Suplication

Pale blue butterflies everywhere, the colour of unfired porcelain and as delicate. Four anthills, complex piles of pine needles. A small black butterfly with two neat red circles on its wings. Lovely thing, only it wouldn't leave my left knee alone. Fly off, then come back, same knee. After twenty minutes I swotted it. Must have been the steak I ate last night.

Caran d'Ache

This blue felt pen dominated the view for a whole day, everywhere I went it followed me. I couldn't escape.

fifty plus

 

Thanks to the Modern Toss and Rick.

Forty-two days

This week

Ste. Croix: Switzerland: Couvet: Big Storm: La Chaux de-la Fonds. Dry out: Twice: St.Imier: Biel: Solothurn

Chocolate: Absinthe: Gruyere and the outside of an asphalt mine.

Saturday

Fourty black and white storks spread out across a field of cabbages. Bosch factory in the distance. On the lake a crested grebe carries on regardless in amongst an all male group of swimmers playing Beach Boys hits. Loud. They are wearing plastic Hawaiian garlands. Drink absinthe chasers, then beer. 

Hunt the thimble

Between wayside markers, every fifty metres or so there are painted diamonds showing the route. Particularly in dense woodland you become a bit dithery if you can't spot the next one. Your heart rises up when you do.

These routes are maintained by the local rambling group. A good job they do. This diamond was on a pine tree on the ridge between mountains. Very high up, steep drop either side. The diamond and the black outline are in gloss paint. From their  regularity I'd say they were stencilled. All this and a light grey undercoat. Three pots of paint, three wet paintbrushes. Must take the whole day.

St Imier

I

The towns and villages either side of the Jura mountain range were the centres of watch and clockmaking during the industrial boom period of the mid nineteenth century. Precision engineering. The swiss tourist board and lately Unesco heritage status recognise and glorify this.

The downside to this boom was the dire poverty experienced by the majority of those working in the industry, either in engineering workshops or as outsourced homeworkers. Unions and craft alliances developed to seek better working conditions and sensible wages. A situation similar to those experienced in the sweatshops of Bangladesh, Vietnam, China etc today. Company towns with workers paid twice a year (St George's and St Martin's Days). High interest credit to cover the interim. 

St Imier became a centre for radical political thought. The watchmakers of the Jura with their anarchist common sense perspective challenged the dominance of Marx and Engels theoretical form of communism. The Jura Federation even had its own International conference to rival the communist International. The tourist office didn't have any information on this, but around St Imier itself there are information boards explaining the varied political tangles of the period. There was a memorial conference last year at Espace Noire, the anarchist social centre in the town.