Photography
Kew botanic gardens still puts on a refreshing and colourful show in winter. It’s not an obvious place to visit in January; the Palm House and the many rooms in the Princess of Wales conservatory were showing fine cacti and orchids, the latter flowering well. Snowdrops flowering in the stark winter sunshine outside. The admission ticket is £5 cheaper for January but the Temperate House was closed and the cafes were seriously overloaded.
Fishermen on the harbour wall at dawn at Brighton Marina.
Fishing boats in harbour for Christmas and a train of skips.
Lots of colour, shapes and textures.
View from Waterloo Bridge of the City of London and the towers of Canary Wharf in the distance down river. It’s staggering how much the London skyline has changed in the past few years. St. Pauls cathedral no longer dominates the landscape except from a couple of protected viewpoints. New blocks with colourful names now push skywards in the winter sunshine.
The shortest day at the winter solstice heralds Saturnalia, the midwinter festival in honour of the god Saturn and fertility. The fresh buds and green shoots of spring are pushing phallicly skywards in search of light whilst catkins, the flowers of the hazel tree, droop curvaceously downwards.
Fulham’s busy North End Road was made traffic-free for one day only as an initiative to show how a lack of traffic could create a “vibrant, attractive shopping area”. Not a Christmas Market in this very mixed borough though there were the smoky barbecues cooking what has evolved as the traditional finger food for a Christmas market. Nor any street decorations or lights, neither religious Christmas or winter festival. Simply an expanded market filling the space on the street usually occupied by motorists.
