Category: Cirencester

Reflecting on Christmas lights

A simple reflection can turn a nuisance to be avoided into something beautiful to be captured in a photo!

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Image 117 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

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Christmas has come and gone; I’m posting this on New Year’s Day but the lights are still shining on Christmas trees in homes and in Cirencester Market Place and in the roads that lead in and out of the Market Place as well.

This is Cricklade Street, running south from the centre of the town, and after some heavy rain this morning and overnight, the reflected lights add to the scene making it even better.

When we think of puddles we focus on their innate properties – wet, probably dirty, inconvenient (step over them or get your shoes damp) a source of splashes from carelessly driven cars, perhaps suggesting a blocked road drain or, worse, a developing flood.

Yet a simple reflection can turn a nuisance to be avoided into something beautiful to be captured in a photo! And this is what we are supposed to be like if we claim to follow Jesus. I might sometimes be seen as a nuisance to others, I may get in the way, I confess to having some bad habits. Don’t we all? I’m not always careful, not always gentle, not always kind.

But if following Jesus means attempting to become more like him, or allowing him to change me, then I should be like the dirty, inconvenient puddle. In other words I should be changed by reflecting his nature. Nothing beyond that is necessary! If, when you look at me, you instead see something of Jesus reflected in me – my work is done and it’s over to you to respond however you choose. You are not responding to me, you are responding to a perception of Jesus’ nature and character.

When: 1st January 2025
Where: Cricklade Street, Cirencester

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Cirencester

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:

A417 roadworks, Advent Market, Bishops Walk, Baunton, Canal 1, 2, Castle Street, Christmas lights 1, 2, Church 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Churn flood, Countryside, Fallen tree, Fleece, Gasworks, Gloucester Street, Hare 1, 2, Hospital, Market Place 1, Phoenix Fest, Riverside Walk, Stone plaque, Stratton Meadow, Tank traps, View, Wonky 1, 2, Yellow Iris

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

A Cotswold scene

Travelling north and west from Cirencester takes you through steadily rising hills peaking at 330 metres or so, and dissected by water-cut valleys until you reach the Cotswold scarp.

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Image 116 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

Enlarge

This farmland just on the edge of Cirencester is a classic Cotswold scene. There is higher land in the background with scattered trees, and in the foreground you can see rich pasture good for cattle or horses.

The flat, pasture land is part of the River Churn flood plain, while the low hills beyond are outcrops of oolitic limestone, the rock that forms the backbone of the Cotswold hills. Travelling north and west from Cirencester takes you through steadily rising hills peaking at 330 metres or so, and dissected by water-cut valleys until you reach the Cotswold scarp that drops back almost to sea-level within a short distance. Beyond that is the wide, flat vale of the River Severn, and beyond that again, Wales with its hills and mountains. In medieval times Cirencester was known in Welsh as Caer Ceri. If the Saxons had not settled quite so far west, Cirencester might have signs saying ‘Croeso y Gaerceri’, and the Severn would have been Hafren.

When: 26th October 2023
Where: Gloucester Road, leaving Cirencester

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Cirencester

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:

A417 roadworks, Advent Market, Bishops Walk, Baunton, Canal 1, 2, Castle Street, Christmas lights 1, 2, Church 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Churn flood, Countryside, Fallen tree, Fleece, Gasworks, Gloucester Street, Hare 1, 2, Hospital, Market Place 1, Phoenix Fest, Riverside Walk, Stone plaque, Stratton Meadow, Tank traps, View, Wonky 1, 2, Yellow Iris

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Low cloud at Christmas

The Christmas lights had been switched on at the beginning of December and then we had low cloud.

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Image 112 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

Enlarge

This was a magical moment that just asked to be captured. The Christmas lights had been switched on at the beginning of December and then we had low cloud. The top of the church tower was partly obscured, but other buildings in the town were not tall enough to be affected.

I took several shots, and this one seemed the best of them. So here it is for all to see. Happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year of grace and peace as we head into 2025.

See also:

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Cirencester

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:

A417 roadworks, Advent Market, Bishops Walk, Baunton, Canal 1, 2, Castle Street, Christmas lights 1, 2, Church 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Churn flood, Countryside, Fallen tree, Fleece, Gasworks, Gloucester Street, Hare 1, 2, Hospital, Market Place 1, Phoenix Fest, Riverside Walk, Stone plaque, Stratton Meadow, Tank traps, View, Wonky 1, 2, Yellow Iris

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Fallen tree

Some things are important…we should do the things that matter most right away…we should not fritter away our time…life really is precious.

