west lane baptist church
cafe inside
looking up, going down
the fitzwilliam museum
a matter of opinion
resident of the month
Week two of the December project I'm doing with friends, Phil, Christina and Charlotte.
No theme, just a photo a week of whatever catches our eye.
butchery
When travelling, my camera is probably pointed equally at the sublime and the mundane. Whatever catches my eye.
In this case, a former butchery in West Ulverstone, Tasmania, caught my eye as Victoria drove me from our delicious brunch at Hey Buddy to West Ulverstone beach for a wander (albeit relatively brief as the weather turned wet and windy soon after).
We'd only driven about 160m when the shopfront caught my eye, and I asked Victoria to stop so I could take some photos.
I can't explain why I was drawn to it. Maybe it was the eggshell blue tiles. Maybe it was the faded signage. Maybe a combination of the two.
I don't recall if I registered the logo design fully in the moment, but that is definitely a reason I should have been drawn to it. I've included a crop of the detail of the logo (albeit not the best quality at that size) to explain why it was 100% worth stopping, in my opinion.
taste and see that the lord is good
mere mortals
It might be hard to make them out online, but these photos I took of the nave of Ely Cathedral include my Mum (walking down the aisle) and my Dad (seated to the right of the frame).
The cathedral's Romanesque architecture dwarfs them.
I have a collection of photos of the exterior and interior of Ely Cathedral that I'll edit soon. But it felt appropriate to edit and share these two images for today's (slightly belated) travel photo, as next Tuesday - when I share them on social media for #TravelTuesday - will be Mum's first birthday since her passing.
ely
I have so many photographs I took during a road trip with my parents in 2017 that I haven't yet had a chance to edit.
I'm trying to fix that (not to mention trying to work through editing all the other photographs I have from other holidays or day trips with them over the years).
It was Mum's last international trip. Her dementia was evident during that visit and even more jarring for me as I hadn't seen her in person since our road trip through Belgium in 2014.
rocket
If you're an Australian of a particular vintage (specifically, Generation X or Baby Boomer), I challenge you to tell me you're not thinking of Mr Squiggle's 'Rocket' while looking at my photo of Perth's Bell Tower at Elizabeth Quay.
I took this while on a whistle-stop tour of Perth with Rhys, one of my cousins.
While Kings Park was quite familiar to me, including the vista from the war memorial (which I had captured on at least one previous visit), the view had markedly changed in the roughly 20-30 years since I'd last photographed it.
This building and other high rises have since populated (and are still adding to) the skyline on Elizabeth Quay.
Although the architecture is vastly different: The Bell Tower is on a river, while the National Carillon is on an island in a manmade lake, and they are on almost direct opposite sides of the big, brown land we call Australia, I couldn't help but think of the near-annual visits my brothers and I took with my Granddad to the National Carillon on Queen Elizabeth II Island in Lake Burley Griffin as kids when confronted with The Bell Tower.
Perth was the city my grandparents moved to after decades lived in Canberra, and it was while visiting them in late high school that I first saw Perth.
I still feel I've only scratched the surface of Perth after about four visits, but there's something comforting about the same-same-but-different elements of the city to Canberra.
I'm sure that if my brothers, cousins and I were kids now and my grandparents were still alive and living in Perth, my Granddad would take us to The Bell Tower annually.
an utter shambles
Here's a selection of photographs I took in The Shambles - Shambles and Little Shambles - in York during a visit in 2012.
Though I've visited York multiple times, I didn't know where the name came from.
As a vegetarian for almost 30 years, the revelation of where the name originated was interesting.
From Wikipedia: "Shambles" is an obsolete term for an open-air slaughterhouse and meat market. Streets of that name were so called from having been the sites on which butchers killed and dressed animals for consumption.
As you can see, even in 2012, that name was no longer descriptive of the shops that populated the area. And on a quick search, the nearby market doesn't sell much meat either.
helmsley
arseways round
The portrait of Mouri above I took while cat-sitting her and her father, Dugla, nicely sums up 2022.
It wasn’t a bad year as such.
It was just a bit befuddling, stressful and a constant balancing act.
