Hope & Glory: An Oral History Of A Plymouth Family Before And After The Second World War. A Granddaughter Remembers Her Grandfather.

Hope & Glory : An Oral History Of A Plymouth Family Before And After The Second World War. A Granddaughter Remembers Her Grandfather.

Granddad bought the house at Pomphlett in nineteen twenty five when he came out of the navy. The house was on the road to Oreston as you left Plymouth going past the Morley Arms. To buy the place he forfeited some of his navy pension, and he paid another one hundred pounds for the land at the back which backed on to the railway. On the other side was a field in which Farmer Giles grew his corn. Towards the end of summer you could see the farm hands harvesting the crop.

At the top of the garden there was a series of out houses where Granddad kept all his tools, which was also a woodworking shop. Another outhouse was used as a dry store, where he kept his seeds. Then there was the chicken runs. We had always to search for the eggs the chickens produced. Sometimes they would be in the boxes where the hens should have gone and laid them, other times you would find them under a bush - but we never bought an egg, along with all the chickens we ever wanted.

Granddad would hatch his own chicks. He would put the eggs under the hens, and let the birds hatch them. I can see him now coming down the garden with this great box of chicks. They would be put in the fireplace over night, so they would not get cold and die up in the hen houses where they were kept during the day. This was only until they were big enough to be able to fend for themselves.

At one point he also had ducks, but did not keep them very long because there was no pond. There were also a few geese as well. I can remember saying to him: ' what are you going to do with those fledglings Granddad?.' He said: ' I'm going to rear them for Christmas.' However, come Christmas he couldn't do it. He could not slit their throats. He came down the garden and Gran said: 'well have you done it?' Granddad replied: 'I can't do it.' So those geese ended up dying of natural causes.

He also had a boat which he kept in Pomphlett Creek. He called the boat 'Boy George' after his son who had been prisoner of war. It was in this boat that he moved the family out to Pomphlett from Coxside. He just put all the furniture in to the boat and off he went. With this boat he would go out and fish for mackerel, which he would bring home and we would all eat.

One year, I don’t know which, there was a glut of sardines in Pomphlett Creek. The mackerel were after them, and they pushed them up as far up the creek as they could go. Granddad said you could go over to the Creek with a bucket. Put the bucket in the water, and you would end up with a bucket full of sardines. Gran would cook them in the great frying pan. Mum said that that year the sardines were exceedingly beautiful.

The fact is Granddad was a very physical man, and he led an active life. In the navy he had been a stoker. He had signed up with the navy when he was seventeen in eighteen ninety six. He may have been younger because he had lied about his age, and he had only just come out when he bought the house with his navy pension. He had done full service. He renewed all the windows at Pomphlett. He also worked on building site, and would cycle back and forth from Noss Mayo when they were building out there.

He was very good with his hands. What he didn’t know about woodwork, gardening, the rearing of fowls. He made swings and a big see-saw for us. They were set up in the garden. He carved the swing out the wood and put the ropes up. On Christmas he made me a dolls house. You should have seen it. It was beautiful. The back opened and there were four rooms in it. Granddad made all the little furniture, and even fitted a bell that rang when you pushed it. It was unbelievable what he made honestly.

In those days we were self sufficient because of the garden. We would sit out in the garden of a summer night, and you could smell all the night stock. Granddad had beautiful peonies with red flowers, and there roses around the red front door. There were also violets. You would come to the door of the kitchen, and on one side would be all fruit trees and bushes: gooseberries, blackberries, loganberries, strawberries. While on the other side was potatoes, peas, turnips, cauliflowers, sprouts. You name it, it was there. The runner beans ran up the side of the chicken runs.

Gran would bottle everything in sight. All different sorts of things. She would pickle things, persevere things. All of this was kept in a big cupboard where she also kept all the crockery. This cupboard would be full of everything that came out of the garden. She even made beetroot wine, which was very much like port, and they would all end up getting very drunk on the stuff. She was a very good cook. Its from her that my Mother and Auntie Win learnt everything. Gran would cook a lot of offal, liver and tripe. Granddad liked his tripe and onions.

During the second world war Granddad would carry out fire watch duty at Pomphlett Mill. He would always be out in the air raids, and we would be in the shelter. Gran liked us altogether so she knew where everybody was during the raids. The shelter was at the back corner of the garden. Granddad had built it himself. But this night the Germans had been dropping incendiary bombs, and some had fallen right on to the house. He looked up and thought: ‘oh my god, the house is on fire!’ You could see the top of the house from the mill. He told his colleagues: ‘I got to go. Bye, Goodnight.’ They turned around and said: ‘oi! Come back here. You can’t leave your post.’ ‘Yes I can,’ he said, ‘my bloody house is on fire!’

