Tuesday 26 March 2024

Crinoids in the hall!!

In general, people don't really expect floors to be interesting but, just sometimes, you come across something like this.  Before I tell you about this stone, and the fossils in it, I'll tell you about the day I took this photo.
 

It was Sunday just gone, and for me it was a Red Letter Day.  I have a bucket list, and one of the items on it was to hear Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition' live.  If I could hear 'Night on the Bare Mountain' at the same performance, that would be a real bonus.  This Sunday, the Philharmonia Orchestra were performing both at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank, London, and Steven Isserlis was the soloist for Kabalevsky's Cello Concerto number 2 in addition.  The whole concert was a real treat and well worth the trip to London.

I'd got there early - a couple of hours early.  Deliberately.  That allowed for rail delays and gave me time to buy lunch (this was an afternoon performance).  It also gave me time to look at the floor - there is some refurbishment going on at the Hall at present, so there were was nobody milling around where I was admiring the said fossils and trying to get a decent photo of them with my mobile phone (it's a Samsung A23, if you're interested and you want to look up details of its cameras).  I was half-aware that there was somebody nearby, and he came over to ask me about the photos I was taking.  If you know me, you know that means I'm going to go into some detail with an equal amount of enthusiasm.  After he introduced himself, he asked to take my photo - he is a very talented portrait photographer, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the result.  He was shooting on actual film!  We then spent a good few minutes looking at the floor and in my case, trying to take a decent-ish photo of it.  I am pleased to say that Gavin, as I learned his name is, was as enthusiastic about the crinoids as I was, especially when I showed him a photo of an extant species.  I'd be interested to see the photos of them he took.  We swapped Instagram details so I no doubt will.

Coming back to the photo:  Quite apart from the fact that I'm a tad arthritic nowadays, taking a photo of a polished slab is a s*d because the camera tries to focus through the surface rather than on it, and also the surface is worn so that the edges of the fossils are no longer crisp and distinct when you really zoom in to them.

Having made my excuses for this photograph:

This is Derbydene Stone, a limestone from Cromford in Derbyshire (I didn't know that when I visited Cromford many years ago!). It is full of the stems and ossicles of crinoids (sea lilies).  These are animals in the same family  - echinoderms - as sea urchins and starfish.

What is a amazing about these crinoids, though, is their age.  They - and the stone they are preserved in - date back more than 330 million years to the Lower Carboniferous Period, long before the evolution of dinosaurs and mammals.  In fact, when T. rex was learning that that bright flash was really bad news, these animals had already been fossils for 264 million years. We're way closer in time to T. rex, at 66 million years, than T. rex was to these crinoids.

#100Photos #38

Saturday 17 February 2024

Yellow Chalk?!


Or is it, though?  Is it not lemon mousse?  Well, I for one would not want to try to serve this into a bowl with a spoon... And neither are the orangey lines toasted sugar.  This is harder than your average chalk - which in turn is far from bring the boring white featureless mass that you might think. When you look at it you see details, structures, layers and beds.  It tells tales of a greenhouse Earth, of the movement of continents and the growth of mountains.  It tells tales of the life that lived in the seas where it settled.

This is West Runton in Norfolk on the east coast of the UK.  You're standing on the top of the Chalk (with a capital 'C') and looking up at huge blocks and rafts of chalk which have been driven uphill by glaciers. Yes, glaciers can do that - they can do whatever they want. The chalk now finds itself surrounded by much younger sediments that tell the tale of temperatures falling into an Ice Age.  West Runton was home to a Steppe mammoth, excavated there and now on display in Norwich, and to a variety of other terrestrial and freshwater fauna and flora.  Norfolk isn't flat and it certainly isn't boring!

#100Photos #37

Saturday 3 February 2024

Mosses and a tiny 'shroom

 


Rather typically of me, I got into another project and haven't visited this blog recently.  Nevertheless, here is a photo from my walk to the local supermarket this morning; mosses on the stump of a felled tree.  That tiny mushroom, though!

#100Photos #36

Friday 10 November 2023

Red berries, blue sky

 

Very many large red berries on a tree with a silver trunk and branches, against a sky of unbroken blue

Like it says on the tin, red berries against a blue sky - the tree they're on has lost most of its leaves and the sun is shining on the berries and the tree's silver bark.  The tree caught my eye as I was walking home from a doctor's appointment today.

#100Photos #35

Saturday 28 October 2023

River view

 

The Peterborough office of the organisation I work for has done rather a peregrination around the city over the years.  Mind you, that's true of some of their other offices as well...  Many public bodies do that as Government priorities and policies change and Departments (and Arms-Length Bodies) are repurposed and reorganised accordingly.  

At the start of this year, we relocated to a newly-built Government Hub office on the far side of the river, on some land that, truthfully, had desperately needed regeneration.  It's a really nice office, and for me one of the great things about it is its proximity to the river, meaning that on office days I can still walk along by the river.  

I took this photo on the way to the office one morning not long ago when it warmer and drier than it has been over the last few days (I'm writing this in the aftermath of Storm Babet).  River views are always (well, sometimes) a Good Thing, and I loved the way the new development is sitting in the landscape.

#100Photos #34

Wednesday 25 October 2023

Broken symmetry


Before Covid 19 and a change in role within the organisation I work for, I used to travel across the Fens by rail to Cambridge quite often; I miss that journey!  I do like the open landscapes and the big skies of that part of the country.  I was actually born in a Fenland town in Lincolnshire (long story, I wasn’t supposed to be…), so I guess there’s an inbuilt sense of home for me in the Fens.

My favourite part of the journey to Cambridge is the couple of minutes that it takes to cross the Ouse Washes, especially on the outbound journey as you look northwards into Norfolk.  The hydrology of the Washes is interesting; in the summer water is pumped off them and cattle graze there, unlike the surrounding areas where they’re pumping water onto the land for irrigation, and in winter water is pumped onto them while they’re pumping water away from the farmland.  The cattle are replaced by wintering birds – the Washes are famous for the thousands of Whooper swans that arrive from Iceland to overwinter, and in recent years there have even been cranes on the surrounding land!  I was absolutely thrilled when I saw them for the first time (and still really pleased every time since)!  It’s always fun to see the astonishment of fellow passengers who don’t know the area when they see the miles and miles of water either side of the train.

One of the things I love about the Ouse Washes is that in winter, particularly, the light changes every time you see them.  On a still day, the surface is a mirror, and on a windy day you could be looking at a seascape.  When I took this photo, you can almost see the cloudscape reflected; it’s a broken symmetry.  I’ve learned enough physics for that to amuse me even if the photo does break the rules of composition!

Speaking of the photo, one thing I’ve learned through this project is that my palette tends to silvers, blues and golds, largely because those are our local colours.  This was a phone photo, by the way; my phone (currently a Samsung A23) tends to be my main camera simply because it’s always with me. At photo 33 I’m a third of the way through the 100 photos, looking at what works from the ones I’ve taken previously and looking to improve my photography in the time the project takes.

#100Photos #33

Saturday 21 October 2023

A modern icon

 


There are not many modern buildings in the UK that are instantly recognisable.  It's not that we're short of great architecture but apart from, say, the London O2 and Belfast's Titanic Museum, there just aren't many modern icons.  The Selfridges building, though, clad in metal discs, is iconic in a way that very few other buildings could hope to be. It is the highlight of the remodelled Birmingham Bullring.

This day, under a glowering sky, was the first time I had ever seen it close-up.  It has the wow factor in spades.

#100Photos #32 

Friday 13 October 2023

The lamp


A few months ago, I found myself staying in Bristol overnight after a rare face-to-face meeting. 

From what I've seen of Bristol in the two or three short visits I've had there, it's an intriguing city.  I had (and took) the opportunity to look around the Cathedral and my colleagues and I had the bonus of a working visit to a city farm the next morning before we returned to our scattered homes.

For this visit, I stayed in a hotel in the city centre. The reception area was very modern, with an ‘Instagram wall’ that I couldn't resist standing in front of and asking one of my colleagues to take a photo of me.  I don't normally do that!

The room I was in was very different from the Reception area and I loved it from the moment I walked in, but it took me a few seconds to realise that it was really steampunk. The safe and the coffee fixings were in an alcove with wire grill doors. And take this wall lamp - it had a really ancient-looking style of bulb which was exposed by the wire-frame ‘shade’ and an industrial cable duct from its power source. It was artfully bright enough to light the room but not bright enough to hurt your eyes. I'd never seen anything like it!  The room had a really comfy bed as well, which is always a bonus.

#100Photos #31

Saturday 7 October 2023

Marston Marble

 


This photogenic, fossil-rich, limestone hails from Somerset in England's West Country. It's not often that a polished slab of stone photographs decently with just a smartphone, but I was really pleased with this photo.  The main issues I find with this sort of shot are (i) holding the phone rock steady (genuinely no pun intended), and (ii) the fact that cameras tend to focus straight through polished surfaces onto something – often the photographer! – being reflected.  This slab is inside a glass case, which tends to add an additional complication in terms of reflections, but I was lucky here and this photo didn’t need to have a filter used or to have any adjustments made.

