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

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!

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.

starcounter1... come in starcounter1...

festive cordoba

haiku for a cold night

Getting this shot was pretty tricky - to catch the colours in the sky I had to go for the longest exposure I could manage hand-held(no tripod with me at the time), a fairly high ISO, and that fabulous forced flash to catch the snowflakes drifting past the lens...

these festive lights look like

inside the night cloud

timidity

ghost town

are you?

of hogmanay...

one year old this week!
we conclude the party with firecrackers and celebraterations!

there have been cumulus clouds, cirrus cloud, stratus clouds and contrails...
dinosaurs, cows, horses, birds and a jellyfish (or butterfly)...
quantum ducks, space foam, robots, rockets, and cloud catching...
mathematics, science, literature and myth...
haiku, sky-ku, lamp-posts and mist.

thanks for dropping by (the sky).

universe tree

holiday tensions...

sky shower

so the weekend was a little busy, and a little back dating has occurred to cover the past three days...

my summer latitude

first of the backdated posts (whoops) - a few more coming

one eye open

ghost houses

ghost houses (2)

thanks again to Stefan for his superlative ink blot as a starting point for another sky monster...