Great Barrier

Beautiful and sad. Bobby needs me.

Upon Westminster Bridge

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear



The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air,



Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

William Wordsworth (Sept. 3 1802)

Picture 1 is the west front of Westminster Abbey.

Picture 2 is the apse of Westminster Abbey.

Picture 3 is the Jewel Tower, one of the few remaining parts of the original medieval Palace of Westminster.

You didn't think I'd go to Westminster and not take piccies, did you?

The view Wordsworth wrote about has changed a bit over the last 200 years. Not many fields or rocks, and the air may be more smokeless than it was 50 years ago, but it's still choked with exhaust fumes, and silent and bare it ain't. As for being asleep, well, like so many big cities, the centre of London never sleeps.

This is the view from Westminster Bridge looking south-east


This is the scene to the north-west


And this is the south-west.

Well the sun is still shining and the the river glittering.

Graansha

I STILL haven't capped this episode. I suppose the truth is that I just don't like it. Some episodes are yucky, some are average, but this one just leaves me cold. One day I'll have to cap it, but meanwhile I just avoid it, and I'm really not sure what it is that repels me.

So instead, I'll just post some of those Utah pictures that Diane treated us to. I don't think it's possible to see too much of them.






















Thanks to the dear man who snapped these and shared them.

The Good Child

This is not the best episode ever for pictures of Bobby. I didn't make it to 10!

Gone

Global Warning

No, it's not a misprint for Global Warming.

Today there have been between two and three thousand global alert events worldwide. At Parliament Square in London, there was a flashmob. I had to be there.

The alarms on our phones were set to go off at 12.18pm. We moved into the centre of the square holding our phones aloft. There was then a repeated chant of "tick, tick, tick" and then we all tried to call numbers we had received over the internet for Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Peter Mandelson. For the most part, people did not manage to connect and leave a message.

But then this young woman, Iris Andrews, was put through to Gordon Brown and had a converstaion with him for several minutes. (I thought I was filming it, but I'd only managed to get a still.)

The aim of the exercise was to get Gordon Brown to go to the climate conference in Copenhagen in December and reach an agreement which will really make a difference to the catastrophe that is enfolding the planet. He told her he would be going. When you look at the latest disaster hitting the world - the horrendous drought that is killing people, livestock and wildlife in Kenya - we just can't wait any longer to stop destroying Earth. And dear US readers, your country is the worst polluter, so please do every little thing you can to reduce your carbon emissions and persuade your government at state and federal level to get their fingers out and help save the planet. That long-sought-after North-West Passage has almost opened up, and the lands that will sink under the rising sea levels caused by the melting ice, not to mention the polar bears that will starve or drown, may already be doomed. We can no longer say we can't afford to do it. We cannot afford not to.

The Gift

I always want to slap this stupid, gullible woman. Sadly, the world is full of foolish people like her.

I'm afraid my obsession with the scene in the garage has increased my pictures by two. Sorry...