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Image 107 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

Larger view

Winter storms occasionally bring down mature trees, even if they are healthy. That happened on the road between Stratton and Cirencester on 21st December 2023. The picture shows the clearing up afterwards. The car driver had a very frightening experience and a lucky escape; the tree trunk crushed the right hand side of the bonnet and I imagine the car was a write-off. Amazingly the windscreen was undamaged and the driver presumably shaken but unhurt.

The road was completely blocked by the trunk and branches of this large, mature lime tree, but the team worked quickly and it was clear again later the same day.

Life is full of unexpected events, most of them entirely harmless, some of them inconvenient, and occasionally something that shakes us up and makes us think about life in a different way, at least for a time. It’s probably good for us to face these think-about-life-differently events once in a while. It helps us to realise that some things are important, that we should do the things that matter most right away, that we should not fritter away our time, that life really is precious, and that we should be sympathetic to those who have suffered unexpectedly in life.

I suppose in the end the important thing is to love others regardless of whether they are close family, complete strangers, or somewhere in between. Everybody matters!

When: 21st December 2023
Where: Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Cirencester

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:

A417 roadworks, Advent Market, Bishops Walk, Baunton, Canal 1, 2, Castle Street, Christmas lights 1, 2, Church 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Churn flood, Countryside, Fallen tree, Fleece, Gasworks, Gloucester Street, Hare 1, 2, Hospital, Market Place 1, Phoenix Fest, Riverside Walk, Stone plaque, Stratton Meadow, Tank traps, View, Wonky 1, 2, Yellow Iris

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

< Previous | Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Season’s Greetings 2024

Look at the world around you and you will see pain, loss, discouragement, guilt, and hard struggles for survival. But look at the world from just the right angle and you will see altogether better things.

This photo of the interior of Cirencester Parish Church reminds us of the dedication, hard work, and sheer skill put into building a church nearly 1000 years ago. That should stop us in our tracks and make us think – why go to so much effort?

Click to enlarge

Work on building Cirencester’s Parish Church of John Baptist began in the twelfth century. The chancel (where the altar stands) is the oldest part of the structure and replaced a previous Saxon Church, and perhaps a Roman one beneath that. Additions, alterations, repairs and improvements date to almost every century, the most recent change returning sculptures to two empty niches on the tower in 2019. It’s been a lot of work over a period of a thousand years.

Why? There will, of course, be many reasons. Wealthy townspeople have been willing to spend large sums of money from time to time, and masons, carpenters and other tradespeople will have worked for payment. Some people may have been motivated by their faith, others by a desire to contribute to something beautiful and special, perhaps some to say, ‘Thank you’, for answered prayer. We will never know the full detail, mostly we can only imagine.

But for me, this photo illustrates something quite different. My own understanding of Jesus’ teachings is that we have received a great treasure and should do whatever we can to share it freely with friends, family, neighbours, even enemies, with everyone who will listen. This is an altogether different kind of building work. We are raising a beautiful structure, not of stone and timber, brass and lead, stained glass, silver and bronze. We are building as Jesus builds, a structure of trust, love, grace and peace, of joy, precious thoughts, acts of kindness and caring, a work of self sacrifice, healing, truth, and acceptance. A drawing in as well as a raising up, a work that can always be extended further.

Am I good at it? No, not really. Only Jesus is truly good at this task. He came to reveal his Father, and to pour out his Spirit. And he told us (his followers, his apprentices) to carry on his work.

So, as a very small part of this task, I say to you my readers (if you are still reading at this point) whatever your faith, or religion or view of life, my wish for you, my prayer for you, is that these weeks as 2024 grows old, will be a time of growing peace in your heart. Life isn’t always easy, so my hope is that you will find something to smile about even in difficult times.

Here’s something I wrote last year, I’ll offer it up to you again now. More and more, the UK is a rich mix of people from many cultural backgrounds. That’s why the title is not ‘Christmas Greetings’. Please accept the greetings and replace the word ‘Season’ with whatever you like. If you’re Hindu you could choose Diwali as a reminder of your celebrations in October, or Jewish friends might go with Hannukah in December, if you’re Muslim you might look forward to Lailat al Miraj in February; Buddhists might consider Bodhi Day, and there are more groups of people I haven’t mentioned specifically. But whatever you celebrate, please take my greetings as a blessing for the whole of next year – spring, summer, autumn and winter.

And I apologise to my southern hemisphere friends whose new beginnings may come in June or July!

PS – If you like the photo, click the thumbnail for the full size version. Print it out, put it in a frame and hang it on the wall. Give a copy to friends if you think they’d like it; or send them a link to this message.

Other years

2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020
2019, 2018, 2017, 2016

See also: