Musings

Commuter today means someone who commutes usually toward downtown from less-downtown, regularly, for economic reasons, usually employment. That is a slight change from its original meaning, which referred to someone who went back and forth (that part’s the same), and so bought a pass—multiple tickets for a reduced price. The commuting referred to a reduction in the per-ride price from buying multiple tickets up front—the combined payment was the “mut” part….

This may not make any sense. Commune with the bumblebee and it may become clear.

Posted at 9:02 PM | Comments Off on Friday mumble

Fog on the moor this morning. Love the visual contrasts of, from front to back, the uncultivated moor, the quilt of fields separated by hedges, the sea, the Wales coast, and the muted sky.

Quick stop in Clevedon to see several places used as the town in “Broadchurch”—including this church, St Andrews in real life. This is a living church, as it were, with a gravedigger (man and machine) busy opening a new spot and prayer books shelved by the door.

Then, farther up the coast, we turned west to cross this Big Bridge, the pleasure for which we paid the princely sum of £6.60. Of course, leaving Wales is no charge…just a one-way fee collection plan…perhaps to encourage the English to leave but not to visit?

Welsh lesson: ARAF means slow. Sometimes they’re in the other order. (I was going to make the title of this post “post wan,” which translates as “weak bridge,” a not uncommon phrasing on a sign on a country lane.)

And, now for Tintern’s church ruins. It is mostly commonly referred to as an abbey, and it was, but most photos are, frankly, not of the monastery, but of the church.

First, the window opening above the east, altar end of the main hall. Second, the newly restored upper window area of the opposite, west (door) end. North transept, wall of high window openings extending to west end.

The light was transcendent.

Today is our first visit to Wales. Signs are different—bilingual. Sheep seem the same to us non-shepherds.

And this is the National Assembly building in the dock-front area of Cardiff. Shipping is not what it used to be and this zone is being repurposed to draw locals and visitors. While somewhat commercialized, there are also stunning modern and historic buildings. And glittering water, wheeling gulls, and, for a while just for us(!), late-afternoon warm-toned sunshine.

Here’s a closeup of a living fence, mentioned yesterday. This one has the uprights just bent to the side, rather than all the way horizontal. After growing, it has the same effect of making a latticework impenetrable to sheep, cattle, and people. Small birds, rodents, and other small creatures may well make their home here….

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

A simple, unfussy phrase can evoke images with complexity and depth.

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I’m presenting an old-fashioned daffodil to go with my new word, Witzelsucht. It means pathological joking or addiction to wisecracking—not just punning, but compulsive joking including in socially inappropriate situations. It happens after a specific kind of brain damage. Discussion generated by BBC (BTW, the fancy word for a pun is paronomasia. FYI.)

Posted at 5:52 PM | 2 Comments »

We got out for Boxing Day into intermittent sunshine—and shadows. Looks like the locomotive world is getting going again after a down day. We saw a crew-switch at another location, but not here, although it looks like a waiting situation….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Parked contained energy package

I liked the pumpkin, signaling this week’s upcoming holiday…and I liked the railing-shadows.

Nut milk bag? Those words didn’t strike me as fitting together. The fine print brings it into focus, however.

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Little did I know when I was standing there, but the local pronunciation is…Pom-pee-aye.

Posted at 9:29 PM | Comments Off on Go figure

Just a software upgrade…and yet the agree/disagree text reads like a typical oblique 21st-century fortune-cookie-fortune.

My bit of wisdom today, or my attempt at that: this world is as entwined and interlaced as these magnolia roots.

Posted at 5:48 PM | Comments Off on Wordy and knotty

Love the light on the fruit at the top particularly. Fruit’s still green, but when they get ripe…yum!

These nopal fruits are called tuna/tunas in southern Mexico. Tuna, the fish, is called atún. Yes.

And sopa is soup and jabón is soap. And sapo is toad. Just sayin’.

Posted at 5:22 PM | Comments Off on Tuna silhouettes

We saw the landscape change today, first as we drove north, eventually through the Pennines, and then as we drove east, descending the Tyne drainage. We saw more critters than people throughout most of it, I daresay.

We watched the row crops yield to pasture, with fields defined almost exclusively by stone walls.

We did this in Our New Car!! Yes, new to us, but ALSO it had 40-some miles on it when The Guru received the keys! New car smell! Shiny white!

The rolling countryside became treeless….

And we were on the open range, driving between the snow-sticks, and watching for “LAMBSONROAD.”

Even more exhilarating, we visited a Roman fort…. That’s the land of the barbarians on the left, and down at the bottom of the hill…the creek…that’s Knag Burn. Burns are creeks. Other things, too…. Many of the trees in this area were pine plantations, and some were newly logged, but not these “forests.”

Our east leg took us to the end of the wall/road, and we watched the afterglow on a North Sea seawall.

Technical report: we’ve been using Goog__Maps to do our navigation, with Miss Voice turned on. She mentions nearly every roundabout, even the ones that are just a big white dot in the middle of a circle of pavement. Keeping us on our toes. Every once in a while she skips one, but our route is obvious. Sometimes she over-narrates curves and turns. Today she totally skipped one, and we had to backtrack. I think it was a new subdivision that wasn’t there in her world, although it was on the map. Still, using technology makes the whole process quite smooth compared to scrutinizing printed maps…without the magic blue dot of self-ness (as in, I am here, right HERE, therefore I exist…).

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »