Change

Welcome to another Theme Thursday.

"We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing."
- R. D. Laing

...We rounded the corner of the York Minster cathedral to find children lining up thousands of coins on the ancient cobblestone street for some charity or other. Is it my imagination that I seem to recall their punning slogan being "It's Time for a Change"?

York, 2009

And for an added visual pun, here's the original shot I "changed" to monochrome for this post.

Letters of York

A vintage post-office display from the Railway Museum in York, featuring two of my favorite tropes, numbers and series of objects.

BritRail Abstract

York 2009

York

More train shots... Last summer I and my daughter visited friends in Yorkshire, England. We arrived in the Viking/Roman city of York at the Victorian train station, with its typical arcing skeletal roof.




We did a lot of sauntering around town, including along the ancient city walls and a twilight "ghost walk." Another attraction is the railway museum. Here is the view from beneath an old steam locomotive.




Another locomotive has been opened up like something from the "Bodies" exhibit to show the workings of a steam engine.

York

Yorkshire Railway Museum

Last days in York – we went to the art museum, full of paintings from the 17th to 19th century, as well as a smattering of modern pop work. We went on a “Ghost Detective” walk one evening, which was quite amusing though only minimally scary, aside from the tendency of the “detective” himself to suddenly shout some of his words (“…covered in BLOOD!!”). Someone across the stream from our house decided to start a bonfire, which left our street shrouded in odoriferous smoke, and our neighbor took the opportunity to start his own in his back yard, flames about ten feet high…fortunately the wind was low and no sparks reached our house!

On our last full day, Pi stayed home to read and rest, while the, indefatigable as ever, further explored York’s byways, wall-walks, snickelways, and street market, as well as visiting the enormous railway museum, which featured both famous engines (e.g. Mallard) from the beginnings to the present, and “rolling stock” such as postal cars, dining cars, sumptuous passenger carriages, etc., as well as a warehouse of miscellaneous railway paraphernalia (signs; switches, lights and other hardware; furniture; engine bits; etc.) and a workshop where men are refurbishing the Flying Scotsman engine.

York and Durham

YORK







DURHAM
Before leaving York, Piper and I took a one-day expedition to Durham on Sunday, an hour’s train ride north through green hills towns of Darlington and Northallerton. We walked down the hill from the station on the hill above the river, crossed the old bridge to the historical part of town, and back up the other side to visit the cathedral. Also browsed around an antiques sale, wandered some tiny cobbled alleyways down to the river and the historical museum, and finished off a pizza lunch with icecream bars before returning to York.

York

Maggie picked us up in her newish Toyota and we dined at her house.  Yesterday was hot, and after Pi woke at noon, she and I bused to York center and spent a few hours traipsing around, from the lower Ouse bridge through massive crowds, through a street fair, towards the Minster via the Shambles, lunching at a little sandwich place and walking it off along the city wall-top.  Checked out the Monks Bar museum of Richard III and then followed a unending glittering trail of small change laid end to end around the perimeter of the Minster by kids collecting for the Heart Association, to ascend 275 tightly wound steps to the roof of the Minster tower. HOLY CRAP --  exhausting!  95-mile view from the top, nicely windy to dry the rampant sweat. Back down to seek out an icecream cone, then down to the river and along it for a bit, crossing over the railway bridge and back up the other side to catch the bus to Maggie’s again. Whew.