Through a glass, darkly
Posted on October 9, 2019
Detail of the stopper of an antique coloured glass decanter, seen at an exhibition of old glassware and ceramics in our local village.

Posted in response to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Circles, Curves and Arches
Tuesday Photo Challenge – Tourism
Posted on October 8, 2019
No prizes for guessing which popular tourist destination is pictured here:

Not drinking water
Posted on October 4, 2019
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge this week could be said to require some lateral thinking, as she is setting the theme of ‘side of things’.
In the medieval centre of the town of Cahors there is a hexagonal water fountain, with each of the six sides featuring a carving of a different dog’s head. This image shows two of them.

Thursday Doors: Bussiere-Poitevine (4)
Posted on October 3, 2019
A fourth instalment of doors from the village of Bussière-Poitevine. (We’re almost done here, I promise.)
By definition, it wouldn’t be a village if it didn’t have a church:

In last week’s post I showed an old shopfront. Here’s another:

Sometimes you need to look around you a little more carefully than usual to spot some interesting doors, like these two sets of ground-level cellar doors that happen to be opposite each other on the same street:


And down a little endroit:

Just a basic example, although the stonework is quite striking:

Thursday Doors 3 October 2019
Keep Out
Posted on October 2, 2019
I spotted this barred window on an old building in the village of Bussière-Poitevine and it seemed perfect for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week. It reminds me of one of those ‘coffee-time’ magazine puzzles where you have to find as many squares and rectangles as possible in the diagram.

Tuesday Photo Challenge: Groceries
Posted on October 1, 2019
Frank’s theme for this week’s Tuesday Photo Challenge is in one sense a little out of the ordinary, but in another way could hardly be more mundane – ‘groceries’. So here are some groceries that are a little out of the ordinary: a basket of coloquintes (gourds) that I spotted at an open-air market in the town of Chabanais. They’re nothing if not colourful.

The weight of tradition
Posted on September 27, 2019
Go to any brocante or vide-grenier around these parts and you’ll find plenty of old farming utensils which would nowadays probably be classed as – and only useful for – ‘design pieces’. Almost inevitably,somewhere in the jumble will be an old set of weights – like these:

Thursday Doors: Bussiere-Poitevine (3)
Posted on September 26, 2019
A third instalment of doors from the nearby village of Bussière-Poitevine
As I’ve noted on numerous occasions in these posts, the streets of many villages and small towns of rural France are littered with old, long-closed shop premises which often display a ‘frozen-in-time’ snapshot of design from fifty or sixty years ago. Bussière is no exception. This one seems once to have been a mercerie:

Equally past its sell-by date is the sign on this garage door alleging that it is in constant use. It’s fair to say that it isn’t:

More doors that no longer seem to perform any function:


Although there just might still be a spark of life in these:


Thursday Doors 26 September 2019
Vintage Car Parade
Posted on September 25, 2019
A line of classic cars prepares to parade through the nearby village of Nouic

Posted in response to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Cars
Tuesday Photo Challenge: Stone
Posted on September 24, 2019
Frank is looking for images of stone to meet his theme for the Tuesday Photo Challenge this week. This small portion of the massive façade of Chartres Cathedral has stone aplenty and certainly would have made a powerful statement about the overwhelming power of the Church.