That raid destroyed most of the top floor of the house, along with the bed rooms. We ended up having to move out to the out houses at the back of the garden for a couple of months until the house was repaired. Luckily, the down stairs of the house was still very useable. The kitchen was still in operation, and the living room was alright. Granddad still had his bedroom.

The bombing raids could be horrific. During a raid on Oreston Granddad lost his eldest sister, a niece, and a niece by marriage, who was expecting her first baby. We were all stood out front when the funeral cars went past Pomphlett. I can remember that to this day. Gran and Granddad went to the funeral. I think the Germans mistook what they were supposed to bomb that night. It was one of the worst raids I have been through.

Even though I was only a tacker I can remember sitting in that shelter with the noise of bombs coming down. We were all in there. One night Auntie Win had hold of the door handle, and she fell asleep against the door. There was a slight clicking sound as the handle turned, and the door shot suddenly open. Win tipped over in the chair, out the door, and she literally rolled down the side of the path. Auntie Phil went in to hysterics. Everybody was crying with laughter. Auntie Win was not hurt though. All of this and German bombs falling from the sky.

There’s a strong navy connection running through the family. Great Granddad was at the Boxer Rebellion in the first year of the twentieth century. Granddad, my Dad, and Uncle George were stokers. In fact, Dad was on The Duke Of York when she put down the Scharnhorst. As well as being in Tokyo harbour for the signing of the treaty with the Japanese. George was at the battle of Crete, and it was during this that the ship he was on was sunk.

George must have been lucky after his ship was sunk. He managed to get a shore on Crete with a shipmate, and they were both picked up by the greek resistance. Who took them up in to the hills and hid them. From what I know they spent six weeks on the run from the germens, and the resistance were making arrangements for the pair of them to be taken back to Africa by sea: Egypt most likely. Only one night they were hiding in a cave thinking it was safe to leave, only to walk out of the cave straight in to the arms of a German patrol, and became prisoners of war. Family rumours had it that the pilot who was going to get them out of Crete was also captured - and then shot by the Germans.


Gran through this period thought he was gone, due to the fact that he had been missing for two months or so. Then to her relief she had a letter from the M.O.D to say he was a prisoner of war. He had been moved from Crete to Germany. Then the letters began arriving from George via the Red Cross. This was when all the knitting started: socks, sweaters. He said in a letter he did not have a pair of shoes. We knew what size he took. So all the coupons went on a pair of shoes for him, and we sent it all out in a box. I think he was very grateful for this considering.

When the war ended he was repatriated, but when he came home he had T.B. We think he caught in the P.O.W camp. I don’t where else he could have got it from. Because it was so bad the doctors sent him to the sanatorium at Newton Abbot, Hawksmoor. There they took one of his lungs away. I remember going to see him when he was at the sanatorium, but I was never allowed inside. George would come out onto the balcony, and I would talk to him from the grass. In the end they sent him home to Pomphlett. The prognosis was not good.

I can remember the last time I saw him. I was about seven then. We were all at Pomphlett for tea, and we were going home. Granddad said: ‘you had better go up stairs and say good bye to Uncle George.’ When I went up he was in bed coughing up blood. I can see him there now coughing. So I just said good night to him and slipped out of the room. He died that night. He was a nice looking boy, with dark curly hair. When he died he was only twenty seven years old. The T.B took him. Gran didn’t last long after that. She died in nineteen fifty from a heart problem, and may be the loss of her son.

Gran was a very gentle patient person. She would never swear. For Gran things were either right or wrong, and she was a very moral person. She was Irish, and a Roman Catholic until she married Granddad, when she came over to the Church of England. Sometimes with Granddad she would die upwards. He would come home from the Morley Arms on a Saturday night, and sometimes bring a package home with him. He would say: 'have a look at this Annie?' The package was a great big roll of pork. 'Where did you get that from?' She would say. 'From the black market,' Granddad replied. 'What! You can't do that,' she said. 'Yes I can,' said Granddad it'll feed the family for dinner.' She found it hard to understand that at the time you had to take what you could get.

