Let us fade

This is St Nick's (chapel of ease) again, back in February and still in King's Lynn in case you were wondering. Quite why St N's is on St Anne's Street is probably something to do with there being a St Ann's fort at sometime just down the road though why name a fort after St Ann (with or without an e) is another question. It's my story, not much of a story I agree but it's all mine and I'll digress if I want to ... where was I? Oh yes all that end is now cleared away to become the subject of on-line forums filled with fading black and white photos and equally fading memories... and there's a museum, I think I mentioned, there's a museum. There's a car wash too, do you want to see the car wash? ... it's quite colourful ... at night.

Just some trees

Here we're back in King's Lynn in the Walks. Peeking out the background is that old Red Mount Chapel but the trees in their late winter finery are the stars here.

Summertime blues

Took Margot out for a check-up at a clinic out in the western wilds of Anlaby. I wasn't allowed in, something to do with them being afraid of the bogeyman, Charon or Karen or was it caronavirus? Anyway I ended up on the naughty step outside. Which might not have been so bad had it not been tipping it down and a temperature of slightly sub 13C, nearer 11C but we won't quibble. Summer's gone and all the flowers dying sprang to mind as bits of me slowly turned blue. This was the view from the bike shelter. The pimple in the far distance is the Humber bridge, the mucky brown stuff in the middle ground is somebody's ruined harvest. I've checked and it's definitely warming up now it's, let me see, oooh 14C! Balmy.

The Red Mount Chapel

This I've posted before (here and here) and well here it is again. If you don't like it you know what to do.

Nothing but the night

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
  Look not to left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
  There's nothing but the night.

                                      A.E. Houseman

A war memorial in a town is, unfortunately, no great surprise, every town I've been in has one. Hartlepool, no town of any great size, has a massive one in the heart of town, Hull has one (well several really if you start to add them up 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 ... though this is not exhaustive). This is King's Lynn's sad remembrance for fallen youth in a quite splendid setting next to the Greyfriars' tower. 

Dieu et mon droit

"In a revolution, as in a novel. the most difficult part to invent is the end."

                                                                                        Alexis de Tocqueville.

A monarchy is these days and indeed any days a ridiculous institution, the head of state chosen by who puts his squawky head first into the world from between the legs of the reigning monarch's consort. We live in unusual times in that the next one in line came direct from the monarch's crotch but no mind, it's bonkers, you know it, I know it and even they know it. 

But that is just the beginning, as it were, for once monarchised the individual has no point in life other than to be a dumb rubber stamp for the Government. There are, of course compensations, the pay is good, the lodgings palatial and the fawning lackeys infinite. And all you have to do is roll up once a year in a horse and cart, read a short speech, written for you (on goat skin parchment) declare Parliament open for business and then bugger orf for another year. 

But as someone once said no sane man can be anything but ashamed of the government he lives under so it is mightily demeaning for us to continue this constitutional failure of the English Revolution (1649 and all that ...) year after year. But what to replace it with? Hmm? An elected president, I hear you say. But what powers would such a person have? Queenie has been around now for over 60 years but she can't say boo to a goose without the Government telling her to. An elected person would clearly have some mandated power simply by being elected. This would, like the fabled gun on a West End stage, have to be used at some point and then comes constitutional mess. We would not want to end like our colonial cousins with their elected monarch and spend three out of every four years arraigning (Thank you Freud; I meant to write 'arranging' but we'll let it stand as it is) his successor clearly those founding fathers hadn't thought this through. But that is not our concern.

Well then let us have a president with only "meet and greet" functions, a puppet (or muppet) to call Head of State, someone to wheel out for special ...

So who would want the job and what qualifications are needed? Would a sane person be fit to appoint to such a meaningless and thankless position surely they would tire and want more, be bored, get diverted. The sort of person who might put themselves forward would be instantly suspect. No, much rather pick some slow witted person, someone who has shown no great intelligence, a person who has perhaps been the product of generations of breeding and selection, a special someone for the purpose (horses for courses, as they say). Where would we find such a fellow ... where indeed? I think I know just the man.

The picture is the top of the old county court house which I would say was on London Road but I see is now officially on St James' Road but, never mind, both roads are in King's Lynn. That the English monarch should have a French motto comes as no surprise to us poor bloody English and if Les Français should tire of Monsieur le President I'm sure Lizzie would be only too glad to take over the reigns; I believe they still secretly lay claim to bits (if not the tout ensemble) of La Patrie. Bonkers!

The Long Pond

I'm going through some pictures that somehow failed to get in here when they should have. This is, as the title says, the Long Pond in King's Lynn. It was taken in February this year while the country was falling slowly into a nightmare from which it has failed to awaken.

Here's the other end of the other half, a road runs across it. Someone must have been through and taken out all the shopping trolleys, it looked spick and span as they used to say before they were muzzled.

Even before the new normal became the normal duffers needed telling how not to drown.

Raindrops on roses

The weekend in black and white is here.