I don't sing because I am happy...

...I am happy because I sing.

Bird to bird watcher, New Yorker cartoon, by Edward Frascino

And the day ended with Evensong at Southwark Cathedral ,
sung by the Dulwich College Chapel Choir.

13th July 1944

Eliot Welchman with his sisters.

Flying Officer Eliot Welchman, Royal Air Force wearing the flying suit which used to hang in our attic like the ghost of a man parachuting safely to the ground.

He was Captain of a Lancaster bomber when he and all his crew were killed in action over Prez sur Marne.
'He earned the immortal gratitude and regard of the inhabitants because, rather than bale out from his blazing aircraft, he chose to save the two hundred or more people from almost certain death and destruction by sticking to his controls to direct the plane away from the village; it crashed a few hundred metres from the village.'

Eliot was 28 years old.

Eliot's daughter. A great cousin.

Back indoors

On a wet and blustery day

The original Edwardian tiled hall floor.

A rug I bought in Heal's one lunch hour back in the 1980s when feeling flush.

An old Welsh blanket.

A 1940s curtain from our first house, made into a cushion cover, 
now wearing very thin.

Lydia's bag

Silver grey Persephone books on my mother's little bookcase.
And they all have lovely secret linings,
like my favourite jackets.

Technicolor day

Black and white and a touch of yellow

The new camera, a Canon Power Shot, has its first outing.

A painting by Jane Arkwright

A vessel by Rupert Spira

Three pieces of Rye pottery.


Willow leaves on a slate path.

Goldcrests

A flock of goldcrests flew into our Deodar cedar today. Too quick for my camera so here is an illustration by Roland Green from
A Third Book of British Birds and their Nests, published in the Ladybird Books series
by Wills & Hepworth Ltd for 2s/6d.

and some information

from the same invaluable source by Brian Vesey Fitzgerald.


I found this tiny nest beneath the same tree earlier this year.

Paris

was wet, cold and grey

but still undeniably beautiful

and so quiet

that we had Rodin to ourselves

and it wasn't all monochrome

so it hardly mattered at all that the hot water cylinder started leaking the night before we left. 'Quel domage', said British Gas, 'we have no one available'.