A very dark day in January.
I’m injured … nasty groin sprain. Haven’t played my favourite Pickleball for nearly two months.
Click the link above if you’ve no idea what Pickleball is. Beware, though. It may ensnare you, as it has both of us.
Being unable to play for so long is driving me nuts…But I digress. Me moaning is not the self-indulgent purpose of this post.
My wife, Bernie, suggested a trip to the local garden centre might help with the limping blues; and it would get us out of the house. We set off into the gloom of a January late-afternoon.
Bernadette seems to know the name of every plant in the place, courtesy of her BTech, but at least I have my trusty Google Lens (below) to help with my lack of training…. just open Google and snap an image within the app.
Voila!
Xanthosoma lindenii, also known by its botanical synonyms Caladium lindenii or Phyllotaenium lindenii. … apparently.
I don’t fancy an exam with that one in. But Bernie has the certificates for hers.
The local garden centre is at Beetham, on the A6 just south of Kendal. It’s a big one, and has both cafe and restaurant alongside three halls of plants and assorted gardening accessories.
Beetham Garden Centre is not afraid of being quirky, and I enjoy the humour of the frequent eccentric exhibits… The last one of these Citröen vans I saw was serving pancakes on Preston Docks. For looks and historical style, you’ve got to admit they’ve never been bettered.
Where was I? Oh yes, the cafe…
Coffee and cake, and a leisurely stroll around the various wares brought us close to the exit…
Where my eyes were treated to the sight of a section dedicated to orchids. Bernadette is not overly fond of them … temperamental, she says. But I love them. The depth of their colours and the intricacy of the patterns get me every time… so I just gaze, in an uneducated way, of course.
She found me staring into this one, lost in contemplation.
“Penny for them?” she asked, coming up quietly behind me.
“I was trying to find the right words to describe the colours of this beauty…”
She put her hand on my shoulder, and we gazed together.
“How about unbearable soft?”
It was perfect. So here it is; with a complete absence of Latin. As they used to say on The Good Old Days: , for your delectation…
———-
I hope you’re enjoying your January … or at least finding ways to make the darkness bearable! Let me know…
©️😎Stephen Tanham, 2026.
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Sometimes, especially on very cold days, the afternoon sun in winter gives us a brief blaze of colour that warms, emotionally, if not physically.
One of my favourite subjects is the low sun on bare hedges. There’s something almost ‘crop-like’ about the uniform nature of the vertical ‘fingers’, each catching its own slice of the provider in the sky.
©️Stephen Tanham 2026
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The Sizergh estate is the ancestral home of the Strickland family, whose name is threaded through the history of the Kendal area.
They’ve recently begun to decorate the whole estate for Christmas. Here’s a sample of what it’s like.
The interiors are from another age – and respond perfectly to the Christmas spirit!
And the famous gardens are lighted beautifully.
Most of the work is done by an army of volunteers.
Happy Christmas!
©️Stephen Tanham, 2025
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If time proves to be not just malleable, but revisitable, we can close our eyes and be back in a tiny Lancashire hamlet called Tockholes; graced by a pub, a few stone cottages and a car park/bus turnaround of the farthest route from Bolton’s bus station, on Moor Lane, in the town centre.
Had my share of nightmares, didn’t think there could be much more
Then in walked Rodrick Usher with the Lady Eleanor…
The car park’s sole occupant is a Ducati 250cc single-cylinder motorbike. It’s not new, but it’s a lovely, metallic mid-blue and silver, and this is the first outing of its new life with a sixteen-year old who has just passed his bike test.
The boy and bike are on an inaugural celebration run to mark their pairing – provided by the lad’s father to mark success at the GCE exams, at which he’s just done quite well.
She tied my eyes with ribbon of a silken ghostly thread
I gazed with trouble vision on an old four poster bed
He’s not with the bike, though it brought him here and sits in the pub car park, polished and gleaming as much as a six-year old machine can.
He’s here – in Tockholes – because, on a previous occasion, it was on the way here in the family car that he first heard a piece of music so powerful that he feels it changed his young life … and he had dreamed that, if he passed his exams and his bike test, he would come here and celebrate with a flask of hot tea and a Turkish Delight chocolate bar … at his favourite ‘me-spot’ by the lakeside, below.
The place where he first sang to The Lady Eleanor.
It’s a ten-minute descent from the pub’s car park to the lake. He’s been singing to himself the whole way. The volume of his singing increases as the water comes into view – calm and beautiful… and receptive; as though the lake is listening.
And the Lady of this lake is Lady Eleanor … and she listens to the boy singing and accepts his tribute. The valley resonates with the exchange.