One Christmas we had a beautiful food parcel from America. It was very good of them. Gran's family went to America. They went to Massachusetts or Chicago, and Gran kept in touch with her niece. She had married an American widower with six children. She never had children of her own, and letters from her would come across the Atlantic. But of this parcel all I can remember is that they sent tins of peaches, and that the family drooled all over them. There were tins of this that and the other. A big letter of thank you was sent back over the Atlantic. The parcel must have cost a fortune to send.

After the war was over. When I was about five years old. Gran would say to me if she was in the kitchen: 'go and fetch the bread for me.' And so I would run to the front door to fetch the bread. The Co-Op delivered the bread with a horse and cart and Mr Baker would come across the road as I was opening the door. In through the gateway and up the steps. He would say to me: 'poop ta shit fart,' and I would be laughing at this. My Gran would shout from the kitchen: 'Mr Baker are you swearing at my Granddaughter?' He was a lovely man. At the time he must have been sixty three or four. Coming up for retirement. I can see him on those steps as plain as day, but of course, as I've already said Gran died in nineteen fifty.

All Regardless of the events of the second world war it was a happy childhood. We would go down to Pomphlett Creek swimming, which is something you can't do now. It was also where Mum learnt to swim when they were small. All they had to do was cross the road, up around by the mill, then turn right, and they were in the creek. They would swim over there everyday during the holidays. What more could you have? I would hang from trees in in the orchard.gone now, of course.

My Granddad Rockey, my fathers dad, was very friendly with Granddad Rogers. He was a dear old boy. We would call him Grandsur. He would come out to Pomphlett and smoke their pipes together in the outhouses. One of them came up with the idea of planting tobacco, and they ended up growing the plant in two of the chicken runs. When the tobacco was ready they gathered it all in, and hung it up in one of the outhouses to dry. I had never seen so much tobacco in all of my life. And when they were all up there smoking it you could see all the smoke coming out of the door of the outhouse. After that year though they never grew any more. Due to the fact that some chin-wag told them it was illegal to grow due to the tax payable on it. And this wasn't the only daftness that they would get up to, especially over the Christmas.

During Christmas Eve, Mum and Auntie Phil, would have a few bottles of VP Sherry between them, because they would prepare all the chickens for Christmas dinner, and make the stuffing. On this day Granddad killed the chickens and we all had to be there for this, because they had to be plucked and drawn, and cleaned out. But the both of them would be drinking this VP Sherry as the day went on and they would get very wonky on their feet. One Christmas Auntie Phil said: 'I've gotta go up stairs and get a table cloth.' And she disappeared for about two hours, before Mum went looking for her. Auntie Phil was found asleep on the bed holding on to the table cloth.

Boxing day was always a big family day. The big table would be got rid of, and the chairs would be put along the walls. The gramophone would be going, and they'd all be dancing. For Christmas Granddad would order two large oak kegs from Jack Lang, the landlord of the Morley Arms. Granddad would tap the pair of them. There must have been eighty pints in those barrels. They would only last until the end of boxing day. It was a great party.

All sorts would be played on that gramophone. One day I played Granddad Bill Haley's 'Rock Around The Clock.' He disliked it so much he called it 'rack'n'roll.' He was very much more in to his theatre and music hall. Down at The Palace on Union Street he saw Laurel & Hardy's final performance. Even more though he liked music hall songs: Marie Lloyd, Harry Champion, and George Formby Snr. He must have seen them all down there. When I was fifteen he took me to Argyle for the first time, but I can't remember the match. He would also go to Oreston Rovers. He was involved with them. He would put them through their training. Even though it was only a hobby for him, other then supporting the bar at the Morley Arms.

In his latter years in the mid-fifties when he was seventy six - Granddad died when he was eighty four in nineteen sixty two - he started buying the Daily Worker. This may well have stemmed from the time when he had been in Archangel during the First World War. He had seen the appalling conditions the ordinary Russians were living in. I don't think he was a hard core communist. Its just the case of someone who takes up that sort of thing, at that time of life, makes you wonder.


I was about seventeen in nineteen fifty five. I went out to see him at the house. It was also the day Uncle Ern came around. He had been a sergeant in the army during the First World War. I knew him very well. He was a gentleman. During the First World War he won the D.S.M, for bringing in a wounded officer from between the lines under heavy fire, and he was a conservative. One would be sat at each end of the big table in the living room, and they'd spend the afternoon arguing about politics. It was like watching a game of tennis.


