the long train ride along the coast

And then England—southern England, probably the sleekest landscape in the world. It is difficult when you pass that way, especially when you are peacefully recovering from sea-sickness with the plush cushions of a boat-train carriage under your bum, to believe that anything is really happening anywhere. Earthquakes in Japan, famines in China, revolutions in Mexico? Don’t worry, the milk will be on the doorstep tomorrow morning, the New Statesman will come out on Friday. The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth’s surface. Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen—all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.


George Orwell, Homage To Catalonia, the last page.

looking through the bars of the Preston General Cemetery, upon the graves of the recently deceased Italian men.

an angel in the C of E. section of the Melbourne General Cemetary.

along the western(?) path of the same

the view of Queen's College from the inside of the same

two things i like to do: take photographs on my mother's old olympus automatic and spend lots of time in cemeteries. on this particular day i went for a long walk among the C of E. graves and closed the gate of one and found myself under a molted tree whereupon i was completely unable to see the ground. I ate homemade vanilla cake in a gazebo and listened to lots of Felt and Aztec Camera, if i recall correctly. I only feel uneasy when i see rats crawling out of war graves, even though I know there is at least four feet between the ground and the person who was once placed in it.