Looking at rooftops

I have started to enjoy looking at buildings - I think this may all be part of becoming a gaffer - I've bought a copy recently of the Pesvner for Dorset - I know very little about architecture, but the hundreds of arcane architectectural terms in the book's glossary fill me delight - I whisper the strange words to myself, like the words of a spell, or prayer - triforium, sedilia, plaisance, apse -

The articles in the Dorset Pesvner make use of glorious abbreviations for these terms, making the delight of reading the book yet more intense - St Catherine's Chapel, Abbotsbury, for example, is described as having perp windows - 

St Catherine's Chapel is built on the top of a bare grassy hill, overlooking the sea - the chapel looks like the remant of a much larger building, one perhaps torn away by a flood or dissolved into a dream - massive buttresses support the roof - inside, people sometimes leave offerings to mark their petition - you will see candles flickering in jam jars, wild flowers left upon the glistening stone floor -

I enjoy, most of all, looking at roof tops - in West Street, Wareham, I am soothed by the stone roof tiles of the Georgian cottages - in Clapton, I stare happily at the elegant late Victorian villas, with their smooth slate roofs and clusters of cream coloured chimney pots -

In Eastbourne, I looked up, to see this fantastic roof top world above the tattoo parlours and cash converter shops - I imagined Steerpike climbing up the stone curlicules and scroll work over the attic windows - I admired the wrought iron balconies, the buddleaia somehow growing amongst the stonework -

I was reminded of the crumbling palaces I had seen in Naples - I thought about the spendid baroque churches I'd visited - their beauty enhanced by their decay -