But this afternoon as I approached the house along the main road. I could see pined above the front door the hammer and sickle. I thought: ' oh my god, what's he gone and done now?' When I got to the door and he answered I said bluntly, 'you've got that flag up!' He replied: 'Well! There's nothing wrong in that. It's a free country. I can put what bloody flag up I like.' 'But you were always so loyal,' I returned.


He had been conservative right up until then. In a photograph I have you can see George V's sliver jubilee celebrations going on. You can see above the door the union jack, and the G.R. With all the red, white, blue, bunting which had been put up for the celebrations. How ever, I can still not understand where all of this came from. After all none of the other members of the family were radical.


Granddad calmed down a bit after the flag episode. I don't think losing Pomphlett Cottages helped him. They pulled the place down when they widened the road, because of the building of Plymstock in to a Plymouth suburb. Why that was ever done I will never know. Mr Beeching came along and shut all the railway lines down. Today they would have been wonderful to use. You could have got on the train and been in the centre of Plymouth within a quarter of an hour. Now look at all these cars on the road, you get traffic jams all the way out to the Iron Bridge and past the Morley.

March 2008.

Dionysius Williams

Dionysius Williams


Dionysius Williams lived in Mayon, Sennen, during the late eighteenth century, so we are told by the author M.A Courtney. But this writer calls him a reputed astrologer, which along with the name Dionysius adds a darker ring to this figure.

In fact, if one is to check the Sennen burial records for the same period there is listed a Dionysius Williams who was buried on the 14th June 1775, and was according to the records a mathematician and fellow of the Royal Society. Whether the mathematician and the astrologer are the same figure cannot be confirmed. Although one can say that the astrologer may well be a lot older then the mathematician.

If this is the case then one can only state that Dionysius Williams could have theoretically existed and have been born anywhere between Corineus defeating Gogmagog, and the French breaking out in to revolt which lead to the napoleonic engulfment of europe. Yet there are no sources to prove this. Dionysius, may well have come a shore with Brutus and his Trojans at Totnes, the same fleet which brought Corineus. But this is pure conjecture. And is not Dionysius a greek name?

At this point it should be pointed out the effect the Trojans had on this country when they arrived at Totnes, for their influence exists in both the land and the place names that surround us today. Cornwall, for example, is named directly after Corineus. The land having been bequeathed to him by Brutus for defeating the afore mentioned giant, Gogmagog.

This combat is said to have taken place on what is now known as Plymouth Hoe. Here, Corineus wrestled the giant who was three times his height, lifted him off the ground, and threw him in to the sea where he drowned. Although to this date marine archaeologists have not found any of this creature’s bones in Plymouth Sound.

There is a mention in the records, of a turf figure of a giant existing on Plymouth Hoe in 1486, and other sources do show that payments were made for the maintenance and the re-cutting of the figure over a series of years. By 1602 there were two figures on the Hoe over looking the sound, known as Gog and Magog, however, one writer identifies the figures as Gogmagog and Corineus, which may well be more accurate. These figures are now gone, there is no mention of these figures existing after the reign of Charles II.

Dionysius as a name conjures up a myriad of possibilities, a myriad of aspects thrown out by the Greek God of the same name: a god of wine; intoxication; ecstasy; frenzy and madness as a removal from the order of society and in to chaos; the leaving behind of the self sane identity. One of the symbols of Dionysius is the mask, a symbol of changing identity.

The Homeric Hymns mention that Dionysius is also a bull god, a creature of rage. Combine this quality with ecstasy, frenzy, madness, and the removal of identity, one comes to the darker sense of the word Dionysius. This is the self beyond the rational, a movement towards chaos. Dionysius Williams not as the logical mathematician, but Dionysius Williams as astrologer.

It has already been stated that there is a darker ring to this figure. For there is the possibility that Williams may not have been wholly human, that just by his name alone he has something of the ‘other,’ about him. And yet the records point to nothing. For all we can tell Dionysius Williams may have been a member of the Fairer Race and not necessarily a Trojan. Although it is quite obvious that he had mystical abilities. M.A Courtney may well have got it wrong. The astrologer may well be a sorcerer. Most certainly he had, as the evidence suggests, the power of the darker arts.

At one point Williams was walking through the fields of his farm when he noticed that his furze stack was dwindling faster then it had in previous years. Williams had a hunch that something was amiss.

Using his ritual art, what ritual it was I have no idea, he discovered that some of the women of Sennen Cove, were in the habit of stealing away the furze during the dark of the night. Williams knew that something had to be done about this problem.

