Wholes, Holy holes, and Nests

Today was beautiful so I rode the bus to a nearby town called Lewes for a Saturday adventure. First stop was a cafe called Wickle to satisfy my sweet tooth. The decor was great - every saucer, mug, vase and upholstery was unique, contributing to a perfectly harmonious mismatch.  

Carrot cake usually takes the cake when I have to choose between several kinds.

Clusters of bulbs surrounding one working bulb for lighting.

Next stop was to see the ruins of the Priory of St Pancras. I like ruins. Nature has been reshaping the priory for the past several centuries (since the dissolution of the monasteries in 1537!), slowly ingesting the handmade constructions into the earth yet again. What the priory originally resembled is hardly evident at all. Earth is the most effective self-cleaning device I've ever encountered.

There was a lot of flint used in the construction of the priory (and most other older structures in England) - same stuff that makes up the beach rock in Brighton. I think building our dwellings with stone is a really elegant way of using the material.

Up!

Up!

Up!

There are a LOT of antique shops in Lewes. An oddly large amount per capita. I went inside one of them and found plenty of interesting knick-knacks and miscellany. I enjoyed the overall gestalt of the thing more than the individual items. I think that's part of the trick of antique shops - something you find may look really neat when you're there in the shop with all the other bits of the ages and it's like you get to take part of that home with you but once you separate it from the hodgepodge of other dusty objects - tarnished jewellery, frumpy upholstery, aged wood patina, magnificent campy lamps, ancient typefaces - and that old smell, it doesn't retain the whimsy. Antique shops are museums with no rules: there's no hierarchy, it's only loosely organized, you can touch the stuff, you can trade money for it, it's morphing all the time, and on the other hand there are things jammed in every nook and cranny where they will sit in unseen, dusty futility for eternity. Antique shops are truthful; their contents vary according to the location they're in and give a lot of insight towards the culture. It is culture, in its literal sense. Antique shops: truthful and tricky.

Then I went to a castle.

Through the arrowslit!

From the turret! Chalk cliffs.

More nature interferences and wonky chimneys.

Into the barbican!

Yet another rocky framing device.

Then I hopped on the bus with olive and pesto focaccia bread in hand and headed back to Brighton. I also ate a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a waffle cone when I got to the beach. I like snacks in neat places. The pier looks different every day, as it's framed by two massive bodies - the sky and the water - whose dispositions are always shifting between two extremes. Today the water was neutral and the sky was doing a far left (I'm not sure I even know what I mean by that but it seems to make sense).

And onward I went to my nest. On the way I came across some other nest-dwellers in Queen's Park.

Reflecting.

Spring has sprung!

My flatmate Mandy showed me this video today. It's an ad for a UK mobile phone company (the pony is how I feel most of the time when I'm running around England). I'm going to call it a long-distance dedication to Mr. Baker.