Life is good. Very, very good.
Last Saturday, the creators of the Lady Eleanor song – the still-performing group Lindisfarne – came to The Platform concert venue in Morecambe.
The sixteen year old young man was there …
and so was his Lady Eleanor …
Here’s a YouTube video if you’d like to warm those memories…
©️Stephen Tanham, 2025.
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The lovely Park Road Gardens, in Grange-over-Sands is one of the jewels of the Cumbrian coast of Morecambe Bay.
I like to photograph it through the seasons.
Through November, it completes its departure as a summer haven and takes on a beautifully melancholy palette of fading golds.
One other transformation is unexpected. A hidden path from a former iteration of the park’s design opens up to reveal a clear view down to the promenade and shore.
Although only a short distance to the sea, the old path would now cross the main Barrow-in-Furness railway line … so you can see why it was horticulturally concealed- to discourage children from trying!
There is though that lovely feeling of having uncovered a phase of local history.
©️Stephen Tanham, 2025
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The small seaside village of Arnside seldom disappoints in providing us photographers with scenes animated by extraordinary light.
Facing west out into the northern end of Morecambe Bay the estuary features complex tides, the outflowing confluence of three local rivers, and some of the most spectacular skies in Britain.
We even have our own ‘bore’, much like the River Severn, but considerably smaller in amplitude.
The sky is the constantly-changing star. There is always so much energy up there that no visual moment can be guaranteed to last. If you see it, take it has to be the sentiment.
This shot was taken mid-afternoon, when the light was dropping like a stone. In the resulting gloom – which had painted the village a seeming coal-black – there emerged a fluffy tunnel of golden light.
As taken. No filters or effects.
©️Stephen Tanham. All work by the author.
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Time-travelled fragments
of mittened fingers
Held in firm parental hand
Exploding neighbours’ gardens
Ripe with bangs and secretly given
toffee-apples
Eyes that glistened with a million smiles
And a few deep breaths as
Imagination proved secondary
To ruptured air obeying gunpowder’s plot
So long ago, now
Yet
In these simpler flames
Where logs surrender to stealthy heat
And memory is escorted, glowing
It remains in vibrant view
A glorious recollection
Of children’s delight.
~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~
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A dear friend sent this to me a few days ago. In a year that’s been very emotional, it touched me deeply, and I thought I’d share it here:
‘The Taker of the Photos
‘I am the taker of the photos. I am the receiver of the groans, the eye-rolls and the “hurry ups”.
I am the one who disrupts the moments – to capture them. But I am also the holder of the memories, I am the keeper of the stories. I am the one with the precious proof.
And if you are too, please know you are capturing this life as it happens. Capturing stages, ages, twists, turns and final moments no one could have forseen. The eye-rolls will be replaced one day with absolute all-consuming gratitude for the image of a smiling face so missed and a memory returned home to stay.
Keep disrupting life to capture it, my friends. When it’s all that’s left, someone, somewhere, will be so very glad you did.’
Donna Ashworth
Joy Chose You
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The crunch-crackle…
I’ll bet you can hear it in your head!
Image by the author.
©️Stephen Tanham
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Part one: eternal stone
A canvas on which the far future writes.
Part two: life abundant, free divergence.
Part three: Fragment of a moment in which intelligence passed this way, a quarter-second behind reality.
©️Stephen Tanham, 2025
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There’s always one day in October that epitomises that golden sense of the final goodbye to the summer for another year.
A visit to Grange always entails a short collie-walk in the Park Road Gardens, which are beautifully kept and a treat for any season. Tess is nearly eleven, and such strolls are ideal for her ageing joints…
Today was it, and we were lucky enough to be doing the weekly shop in Grange-over-Sands when the sun burst through with all its October mellowness, lighting not only the pale greens of the departing leaves, but also the seemingly endless carpet of gold beneath.
The winter is just around the corner, of course. But this immersion in glorious gold is very welcome!
Photos by the author. ©️Copyright Stephen Tanham, 2025.
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The flight from Montreal had been short and pleasant. Through the aircraft’s small window, the pastoral landscape of Prince Edward Island (PEI) was expanding into detailed view as our plane from Montreal jostled with the final air currents and descended to land at Charlottetown, the island’s capital.
Below us stretched the gentle hills and estuaries of PEI, many of which we would encounter, albeit by short outings from the capital, in the few days that followed on this, the last part of our Canadian trip.
Four days later, we felt we had at least sampled life here and enjoyed it very much. Charlottetown, the island’s capital and our base, offered a lovely quayside walk into it’s historic town centre, a stroll taken in search of dinner each evening when we returned to our guest house a little weary from so much driving and exploring.