During the starlight of the next night a elderly woman came up from Sennen to collect from the stack a faggot of furze. While at the stack she made a bundle of the usual size so she could carry it home, but she found she could not lift it. Because of this she removes half of the furze from the faggot and found again that she could not lift the burden. Then she found she could not move from the spot where she was standing, and had to remain there in the cold all night.

The next morning Williams came out to meet her, and released her from the spell that he had cast upon her. Just by looking at her he realised that she was poor and took pity on her, and gave her the bundle of furze. She quickly went on her way.

Dionysius Williams’s furze stack was never touched again. And it is also at this point that the scant records of this figure go cold, leaving nothing more at this point to be said about his unusual name and nature.

Dionysius Williams: Mathematicus

In Dionysius Williams I noted that the cornish folklorist M.A Courtney had called this eighteenth century figure a 'reputed astrologer.'

Further to this I added the fact that in the Sennen burial records there is recorded a Dionysius Williams who was a mathematician and a fellow of the Royal Society. This Dionysius Williams had been buried on the 14th June 1775.

Also, I stated that the Astrologer may well be a lot older then the Mathematician. Insinuating that Courtney’s Williams was not the mathematician buried at Sennen. The astrologer coming from an older pre-scientific tradition, who may well have been a sorcerer, due to the fact that the recorded story of Dionysius Williams contains obvious magic use. One of these figures has at one stage been projected on to the other.

However, there is a possibility that I may have been wrong. For within all this mix of terminology, there was one term which was missed, bringing both astrology and mathematics together, and opening the way for the Sennen mathematician to actually be the Dionysius Williams of Courtney’s tale. For it is possible that Dionysius Williams was a ‘mathematicus.’ This, of course, will need some explaining.

Mathematicus as a word has a triple meaning. It describes a human being who practices mathematics, astrology, and astronomy, not just as a rational logical practice, but also as a spiritual discipline, an evocation of the divine, a movement from the rational physics of maths, towards a metaphysical description of human nature, and the world in which we inhabit.

The use of mathematics as a gateway to the divine is nothing new. There is historical agreement that astrology, astronomy, and mathematics grew out of the Babylonian culture of the Euphrates and the Tigris during the second millennium BC. A combination of disciplines which could open the universe.

Later, the Greek Pythagorean cult would practice ‘all is number.’ A combination of mathematics, astronomy, astrology and religious methodologies, along with vegetarianism, a doctrine of the transmigration of the soul and a form of numerology. All intoning a movement through mathematics towards metaphysics.

In our own time, pulling on greek and babylonian traditions, we can find the same movements in the work of Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler. Mathematics, astrology, astronomy, combine in figures who are normally considered in modern thought to be scientists.

Then there is John Dee, who may well be the closest model we have for Dionysius Williams. Dee himself was dubbed a magus, echoing Williams as a sorcerer, but regardless of that conation, within his work he tends to practice astrology, astronomy, alchemy, magic, numerology, and cabala, as well as mathematics which tends towards the metaphysics. Such is the nature of the mathematicus.

So here we have in babylonian, and greek culture, and in the work of Galileo, Kepler, and John Dee, the same combination of astrology, astronomy, and mathematics. All of which indicate that these three elements have always operated quite closely together.

Because of this it would then only be natural to suggest that the Astrologer of Courtney’s tale and the Mathematician buried in Sennen, may well be the same person, considering that astrology and mathematics seem in these circumstances to be inseparable. And because of this the two Dionysius Williams combine in to a single whole.


Dionysius Williams: Tracings Of A Life


In the previous article 'Dionysius Williams: Mathematicus,' it was argued that Dionysius Williams was in fact that, a 'mathematicus.' A practitioner of mathematics, astrology, and astronomy, to the point they combine to create a metaphysics of human nature.

However, the major problem with discussing Dionysius Williams is the fact that biographical materials are thin on the ground, and trying to pull together a fuller portrait of the man mentioned as a 'reputed astrologer,' in Courtney's tale, along with the mathematician and the fellow of the Royal Society buried at Sennen on the 14th June 1775 is difficult, if not sketchy at best. But what material there is does support the argument that Williams was a mathematicus.

