photosworthseeing:

adventuresofalgy:

Stormy weather in March does have a few wee compensations… and the rainbows which sometimes appear during torrential showers of hail are especially bright. So when Algy saw the massive black clouds sweep in from the sea, with the sun still shining through from the south, he leaned back happily on the waving bed of Marram grass and gazed at the sky. Algy loves rainbows, so he was inevitably reminded of Wordsworth’s famous rainbow poem:

          My heart leaps up when I behold
             A rainbow in the sky:
          So was it when my life began;
          So is it now I am a man;
          So be it when I shall grow old,
             Or let me die!
          The Child is father of the Man;
          And I could wish my days to be
          Bound each to each by natural piety

[ Algy is quoting the poem The Rainbow by the 19th century English poet William Wordsworth. ]

Blog recommendation of the week – reblog 3

You can see more of Algy’s work on the pws-pop up follow-up exhibition today

Algy remembers this rainbow – it was a beauty, in a dramatically stormy sky.  And Algy’s assistant remembers it too, because she had to photograph it in a hailstorm in a howling, freezing wind, while Algy just reclined in the grass!

They both thank @photosworthseeing very much for reblogging this image from Algy’s many adventures 🙂

Advertisement

Stormy weather in March does have a few wee compensations… and the rainbows which sometimes appear during torrential showers of hail are especially bright. So when Algy saw the massive black clouds sweep in from the sea, with the sun still shining through from the south, he leaned back happily on the waving bed of Marram grass and gazed at the sky. Algy loves rainbows, so he was inevitably reminded of Wordsworth’s famous rainbow poem:

          My heart leaps up when I behold
             A rainbow in the sky:
          So was it when my life began;
          So is it now I am a man;
          So be it when I shall grow old,
             Or let me die!
          The Child is father of the Man;
          And I could wish my days to be
          Bound each to each by natural piety

[ Algy is quoting the poem The Rainbow by the 19th century English poet William Wordsworth. ]

It was a dark, dark day in the West Highlands… but Algy knew that it was a far darker one in Paris, France :{{{

Algy lay back among the wildly waving Marram grass as the wind howled through the sand dunes, and gazed at the stormy sky. And just as the clouds grew blacker and started to pelt him with rain and hail, the low afternoon sun broke through a tiny gap in the clouds behind him, and a glowing rainbow appeared on the horizon, while the great mass of grasses momentarily turned to gold.

Algy has been thinking of all his friends in France today, especially his friends in Paris… and of all those who have so needlessly died or have been injured, and their families and friends… and of the human race in general. He was very greatly distressed by the awful things that had occurred, and by the terrible atrocities that humans seemed to be capable of. But he knew that – just like the grasses – the great masses of humankind could turn to gold in the right light, and he thought of the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling:

          If you can keep your head when all about you  
              Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,  
          If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
              But make allowance for their doubting too;  
          If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
              Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
          Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
              And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

          If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;  
              If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;  
          If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
              And treat those two impostors just the same;  
          If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
              Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
          Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
              And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

          If you can make one heap of all your winnings
              And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
          And lose, and start again at your beginnings
              And never breathe a word about your loss;
          If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
              To serve your turn long after they are gone,  
          And so hold on when there is nothing in you
              Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

          If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,  
              Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
          If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
              If all men count with you, but none too much;
          If you can fill the unforgiving minute
              With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,  
          Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,  
              And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Algy has been very happy to see so many “Men” (i.e. true humans of any gender) in the light which broke through the darkness on Tumblr today :))

And he sends some very special fluffy hugs to all his friends in France xoxoxo

[ Algy is of course quoting the famous poem If by the late 19th/early 20th century British author Rudyard Kipling ]

It took a wee while for Algy to recover from the incredibly fluffy excitement of his surprisingly fluffy party, but when he finally woke up he felt in need of some wide open space and fresh air…

So he flew over to a point on the peat bogs with a fine view of the Isle of Rum, and was rewarded with his first rainbow of the new year… not to mention rather more air than he had bargained for!

A great wind had swept across the land in the night, howling around the mountain tops and sweeping over the moorland and peat bogs like a mighty broom, collecting up all kinds of bits and pieces, and tossing them here, there, and everywhere… And when Algy awoke the next morning, he found that he was no longer tucked up safely at home, but had been transported somewhere over the rainbow!

Algy needn’t have worried about leaving his umbrella behind, because suddenly Nature provided him with the loveliest umbrella he could imagine. Algy perched on a wee rock beneath the beautiful bow, with the rain falling all around him, and remembered a simple little children’s poem he had once read:

          Boats sail on the rivers,
          And ships sail on the seas;
          But clouds that sail across the sky
          Are prettier than these.

          There are bridges on the rivers,
          As pretty as you please;
          But the bow that bridges heaven,
          And overtops the trees,
          And builds a road from earth to sky,
          Is prettier far than these.

Algy hopes you will all have a happy, peaceful Sunday xoxo

[Algy is quoting The Rainbow, a poem for children by the 19th century English poet Christina Rossetti.]

Postscript: several people have written to Algy about this very unusual rainbow, and he would like to assure anyone who is curious that it really did look exactly like this (even more impressive in reality, in fact), and the photo has not been altered in any way other than to adjust brightness, contrast and saturation levels a wee bit. Neither Algy nor his assistants had ever seen a rainbow quite like this before.

One of Algy’s oldest friends is about to go to hospital to have an operation to help him walk more easily. So Algy found him a beautiful rainbow for good luck, and to brighten up the gloomy days. Algy says that when the rainbow lights up the dark clouds the storm will pass, and soon there will be lovely blue skies once again xx

Algy was sitting quietly in the tangled mass of honeysuckle, thinking idly about life, the universe, and nothing much at all, when a huge black cloud turned everything dark and there was a sudden shower of hail. As the shower moved rapidly towards the hill, a dazzling hailbow appeared, with sheets of hail still falling around it. Algy thought it was perhaps the brightest rainbow he had ever seen, but it only lasted for a few minutes and then vanished …

When it started to rain, Algy put his book away safely and watched while the storm passed over the hill. It wasn’t very long before he saw what he had been waiting for. Just like the poet Wordsworth, Algy finds that his heart leaps up when he beholds a rainbow in the sky …

St. Patrick’s Day 2013

Algy was sitting quietly by the burn on St. Patrick’s Day, when he experienced a strange phenomenon …

          What motion of the sun or stream
          Or eyelid shot the gleam
          That pierced my body through?
          What made me live like these that seem
          Self-born, born anew?

[Algy is quoting from W. B. Yeats’ poem Stream and Sun at Glendalough, with apologies to the great Irish poet for taking his words out of their proper context.]