Sunset on the Pampas

August brings two highlights to our garden - it's the monthe that we get the best sunsets and its when the Pampas grass flowers.

That Spot Again

You may have seen my post entitled Tricks of the Light.

If you did, you might be interested to see this follow up shot. The spot light created by the round window in the opposite wall moves across the wall each afternoon.

Wednesday Evening, The Amphitheatre, Arles

Every Wednesday there is a traditional Camarguaise bull fight in the Roman arena in Arles. A great opportunity to see the arena continuing to be used for the purpose for which it was built around 2,000 years ago.

Camarguaise, by the way, means 'of the Camargue' - the area of marsh and salt flats formed by the Rhone delta between Arles and the Mediterranean, where the wild bulls are raised in 'manades', or ranches, by the cowboys of the Camargue, the 'guardians', riding white Camargue ponies and surrounded by lagoons of flamingos.

The bulls are not killed. Indeed they are the heroes. It is they that have first billing on the posters advertising the fight and individual bulls gain a following amongst aficionados. The challenge is for the 'razateurs' (the bull fighters) to cut a very small, string rosette tied to the horns of the bull as the bull charges. It's very skilful and potentially very dangerous. These are wild bulls with unprotected horns.


A particular feature of the Course Camarguaise is the way in which the razateurs use the side boarding of the arena to leap to safety. (Sometimes the bulls follow!)

Almond Harvest

OK - it's noy many, but it's a start! (And how many people do you know who harvest their own almonds from their own almond tree?)

Windows of Provence (1)

When I was at art college, our art history teacher told us that if we wanted to see the true architecture of a place - that which he 20th century didn't get to - then look up. Since then, when visiting new places, I've taken her advice.

For a while I've been collecting pictures of windows around the region, and now I'm going to start posting them as a series. Here's the first, taken in Aix-en-Provence...



(All I did was do like Kitty said and "look up".)

Tricks of the Light

It's been quite a while I know. Summer's truly on us and the house is bulging at the seems for most of August. Lindsay's been in Brussels for 3 weeks and I've just been too busy to blog. I'll make up for it in the next few weeks as I've got a backlog of images that I want to post.

Here are two interesting ones - both are right-time-right-place shots. No particular story just a couple of things I noticed when I happened to have the camera handy.



This is our front door bell, bought for us by our friends Nick and Babeth and their daughters, Sophie and Emily. It saves our guests having to climb our spiral staircase when the want to find us and saves us the embarrassment of guests coming up to find us still asleep in bed! This shot was taken at lunch time (so yes, I was up by then!) when the sun was directly to the South - hence the perfectly square on shadow.



And this shot is taken in our apartment, the converted hayloft. In the apex of the western gable, we have a small round window. Every day, as the sun starts to descend, a perfect circle of light works its way across the opposite wall. Here it is at 6.30, hitting my collection of minitaure Penguin books released to celebrate Penguin's 60th birthday. All together a too good to miss all round orange moment - the book spines, the Antony Gormley poster and the setting sunlight.