Common-or-Garden

London terminii by Gail Brodholt

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places

I was out cycling across hot, unshaded fields in Cambridgeshire and I came across this little church in a village which abuts onto a USAF airfield. It’s a church of no great distinction, not listed in Betjeman’s guide to the parish churches of England, just a few sentences in Pevsner, but it was of great distinction to me. The porch was left open and the stone was cold to the touch and I sat down and felt incredibly happy. It has been about three months now since I last went into a church and I am feeling the loss. Social media is full of people saying ‘oh but the church is actually the people and not the building’ and, whilst they’re not wrong, I have never really felt part of that kind of deep community, I have always been too transient to feel embedded in a church but I have felt part of a broad community whenever I go into one of these buildings. 

Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond

Stevenage

“Buildings are part of a much greater thing, that's what fascinates me: the totality of things. I find everything fascinating and that is a gift. It's that Flaubertian thing: everything looks fantastic if you look at it long enough. That chimes with me entirely." - Jonathan Meades

Interflug

Interflug was the flag-carrying airline of the DDR (GDR) from 1963 until 1990. Its hub was Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport and it focused primarily on serving fellow Comecon nations in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. 

Although the DDR was portrayed as a hermit state within Western Europe it had a long and proud history of internationalism of which Interflug played a major role. 

Holyhead Mountain, Anglesey, Wales