I experienced worse and more frequent panic attacks earlier in the year due to health issues. I’m hoping the trigger has just turned out to be a new food intolerance (the jury’s still out). But I became near-agoraphobic for a period.
In addition, I got a bite guard and discovered I was both vitamin D deficient and B12 anaemic again 15 years later.
With some time, stern self-talk, medical tests and procedures, I seem to have brought the psychological impact of the potential food intolerance under control. But I need to confirm my suspicions before things return to “normal” (though, even then, the likely culprit is so widespread that “normal” is definitely subjective).
My year started well with temporary work beginning in mid-January. It allowed me to get back on my feet financially after a couple of years of sporadic work and the lingering psychological impact from previous jobs.
And the job offer came despite my being open about my experience photographing roadkill. I shared that in the context of the organisation focussing on haematology as I would potentially have to interact with graphic and disturbing imagery.
Almost a year on, my managers and co-workers are some of the best people I’ve worked with.
They’re inclusive. They understand work-life balance. There’s zero bullying and no alpha male egos to contend with. Bliss.
At this stage, I expect to continue to work with them for a few more months at least, but we’ll see what lies ahead.
Despite the positive start to 2022, the year was bookended by death. And there was also the loss of a beautiful kitteh I stayed with in October.
Anthony left us unexpectedly in January, and a friend’s mother passed in November. So I attended my second-ever virtual funeral toward the beginning and my first-ever in-person funeral toward the end of the year.
Though the degree to which I knew each was quite different, both were meaningful losses.
On the positive side, this year I:
Had my hair cut and coloured for the first time since early October 2019.
Attended my first live gig since the pandemic started.
Visited four art exhibitions.
Read a book cover-to-cover in one evening (okay, technically, it was a short story, but it’s the most I’ve read in book form since 2021…)
Resumed my language studies (late in the year, this is recent).
Continued my letter-writing (albeit just one this year…)
Took some new self-portraits.
Continued to share curated series from my sepulchre work and travel photographs, and I swapped fungi for flowers.
Created the odd digital collage.
Dabbled in AI art.
Engaged with at least 40 people on dating apps (though at least five turned out to be douches) and went on dates with 10 of those I chatted with (who were mostly not those who turned out to be douches).
This year, I found something of a second home in Bromley, cat-sitting Lily, Sammy and Poppy most months of the year.
The current Primark was originally Medhursts department store, where David Bowie used to buy vinyl. And I popped by to look at a couple of the houses he lived in as a lad.
Earlier in the year, while cat-sitting, I revisited the Imperial Arms in Chislehurst and wandered through
Elmstead Wood and
I didn’t travel as far afield as I’d hoped, but I did manage to venture out of London to visit
Leeds Castle and
in Cotton End, just outside of Bedford, and an overnight stay in Bedford a few months later.
And days out in London included revisiting
Regent’s Park with my new co-workers and visiting
the Sky Garden for the first time with friends old and new.
It was a quiet year on the cemetery front.
I revisited Abney Park Cemetery on a first date.
I visited Grove Park Cemetery for the first time.
And dropped in to see William Blake and John Bunyan in Bunhill Fields for the third time.
Stopping to chit-chat with the resident squirrels.
Sitting Lottie (and her loss) led to a renewed friendship with Sarah and a wander along the New River (not new, not a river) from Hornsey to Bowes Park.
Hopefully, in 2023, we’ll continue that walk north from Bowes Park.
It was an absolute pleasure sitting with Lottie earlier this year despite her being poorly.
I love this portrait I took of her because it’s so uncharacteristic of such a sweet-natured kitteh. Obviously, she was yawning - not threatening to decapitate me - at the time. Though it may seem otherwise.
Alongside my new friendship with Lottie and recurring stays with Lily, Sammy and Poppy, and Meg and Mog, I added
Mia (including her cat-sitting me with her cat-mother, Sophie, post-medical procedure),
Dugla,
Mouri and
Bentley to my close feline friends this year.
In 2022, I spent 63 nights with smooshable kittehs and visited kittehs locally 13 times.
I had 10 furry clients. Five of them were new clients.
