Bench series #17

For the month of April I’m looking for benches with a view

Friars Crag Keswick
Friars Crag – overlooking Derwentwater, Keswick, Lake District

If you would like to join in with the Bench photo challenge then please take a look at my Bench Series page. No complicated rules, just a bench and a camera required 🙂

  • Create your own post and title it Bench Series: April
  • Include a link to this page in your post so others can find it too
  • Add the tag ‘bench series’ so everyone can find the benches easily in the WP Reader
  • Get your post in by the end of the month, as the new bench theme comes out on the first Sunday in May.

My Picks of the Week:

Daily Musings has chosen an unusual location. And Klara catches a couple napping.
Torrie tries to complicate things
We find Jack lazing by the river in Australia
then we move to Africa with a view over the Zambesi

Many thanks for all your links – remember this is the last week for a bench with a view.

Happy St George’s Day

Saint George is the patron saint of England. He’s popularly identified with England and English ideals of honour, bravery and gallantry – but actually he wasn’t English at all.

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One that got away…

Why is it that we don’t celebrate our patron saint’s day in the same way as the Irish? Why aren’t we in the streets dressed in red and white, wearing a rose and waving the St George Cross? Oh, I forget, we reserve that for the football World Cup. And we all know how successful that is.

george crossPerhaps it is time we had a new saint for England, after all this chap came from Cappadocia, now Turkey, and has no direct connection with England. Very little, if anything, is known about the real Saint George and he obviously hasn’t caught the imagination of the English. George’s reputation grew with the returning crusaders. A miracle appearance, when it was claimed that he appeared to lead crusaders into battle, is recorded in stone over the south door of a church at Fordington in Dorset. This still exists and is the earliest known church in England to be dedicated to Saint George.

April 23 was named as Saint George’s day in 1222 replacing St Edmund who gave his name to the Suffolk town of Bury St Edmunds. Perhaps it is time to reinstate him?

What are your thoughts? Do you celebrate St George’s Day? Should it be a national holiday? Should we have a new patron saint of England? If so who would you choose?

Early one morning…

…just as the sun was rising.

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I am not an early riser. Never have been. I’m a night owl. Even as a child you’d find me reading under the blanket with a torch long after I was supposed to be asleep. So the weekly photo challenge  to take a photograph early in the morning has been a real challenge.

DSCF2476Staying on a working farm in the countryside, this is what I captured at 6 am this morning. And yes it was cold in my pjs, and the grass was wet on my bare feet, but you know what? The light really is incredible at this time of day. Perhaps it is not too late for this old dog to learn new tricks…

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