Little boy's toys

"Be not afeared.

"The isle is full of noises sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt now.

"Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears and sometimes voices that if I then had waked after long sleep will wake me sleep again; and then in dreaming the clouds me though would open and show riches ready to drop upon me that when i waked i cried to dream again."

Great democratic spaces

Have you considered how many spaces you actually have no right to be in? Shopping malls, for example.

In the old days you had the right to stroll around your town, look at the world, stare at the world over a cup of tea and a slice of toast.

But not in a shopping mall or your supermarket or its car park or ... well you get the idea.

Try this: go into your shopping mall and start taking some photographs.

See how long it takes for a chap with a plug in his ear to come and tell you to stop.

Try this: sit on the floor and read the paper. Ditto.

Or try taking your family and friends for a roof top picnic. What could be better ... crunchy bread, warm merlot, lovely cheese ... overlooking your gorgeous town?

Arrested.

Not only don't you have the right to be there ... but someone or other actually employs someone or other to move you on, harass you, or have you and your family taken to the underground car park and beaten.

It's a generation now since someone pointed out that graveyards and cemeteries are some of the few remaining (haha) public spaces where one can wonder about without fear of arrest.

(Unless of course you're a 14year old with a bottle of diamond white. In which case you should also be hung. This is called irony.)

So anyway. Here are two pictures of St Stephen's Green in Dublin. They're not great pictures but it is a great democratic space.

Now i accept that the authorities probably have a whole set of bylaws under which i could be arrested. Eating the tulips on a good friday.

Or using it as a base from which to occupy the Shelbourne hotel. But it IS a public right of way (I think).

And it is - dead good.

Caption competition ...

I thought about a reference to that horrible dead South African chap trying to ruin the world cup from the grave .... or Rio Ferdinand slowing down in the Man Utd defence. But help yourself.

Consider the lesser species

We found a lovely big scallop shell while we were strolling on the beach.

The tide was far out - Newfoundland, i think - and we walked for miles across the sands and round the ragged rocks.

Then there was the scallop, complete and with seaweed attached; the kind of shell you buy on holiday, with a photograph of Elvis or the pope inside.

"Is it dead?"

"Yep"

And so it joined us on our walk.

"There's something inside it."

"Elvis?... "

"It's very heavy..."

"It was his diet"

"Might be alive..."

"He fell in the toilet."

And so we put the scallop back in the water.

Feet in Connemara

I've always liked my feet. They're two of my better features.

Today they got an early-season treat.

And so, dear readers, do you.

Today in Connemara

Untitled wall

Because i'm well-miseducated i know a chap called John Ruskin wrote some books called the Stones of Venice.

These are not they.