and their games of tag (I also have a sympathy for the children, it must have been great fun...). When I want to be quiet and think, noisy kids and extroverts in groups, especially those spouting anodyne and tuneless nonsense, get on my nerves too. But I suspect (and this is, of course, only my subjective speculation, so pace any who may feel otherwise. I also know that many believing and observant religious people do not feel the same way...) the discomfort of the orthodox religionists around the labyrinth runs deeper than that.

The labyrinth throws one back on oneself. It is abstract and abstracting. It threatens to turn one inward, to find direction, grace, balance, truth if you will, on one's own within one's own consciousness. Doctrine, ritual, hierarchy cannot get a purchase there, the intervention of priest, book or word, is not required. The power of the church has not been able to appropriate it. Inasmuch as it evokes the Delphic exhortation 'Know thyself', it is indeed pagan.

So I reached the centre, stood a while, and made way for other people entering by stepping into one of the corolla of petals of the fleuron in the centre.

Because our B&B was quite central, and had secure parking, we left the car there almost all the time, walked everywhere, and kept Molly with us. This meant that when we wanted to go inside somewhere, the Cathedral, museums, galleries etc, where dogs weren't allowed or she'd have been a pain anyway, we had to split up, one of us minding her, either sitting and waiting and watching the world go by, or taking in the gardens or the market, or having an cup of coffee, or whatever, or sometimes one of us would stay back at our lodgings, reading or resting, while the other made a foray into town. Occasionally inconvenient, in general it worked out rather well, enabling each of us to to absorb and appreciate things in our own way, without reference or deference to the other, then to have the benefit of recounting and considering our impressions and feelings about them to one another afterwards, looking at photos etc. It also created an interesting dynamic, certain benches, cafés and other locations acquired an affectionate significance, and there were plenty of opportunities for joyful reunions, and, where cocker spaniels are concerned, you can't have too many joyful reunions. On this occasion, going into the Cathedral but not knowing the labyrinth was uncovered, I left Tom and Molly on the first block stone bench in front of the West Porch. As it was quite chilly and the morning was wearing on, I told Tom to go back to the B&B if he got fed up waiting, and I'd 'phone when I came out.

I started the outward path and undertook it more quickly and light-heartedly, enjoying the sensation of building up more speed round the wider arcs, and slightly careening into the turns with an occasional loss of footing. Then suddenly, I was looking straight down the homeward stretch, the last few unbroken yards of paving towards the exit, and my heart lifted with hope, as I ran down it, out of the west door and into the daylight. And they were still there waiting, and Tom wondered why I was standing at the top of the steps, among the queens and kings of Judah, grinning like an idiot. I hugged him and then Mol, and kept saying 'You're still here, you didn't go home without me!'

~~~

Tom walked it later, and we became rather labyrinth obsessed, and decided we'd rather like to take our own one home. We realised this was possibly somewhat naff and touristy, but that not to follow up something thatdrws you for fear of such judgement is cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. First we found this routed MDF disc of the motif, with a wooden pivot on the underside, which you navigate with ball bearings. Quite tricky!


Then I visited a tiny mosaic gallery in a small converted chapel in the lower town (I'll perhaps post a few pics of this later), and saw and fell in love with this mosaic one. I thought, if it's X euros or less, I'll buy it, and it turned out to be half X. It goes nicely, I think, with our red walls.


We love the labyrinth!

~~~

*Although many are and are still discouraged. Lauren Artress, from Grace Cathedral, an episcopalian minister, asked several times if a group from the Veriditas project could come to Chartres and study and walk the labyrinth, but received no response, and finally they came anyway and moved the chairs out of the way themselves.

Limestone and wisteria

The city wears a perfume of limestone and wisteria.

Limestone, like cheese, cut with wires, veined and crumbled,

smelling of caves.

And wisteria, like mauve spice,

Festooning and clutching the arches of the bishops' palace,

swallowing the wires that trained then constrained it,

or trailing affectionately over the lintel of a flaking shuttered window, on the shabby pavements of a noisy boulevard downtown.

Chartres Cathedral beggars

I know I'm posting fit to bust at the moment, but I rather feel I need to use up this material while it's still quite fresh. Five days' holiday could well run to a fortnight of posts, or more.

That said, I know poems should be worked and rewritten. This conflicts somewhat (do you know, I have to count the rathers, somewhats, and a bits when I write, to make sure there's an even distribution, and I haven't repeated any too closely. Does anyone else do that, or am I simply hooked on moderating qualification?) with the need to be topical and fresh about subject matter. Ho hum and tant pis.

I was rather intrigued by the people who regularly hung around the Cathedral in Chartres, how they seemed to be regarded and accepted/tolerated. In general, beggars and begging make me feel uncomfortable and negative, there, I felt, as I often did, that I was in a slightly different dimension.

This man was very nice, I didn't photograph any of the others, but this one I spoke with,a nd gave some money to, before asking for his photo. Here's the poem. I wondered if it should be prose, but opted for poem. I've made the font small, or there's too many overhangs, which makes it unclear whether it's a new line or not.

Chartres Cathedral Beggars

Each doorway has its mendicant familiar.

North - where everything that went Before
is held in shivering shadow,
belying its clarity, the balance between
stillness and action, the wavering edge
and shimmer of the line - Abraham twitches,
the knife poised, fingers caressing, tenderly,
his small son's throat, tilts his head to hear his god
let him off the infanticidal hook,
and Judith's murderous fidelity
curls at her feet, a limestone mutt;
the zodiac leaps over the the right-hand door,
drawing you further into its nesting arcs, to see
the man drawing the thorn out of his sole.

But come a little closer, and the door
opens like a clam, she hovers blandly
smiling, like a churchwarden, thrusts
an ashtray at you, for an offering.

*

The South Porch, though it tells of resurrection
and redemption, as well as Judgement,
is occluded,obscured by scaffolds, tarps and ladders,
its figures blackened still, fuzzed with age,
slurred with eight hundred years' dirt and decay,
so no one much gives them the time of day:
'We'll come another time,' we say,
'when you're more up to company.'

Among the poles and dust, a few pass by,
hurrying, with just a glance towards
a glowering, smokehead, Jeremiah of a man,
who seems to ask for nothing but to haunt there,
baleful, angry, grey.

*

Around the busy Western door, where flocks of folk
from all the world file and flutter, you'll maybe see,
about the iron gates, a troupe of lazars, motorised on wheels,
limbs curtailed, who buzz and scrutinise, asking for alms.
We passed a phalanx of them on the ring road late one night,
full in the stream of traffic, showing no lights,
they made us gasp, then banked off sharply down a side street.

But chief among the spirits there's the one, gentle and affable,
who sings, banal, absurd, but sweet enough to make you smile:
'Dominique -nique -nique...' so you'll have earworms for a week.
On learning that I'm English, he pieces carefully together
the journey that he made once, walking, camping, over
the southern counties, pronouncing - 'Brighton -
Croydon - Windsor, beautiful towns!' with reverent affection.

Stood between the crumbled and archaic faces of the queens,
framed with their tapering braids, his face is smooth
and brown as almond skin, his scallop shell
serves both as begging bowl and emblem.

He always carries flowers, sometimes a formal gold
and white bouquet (one puts aside the thought of raided cemeteries...),
but here, the chestnuts in the Bishops' garden must have caught his eye,
their white and waxy candles, and a palm of leaves, open and green,
splaying its lobed and tender fingers wide, like a blessing,

over his blue-clothed heart.

~~~

If you've read this far, you're obviously up for poems, so do yourself a favour: Joe's response to my question 'What have you heard?' is up at Compasses. It's beautiful. He wrote it on New Year's Day. Voices in the dark.

Chartres Cathedral, North Porch.

The North Porch was the only one I spent a lot of time photographing. I'd read up a bit about it before, and some more afterwards. Somehow it was never the moment to take pictures of the West Porch, which is older, and which I expected to be more taken with, and I suppose in a way I was, but it was different; there always seemed to be something distracting, or more important going on. The South Porch was largely in the process of restoration, and was forbidding.

Key:

1. Satan glorying over Job on the dungheap; 'going to and fro in the world and walking up and down in it...'

2. Adam and Eve, I think, chucked out of The Garden.

3. Clenching.

4. Balaam giving the Queen of Sheba the glad eye, who seems unimpressed.

5. The sign of Cancer in the zodiac, right hand portal. A lobster. Why settle for crab when you can have lobster?

6. Abraham and Isaac.

7. Aquarius in the zodiac.

8. A city of stone in a capital.

9. Gemini. I'm sure some amusing caption could be found for these two, but I'll leave it to sharper wits than mine.

10. Potiphar's wife, taking advice from a rather dodgy quarter.

11. Pisces.

12. Simeon. 'Lettest now thy servant depart in peace...'

13. The socle of Solomon's statue, looks like he's taking a thorn from his foot.

14. Seated king, and friend.

15. A scene I've not been able to make sense of from the life of the Virgin.

16. Moses. Michaelangelo gave him horns too.

17. A dragonish beast.

18. Judith's dog, a symbol of her fidelity, both to her husband and her people, which she preserved by only pretending to offer herself to the Babylonian general Holofernes, then when he got riproaring drunk in celebration of his good luck, she cut his head off.

19. Earth, air and water.

20. John the Baptist.

21. Isaac's bound feet, and the ram that was sacrificed instead.

22. The Visitation. Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist. The Second Joyful Mystery. 'My soul doth magnify the Lord...'. Even if you don't buy into any of that, this is a beautiful, timeless, soulful piece of sculpture. Eight hundred years is as nothing.

(Go on, click on it!)

Something tasty for the weekend - Saturday market, Chartres.

Staying as we were in chambres d'hôte (on which more later) we were not able to avail ourselves of much of the produce available on the wonderful Saturday morning market in Chartres. So, I had to enjoy most of it by only visually.

However, if we had been, a fine dinner could have been made.

First though, one would had to make sure you had chairs.

This man specialised in reseating them, in maize straw, or cane. (I am so not a street photographer. My attempts lack something, and the most potentially interesting, a shot of a shrewd-looking nun buying groceries from a shrewd-looking market trader, turned out with both their faces being obscured by the price labels of the goods...)

Then you would need to get dressed up.

These girls were helping to promote Macedonia week in Chartres. An even smaller girl gave me a booklet about Macedonia with some lovely pictures.

Then what would you like for a starter? Artichokes?

The ones on sale here were enormous, far bigger than any I have seen in Brittany, said to be the artichoke heartland of the world. I was assured by Breton friends that this was probably because all the biggest and best Breton artichokes are sent towards Paris, and some may have found their way here.

Or perhaps crudités, some radishes,


or a tomato salad?


Then perhaps the fish course,

Which would go nicely with some spinach.

Whatever you have as a main course, make sure to cook it with plenty of garlic,

some little earthy red onions (Roscoff pinks were also available...)

and some spring carrots, or celeriac, or Swiss chard,

and some more garlic.

And then there's the cheese.

If you're feeling a little liverish after that, what about some pruneaux d'Agen?

When I consider how the English brutalised prunes in school dinners and similar, I almost think we deserve the contempt in which our culinary reputation is held in the rest of Europe, which normally I rail against with persons of any nationality who come my way. Real prunes are the most unbelievably luscious, sumptuous things, almost more like a sweetmeat than a fruit. I did buy some of these.

Or, if none of that grabs you, you could go alpine, and have a fondue.

But don't forget to rub the pot with plenty of garlic.

Prose is the rest of the time;
workaday words, with a job to do.

If you're lucky, they like their work,
go to it with a light step and heart,
not plodding, dreary or reluctant,
though breaking a healthy sweat at times.

They may have satisfying moments,

laughs with their mates, even perhaps

some light-filled days and revelations,
and carry out their tasks with grace and joy.

But poems are the words on pilgrimage.

(Or, at the very least, on holiday...)

Where to begin...

... with our trip to Chartres?

Still rather overwhelmed. Bewildered, you might say. Too much is not enough.

A collage of architectural details is as good a place as any...

Perhaps. (You can always click on it if you want to see more).

Things worth coming home for...

Books arrived in the post.

A teapot, one's own.

Soup and toast.

The new red wallpaper, half forgotten.

Buttercups and sorrel in the verges.

Molly's place on the sofa.

The white azalea flowering.

(and you all, of course !)

More of spring.

This really is the last one before we go away, in a quick bit of time snatched between a trip to the launderette to make Molly's bedding presentable for the very chic looking B&B we'll be staying at in Chartres, and a trip to the dentist for a check-up for me and an appraisal of a broken crown for Tom, then I'll be packing. The early May drive across some part of France has been a part of our life almost every year we've been married, even before we lived here; I look forward to it so much.

The first thing is a spring melodies meme, passed on from Jonathan, who hovers in virtual space between Paris and Norway, to name seven favourite musical things to be listening to in this season. This was actually rather nice,as it made me think about what I actually fancied listening to, to accompany my vernal musings, as well as the earworms that were already wiggling about in my head.