Incidentally, this variety of stone (which dates back to the Lower Jurassic) is not actually a 'true' marble in the sense that geologists use the term - limestone metamorphosed by heat and pressure - but stonemasons use the term to describe any limestone that takes a good polish. This one certainly does that! Stonemasons were using some 'geological' terms long before geologists were. 

This beautiful specimen is in the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge, UK - do go and see it for yourself!

 

#100Photos #30

Wednesday 4 October 2023

Norwich - leading lights


Everybody has favourite places. For me, there’s Edinburgh; partly because of its history and partly – mainly - because of the story told by the exposed geology of Holyrood Park, Castle Rock and Calton Hill.  If a certain brewery did geology trails, Edinburgh would be the showcase one.  At the other end of the size scale I have lovely memories of a village called Uley in Gloucestershire, where my great aunt lived and where I rode a horse for the very first time.

Then there's the county of Norfolk on England's East Coast.  My grandmother came from Castle Acre; it's a beautiful village with a ruined castle and the remains of a Cistercian Priory.  My father was twice stationed in Norfolk with the RAF, and I went to boarding school near Norwich when he was posted from Norfolk to Germany.  Add in visits since then to the Broads and to North West Norfolk and the North Norfolk coast and you've got a bucket full of memories.  I've been back to Norwich a number of times with my partner and it's very definitely my favourite English city.

We were walking through the Royal Arcade one day and I took a truly mundane photo as we did. I've cropped that photo since then and it's almost what I would take now if I were trying to take a photo of the lights. I could have done with standing slightly further to my right, which is what I hope I would do now, but I do quite like this as it stands.

#100Photos #29

Sunday 1 October 2023

The coming storm

The Exe Estuary and Dawlish Warren from the train, with silvery water and the Sun peeping through an equally silvery sky


One Saturday morning, I was on my way from Exeter to spend some quality time with the red cliffs just along the coast at Dawlish when the train went past the Warren, and I took this atmospheric photo through the train window. Dawlish Warren is really important for its coastal geomorphology, so it has a good Earth science interest in its own right.

Looks idyllic, doesn't it?  It’s what the photo doesn’t show that comes to mind when I look at it.  Out of the window on the other side of the carriage, the sky was black.  Not just grey, but black-with-menaces.  The sort of black that a daytime sky has no business being. 

As we rounded toward the small town and seafront station of Dawlish (which is now famous for the railway line being washed away there in a later, rather more massive storm and equally famous for the Herculean work of the 'Orange Army' who repaired it), the heavens opened.  As those of us who were getting off the train there did just that, and those who weren’t getting off looked smug, we were lashed by horizontal rain, salt spray and rather stiff winds.  The passengers who had a particular destination in Dawlish made a run for it, but I just took shelter in the station, wondering whether my trip was in vain.  

Luckily, the storm was reasonably short-lived although I did watch several more squalls going past out to sea during the morning. I did get my quality time with the cliffs (Permian sandstone, as you ask) - and a long journey back to the Flatlands of the East, tired but happy, afterwards. That said, it will be a long time before I forget that storm!

#100Photos #28


Thursday 28 September 2023

St. John's, Smith Square


If there's a type of stone that characterises London, especially the Government estate and major historic buildings including Buckingham Palace and St Paul's, then that stone is Portland Stone. It's a limestone, dating back to the Jurassic Period; some facies (varieties) are very fossil-rich, with Grove Whitbed being rich in oysters, and Roach Stone being famous for it's 'Osses' heads' (Trigoniid bivalves) and Portland screws, a variety of gastropod mollusc.  Other facies are freestones, very suited to carving by stonemasons.

There's a reason for the popularity of  Portland Stone in London, and for its use to rebuild St Paul's after the Great Fire of London in particular - Sir Christopher Wren owned shares in a certain quarry on the Isle of Portland!  His use of the stone set a trend, and now, in addition to the buildings I've already cited, think in terms of Regent Street, the Old Bailey, the Bank of England...  One of my favourite buildings is St John's in Smith Square, Westminster. It's a deconsecrated church now in use as a classical music venue.  One really hot day, I happened to walk towards it, and there was something about the light, the gleaming stone and the green of the trees that was beautiful and almost exotic.  Being me, I raised my camera almost in supplication; this photo was the result.

#100Photos #27

Monday 25 September 2023

Conditional discharge

 


These spent batteries were at the top of a full, tall but narrow cylindrical recycling bin.  If that's one snapshot in one shop then hopefully there are many thousands more being recycled each week across the country.

But:  How many more are *not* being recycled?  And how the heck many are we using??  Why???

#100Photos #26