I took this photo in #HurstbourneTarrant, England. It reminded me extremely powerfully of the door into Archenland, "The Horse And His Boy". And it's great in its own right.
cc.@layanglicana
Close-up of that above. You see what I mean.
Cue that crackpot theory from Rupert Sheldrake, his morphological fields thing. Cue the theory from Carl Jung, acausal synchronicity. Cue Terry Pratchett. Some places just come to look like #Narnia. Here, the Crom Estate, Northern Ireland. Morphomorphize FTW!
Close-up of part of the above. I mean, seriously, doorway to or from Telmar?
Dunluce Castle, Northen Ireland. This place is said to have directly inspired #CSLewis' vision of #CairParavel, #Narnia.
Dunluce castle again. Because every castle needs to stare menacingly at you.
All of these and the following in the thread are my own photos, by the way, unless expressly said otherwise-
Dunluce Castle again. Doorways all over the place.
Dunluce castle covers the whole top of a monolith, one huge rock, of what I think is basalt and conglomerate stone, separated by a deep gulf from the mainland. Your reminder it has a honking big cave undermining that huge block
The entrance to the massive cave under Dunluce Castle; Mermaid's Cave. The first white blotch is a person; above that person's head, just under the top rim of the cave, you see part of the sea, far off at other end of the cave.
Inside Mermaid's Cave; I partly measured the cave; highest point of cave roof roughly 12 metres (40 feet) above floor; cave around 42 metres (138 feet) long. Note the tiny people at the upper right of my photo.
Inside Mermaid's Cave, looking towards the open sea end, under and undermining Dunluce Castle.
Dunluce Castle, up top.
Mermaid's Cave, right at the sea end.
"Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back"
___
"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
Looking back from the sea end of Mermaid's Cave, back towards the small entrance from the landward side (138 feet away). I did a very long exposure to photo this. It is very very dark in there; don't be fooled by the long-exposure photo.
More #Narnia morphology, if not Narnia itself. Because Sheldrake, Jung, cue words from Terry Pratchett about places changing to look like stories.
We begin with a staddlestone, all on its lonesome. A remnant staddlestone: wait, and ye shall find out why.
Staddlestone building! A timber-framed granary or storehouse originally; the bricks would be more modern (it would have been wattle, daub & lime, originally, inbetween). Again in #HurstbourneTarrant, England. Can't get all that much more Narnia-ish.
Staddlestone building FTW!
Yes, it's Monday. Cheer up and wave a sword at it. Winter is coming, and learning a bit of swordwork will always stand you in good stead.
This one is the only one not my photo. Be like Tilda! Well except for the evil bits, & the cruelty to beavers bit, & so on.
But now, onto my own personal summation of this all. The @Guardian, it is THE paper and site that gives most national (UK) and international (USA, Australia, the damned world) to coverage of issues like poverty, class. It has worldclass investigative #journalism. But.....
... but I admit to being more than fully cheesed off with the Guardian myself. I was a loyal funder, around 60 quid a month, I stopped completely, because the Guardian's new policies were so idiotic and off-putting, not to mention counter-productive.
But! ....
But, bluntly, the @Guardian still is THE major newspaper in the UK, the USA or Australia, to give a very wide range of opinion from the public, & to also give reasonably trustworthy investigative #journalism.
I refuse to contribute money, but it's still very much my first go-to.
Some seem very eager to attach yellow stars to the Guardian (by the way, for anyone interested in the truth, it's not Jews who own the Guardian at all, and the Guardian tends to be pro-Palestinian. But hey, #BoycottTheGuardian because Jews).
Oh, and let's discuss that bit of trivia, that went trending on Twitter for a short while, only in the UK, naturally. The #BoycottTheGuardian garbage. Because maybe the UK could benefit from dosing up the tapwater with lithium and haloperidol too.
For those who don't know it: the @guardian is a broadsheet, i.e. a respectable newspaper, not a scandal-mongering tabloid, based in the UK, though its web-presence is heavy in the USA and Australia. It is the smallest of national broadsheets in the UK, and the best one.
The @Guardian, national broadsheet w/ the smallest subscription in the UK, is also the most "left"-wing & liberal of the UK national broadsheets. Known 1821 till 1959 as the Manchester Guardian, it has done a huge deal of v important investigative #journalism over the centuries.
There is an excellent Spanish movie, Alatriste, which opens with a map, and the caption, "When Spain ruled the world". And it's quite amazing; for a period of around 40 years, it really looked like Spain ruled the world. And for longer, it looked like Spain might rule forever
And somewhere around 1600 A.D., it looked like Spain would come to rule the world. It had THE best infantry in the world, the truly feared Spanish tercios. It had a huge, world-spanning empire. It had incredible wealth. And then it all went south, quickly, much by 1650 A.D.
Witticisms can be misleading, but sometimes it's true to say that every great strength hides a great weakness. Spain ruled a huge empire. Almost every single part would rebel. Spain had the world's best infantry - but b/c of aridity, meaning few horses in Spain, little cavalry.
There are people who need cheering up. So I am going to do some cheering up, but in a novel, mixed way. Meaning, I am going to tweet random butterfly photos of mine, and also tell y'all a true story.
cc.@US_Vote, @ElectionBabe
Some of you, may think us blokes have it easy, at least when we're young, energetic, & brain-deficient. Nothing is further from the truth for many of us blokes. Now y'all will hear The Truth. An embarrassing saga of the truth, but a funny one. Very.
My photo again.
Australia. BIG place. Lots of mines, quarries. All dusty, dirty, hot work. Picture to yourself a young, innocent bloke who has just got his indie shotfirer's licence (if new 2 this, see
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). Prefers not to work in more mines, BECAUSE (
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1/ OK. Let's stop talking about the embarrassing time I blew myself up and lost half a head of hair, because embarrassing. Let's talk instead about a colleague of mine on another job, who blew himself up dramatically, and I mean drama
2/ You think I'm silly? This other poor bugger, lemme tell you, he blew himself up, was stark bollocks naked as a result, and only just missed being lethally impaled by a jackhammer into the roof of the tunnel, like some weird kind of Industrial Mineworking Pinned Butterfly.
3/ Shotfirer = the bloke (or woman) who sets off the explosive charges in a quarry, mine or demolition site. The "shot" is the actual explosive charge or set of them.