Sunny days

Sunshine is the difference between winter here in southwestern Ontario and winter, as we experienced it, in northeast England. 

It was sunny here all day today and most of yesterday. We never saw that much sun for that long in Corbridge when we were there in December and January.

The nice weather made my slog back out to Toyotatown to pick up our Corolla with its supposedly repaired air bags - how would we know if they were or weren't? - quite pleasant. At least for the first few miles, along well plowed, quiet streets in Wortley Village. 

South of Commissioners, where the land rises, it's a whole other micro-climate. A cutting little wind from the north sprang up. At least it was at my back going in this direction, but by now my back was sweaty from the exertion so the wind chilled me. And as nice as it was, the sun held little warmth.

I was fagged by the time I got to the dealership after my 90-minute hike. But collecting the car was quick and easy, and I was on my way in minutes. All's well that ends well.

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Every picture tells a story  Somethin' happenin' here, what it is ain't exactly clear.

No men with guns, anyway. 

Every picture does tell a story, but sometimes the picture needs a bit of help from words. This one was taken in 2009 in Ortigia, an island enclave separated from the Sicilian city of  Siracusa by a narrow channel. It's where Karen and I spent our first winter away. Most of the rest of Siracusa is fairly modern, but many of the buildings and the street lay-out in Ortigia date from medieval times. The flat we rented was in a 16th century building. 

So what are these folks doing? In the build-up to holy week, the members of a church brotherhood bring a statue of San Sebastiano - the guy with all the arrows - out of the tiny chapel devoted to his cult just off the main square and carry it on a 'float' through Ortigia. It draws big crowds. 

These people, cult members, are shouldering the float. The statue itself was the usual gaudy gilt wood carving. The people carrying it were far more interesting, so that's what I photographed. It was shot with a fairly powerful flash so there's lots of detail and contrast. It begged to be a black and white picture.

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I generally won't bother to recommend mainstream music, TV and books on the assumption that most of my legion of readers are already aware of them. But I'll make an exception for The Dig, even though it's being heavily promoted on Netflix right now and features big-name stars Ralph Fiennes and Carrie Mulligan. 

Despite the star power, it's a quiet little movie about a fairly obscure topic, and you might read a blurb about it and think, 'Meh.' Don't. It's a gem.

Carrie Mulligan as Edith Pretty, Archie Barnes as Robert Pretty and Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown

It tells the story of an archaeological dig in the late 1930s at the early Anglo-Saxon burial site Sutton Hoo in Suffolk in southeast England. The site today is a much-visited National Trust tourist attraction. Karen and I saw it last spring with Caitlin and Bob and their boys. 

In 1938, the site sat on private land. The owner, Edith Pretty (Carrie Mulligan), a widow, hired Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), a local man with little formal education but wide knowledge and experience of archeological digs, to excavate the mounds in an empty field on her property. They had long been thought to be ancient burial mounds.

The backdrop to the story is the rapidly approaching war with Germany, Mrs. Pretty's loneliness and dire health issues and the anxiety of her precocious ten-year-old son, Robert (Archie Barnes). In the first part of the movie Edith, a cultured middle-class woman, and Basil, a much older farmer's son from the West country, bond over their shared passion for archaeology. Then it gets interesting when Basil makes a really important discovery. 

I was disappointed to read Barry Hertz's review in The Globe & Mail. He seems to suggest the film makers made a mistake introducing a bunch of new characters in the second half of the movie - it distracted from the main relationship between Edith and Basil, he felt. Hertz is referring to the professional archeologists who arrive on the scene after Basil makes his great discovery. 

Barry, that's what happened. How could they not introduce Charles Philips, the Cambridge archaeologist appointed by the British Museum to oversee the rest of the dig, and his staff? 

Ralph Fiennes as Basil won't wow you the way he sometimes can, but he absolutely inhabits the role. And Carrie Mulligan is almost as good. Highly recommended.