I’m hoping my mojo will be fully restored in 2023. So I can enjoy kitteh-sits, doggo-sits, and photo walks further afield. And continue to hang out with my faves closer to home.
And on the creative side, I look forward to creating and sharing:
Themed chapbooks (including photographs, writing, collages, sketches, musical compositions and curated playlists).
Collaborations.
Possibly some AI art (but likely incorporated into other work).
More instalments of existing series, including my love letters to london.
New series I’m yet to discover.
I hope your 2022 went as smoothly as possible and that 2023 will bring you lots of good things. xx
two heads are better than one
there will be comedy (loading only)
I took this photograph of the Futurist Theatre in February 2012 while visiting Scarborough with an ex-partner, Kyle, using The Old Chapel in Baldersdale as our base.
I finally edited this photo a couple of weeks ago and looked up which road it was on in Scarborough. That was when I discovered the theatre closed in January 2014 and was demolished in August 2018.
I have to admit I gasped in shock, horror and sadness.
The place seemed somewhat comical when I photographed it.
Most British seaside towns - especially their esplanades (even if called something else) - elicit a strange combination of amusement (especially if there's a 'Pleasure Beach'), nostalgia, curiosity, wonderment and sadness for me. Maybe there's a longer piece to be written about that.
But, given its history (both iconic and terrible), it seemed shocking to have been knocked down.
And from what I can tell, the site hasn't been developed further since (which is possibly even sadder).
For a time, the Futurist Theatre had the ignominious heritage of being owned by the Black and White Minstrel Show's producer. They staged the show there many times.
But The Beatles also performed there during their Beatlemania period in 1963 and 1964.
Aside from the architecture, history, irony and nostalgia, I photographed the theatre because The Muppets was showing.
Man or Muppet became our shared earworm during that holiday. It played regularly on the northern radio stations we listened to in the rental car during our time in the region.
Despite its cheesiness, there's a snippet of the film's dialogue in the video clip for the song that got me every time. It still does.
full to burstin
The Grand Burstin hotel in Folkestone.
leeds castle
Leeds Castle in Kent. Taken in May this year during a visit with friends.
saint richard
As soon as I saw this fellow on the grounds of Chichester Cathedral back in September last year, I was immediately reminded of Nosferatu.
You know, ignoring the fact he was out and about in sunlight bright enough to create lens flare...
But I only read up on him as I edited these photographs, and he's quite an interesting fellow.
Here are some of the tidbits from the Wikipedia entry on Saint Richard of Chichester that caught my eye:
He's often depicted as a bishop with a chalice on its side at his feet because he once dropped the chalice during a Mass and nothing spilled from it. That's my kind of guy: no "alcohol abuse" (i.e. spilling wine)! Okay, okay, so he also doesn't spill "blood", so he's still my kind of guy.
However, he had a statute that the wine should be mixed with water. That could constitute alcohol abuse in some circles.
He also had a statute that practices such as gambling at baptisms and marriages is strictly forbidden. I guess that statute rules out the possibility of a wager on how long the marriage would last or who the baptised's father was.
Another of his statutes was that the clergy were not allowed to wear their hair long or have romantic entanglements. Spoilsport.
He kept his diet simple and rigorously excluded animal flesh; having been a vegetarian since his days at Oxford. He was well ahead of his time. This dude died in 1253.
After dedicating St Edmund's Chapel at Dover, he died aged 56 at the Maison Dieu, Dover at midnight on 3 April 1253, where the Pope had ordered him to preach a crusade. His internal organs were removed and placed in that chapel's altar. That's an odd choice of donation to the collection plate, but sure...
Other items in the entry indicate he was fair and reasonable in some instances:
The townsmen of Lewes violated the right of sanctuary by seizing a criminal in church and lynching him, and Richard made them exhume the body and give it a proper burial in consecrated ground.
But he was still very much of his time:
It was decreed that married clergy should be deprived of their benefices; their concubines were to be denied the privileges of the church during their lives and also after death; they were pronounced incapable of inheriting any property from their husbands, and any such bequests would be donated for the upkeep of the cathedral.
It seems his popularity has continued, with Sussex Day being recognised annually on 16 June since 2007.