The burial records of Sennen show a fair number of Williams listed across the 18th century who have passed out of existence, and may or may not be related to Dionysius. Yet there are three which are of note for according to the records Dionysius buried at lest three members of his family before his own death in 1775: Ann, one of his own daughters was buried on 15th September 1751; Margary, another daughter on 7th December 1767; and most telling his own wife, Ann, on the 29th March 1754. So far these are all the details that exist for Williams’s family. At the moment birth dates for these three women are not available, due to that they may have been born out side of the parish, and the birth date will be recorded in the parish of birth. This would be especially so for Dionysius’s wife, Ann.

For Dionysius him self it has already been noted many times that he was buried on the 14th June 1775, some twenty one years after the death of his wife. Further to this the records of the Royal Society mention that he was baptised at Sennen 'as of ripe years 6th January 1738, which still leaves an open date for his own birth, due to the fact that 'ripe years' could almost mean any date prior to that of the baptism, and is generally ambiguous.

But, regardless of these biographical problems with the dates, the archives of the Royal Society also allows us an insight to some of his own activities during the middle of the eighteenth century, and for the sake of the argument it is these details which are important for an understanding of this man.

Apparently in 1742 Williams wrote on the eclipse of 1742, and in the following year calculated the date of the moons eclipse. He also, may be in the late 1740's helped to survey Mount's Bay. A chart of the survey was published in 1751.

On the 8th May 1766 Dionysius Williams was voted in to the Royal Society as a fellow, based on this citation from his certificate of candidature: 'Mr Dionysius Williams of Sennen near the Lands End Cornwall. A Gentleman who has devoted much of his time to the study of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy being desirous of being Elected in to the Royal Society we whose names are underwritten from our knowledge of his person and character do recommend him in to the Society believing that he will become a useful member thereof.' The proposers on the certificate are noted as: 'T.H White; G Scott; Tho Yeoman.' Williams was admitted to the Royal Society on the 21st June 1766.

What this tells us about Dionysius Williams, is not only was he a skilled practitioner of mathematics and science in general, but also, the writing of the eclipse of 1742, and the calculation of the moon’s eclipse, shows a knowledge of astronomy, as does his surveying of Mount’s Bay. After all navigation at this point still very much relied on the positions of the sun, moon, and stars. In other words astronomical positioning.

It is obvious that Williams was more then a force to be reckoned with on these subjects, due to the fact of his entry in to the Royal Society. Entry after all could not have been easy by any means.

From this evidence it can be surmised that being Williams was skilled in mathematics and astronomy, astrologer would not have been that far behind, for it it has been shown in the previous articles that the practice of these three disciplines close together, in fact as one, is not unusual. And because of this Dionysius Williams was most certainly a ‘mathematicus,’ a practitioner of all three disciplines. There can be no doubt that the ‘reputed astrologer,’ of Courtney’s tale, and the mathematician buried at Sennen are the same person.

All of this though are only the traces of a life. These are only the barest details of this figure. We have no image of the man, and have no details of his personality or emotions, how he lived or felt. Because of this we can for now only say one thing: Dionysius Williams: Mathematicus.

December 2006.

Broken Waters

A slight paradox occurs to me while looking at this picture of an angled perspective of the Break Water, especially while looking at the figures towards the mid-ground of the image sitting on the un-hewn stone, even with regard to the dark figure standing out within the grey towards the foreground: these men, frozen in this locus of sepia, are unknown, may be unidentifiable biographically, they never knew a time when this grey stone silver in the sound did not exist. The construction of the Break Water began in eighteen twelve, and with the picture being taken in eighteen ninety three, a space of eighty one years exists between them , the stone they are stood upon, and the imprint of light which sits before me. There is another separation which exists here: the space between myself and these men who stare in to the camera. Another one hundred and thirteen years stand between the shutter and my own eyes. It comes to mind that they were gone long before my own birth, yet the constant of the Break Water remains out there in the sound.


July 2006.

Plymouth Street Photos Vol One

Two Boys On Skateboard

River Plym At Low Tide

Waiting For The Bus On North Hill

Runner On Lock Bridge

Paris Pont-Neuf

Marcus Aurelius

Principles can only lose their vitality when the first impressions from which they derive have sunk in to extinction; and it is for you to keep fanning these continually in to fresh flame. I am well able to form the right impression of a thing; and given this ability, there is no need to disquiet myself. (As for things that are beyond my understanding, they are no concern of understanding.) Once learn this, and you stand erect. A new life lies within your grasp. You have only to see things once more in the light of your first and earlier vision, and life begins anew.

Marcus Aurelius. ‘Meditations.’ 7:2.