Numbers in an English country church - St Margaret of Antioch, Bygrave, Herts

The hymn lists in a window at St. Margaret of Antioch. St. Margaret's is in Bygrave and is probably one of the most beautiful little churches I have ever been in. Its very old - the oldest church in North Hertfordshire. very plain inside and with a partial wooden roof, it looks like something from Tuscany, not deepest Hertfordshire It's one of my very favourite places here..

Click HERE for more info.

Lettering on a house in Cambridge

This was just a house we passed at the end of the walk from Grantchester meadows up to Newnham in Cambridge. Such a simply thing and yet lovely.

Bletchley Park - Second World War lettering and numbers treasures.

For my birthday, I finally managed to get to Bletchley Park in Bedfordshire. It's an astonishing place, a place where you can still tangibly feel the presence of the people that worked there in the Second World War. I actually got to see an Enigma machine and got to see Colossus working. A magnificent sight and sound! Here are just a few of the beautiful numbers and letters about the place.

The Polish Memorial

The Polish Memorial

Bakelite Radio

The Beeb at its best - language grown from Twitter

A great link to an article on the BBC website about how Twitter is growing its own language... click HERE

A drive down the M6, M1 and then home - lorry logo's

St. Mary's Uggeshall - poor box words

Another small object that grabbed my attention. Its a poor box that was in St.Mary's church at Uggeshall in Suffolk. This little church we came across by sheer fluke and couldn't believe our eyes. Its thatched and old, really old. And open to see inside too. Its very simple inside with many devotional pictures of Mary. Its one of my very favourite of churches. So utterly peaceful and full of atmosphere. Truly wonderful and tucked away from the main roads. Go and visit if you are near and put some money in the donations box.

Holy moly guacamole!! saying hello again and some new beautiful text to see!

Holy moly guacamole... I havent posted on here for what feels like a billion years. Ok, a bit of an overstatement, but its been a long time. I have been poorly, had a lot on work wise and had difficult family commitments to cope with. Still, a break is sometimes what you need to recharge and here are some photos of some new beautiful words I have found on a recent trip to Suffolk.

Aldeburgh Museum

A boat at Southwold harbour

Sole Bay Inn at the heart of Southwold

Everwhere I go, a little bit of Salisbury

St Margaret's church at Reydon

Back to Front Cottage at Southwold

Window lettering and a grey day in London

" The Sand in my Hand" - spoken poem

Click HERE to hear on AudioBoo

The sand in my hand


Standing with the sun on my back
I can hear the swoosh of the waves coming and going.
Their movements are as timeless as the sun rising and setting.
I know that the warm dry sand in my hand,
that slips through my fingers
is the most beautiful thing
in my world at this moment.
It's like liquid, the grains joined and intimate,
touching so close that there is no air between them.
I am so happy, but
I know in its beauty I have to let the sand fall through my fingertips.
It must fall away into the wind,
into the air,
into space.
I have no choice.
I long to hold it forever but I know I have to let it go.
And so the waves swoosh
coming and going,
coming and going,
coming and going.


©Vanessa Stone 2010.

A paper cut read aloud - a new AudioBoo post

A new Boo to hear - this paper cut read aloud. CLICK HERE to hear it...

"Moment of Ecstacy"  © Vanessa Stone

one of my poems spoken via Audioboo - "thinking of you"

Here is another of my poems read aloud for you to hear. I wont explain what its about - just enjoy!

CLICK HERE to hear it.....

AudioBoo - my poems spoken - "About a father, about a life"

I have recently signed up to Audioboo. Its a sharing site for just audio, so a bit like Twitter and  Facebook, but its feels much more quirky and little and VERY easy to do. I simply love it as hearing someones voice is intimate and makes them feel like they are in the room with you. And so far I have found people talking and reflecting about their lives and their day to day thoughts along with musicians,and journalisty kind of audio clips from real news events around the world. I first thought I would use it so that you can hear me say my poems and talk about some of my work as hearing a voice adds and richen the experience of getting to know someone - but I think its going to be a broader use that that as I can just record stuff on my phone and post it. have a little tiny stab at making some sound pictures. Its a whole new world!

So here is my poem " About a father, about a life" read on AudioBoo. Have a listen!  CLICK HERE

"About a father, about a life"

Into this building we have all walked
All hear the echo of our footsteps and see the mark of them.
There are many floors - only three I have fully known.
You have climbed, trod many more.
And in that time, my hand held - looking up.
Doors you opened, window light bright, shadows few.
A cloak naturally assumed to be there.


(the thief in the shadows has been stealing your wings,
feather by feather by feather)

I opened doors too, alone, in this great bulk.
And am opening them still, little tear by little tear.
A cloak that’s now given, a hand held looking down.


©Vanessa Stone May 2009

New post on my papercut Girl Blog - making the cut of St. Paul's Cathedral

Click here to see the making of my St. Paul's Cathedral papercut....

Old Salisbury Library and memories of the books we chose...

