No Escape

No escape indeed. There are a lot of churches here. The ubiquitous church spire is a commonplace sight throughout the country. And while we don't pay much heed to religious admonition we appreciate a lot of what has been constructed by those that do.

Impossibly tall rib vaulted structures that have a sort of formidable grace. Even trying to think of a way to describe some of the religious buildings we've visited is very difficult. My mind seems to just go blank when I step into one of those cool, slightly dark, yawning places. It might just be one of those things you really have to see for yourself - i've never seen a picture that really illustrates the feeling of being in a room so tall and so long. With the dim reverberations of sound (when the choir isn't singing), and that distinctive smell of centuries old stone and churchey gubbins.

Of course one must never forget that it's not only the grand , decorative churches that are beautiful . The tiny village churches are also worth a mention. Sadly I don't have a decent photograph of one of the many we have visited. But while they are very often plain, and simple - they are also charming. I'm particularly fond of the overgrown graveyards that tend to surround them .

Possibly my favourite kind of church is the tumbledown, open to the sky, ruin of a church. Especially some of the bigger ruins - like Tintern Abbey - where grass grows in the nave and birds nest in the walls. One of the beautiful things about Tintern is the light. Most of the original structure is still standing, just minus a roof and windows. This gives you all the soaring majesty of a church combined with the beauty of the open sky and light - massive amounts of light, creating fantastic shadows through the archways and what remains of the giant windows. Splendid!

I feel the need for a little sunshine, hence the final picture. Not hard to tell that it was not taken in the UK, but rather on the island of Syros in Greece - on a nice hot day - aaahh hot days, how I miss you.

So much for summer. While it hasn't rained in a while it's getting colder already. There's steam people in the mornings! It almost rained this afternoon, but not quite. Perhaps if it had it would have put off the animal rights protesters that decided to wave their placards around outside work. This is a fairly regular occurance (I used to hear it from Cmed). They always come on a Friday, around 5pm, stand outside for about an hour and shout obscenities at the employees as they leave. Nevermind the fact that no animal testing goes on at the site. I'm not sure about the rest of the company - but we have nothing whatsoever to do with the testing of pharmaceuticals. What surprises me about these people is just how vicious they are - really, really nasty. I hope that since they feel so strongly about animal testing that they don't actually use any form of medication themselves - on principal. It is, after all, a government requirement in most countries (including this one) that all medications must be tested on at least two different species of animal before they can be tested on people. So no aspirin for the animal rights protestors! And lets hope they never get an infection, or require an anasthetic.

I waved and smiled at them as I drove by.