Mrs Woo-Star dream of Pickled Plums and Rhodophyta

Mrs Woo-Star, aspiring farmer of sea merchandise, sometimes likes to meditate amongst red land plants, here an oversize crop of red shiso, which she likes to imagine is a forest of red algae - though Granny Egg, who regards Mrs Woo-star as an interloper and is still pondering if she her neighbour is serious in her request for peck of plums to pickle, or is Granny has misheard and she asked for a peek at a plectrum of prickles, prickles being a commodity with some currency(see By the Prickings)  in Huntingdon County.

Sea Murchandising at Brass Acres - The Return of Mrs Woo-Star

The last time we saw Mrs Woo-Star she was plain Mrs Woo, and she had taken adverse possession of Brass Acres, the former farm and mise en scene extraordinaire of Bart Brassica ( Vale).  As a result of her addiction to reading PG Wodehouse's tales of Bertie Wooster, with which she finds some affinities to our lost Bart B, and what she sees as her new career in Rock Pool farming, she has assumed the 'Star' suffice by Indeed Poll.
Now she surveys her Rock Pool farm where she hopes to cultivates Sea Merchants, though this is due to her mishearing of the word Sea Urchin and noting the rich price they fetch in Sushi Bars.  You will no doubt spot her failure to provide any fodder for her Merchandise ( her term, not mine) in the form of Kelp.  The question is will she realise and call the National Kelp Line?

Lodhi Garden's Shisha Gumbad

Dusk lasts longer is Delhi's Lodhi Gardens, and here I will refrain from mentioning how this is due to  the air being overloaded with particulates, so everything has a romantic haze and all colours are shuffled along into the red spectrum. Lodhi is gorgeous with 15th Century treasures, gardens, people strolling, running (ouch! that air) and the elegance of birds.  And Shisha Gumbad's lovely arched doorways frame the light and trees perfectly.

Spice Street, Old Delhi

Two kinds of dates, golden sultanas, greenish raisins, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, Old Delhi's spice street, pantry, stage set, graphic feast.

What the Stylish Camel wears this Autumn

The best dressed camel is tasselled and tessellated with plenty of pom poms, bedecked with beading, tassells trembling, anklets tintinnabulating with each soft camel step. Even the camel's shadow is  sharply stylish.  The camel fair at Pushkar in Rajasthan  is obviously the place to be seen for stylish dromedary.

The Fabulous Land of Wedding Bling

While there are elegant shops of passamenterie in Florence, for extreme ebullience, for dazzle, for gorgeous excess, for silver sass, for chi-chi chutzpah, for over opulence, for ribbon riot, for graphic gobsmack, the wedding lanes in Old Delhi does it best. My favourite, hmm, either second row down, centre stack, the top wide with of black and silver... but.....

Buildings as Astronomical Instruments

What if every new building worked to test or measure a scientific principle?  Each house collected the data that fell on it from the sky?  New Delhi's18th century Jantar Matar, eminently photographic, dedicatedly scientific collection of built things to measure matters astronomical does exactly that.  Bravo to Jai Singh II who built a series of Jantar Matars.

Betel Leaf's emphemeral green spiral into the red

Arrestingly graphic, with a Fibonacci appeal, laid out spirals of betel leaf in Old Delhi's spice market seem to be a role model of green.  Later they will be filled with areca nut and often tobacco.
This mix, an addictive pyscho-active tooth rot, with be chewed into a red juice and spat out on the street, red tubercular-esque stains.  Bad ending.

Old Delhi's Colourised Sepia lanes

Crumbling chalky wash of colour, infusion of sepia, tangle of cables, glimpse of  faded rickshaw, faded grandeur of old Haveli balconies, it all might be a concoction of filters and collage but this Old Delhi lane was as is.  That atmosphere courtesy of the fine particulates, the chalk wash a leftover from a movie shoot, and yes, that noir mystery is real.

Pigeon Napping in Progress in Old Delhi

The somewhat coy and variegated beauty on the left, skittish, curious and confused has been caught flocking with someone else's crowd. Coming in to this high terrace in Old Delhi, her new friends colour matched with the grey sky, she is soon to be seduced by the lush  peckings, nabbed with a net by a careful man who has been cooing his best. Then, rumour has it, there will be the business of ransom and return. Fowl play?