Preparing for the Adventure

And while we're on the subject of Alice, here's a poem I wrote some time ago. Trust me when I say that it scans the way I read it.

Preparing For The Adventure

I make a list headed
“Things That I’ll Need”.
Biscuits, chocolate, crisps, more crisps
and squash to wash down the feed.
I’ll be wanting a torch
and rope and a spade,
and a bag to hold all these
odds and sods for the plan that I’ve made.
I catch the bus to the woods
climb over the fence
by the “No trespassing” sign
crossing the line that doesn’t make sense.
I sit and I eat
and I wait for my prey
But the forest is empty.
I sigh , and I rise to call it a day
Then from the thicket
A rabbit runs past
Quickly I follow to
its home in a hole - on my way at last.
I take out my spade
and dig all around
I’m going to join Alice
Adventuring deep underground.

Sun goes down, sun comes up.

Nobody seemed to want to take a stab at the locations of my sunset and sunrise pictures, but here are the answers anyway.

1. A sunrise in Monument Valley, Arizona, USA. This one should have been really easy. It's an image that is seared into the brains of generations of Western fans. We had hiked out to camp on top of one of the mesas so that we could get up early and await the dawn just to get terrific photographs like this one.

2. Picture two is both a sunrise and a sunset which should tell you that it was taken in the arctic circle at the precise time of day when the sun dips to the horizon and then starts to rise again. It was actually taken in Norway.

3. Picture three is a sunset taken from the Laos side of the Mekong looking across the river into Thailand. I knew this was going to be a great picture as soon as I stepped onto the balcony of our extremely unpleasant hotel. The hotel was dirty and unhygienic and I slept fully clothed with my groundsheet stretched out over the bed. It was worth putting up with all those horrible conditions just to get this shot. I have no idea why the roaches put up with it though, none of them had cameras.

4. Surely the colour and quality of the light must give this one away as being somewhere in Africa? It was actually on a game reserve in Zambia and we sat in folding chairs on the plain drinking ice cold beers and watching the sun go down.

5. When we visited the Stone Forest in Yunnan Province in China I wandered around taking lots of shots but as soon as I saw this particular formation and noticed that I could stand in a position where the setting sun was going to reach the very bottom of the cleft, I knew I had to wait and get the picture. I didn't dare go to look at something else for fear of mistiming it and losing my chance. I waited for about twenty minutes.

6. This was taken a couple of days after picture number three as we travelled down through Laos. It was taken in Vang Vieng at sunset after a particularly harrowing day of travel during which we had almost run the truck down the side of a mountain in a mudslide.

7. Back to Scandinavea for another sunset, though to be honest I'm not completely sure where exactly we were when I took this one. I suspect we were on a ferry somewhere near Sweden.

8. And so to South America and a sunrise. Again we had got up early to get this picture of the strangely alien landscape of rising steam at Sol de Manana in Bolivia. We had stayed the night before in an isolated hostel at the glorious Lago Colorado and got up at five just to drive out for these sunrise pictures.

9. And anyone who didn't notice the pyramid on this Egyptian sunset should be thoroughly ashamed. Go and stand in the corner with a dunces cap on your head.

Alices In Wonderland: Part 3

Sometimes publishers of out of copyright works don't bother to put the creators name on the cover. I have at least one edition of Alice In Wonderland that fails utterly to mention Lewis Carroll. More commonly the illustrators are not mentioned - this happens for even modern works - perhaps because they work in-house for the publisher and are therefore not deemed worthy of a credit. I don't know why this should be so.

Alice, having followed the rabbit, does not hesitate to follow him into the rabbit hole. The illustration below comes from the Brown Watson Bedtime Books series. The only credit given is to Maureen Spurgeon who wrote the extremely abbreviated version of the text. There is no credit to Carroll and no mention of the artist although one web site that I found credits it to John Bennet, about whom I have been able to find out almost nothing.
If anyone can confirm this, or point me in the direction of an internet biography, I'd be very grateful.

Alices In Wonderland: Part 2

Alice of course, having seen the rabbit (or kangaroo!) immediately jumps up and follows it. This illustration is from Margaret Tarrant. She was born in 1888 and died in 1959, illustrating Alice In Wonderland for a 1916 edition.
The edition I have is, sadly, rather more modern, being the Bounty Books 1990 edition, which reproduces the Tarrant illustrations but, as far as I can see, fails to credit her beyond noting that their series of children's books are "illustrated with colour artworks by Edwardian artists".