"A window on Romania"

Last week, I received my latest Blurb effort, containing images mostly not included in my earlier Romania book. It might - Caroline's suggestion - be the beginning of a series, as I always seem to have windows on my mind when I go on holiday. There could even be A window on Gloucestershire in the pipeline. Who knows? Ah well, it keeps me busy.

"A stained glass Bible"

This is the title of a book I've published via Blurb online publishing. Not of course all the Bible as seen in stained glass, but some of the familiar stories. Alongside a text derived from the New Jerusalem Bible is one of my photographs of a stained (or painted) glass panel, taken from the collection I've built up over the years - 30 or so in total.

It's print-on-demand book, so if anyone wants to order a copy, then they do so by accessing the book on the Blurb site, and filling in their requirements, just like on Amazon. You can preview some of the pages of the book online (to help you make up your mind about buying!).

How did this all come about? Well, Mini, my new daughter-in-law from Japan, is an admirer of stained glass, and this prompted Leo to commission me to put together a book of photographs for her. So, rejecting all the many non-biblical subjects I seemed to have gathered in, I restricted myself to a theme of Old and New Testament subjects.

The age of the windows I photographed is from the early 14th to the late 20th centuries. I was worried about including a couple of images taken in a private chapel I'd visited, but the owners were happy to consent to my publishing them - provided I didn't identify the location. I hope none of the other glass's "custodians" object to their windows being included, with attribution and a general acknowledgement.

Lost in translation

Opera in English - save when that's the composer's language - perturbs me. The more so now that surtitles have become commonplace. Caroline and I were at the London Coliseum on Monday. Some magnificent orchestral playing - and singing, from principals in demand to sing their roles the world over. Was it "The Knight of the Rose" we saw? No. According to the programme, and as common sense dictates, it was Der Rosenkavalier. So why make someone as distinguished as a Sarah Connolly or a John Tomlinson learn their roles in English, rather than letting them and the rest of the cast sing in the original German? Is it really so as to make opera more accessible? We were very kindly given tickets, but with prices as they are, I really doubt whether the language factor is what brings a wider range of the public in. (Does the film industry dub foreign films? No, it surtitles them.) Is it so as to draw a line between ENO and Covent Garden? Why not just allow them to compete on musical and dramatic excellence? It can't surely be anything to do with the name "English National Opera"! Do Welsh National sing in Welsh? The late Alan Blyth's essay in the ENO programme book itself squishes any argument for performing Der Rosenkavalier in English: Hofmannsthal sets "standards of... literary excellence never before achieved... The text was written in an imaginary parlance... something inevitably lost in translation."

On the way to the Coliseum, we popped in to the recently reopened St Martin-in-the-Fields. Those short-listed for the commission for a new East window were asked to "animate the light" by a work which harmonised with the clear glass of the other church windows. I hope my photograph illustrates how nothing seems to have been lost by Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary in translating this brief.

Chipping in

When we arrived here at our "new" home in July 1995, it didn't take long for the first hidden defect to reveal itself. As I lifted one of the sash windows in the dining-room, the bottom bar gave way and a large sheet of plate glass crashed downwards: had my head been a few inches further forward, I would have known what it felt like to be guillotined. We turned for help to our neighbour across the road, Tom Holding, having heard that he ran a building firm, and the next day the diminutive Barry arrived carrying a bag of tools. This charming Irishman fixed up a new sash bar (and glass pane) in what seemed like next to no time.

We now hope we are on the way out of this house, but the other day nearly the same thing happened as I was opening the bathroom sash window. Help! I cried to Tom. I'll send someone, he replied; and lo and behold, early yesterday morning, along came Barry with his bag of tools. Now 73, he still does his most skilful stuff, lamenting how much the present generation of carpenters depends on expensive power tools which take 45 minutes to unload from the van in the morning.