PHOTO-A-DAY CHALLENGE
A Week In Mysteries
An Inland Lighthouse — A Rainbow Of Cones — Emergency Dentist
Depending upon whether you start your week with a Sunday or a Monday, the week began or the previous week ended with a flying visit to an emergency dentist. I wasn’t the one requiring treatment, but I was roped in to be the chauffeur as it was a wisdom tooth extraction requiring a good dose of anaesthetic.
I photographed this artwork on one of the walls of the massive foyer where I waited. There were no explanatory plaques and no one to ask, so the who, what and why remain a mystery.
Just across the road was a rather magnificent looking pub called The Leopard. According to the signs plastered all over it, it boasts live music, real ale, sports, good food, and a beer garden. Being Sunday morning, it was shut, but I looked it up. It’s one of Doncaster’s oldest pubs. It has long been a high-profile live music venue.
Records mentioning The Leopard seem to go back to the 1830s, but the 1911 census lists it as under construction. It was forced to close in 2014, but was rescued by Doncaster Culture and Leisure Trust and reopened a few months later.
The dental trip wasn’t the only journey of the week. We went to a family gathering that involved much catching up, good food, young cousins running riot, a mishap involving a dog and a cake — overall a good day on which no photos were taken at all until the journey home when the 6-year-old pointed out the cones.
No one who travels Britain’s motorways is a stranger to traffic cones, and we saw miles of standard red and orange ones, but then we came across these. I wasn’t quick with the camera. I only caught a few and didn’t catch the full rainbow, but it made a change from the relentless lines of red and orange.
Having taken two journeys inland, it was time to head for the coast. If you think the sea is beyond the lighthouse in the picture below, you would be wrong. The lighthouse is in the middle of the town. Originally built a quarter of a mile from the sea, there was a time when nothing but sand dunes stood between it and the ocean. Maybe it was built so far back because the coastline erodes quickly, although this stretch has been protected and the lighthouse is no closer to the sea than it ever was.
All in all, it ended up being quite a busy week, so it was good to spend time at home, where the garden is demanding attention. We have had a good crop of red hot peppers; enough to last us for several years probably. The pears have done well, too.
And so on to the dead flowers. Recently, I read Barb Dalton’s photo diary in which she included a shot of dead flowers.
Some days later, I read Kim Zuch’s photo week and saw that she had followed Barb’s lead.
So, not be outdone, I rushed out and photographed our own strange flowers. Whatever they are, they grow tall. The ones in the first picture lay down on the grass a couple of weeks ago but continued to flower and open up for the sun. All attempts to prop them up were futile so we left them to sunbathe.
The thing about these flowers — whatever they are — is that they not only look as though they were made from paper, they feel like paper. When they first bloomed, we thought we would lose the lot in the first stiff breeze that came through, but they’ve weathered everything that summer has thrown at them.
Some of them are still hosting bees. It’s a fuzzy shot — I managed to get the rose leaves in focus but not the flower with its bee.
It was almost as though someone had planted the garden with fake flowers, but presumably bees know the difference. And anyway, they are now starting to die off for real. There are a few that have entirely lost their colour and lost any pretence of being viable flowers. I guess they will all go this way now that autumn is upon us.
The week in photos articles were started by Dennett and taken up by many. They provide some fascinating insights into people’s lives. As well as Dennett, here are more writers whose stories are worth following: Susan Alison, Anne Bonfert, Kim Zuch, Ellie Jacobson, pockett dessert, Erika Burkhalter, Barb Dalton 🇺🇦, Pene Hodge, K. Barrett, Mia Verita, Louise Peacock.