Calstone (Wednesday 23rd March 2022)

I haven't been up to the 15th Century Church of St Mary in Calstone Wellington in ten years, despite it only being three miles away, following an altercation in 2010 with a barking dog and its unreasonable owner that put me off the place.

Happily on this visit, when I arrived there almost by accident in search of a blip, preferably of a tree, I had the place almost entirely to myself, and did a short footpath walk along and beyond the perimeter of the churchyard.

According to Wikipedia, "Calstone was probably part of the large royal estate of Calne which was held by the kings of England in the 10th century, and perhaps also before that. By the time of the Norman conquest of 1066, most of this royal estate had been granted away from the Crown as a series of smaller estates, including Calstone, Calstone Wylye, the future Calstone Wellington, and the future Blunt's. The Domesday survey in 1086 recorded three landholdings at Calestone, with altogether 62 households and four mills. The 'black land' of Calstone was held by the Crown until 1194, when it was granted to a new owner and became the manor and parish of Blackland."

I have chosen this tree in honour of Joe Tree Day. I usually shoot in RAW but for some reason there were strange arcing lines across the sky on the RAW image which were not on the JPEG image that the camera made at the same time, so I used that to work from. My car Archie is just visible in the bottom left of the blip.

Gardening Wednesday went well in the morning, with paths being reinstated by Refna and under her advice an area cleared by me for future development beside the car port.

On the downside I had a trailer-load of stuff to take for recycling but over the last week one tyre had gone completely flat and couldn't be pumped up because the seal between tyre and rim had gone.

L.
Friday 25.3.2022 (1250 hr)

Blip #3609 (#3359 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #006
Blips/Extras In 2022 #047/265 + #020/100 Extras
Day #4383 (1027 gaps from 26.3.2010)
LOTD #2753 (#2593 + 160 in archived blips)

Calstone Wellington series
Trees series
Churches series

Taken with Pentax K-50 (Red) and Sigma AF 17-70mm F2.8-4 DC Macro HSM lens

A Visit To Calstone Wellington, 23 March 2022 (Flickr album of 12 photos)

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Marvin Pontiac - Small Car (1999)
Since Archie is visible (just) in the Blip, I've chosen a LOTD on the theme of the small car. I heard this on a repeat of a show first broadcast in 2019 hosted by Cillian Murphy (of Peaky Blinders fame).
John Lurie, a founder member of the Lounge Lizards, is behind this record. He has written scores for over twenty movies, including Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law (both of which were directed by Jim Jarmusch and in which he also starred), Mystery Train, Clay Pigeons, Animal Factory and Get Shorty, for which he received a Grammy Award nomination.
The album The Legendary Marvin Pontiac: Greatest Hits was a posthumous collection of the work of an African-Jewish musician named Marvin Pontiac, a fictional character created by John Lurie. It includes a biography that describes the hard life of the troubled genius, and the album sleeve's cover purports to be one of very few photographs of Marvin Pontiac. Lurie wrote the music and performed on the album with John Medeski, Billy Martin, G Calvin Weston, Marc Ribot and Tony Scherr. The album received praise from David Bowie, Angelique Kidjo, Iggy Pop, Leonard Cohen and others. Lurie said in a 2008 interview, "For a long time, I was threatening to do a vocal record. But the idea of me putting out a record where I sang seemed ostentatious or pretentious. Like the music of Telly Savalas . . . I don't sing very well, I was shy about it. As a character, it made it easier."