from Harlech and London
fotoLibrarian
fotos, follies, fonts, food & other folderols

Archive for June, 2014

100 Years Ago Today

Saturday, June 28th, 2014

One summer’s day in 1982 I drove from Cavtat to Sarajevo in a new Yugo without a working handbrake; an interesting drive. Von had a migraine and was lucky not to be with me on the ride, though she missed sights that have stayed with me for the rest of my life.

The beauty of the Bosnian countryside, for one, sprinkled with exquisite alien mosques, sharing the villages with onion-domed Orthodox churches. The mosques had been there for centuries, but they still looked like strangers in a green land to my eyes, better suited to a desert clime. Seeing them framed in European countryside simply seemed wrong, although they were beautiful to look at, unlike the flashy and trashy modern mosques cheaply thrown up in British city suburbs today.

The bridge at Mostar, for another, improbably tall and thin, impossibly beautiful, built by Muslims in the C16 — ‘Mostar’ simply means ‘Old Bridge’ — with boys jostling on the parapet, raising sponsors to pay for their death-defying plunges 70 feet into the Neretva. I waited for 40 minutes but not one jumped. It took over 60 Croat shells to destroy it in 1993.

War was unimaginable in that peaceful countryside of the early 1980s. But that was the main purpose of my journey. I wanted to see this:

Footprints of Gavrilo Princip

The footprints of Gavrilo Princip when he fired the shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, June 28th 1914

Here on the pavement in a side street in modern, cosmopolitan Sarajevo, shortly to host the Winter Olympics, was a carving of a pair of footprints. This was where the assassin Princip fired the fatal shot that is genarally agreed to have started the First World War — the shot that was heard around the world — which killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in his Gräf & Stift Phaeton. The make of the car was as appealing to me as anything else at the time.  Curiously I now own a Phaeton, sadly not the Gräf & Stift version.

I haven’t seen another picture of this for some time. I don’t know if it was destroyed in the Bosnian war. But I’ve been there, seen that.

And pondered on the futility of war.

 

 

Share

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on 100 Years Ago Today

Real Shops

Friday, June 13th, 2014

“Maybe I’m out of touch, but I’d rather go to an actual shop — preferably a small one — than to a harshly lit superstore, or, worse still, a website. I don’t want to buy my books and my toilet paper and my clothing all under the same roof. I want beauty in my life. I want charm. I want contact with actual people. It is, for me, a large part of what makes life worth living.” —David Sedaris in an interview with Mary Laura Philpott, editor of the Musing blog at Parnassus Books, Nashville, Tenn.

Thanks to Shelf Awareness for pointing this out.

Share

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Real Shops

  • Last 5 Posts

    • Presentism
    • How big were the Beatles?
    • Anosmia
    • A Duty Of Care
    • 34 REASONS TO READ  THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT by HILARY MANTEL
  • Pages

    • About Gwyn Headley
  • Archives

    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • January 2020
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • July 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • July 2018
    • March 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • September 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • October 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • January 2014
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • April 2013
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • October 2012
    • August 2012
    • July 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • September 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • February 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • April 2009
    • March 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
    • December 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • August 2008
    • July 2008
    • June 2008
    • May 2008
    • April 2008
    • March 2008
    • January 2008
    • December 2007
    • November 2007
  • Categories

    • Uncategorized (349)

fotoLibrarian is proudly powered by WordPress
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).