For goodness sake do NOT touch a water boatman. Their bite/ sting is excruciating (indelible memory from age 12years!). They aught to produce equally good pictures as these however - provided you leave them alone.

I didn't know of it but I am going to Port Quinn soon and will look out for it. I also take that lens with me on holiday.
You have given me inspiration!

I'm just jealous

Take a bow. Dip up and down. These are wonderful.

But both are brilliant!!! You are becoming to fog & mist master! [/quote]Thank you Spad[/quote]I'm sure that would become a magnificent title when rendered in German (but I don't speak German!).

More fog please!

So now you have been set up for it, let's have a sunset?

These are absolutely wonderful. I await the astro version.

You won't get autofocus (who wants it for macro?) but will not the Jessops tubes with contacts for the A setting do the job?

I think you have already discovered the 'why' bit - because studying symbolism is indeed fascinating - even when you meet a dead end, like this one seems to be. Yes, I did know it outright and the references are sitting in my book case, not 3 feet away from me. As to How? Try this scenario -

Think of yourself as a prehistoric man. All he knew was what was literally before him. He had 'in front' and 'behind'; 'this side' and 'that side' and as he turned around to view them he described the same circle that he watched go past him, on the horizon. He used a stick to draw it and he produced a simple four armed cross (hundreds of them all over the world on various rock faces) and he drew his circle to confine it, just as he could see the reality in front of his eyes - (crosses in circles are found everywhere too!). Now you have a new symbol and an earth-shattering concept - YOU are smack in the middle - you just proved it - and it doesn't matter where you move to - it still holds!

He added 'up' and 'down' to his conceptual toolbox and he saw the heavens revolve, just as we do. Just as he did when he turned around on his earthly 'middle' and he saw that while most of the heavens moved, just one speck did not. It stayed fixed (the pole star is a bit of an arbitrary concept over such timespans but the idea remains valid). And our ancient man became an ancient priest when he realised that a line existed between that unmoving celestial center and the unmoving middle upon which he stood. Enter the idea of the world axis, or axis mundi around which everything revolves. And from that seminal thought we now have relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory and the ability to blow ourselves to kingdom come.

That's just an example of how ideas quickly blossom as connections are made. If you want to follow those ideas up you might look at, for example, The Center as in one's navel, or the nave plate on a motor car's wheel (otherwise called a hub cap), the nave of a church - all are central, pivotal points. As to world axes, the story of Jacob's ladder and his dream of a connection between heaven and earth springs to mind (Genesis 28 vss 12-19). You could also look at the 'center of the world' as marked by an omphalos or a monument deliberately placed to "mark the spot", such as that at Delphi (Yes, it's a real one that has survived the centuries - and there is another one, now built into the Eastern corner of the Ka-Baa at Mecca). Now go back to Genesis 28, verse 18 and read what Jacob did and why he did it. It's things like this that smack you between the eyes as you try to work out how such parallel and apparently identical thought streams might exist across both time and culture.

And all this from an inverted figure 4 ............... now consider these observations:
Invert it - and the central axis remains in place.
laterally flip it - and the central axis remains in place
turn it through 90 degrees - and a fresh central axis replaces the original, etc, etc.

However you might present this figure, it remains an essentially axial object; one that satisfies every last consideration alluded to in the foregoing text - and here I am indeed thinking "off the top of my head". This is new and original thinking! Perhaps some small progress has been made towards understanding this enigmatic Chiffre de Quatre?

(you did ask a silly question!)

Oh dear. You have opened a monster can of worms here. I didn't notice that mark first time round. The only (non) explanation I can give is that it might represent a French term, "quatre de chiffre" which is completely untranslatable and goes back to perhaps the 12thC. You will find it here and there in churches - for example the Collegiate church of St Mary in Youghall, Co.Cork, so it isn't confined by national boundaries. The greatest symbolist of all time (Renee Guenon) admits that its import remains unknown (Symbols of Sacred Science, Ch.67 pp.387 - 391) and Eugene Goblet d'Alviella (The Migration of Symbols (1894)) rapidly progresses from it to various three-armed Triscele figures (e.g. the three legged symbol of the Isle of Man or Sicily) and four armed Gammadions (swastikas). If you Google it, I hope you can read French!
or you could try this one? link