These are some pictures of the outside of what was Salisbury Library. I can't remember when it moved to its current location. I remember it being a very shiny new place compared to the old one, but being very sad that the library I had visited so many times with my father was to be no more. If I shut my eyes I can picture the interior even now - the turquoise fake leathery (must have been an acrylic as I remember on hot days my legs sticking to them) seventies chairs in the children's section, along with the dark wooden troughs for the books. I remember the light and the smell of polish on the parquet floor. It's there that I remember books by Eric Carle stuffed under my arm, or dropped as they were usually too big to carry! My father would be in the rows of the grown up books. There was a place a bit away where there was huge rows of huge books. They weren't of course... they were just normal sized picture books and novels and magazines but to me as a small child they seemed gigantic. He would always be in the same place, always pick books on two themes - photography and the two world wars. At home I would look through them. See the bodies, the twisted fallen soldiers and in absolute contrast, the glamour pictures of women in the photography books that erred on the side of a bit of soft porn. He would tell me of Tommies and the trenches and sometimes tell me of Wilfred Owen. We would watch Armistice day together and stand at the silence and talk of England and owning your own piece of land. This wasn't a man that had been widely educated, just a cobblers son that had left school when he was 14. It all stuck, seeped into my subconscious and enriched me.

Pictures of the library and my beloved father.

Vanessa Stone and Ted Stone

Prayers from Ayots St.Lawrence church, Hertfordshire

I had forgotten about these little pictures. I have been getting down to doing an uber back-up today and sifteing through some files, up they came through the ether. I took these a couple of years ago I think when we went to visit George Bernard Shaw's house at Shaw Corner. They started off the gem of the idea of cutting the prayers, which resulted in the "People, Paper, Prayers" exhibition.

Ayot St. Lawrence church is absolutely one of my favourite - a Classical, Palladian inspired gem sitting quietly in Hertfordshire and thankfully not that far from me.

Camden lettering - a first visit and some lovely lettering...

I have just been to Camden for the first time. I know, I know... the first time at age 44 seems la-la! Its a place that I have always known about and never been. My adolescence was pretty sheltered when I think back. Certainly I had my wild times, but in the scheme of things not that wild! I also have a problem with trendy places. Anything thats percieved as being where to go, where to be seen always makes me want to walk the other day. I hate feeling like a sheep even in unconformity! I do have an obstinate heart. Tell me to jump and I am generally a bit reticent! though peversely I am really enthusiastic about things so I am in a constant state of flux in my nature. Making art's like that though, the flexing between head and heart.

Anyway, getting away from the subject. Camden? It was cool. I actually loved the place. Loved the flow of it, the food and how easy and relaxed it is to just mooch and be about the place. We went down the canal and away from the crowds. It was a special day. And I bought a little plastic tiger that makes me chuckle.

In it and walking to it - the Imperial War Museum

Walking to the IWM was this blue plaque and my heart skipped a beat!! Captain Bligh! The Bounty!! exciting indeed!

A great road name

And in the museum...

A birthday, the Imperial War Museum and a blown up car.....

It was my birthday yesterday and the one place I wanted to go was the Imperial War Museum. I have never been but always been aware of it. I haven't any military connections family wise but my father worked for the MOD for a long time and going to school in Salisbury meant I was always used to a squaddy or three being about. Growing up in a Wiltshire village, Winterslow, also meant that I could regularly hear the guns on the Plain, and in deepest North Hertfordshire I still sometimes yearn to hear them again and realise that it's just the freight trains clunking through town. At school, in history, we didn't do anything to do with the two World Wars that I can remember. Our history lessons were all about early Christian life in medieval times. If push came to shove I liked learning about house building and looking at the beautiful jewellery made then, but to be honest the rest bored me rigid. In one history exam I wrote my name and answered one question and got 4% and that really was the death knell for me and history at school.

Growing up and maturity does strange and wonderful things to a person though. Whereas as an adolescent things were more black and white, as an adult my thinking landscape has changed dramatically to include a very wide range of colours and saturations. In experiencing these colours there is a cost of course - there are sadness's, tears and loss - but blowing all those out of the water is feeling more human at a fundamentally deeper level. Growing up is scary as life isn't so clear cut - but oh my God, there is a depth's to feelings and experience that makes me know that I have actually lived.

I think that why I hadn't been to the Imperial War Museum. I simply wasn't ready. I was just too young...and this birthday? I was 44, so no spring chicken. Add into the mix a birthday on 9/11 and the Imperial |War Museum was just the place to go.

I managed to clonk my head on this bomber...

Sitting room in the 1940's house

As I say the Imperial War Museum is an amazing place, full of artefacts that by their very presence and reality makes you think about war. Makes you think about fighting for your country, death of children, of innocents, of greed, anger, violation of human rights and of course in seeing the films and models and artefacts in the Holocaust section, witnessing true evil. I love places like the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum as they are filled with such beauty and history, but the Imperial War Museum has artefacts and objects that are graspable as part of our own history, of our own time. The 1940's house isn't one where I grew up, but my 60's/70's childhood home certainly has many echoes of it with the quilts on the beds, the dark furniture and the odd enamel pans in the kitchen. It's not an abstract place, a place of cabinets that hold treasures that I can't relate to. It's the opposite, full of things to see, read and understand and fully enrich me. I have to go back of course. One visit isn't enough.

Trench signs

Epaulettes from captured German soldiers

 What was the exhibit though that affected me most? has stayed in the forefront of my head as I have been doing the washing up, sorting out the bedrooms and listening to the Archers on a Sunday morning?


It was the car bomb shell.  Have a  read of Will Gompetz blog to find out all about it. It wasn't the actual car that held the bomb, that was obliterated at the time of the explosion. No, this was a car in the street when the bomb went off, the bomb that killed 38 people. All that was left was a crushed and twisted piece of rusted metal, and was just on show in amongst the other exhibits of tanks, bombs and a suspended Spitfire. A really interesting member of staff - Grant Rogers - told me that it was probably a Volvo estate. I drive a Volvo.
If you haven't been to the Imperial War Museum please go , I urge you to soon. Have a look at that car and think what war does.

I just wanted to be silent and look and think.