I am not a seriously musical person at all; I have no talent for the performing of it and limited discrimination. I have scarce any knowledge of current pop, I have never really succeeded in acquiring a taste for jazz, except when I'm at Tall Girl's place, where the jazz always sounds wonderful. Though I've come to classical music a lot more of recent years mostly through Tom, my tastes in it are generally pretty middlebrow and obvious. I like early music probably because it's often a bit less complicated, and also frequently melancholy and solemn, and I like melancholy and solemn. However, I have been fortunate enough to have had many people in my life with a real gift for music, so inevitably some osmosis has happened.

Even for spring I like some melancholy; however joyful the season, it is always so exquisitely, poignantly fleeting, but I have looked for things with some lilt and lift too. So:

1) The Messiah, a bundle of mixed arias and choruses, enough so that the earworms show some variety. We often seem to have a Messiah Day or two at this time of year, which I love. We have yet to find the Perfect-Messiah-as-Tom-Remembers-It, which I think is without too many of the (authentic) twiddly bits. This may be something like Parsley-Liquor-for-Pies-Like-the-Pie-Shops-of-his-Youth-Used-to-Do-It, which is to say, a piece of lost time impossible to retrieve, but we enjoy the ones we have anyway. (The Messiah recordings, not the parsley sauce).

2)Bax, Spring Fire Symphony. I just put this on. It is nice in parts, but I think I'm partly beguiled by the title, which seems so redolent of the blazing bright urgency of it all, as well as those welcome fires one still sometimes lights on chilly evenings in early spring ...

3) Canteloube, Songs of the Auvergne. We took a holiday there at this time of year a few years ago. Actually it turned into something of a nightmare, because the place we were staying at, which was pretty and luxuriant and green beyond imagining, and full of lovely wildlife, also turned out to be full of ticks, not so lovely wildlife. The only day Molly and I didn't acquire any was when we visitied Vichy, which is a delightful town, its historical associations notwithstanding. The paintings by Alphonse Osbert in the old pump room reminded me of Cantaloube's music(that link is fun, you can fly around the room!).

This music also reminds me of my mum; not that I ever remember her listening to it. She always said she liked it, and I bought her a cassette of it late in her life, but in fact she rarely listened to music at all. Partly because she was deaf, partly because, like me, she didn't think to do it, the music-playing equipment wasn't so handy then, but also I think because she wouldn't allow herself the indulgence of it, the time to do something pleasurable just for herself. So I got a CD of it a while ago, and took the time to get to know and enjoy it, as it were for her, though I'm not sure in quite what spirit I have done this...

It's samey in places, and irritating in others, but there's something about that opening phrase of 'Baïlero - lero -lero!', that makes my heart soar.

4)Van Morrison. Some standards - And It Stoned Me ('oh, the water...), Bright side of the Road, Have I Told You Lately... you know the kind of thing.

5) Bhundu Boys - Jit Jive. Their 'True Jit' album, which I used to have on vinyl but lost along the way, is difficult to obtain now on CD or download (which I don't do anyway). Lilting and joyous, I listened to it obssessively at a time I seemed to recall was not particularly joyous, but it has completely transcended the memory. I have this one track on a World music compilation, though there were others I liked better. While listening, I also rediscovered ...

6) Hugh Masekela. Tall Girl gave me a cassette of 'Waiting for the Rain' more years ago than I care to remember, which I wore out listening to on a clunky old Walkman every night going to sleep on sometimes tense visits to the parental home.

7) Yann Tiersen's soundtrack music for 'Amelie'. Very winsome!

No time for many appropriate links, I'm afraid. Now, I have to tag 5 more people, so I'll choose those I know are considerably more musically literate (if that makes sense), than I am. Tall Girl, Sheila, Julia, Rosie and Barrett Bonden, seven spring melodies, or collections thereof, if you please.

And of course, and I know this makes 8, what is more appropriate the Vaughan Williams? Not my beloved Tallis Theme or Dives and Lazarus, say, which are solemn and wintry, but the English Folk Songs Suite, for example. Here's a video I made the other day, as a kind of round-up of the season. I still can't make head nor tail of the Windows Movie Maker, so it's done with Picasa again. I put the slides together first, then loaded the music, which helps with the jumpy scratchiness, though it's not perfect.

~~~

Finally, and my toothbrush is calling, my response to Joe's demand for lunch, is over at Compasses.

~~~

Sorry if I haven't got around to visiting everyone before I go. See you soon!

Orchids, and another blossom.

I know I'm posting rather a lot at the moment, but we are going away next week, so there'll be a hiatus then, and I've still many spring things to use up. I always feel our early May peregrinations mark the end of spring, at least in its first flush.


Bee read about these early purple orchids (orchis mascula), at Out with Mol, and wanted to see them. They are not particularly rare, but to see them in this abundance is unusual, and they're very striking to see, though not as sensational as Bee's Texas bluebonnets. They're just growing on a municipal roadside verge near the plan d'eau in Trédaniel.

Bee spoke about how she'd seen bluebells that seemed to glow in the shade, which reminded me of a DH Lawrence poem 'Bavarian Gentians', though that is very much an autumn poem :

' burning dark blue, giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off light',

and the way blue flowers in shade seem, paradoxically, to glow with darkness.

~~~

And on the subject of gorgeous flowers, and blue bonnets too, come to think, a couple of photos of Princeling who we saw for the first time for ages yesterday. Still a continually sunny and cheerful character, as he has been since he was born, now running around on two legs and needing quite a bit of keeping up with.