…french and

Other languages have not been used in the compilation of this puzzle.

What do the following clues have in common?
• Africa has one.
• China has a great one.
• Arachnid.
• Playing card.
• Freshwater fish.
• Mediæval instrument of torture.
• One of the so-called four evangelists.

Clearly, some of these clues have more than one possible answer, but if you get two answers that appear to match, then it should be possible to connect the rest.

I shall be offline until at least Saturday because I’ll be travelling back to Hong Kong. I hope that someone will have submitted a correct answer before then.

penrith picture quiz

I’ve been looking for distinctive architectural features around Penrith that I could take photographs of and compile them into a quiz. Obviously, this will only be of interest to residents of or visitors to Penrith, but if you fall into either category you may find this quiz amusing. All locations are within a 250-metre radius of the Musgrave Monument, which most people would regard as the centre of town.

I’ll start with two stone arches that no longer serve any practical purpose:

There are probably other projecting windows on the upper floors of buildings, but where is the one seen in the next photo?

This stone recess was once a source of drinking water:

This may be the only example of a clerestory window in Penrith, although the whole structure is decidedly ramshackle:

A studded oak door:

This façade should be easy to place:

More arches that no longer have a purpose:

Is the next photo of a door or a window?

Where is the entrance leading to a short flight of steps in the next photo?

Finally, where are these two windows with wrought iron balconies? The ‘roof’ above suggests some kind of industrial use originally:

favourite photos: summer 2018

The title of this post may seem slightly odd, given that it’s November already, but for the past two years I’ve published a collection of photographs to coincide with my annual sojourn in the UK, and I’ve had to delay my departure for Hong Kong by four weeks this year. There is another difference this year: previous collections have focused exclusively on my time in Penrith, but this year I’ve included photos from visits to Cologne and Manchester in June. As usual, the photos are presented in chronological order.

I’ll start with two photos that I took in a park near our hotel in Cologne:

Nothing out of the ordinary; I just like the reflections.

Paula took this photo of a stone toad in the same park:

The next photo is of the cast iron side door of a church in Cologne. It depicts episodes from the Bible:

Starting at the bottom and working up, left to right, this is what I think these images represent:

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden / Noah’s Ark / Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego being cast into the fiery furnace / Cain and Abel / Moses and the Ten Commandments / baptism of Jesus / ? /the Last Supper / birth of Jesus…

I have no idea what the two images in the top right panel depict. Do you agree with my interpretation of the others?

I’ve included the next photo because I like the juxtaposition of secular and sacred. The exotic building in the background is Groß St Martin, one of the twelve Romanesque churches to be seen in the mediæval part of Cologne. The latest date for its construction is circa AD 1250.

My final photo from Cologne presents something of a mystery. The original image was a fairly unremarkable piece of street art, but why has someone spray-painted ‘HACF LTN’ over the key section of the image? I can only guess, but it seems likely that some kind of encroachment by the original artist on someone else’s turf is involved. Whatever the truth, the addition is as obvious a piece of vandalism as you’re ever likely to see:

You may have some difficulty interpreting my first photo from Manchester:

It shows reflections in a glass-walled building in the city centre.

The subject of the next photo is more obvious. It’s a Victorian railway bridge spanning the Rochdale Canal:

I didn’t have time to take a closer look at Manchester Cathedral, but these photos, taken from a distance, are a reminder that I should rectify this omission the next time I’m in the city:

This is another photo of a section of the Rochdale Canal:

I did think of turning this one upside down. Or is it already upside down? Note the graffiti along the towpath.

My final photo from Manchester is of an unusual modern building—unusual in that this is a city where most of the interesting buildings date from the nineteenth century.

A few years ago, I wrote about my discovery of caterpillars of the cinnabar moth on a clump of ragwort, and ever since I’ve been looking to see whether I could find more, without success. Until this summer. I took the following photo in my next-door neighbour’s garden:

I rarely photograph oil/petrol spills nowadays, but this one was so intense that I took several shots. Here are two:

Although such pollution incidents can be spectacularly colourful, it’s important to bear in mind that the pollutants will eventually end up in the sea!

I always seem to find at least one interesting scene to record in the Thacka Beck Nature Reserve, and this year has been no exception:

These are organically reared longhorn cattle that are brought in to graze the central marshy area during the summer months.

I don’t often walk past the location of the next image, but I swear that I’d never seen this statue of a bear before this year:

The odd thing is that it appears to have been carved from a tree trunk that is still rooted in the ground!

I rarely get a chance to photograph sunsets, but I took this photo on my way home from the pub one Sunday afternoon:

It would probably have made for a better photo 15–20 minutes earlier.

Finally, I include a couple of autumnal photos. I’m usually back in Hong Kong by the time leaves start to drop off the trees in earnest:

The first photo is a view of the avenue of trees in Castle Park leading down to the main entrance, which is also Penrith’s memorial to the two world wars of the twentieth century (the memorial to the Boer War is located behind the camera). The second photo is a view of Penrith’s Methodist church from the grounds of Christ Church.

leaving a mark

Albert Street, which connects the town hall and the bus station, is a quiet thoroughfare despite being close to the centre of Penrith. One reason for this is the restricted access, as seen in the following photo:

This photo was taken from the bus station end. Although the street is now entirely residential, the first building on the right used to be a foundry operated by Thomas Altham & Son, while the building on the left was probably a warehouse. Both have since been converted.

And this is what the street looks like from the opposite end (it’s the one on the left of the white house):

Notice that there is a footpath only on the left. This would once have been constructed from cobbles, but whether the cobbles were removed or simply covered in tarmac I cannot say. However, the kerbs appear to be original sandstone, given the degree of weathering that they show—modern kerbs are invariably concrete.

I mention this because I happened to notice recently that there are initials carved into three of the stones:

It seems likely that these are initials of men who laid the kerbs, and if my conjecture that the kerbs are original is correct, it would mean that the initials were carved sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. I reach this conclusion because it is reasonable to assume that the street was named after Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who died in 1861. There are no twentieth-century buildings on Albert Street.

Incidentally, the diagonal line across the third photo is probably a thin vein of silica with quite a high content of ferric oxide, hence the dark red colour. If you look closely, you can see other silica veins in the block that forms the gutter (bottom of the photo).

Not many old sandstone kerbs remain in Penrith, but the discovery of these initials here immediately reminded me of the stonemasons of the Middle Ages, who frequently left their marks on the buildings—notably churches and cathedrals—that they constructed. I know of only one such mark in Penrith, and it is probably from a much later date:

Mediæval masons’ marks usually reflected the tools they used, and this mark appears to represent a compass. I should add that I suspect the block of stone bearing this mark was originally part of another building, because it is now in an inconsequential boundary wall. I also think the mark is upside down.

A final point: I’ve written this to remind readers that the more you look around as you walk around, rather than stare at the screen of a smartphone, the more you are likely to see. Of course, you probably wouldn’t be bothered if you missed the marks that I’ve been discussing here, but next time you might miss something important.