We were saving the final day for something special. The penultimate one saw us explore some of the bays and beaches on the north of PEI, and we closed off the day by spending a few hours exploring Bernie’s long-awaited Green Gables Heritage museum.
For now, (above) here’s a montage of some of the interesting panels of both author and characters…
Bernie remembers loving these books as a child. She hadn’t expected to visit the place of their origin, here on Prince Edward Island. For her, this visit, alone was worth the trip.
Back to the conclusion of the main story…
Russ and Paul’s ancestor, William Brent, had taken his final voyage aboard a boat built for them somewhere on Prince Edward Island. They were to use it for the final part of their emigration from Cornwall to New Zealand – a considerable undertaking … and one filled with risk!
The end of our trip was fast approaching. We had set aside the final full day to travel to St Mary’s Bay – a huge estuary from some point in which Russ’s ancestors had departed for their new life aboard the Lady Grey, a schooner built for them on PEI for the purpose – presumably with their life savings.
At that time, PEI was a renowned centre of timber production and boat building. But there were no surviving records as to where the schooner had been constructed – beyond that it had been somewhere in St Mary’s Bay – a large area!
There were many small docks in St Mary’s Bay and we had no chance of searching them all. Also, we had been warned that many of them were recent and unlikely to have been connected with the building of ‘our boat’.
Our last day was to be spent in the hopeful fulfilment of our promise to Russ – the direct descendant of William Brent (see previous posts).
He had asked no more than we take a few photos of PEI, to add to his family records back in New Zealand. But we felt we could do more, as long as the ‘fates’ were on our side… In reality, we had almost no chance of finding the location, so long after the event.
Taking general photographs of PEI was simple but we thought that we could do better than just take snaps of the general scenery. We both felt this, strongly, but had no idea why we felt that confidence.
I confess to having a general strategy on such occasions; if there’s a lighthouse, I head for it… Apart from a love of photographing lighthouses, other good things occasionally happen…and there’s a hopefulness about lighthouses!
Local maps revealed that the western edge of St Mary’s Bay was bounded by a long causeway at the end of which was a larger piece of land named Panmure Island (see map below).
The lighthouse (as photo earlier) was located here, facing the ocean, literally the last piece of land the Lady Grey would have passed on her way out into the open sea. Surely this would be a more meaningful photo-set for Russ and Paul?
The journey took us an hour from our guest-house in Charlottetown. Once there, we spent a cold twenty minutes exploring the small headland before gratefully getting back into the car and retreating down the causeway … where we remembered seeing a cafe!
It had been a while since breakfast. We were glad to make the stop and relieved to find that though the cafe was closed, there was a ‘take-away’ hatch in the wall!
There was a tall observation platform. I climbed up to take some shots of the beach and ocean. Here was a perfect balance of estuary on one side and the open Atlantic on the other; both visible from the viewing deck.
I began to get that ‘gently buzzing head’ feeling that tells you something extraordinary is about to happen.
I looked down from the viewing deck to see Bernie talking to two young people in blue polo shirts. It turned out they were the local Park Rangers and were keen to help us, being fascinated by Bernie’s retelling of the story of The Lady Grey. We explained our thinking that we had probably got as close as we could to the distant past of William Brent and his family.
They were both interested in The Lady Grey and asked us to tell them more about its origination, here.
They knew the history of Panmure Island and explained that there were only two boatbuilders here in the 1820’s and both of them operated from the old quays. They pointed us back the way we had come – along the causeway, again – and beyond the turning for the lighthouse – which we had taken for a forest track leading nowhere. They assured us that the track widened and would take us onto the Panmure Island coast and there we would see the remains of the boatbuilder’s quayside.
They were certain that the Lady Grey would have been constructed there, as the ship-building operation had been substantial – and it gave direct access to the deep tidal flows necessary to launch such a ship into the estuary for final fitting before its maiden voyage out into the nearby Atlantic Ocean.
We drove in silent excitement back across the causeway…
Approaching the lighthouse, again, we could see the small track we had missed. We took it and, soon, another landscape of red sand and forest opened up before us.
Less than 100 metres in, we came across the sea-washed remains of the old quays, long abandoned…
So, now Russ and Paul have their photo souvenirs and – via the Rangers – accurate and verified contact with the past.
And we feel pleased that we were able to provide more details of the the missing piece of Russ and Paul’s family story – Prince Edward Island.
©️Copyright Stephen Tanham, 2025.
Sun in Gemini 
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