Smartphone Photography

 

Here I am, trying to figure out how to use an old DSLR camera. It's like a maze for me, with its six lenses, multiple settings, and my increasing awareness I'll die in a few years. Maybe I don't have enough time to begin that career called Photographer, when I already had non-starting and failed careers in Nursing, Law, Communications and Dithering About.

 

Then along comes Jeanette of jetblacksquares and my life is given new purpose! I mean, I'll still carry on wrangling the DSLR. Remembering what's what keeps my brain alive. But blimey, I didn't realise I actually have a pretty powerful camera ...that sometimes makes phone calls.

Rat-run-work-home

 

Just another 1970s building

 

At someone's lovely 1970s apartment. It's filled with detailed design from the decade, and it's a joy. Pioneering architecture of a decade that - the further we move away - needs protecting more, not less.

For example, it has a small fire escape from the back of the bathroom to avoid the front door should a fire impede main access. How carefully thought-out is that? It's amazing!

But then I hear power tools in the stairwells, boots on steps, and voices of purpose. Here it is, this super crawl escape, being blocked up. It's the law. Nothing to do with us. Present-day fire regulations say this little curiosity, reflecting the fears and strategies of a different age, must not exist. 

These lovely apartments are not likely to merit the courts for the Twentieth Century Society. And there's no protest stump on which to chain myself. It's just another ordinary building.

 

How desire paths grow

 

New tellings

 

Each year, there's a Bard elected here. I'm sure, in recent years, I recall stories of love and warm humour, mischief and tease. Stories for big arms, wrapped around the neighbourhood. 

These are different times. Bleaker, angrier, stories of betrayal and resentments, rough justice and pain. The times we live through. 

No Photo

 

Just a day to enjoy some imagination.

Outside appearance

 

The unprepossessing entrance to the pub in a nearby village. It's the Photography Club social. Where I discover -ta-dah!- I'm runner up! To the Photo of the Year competition! (Taken January 2025, you choose.)

Comfort food

Lentil stew! Onion, carrot, celery, potato, plus roots and greens skulking in the fridge. And red lentils. Plus Marigold Boullion Original.*

*Not receiving payment for the most splendid of stock powders. Although if they would like to send a couple of kilos, fine by me.

Achievement of the Day

 

Two straight morning hours in the garden, starting The Great Winter Progress. 

Sunshine, 8C degrees, beating heart, full bin, perfect. 

Very lentamente

 

Sto imparando l'italiano, lentamente. 

Iere, Mnc - lei è una buona amica - ha cucinato il risotto nella mia cucina. È stato fantastico! Ha vissuto in Italia per due decenni! Parliamo italiano. Io, lentamente. (E male.)

Oggi è il mio turno con un libro.

Misty walking

 

And I had fun, playing with my phone camera settings.

On the minus side, when I hang around at the back, staring intently at my phone, it looks like I'm an irredeemable addict. Tsk. Youth of today. 

Love the little things in life

Down the local tip today, dumping rubbish from the studios. Stuff I can't sell or give away, like floor sweepings, smashed plastic crates, and rotted wood.

I'm carting it around when one of staff - someone I can't see despite the flourescent orange - bellows across the bins. Oi! You! His voice soars over the domestic appliance skip, lifts above the Christmas trees, and bounces off the stinking carpet. If you put cardboard in the metal bin again I'll slash your tyres! The figure heading to the metal bin freezes before changing course, due south. 

 How I live for moments like this.

Secret maps and Gesualdo

 

I got into the Secret Maps exhibition at the British Library! Ordinarily I wander in on a whim, but today the entrance queue was round the shop. It was a full-to-capacity, one-in, one-out.

Amongst the crowds I did manage to snap one of my favourite maps - Glebe, Number 6, Smallburgh, Norfolk. Dated 1582.

Also, the exhibition closes in 24 hours, which might account for the queue.

Quick walk next to St Martins through Luvverly London...

 

For Death of Gesualdo, 'a theatrical concert fusing music, puppetry, and tableau vivant'. Fantastic! I am reminded to put St Martins back on my Things-to-do-in-London list.

And more out-of-focus photography...

 

Having a Laff in the pub

Local pub and stand up comedy performances by Tadiwa Mahlunge, Ben Ashurst, Kate Robb and Terry Alderton, with an excellent MC. Phew, we all need laughter. x

Opera at the cinema

Fictions and truths; humans concealed and revealed. 

