The Battle Of Life: Charles Dickens

Well, well, well...

I look at it through my pink spectacles and think, what a lovely, lovely story.

I look at it through my green spectacles and think, but I don't believe a word of it.

Rose-tinted spectacles: You're judging it by the standards of realism and it's a fable. Dickens is a fabulist.

Green-tinted spectacles: There's fable and there's deliberate untruth. Dickens is misrepresenting human nature.

Rose: What a cynic you are. It's Shakespearean. Think Cymbeline.

Green: Shakespearean, my arse! Think Little Nell with knobs on...

Enough of that....

It must be the least regarded of Dickens' major works. Eleanor Farjeon- in her introduction to the Christmas Books- dismisses it in a line. And yet it's not something Dickens tossed off in an idle hour; it's a carefully constructed work of art, with splendid set-pieces and a clutch of variously delightful comic characters. Perhaps the final reveal is a little hard to take...

And off we go again....

Loaves And Fishes?

The Crypt is the oldest part of Canterbury Cathedral- and its where the shrine of St Thomas was first erected- and remained until the pressure of pilgrim numbers compelled them to move it upstairs. There's some great Romanesque carving down there.

Also it's very dark. Some of the things I'd like to have photographed were so deep in shadow I didn't even try. This particular capital was in the twilight zone. I doubted it would come out but I gave it a shot- and processed the result. The image is grainy- but then so is original stone.

A person sits on another person's head holding a fish in one hand and something indeterminate in the other. Is this the boy who supplied Jesus with the loaves and fishes with which he fed the 5,000? Seems unlikely: for one thing he apears to have a beard and moustache and for another the indeterminate object looks more like a bowl than a loaf. But I don't have any other suggestions. I've not seen anything like it before.