"Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not."—Some photos of a walk across Grantchester Meandows
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The first thing — for obvious reasons — was Caliban's famous speech in The Tempest:
CALIBAN: Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1610-11)
Because he quotes Caliban's words on the opening page this, in turn, inevitably reminded me of Rob Young's terrific account of Britain's Folk-Rock movement of the late 60s and early 70s called Electric Eden. The young lad playing the banjo by the river (the first photo in this post — the original black and white photo you'll find below) was, for me, a perfect musical distillation of the overall mood the book continues to evoke in me. I stood and listened to his playing for a long while. Marvellous.
The third was also, perhaps, inevitable because the name Grantchester Meadows is shared by a track recorded by the Cambridge band Pink Floyd in 1969 on their album Ummagumma. When I got home I put it on for the first time in years. Marvellous stuff yet again.
All the photos here were taken with my iPhone 6+ and, for the most part, using the Filmborn app. The very first photo (above) and the very last were taken using the Hipstamatic app. Just click on a photo to enlarge.
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