WAYS OF LOOKING

 

Today's walk. It was a long one : hot but enjoyable. The butterfly garden of 2026 was being cut down. I'm sure it will rise again next spring. The cycle of life.

Down Crossborough Hill and Eastrop Lane to St Mary's church. Gothic in style, but Georgian in period, from a time when Basingstoke was expanding eastward, in the general direction of London.

Eastrop Lane is lined with detached and Semi-detached houses of the interwar period. They vary in detail but share a common style. At the bottom of the hill there is an interesting close of Neo-Georgian houses with mansard roofs and pedimented entrance doors. I'm guessing they are late C20th. In the background the weird post-modern spire of festival place.

My route lay past this to the Bus station, where the no12 was waiting to take me home.

 

This is a Victorian makeover of questionable architectural merit, but some historic interest. Disraeli's "country seat" in an age when Prime Ministers had to have one. I suppose the entire city of Manchester now performs this function.

This pic was motivated by a visit by my son and grandchildren. I did a bit of Wikipedia research and pressed some AI buttons to simplify images. We used to call it "seeing the wood from the trees" and I'm finding the AI tools in Samsung gallery helpful in doing this.

Photographs seem to direct our attention to irrelevant detail in a way that viewing the world directly does not. Of course a really good photographer can get around this, which is why photography CAN be an art form. It's not about pretty pictures of sunsets of course, not even those heart-wrenching images of conflict zones. Art is a much more subtle quality.

Needless to say I'm not calling this Art. It's merely a tool to help me focus my attention on the essentials. Great workmanship here, but far too "eclectic" for my taste, or Pevsner's.

 

On my way to get milk, I pass through an area that is named after "yards" These have been converted into parking lots on the edge of the town centre. We used to park here when I was visiting from Dubai to see my son, and we were coming in to shop or to eat out.

I imagine that these were strips of land behind "high street" businesses where stables and workshops are located. When these strips were combined into car parks, the differences in level between properties had to be resolved.

This is how I interpret the raised, cobbled tree ring that I noticed properly today. They wanted to keep a mature tree which had been in a yard that stood higher than the new blended level. Maybe I will find an old map to flesh this story out at some point.

 

 

Images from yesterday evening. Days beginning to shorten, which is exciting for me after 45 years away and closer to the equator.

Bottom right is a conifer with large female cones and small males. My app says it's an Atlas Cedar. This one is a beautiful specimen on a small, flat hillock close to an octagonal gardener's hut. People love to sit underneath the shade here: feels like a magical place.

The other three squares are of a group of limes on the other side of the main field. Two versions of one of the shots: watercolour and oil. For once, the oil is "better" The watercolour AI seems to freak out at the number of separate leaves and just dash some splodges about. Better for showing the support structure though.

Top left is zoomed in further so the watercolour picks up the actual leaves quite well. I darkened the image and enhanced the contrast to better represent the sky peeping through leaves in shadow.

 

 

BRASS MONKEYS

 

The War Memorial Park is just the gift that never stops giving. Memories of "Brassed Off" the film about the miners' strike that featured Grimethorpe Colliery Band. I had classmates who lived in Grimethorpe back in the day at Barnsley Grammar School.

A bit hot, but plenty of shade available from the trees whose species I have been trying to learn. All in all a glorious Sunday afternoon in this, my first full English summer for 45 years.

I could learn to like this retirement malarkey. 🤣🤣

 

 

In the early evening, if I need another 15 minutes or so to reach my exercise goals, I head off down the street opposite the gate into our building. Then turn right before the cricket ground, past the old Board school, maybe pause at a circular seat around an old tree between the church, school and pub. Then back eastward, nip into an alley and arrive home "job done"

That walk takes me past the Proteus art centre, which I should try to make more use of. Recently there there have been plastic barriers around a dug-up portion of pavement, just before I get to the seat. Repairs to heavy electric cables. Note the plastic cocoons where the old and new are spliced together. I've always been fascinated by construction work in progress. The stuff that gets hidden away eventually.

That avenue of trees is from my longer, morning walks, just after the butterfly garden. Another example of the feeling of secret promise that sometimes lurches into view.

 

Watercolour is a great medium for botanical drawings. The little man inside my Samsung phone is remarkably good at simulating this style. With a few clicks I can take a sample I stole from a low-hanging branch and and "up the clarity" of the images it provides by several notches.

This is a sprig from a lime tree. Tilia Tomentosa. The leaves have fine hairs on the underside leading to the pale grey colour and the name "Lime" (Linden to some) Not to be confused with the citrus fruit. It provides some of the best wood for carving: fine-grained, not too hard. Grinling Gibbons' favourite.

A WINDOW OPENS

 

Spent my afternoon watching cricket, women's club cricket to be exact. Quite a high standard and lots of fun. Notice All Saints Church in the background. The bells were ringing for quite a while too. How English can you get?

 Did I mention the draft beer?

 

 

Change of focus because of "reasons" I'm returning to the sash window families I created several years ago during Project Soane. I was quite proud of them at the time, and they have done good service, but there are lots of issues.

Time to step up to the next level. As usual I am taking a modular approach. More variations with less effort. First nested component is called VOID. It's a complex shape and can be swapped out with other variants. In this case there is allowance for a stone sill extending sideways under brick reveals and deep enough to sit under the window frame. It's a walk hosted family with 3 separate voids.

Second component is called FRAME. It's simplified, but it will do for now. Solid sill, weight boxes at the sides, open head, staff bead round all 4 sides. To improve would mean notching out some of the extrusions where they overlap. That can come later.

The fourth image is a Revit project file. Here I collect component variants, plus fully assembled window families. You will notice examples of the nested item called SASH.

 

Last night I went with a close family member to watch a Black Sabbath tribute band. The venue is less than ten minutes walk from my place. What a privelege. I never was a big Sabbath fan, but live music is always a couple of notches above the recorded item, especially in small intimate venues where you can have a drink with a friend.

Earlier in the day I changed the mattress set up on the day bed that I am using in my flat. Out go the two thin items that belong to the frame. In theory, they allowed switching between bed and sofa. In practice that never happened. Too much hassle. So I'm going for a single, thicker mattress and gaining a few inches back into the room. Hopefully the sore chest-muscle issues I've been having since I left Dubai will fade away.

 

Further feedback on my Sash Windows study. I have set up a sheet to get a solid overview of progress. The situation I know best from my own experience is a late Victorian /Edwardian version as found in terraced housing in the north of England.

Nine inch walls (one brick) with internal lime plaster and red face-brick externally. Box frame set into brick reveals and finished with architraves and window board (sill) internally. Usually stone sills externally, full thickness of the wall with stooled ends to support the outer brick leaf.

The box frame is closed at the sides to contain the cast iron counterweights but open at the top. The head could be a flat arch or gently curved, or a stone lintel. Yet to develop these options. I do have a variant from Project Soane, meaning Georgian era. The wall is usually thicker and plastered externally often with classical mouldings.

I will come back to the Soane types once I am happy with the later version, it's constraints and parameters, linked nested components, ease of use and stability. Fairly happy, let's say.