Taking the light for a walk

It was such a glorious morning we headed straight out into the sun and washed air to see where our legs would take us. Along the river there were plenty of picturesque photo-opportunities: a bee flitting round mauve flowers in front of a deep-red narrow boat, wall fragments from the 850-year-old Osney abbey incorporated into a new housing development (mostly on concrete stilts since this is flood plain), shopping trolleys glistening in the sun against vibrant graffiti...

I was very taken with the symbolism of the 'Innovation Centre', created for cutting-edge businesses a decade or so ago. Behind its glass doors blipably reflecting blue sky and clouds in layers of slightly distorted rectangles, some plastic stacking chairs were scattered next to an abandoned parcel trolley. Outside, a once-tasteful, metallic planter contained not the cultivated, cared-for plant that must once have been there but a thriving, self-sown sycamore.

But I keep coming back to how the strong sun, slicing through the tiny gaps between two linked railway bridges over the Thames, created this dystopian film set.

There is a crack in everything; it's how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
(though I discovered recently that he probably nicked it from Groucho Marx: Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light.)

Thinking especially of talented Pii today.