That's the way to go

 

The last few weeks have been challenging. But today I decided to do things I love! Like walking in the rain. What could be better? (Maybe I'm variety outdoors British.) I love the constant scattering of raindrops and cold wind on my face - bright and breezy, I'm alive! I have no need of a brolly. It wasn't up to the job anyway, so I photographed it as it fled the scene.

Pub quiz night

I answered one question confidently. (Answer: Henry V.) Here's a snap of the pub roof.

Woods, canal, sandy heath

Morning winter walk, Ramblers.

Breakfast at Bettys, York

Science is safe with us

Master of Science joins the ranks. X

Barnsley x

How things are put into order

Thing out the house! 

Victorian Log Book. From the local School, to the local Museum. 

I am ashamed to have it; it was loaned years ago for educational research. Lacking lettering on a spine, it was swept into the Borges Bookcase, where three centuries of papers, leathers, canvas boards and curling corners intermingle. I am slowly advancing into the shelves.

 

 

Anyway, the local school log book, heavy on scripture lessons and discipline, now has a safer home.

Narnia began

 

Just for a few minutes, in Ampthill Great Park.

One Thing a Day

This year, my death-cleansing continues. The most useful advice I've yet received on this ritual is One Thing a Day. One thing out the house every day. The list this year includes a fabric throw, canvas box, and 100 photographic slides, including gun boats used in the Cod Wars of 1972. Let's hope the Icelandic Archives love them.

Also, I forgot to photograph them before they left. But I found this on the floor, so it'll do instead. It might be tomorrow's Thing. A Thing can be big or small, room-changing, or never-will-miss-it. A paperclip to a wardrobe. That helps.

Morning, Ramblers

 

Five mile leisure stroll. I know this looks like 'never as lonely as in a crowd', because every photo I have is when they all walk off in front of me. 

 

But it's a sunny morning to breathe frost air and hear the crunch of ice. I did have a conversation with a path checker, so not spent entirely alone.

Walk and talk

 

I'm with Shark today. Everyone else has gone. 

We go on this walk and I tell her about the young woman I saw in Tesco on Christmas Eve. She was wearing a flawless drawn face with perfect coiffured hair, dressed in boots and unwrinkled pyjamas. Held in smooth hand with tapering fingernails before her, was a phone, picture-perfecting her steady walk through the harassed crowds. Her face, expressionless. The rest of us, exhausted and spent, making way, clutching our grubby last minute parsnips and cheap brandy sauce. 

I say to Shark I find it dispiriting that our cultural life seems to be no more aspirational than to be an influencer with a marketing plan. Then we're all running along, threatened with the miserable lives we are destined to have, if we should fail to 'live our best lives' and 'curate our authentic selves'.

I ask Shark, 'What will you do when you get back today?' She answers after a slight, thoughtful pause, 'Draw a goldfish.'

There's hope for humanity, yet. 

Script? What script?

 

Family outing to see Avatar. The new one. The script is terrible. Don't go for that. It was so bad, at one point I felt the balance of my mind become disturbed. 

I cheered up a bit when I'm told that my script score of -10 was fair. People don't go to Avatar for the words apparently! They go for the spectacle. And American violence. Guns and fist fights.

Well, we got some great discussion from it, so not all bad. About the Romans, the process of film making, the emotional management of audiences, CGI and the role of writers. We covered good ground in a two-hour autopsy.

The photo, by the way, is not the Avatar audience. The screening was well attended, and I have my limits when it comes to crowd scenes. I took this photo some time ago when I was the only one in the audience.

More shonky curtain stitching

 

I bought a pair of green velvet curtains for £2 from a car boot sale about ten years ago. 

They were hanging in the garden room for years, then spent four years in a cupboard. 

Today I cut up the second one to stitch it to the first, to turn a six foot curtain into a ten foot curtain.

The electric sewing machine spat out the velvet, so I complained for an unproductive time about things like Nap and Frister Rossman 1974. Then I gave in and hand sewed the lot. Here it is. 

Achievement looks like this.

Routine appointment

 

Time for bed in my workshop

 

Sold

 

I live in a house with more chairs than people

 

Clear out

Ramblers Walk 7 miles circular Milton Keynes

 

This, earthworks at Shenley Toot, location of motte and bailey castle remains. I'm happy with the story that it dates from twelfth century battles between Stephen and Mathilda. (Living in revenge against the opinion that MK is just another new town.)

Cheese