pun crow disparages whimsical collective nouns

The late middle ages have a lot to answer for... venery included...

postcards from the edge of reason

Captured at Christchurch Harbour, Dorset.

swan-rād

Old English poetry was full of a metaphorical technique called kenning, in which regular words were replaced by compounds which gave a poetic flavour to the description. Thus 'sun' can become 'sky-candle', and 'warrior' can become 'feeder of war gulls' - a double modified expression, in which war-gulls refer to ravens, the carrion birds attracted by the dead after a battle (nice, eh?). And what of the sea? In the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, mighty ships plough the sail-road, the whale-road and the swan-road.

The when light hits the surface of the water, it creates a dispersed pattern of reflection stretching from the horizon towards the viewer. As light scatters off the moving surfaces of the ripples, only those beams which reflect towards the observer are visible. The resulting twinkly surface is called a glitter-path, and when the individual twinkles are summed together (as in this long exposure), the result is a clear, bright bridge. Here, the moon-bridge stretches right across the bay to the old town of Swanage (Anglo-Saxon name: Swanwich, meaning... wait for it... swan-village). Anyone fancy a stroll along the moon bridge across the swan-road to Swan-town?

Captured at Boscombe, Dorset

colours, colours, colours

Captured at Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau Island, HK.

what do hipster birds tweet about?

Captured on Knez Mihaelov, Belgrade.

underneath the storm clouds...

After an stormy hour, trudging along a pebble beach under ancient cliffs, I rounded a remote, grizzled headland only to find these bright beach huts nestled into the dunes. Surreal.

Captured at Mudeford Spit, Dorset, UK.

somewhere up here...

paper mountains

Lantau Island, in smog. Hong Kong.

wishing lanterns

In Bangkok during Loi Krathong, as well as floating colourful krathongs into ponds and rivers, many Thais sent their wishes for the coming year skyward, much to the chagrin of local police. Perhaps they thought such festivities should be reserved for Yi Peng in Changmai? Or perhaps their enthusiastic dousing of people's firey wishes was out of respect for a recently passed religious figure. Still. Some wishes got away!

whatcha up to?

The world of work can be grinding at times. Hope this little fella shines some light at the end of your work week.

Captured at Wat Suthat, Bangkok.

cities in the sky

Overlooking Penang and Butterworth, Malaysia. Still impressed by the size of towering cloud-mountains, relative to our puny, human-sized achievements...

lonely

City of Hong Kong. Tallest sky scrapers, loneliest streetlights.

bright romance

Ice halos captured towards the end of a flight from Bangkok to Singapore. Flying through cirrus layers, a 22 degree halo appeared, joined by sundogs, which turned sharply into Parhelic arcs, vanished just as quickly - but followed by this beauty - a lower tangent arc (column crystals, light passing through the sides), normally hidden below the horizon: The arms of the arc only cross like this when the sun is about 15 degrees above the horizon. It lasted just a few seconds...

...but I was waiting!

Tiny God

All questions about whether 2014 will be a good year are now answered. Ask the Tiny God. Aw Yeah. His small friend is pretty stoked too. Fist pump!

Captured at Tokong Han Jiang, Ancestral Clan Temple, Penang

nebulous your allegiance...

i only came to say hello...

not coming home any time soon

Oh, hi there! It's been a while since we've seen you!

grendel, your pea soup is ready...

It's the line of the poem. Most famous and best remembered: "ða com of more under misthleoþum Grendel gongan, godes yrre bær" He came off the moor, under the mist-cliffs, Grendel striding, bearing the wrath of God.

How could a thick fog at the cliffs not remind me of that line, and of Grendel's powerful, furious stomping... But also of the injured monster - retreating from his encounter with Beowulf, arm torn off, slouching back to his cave, to see his monster mum. A substantial portion of the poem is devoted to Grendel's mum (rather curiously portrayed by the foxy Angelina in the recent film). So perhaps she did brew him up some restorative soup, before heading out to slaughter Hrothgar's men in their sleep... thanx mum. x. gr.

there's clearly something about monster mums that i find absurdly amusing...

nice to meet you...

clearly some further adventures from the hedgehog and the bear cub who aren't always on time... it's good to hear that they've found a friendly broken-down lamppost on the boardwalk to share their favourite hobby with.

pirate gold

I like to think of the sea as a seducer of young men, bright eyed and open, with adventure in their hearts: Men who leapt gladly from the underhanded, Shanghai-ing, political world of the privateers, into the democratic arms of honest share-and-split-the-booty-alike piracy, cutlass between teeth and a flintlock, tied to end of a colourful silk sash...