Wednesday 20 June 2018

The Watchers of the Cathedral

I had my lunch in the Cathedral cloisters..when uninhabited an unusually serene place given it's proximity to the main shopping drag. Once nourished, I had a short wander, circling the Cathedral.

The building felt imposing and monolithic, parts of the walls black with grime. I looked for gargoyles but there were none. A smattering of graves along one edge, a sparse cemetery.

Coming back along the other side I looked up. No gargoyles here either but some stranger apparitions, at least to my eyes. Four figures adorned the building. Their faces appeared weathered away, one to the point of having the front half of the head missing. From where I was standing they looked small but radiated an aura beyond their size, sort of God like, alien. They reminded me of the statue-like figures in a vaguely recalled series of episodes of Dr Who (Sylvester McCoy and Ace vintage) titled 'Ragnarok', which had something to do with Norse Gods and sinister clowns. The cathedral figures seemed as much akin to Norse figures as Christian ones, but appeared to be neither. Despite their facelessness, they looked like ominous  watchers from another time.




I could only get three of them into the picture, and even then from a distance. It was only later when I looked at it and zoomed in that I noticed two of them had heads that appeared to be covered by nets, or possibly hoods. No doubt an illusion of weathering but still adding to the sinister strangeness of the figures. What were they waiting for?

Around the other side of the building I spotted a small engraving or what appeared to be a reverse sunrise. With the solstice approaching, this furthered my  feelings of unease.






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