Limits

We went to the Final Year Fine Art Degree Show.
Some people managed to create something aesthetically pleasing after their three years in the maelstrom of creativity that is a Fine Art degree.
There were works that could have fitted on the wall back home.
Others pieces were more basic.
Many parts of this particular installation were replaced with A4 sheets "Censored by Goldsmith's College." Its a long story. An affair between a tutor and a student graphically shown and then removed at the last minute. There are limits.
For Art Students, it is a matter of finding them.

Know Thyself

by Alexander Pope

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast,
In doubt his mind or body to prefer...

Williams at Grove

I went to the Williams F1 HQ at Grove for a presentation by the army about what they do.
It was vastly over subscribed and they had to run two full sessions,
possibly because it also included a visit to the Williams Formula 1 Museum.

The army presentation was good too.

Dreaming Spires

with one or two Dreaming Cows.

Birnbeck Pier

Pier View was restored a few years ago, but it looks like somebody has been trying to nick the roof.
The rest of the derelict Birnbeck Pier in Weston-super-Mare has been closed off since a storm hit it in 1990.
A company called Urban Splash, who take on renovation projects others would not touch, bought the pier in 2006 and have put up their proposals, for redeveloping the pier, in the window of the Pier View visitor centre.

The Pier is unique in that it connects the mainland with an island.

Mr Pepper Revisited

This picture would have been taken about three years after I was in Mr Pepper's Class. But the style of the clothes, the mix of children, and variations in size, and the setting are the same.

Mr Pepper was quite unlike any teacher I had known before. The lessons were fun, but a little scary because he called on each of us to take part. Up until then I managed very well to keep in the background.

Taken at Whitehall junior schools in Evington, Leicester - another from Friends Reunited

No Helen Kellar

I still write poems from time to time. A documentary called the Silent Minority shown in about 1982 helped spell the end of the huge victorian mental hospitals. Most have been either knocked down for housing or converted to housing ...

-----------------

All day like a yogi
sitting on a hospital wheelchair

For a pat on the head
he slowly uncoils
emerging arms sway
searching a tactile sea
for something to hold
and he won't let go again
easily

Lips touched by a spoon
He gurgles
and sucks

"You enjoy that?"
He doesn't hear
or see

Because he is here
WE ASSUME
he is no Helen Kellar
and don't try too hard
trying to get through
only change him
and feed him
and shave him
and bathe him
and move him to the veranda on sunny days
and move him to bed...

Mr Hopkins Revisited

I recently signed up for Friends reunited, and uploaded an old class picture from when I was 8 or 9. And these are the interesting things (for me anyway) I've found from other people... A picture of Mr Hopkins our English teacher from about aged 13 to 15. His comment on my first essay in his class was "5/10 : All very sad. Your story is too breathless to make much sense".

The next one was "8/10: A lively imaginative piece of work."

But a little later..."At present you are trying too hard for the unusual word and your writing is strained. However I expect you'll come to terms with it.'

Peep Hole

The world looks more mysterious when viewed through a peep hole.

Shotover

A notice says these were saxon hunting woods. The same can probably be said for a lot of these lands, but here in Shotover, near Oxford, you can still believe it.
Trees that are fallen remain fallen and left to rot...
Trees hang out at all angles.