old man's mustard
Once again, my photography introduces me to new things. I learn from it all the time.
I had difficulty deciding on a title for this post based on the various names for Achillea millefolium: yarrow or common yarrow.
According to Wikipedia, it has many evocative alternative names, including arrowroot, nose bleed, death flower, eerie, hundred leaved grass, knyghten, sanguinary, seven-year's love and snake's grass.
I settled on the one I spoke out loud and chuckled at as I read it.
Apparently, in Ireland and Great Britain, it was believed to be able to foretell your romantic future.
It appears ingesting it has positive and negative effects on humans and animals.
And, for a kid growing up in the 80s, I was amused that yarrow was used to make pick-up sticks. (Though, if I remember correctly, ours were brightly coloured plastic).
These particular specimens were obviously at the end of the season. I photographed them on 10 September 2020 in Pondwicks Meadow in Old Amersham.
coronary
camber sands
Despite visiting Camber Sands with friends on such a lovely day with perfect weather, albeit a bit windy, I barely took in my surroundings. I only captured a handful of photographs with my dSLR and my iPhone.
And some of those iPhone photos were taken while I sat in the car with my mind elsewhere.
Specifically: on the outcome of the Brexit referendum, which had taken place the previous day.
I'd stayed up into the wee hours keeping an eye on updates but had finally succumbed to sleep before the result was confirmed.
I woke up a couple of hours later and checked the news on my phone. Seeing the headlines, I tossed my phone on the bed in disgust, went to the bathroom, and then returned to a fitful sleep, brought on by my disappointment and disbelief.
My mood hadn't lifted over breakfast. It wasn't helped by our B&B hosts being unashamedly pleased with the outcome. Phil and I both struggled to contain our frustrations out of politeness to our otherwise welcoming hostess.
Even now, my disappointment over the decision for Britain to exit the European Union is still present. It's reinforced every time the current Conservative government takes the Overton Window further and further to the right.
The political situation in the UK, US and Australia had already been heading that way for at least two years. But I feel Brexit was the beginning of an even more accentuated move away from common sense toward the politics of Drumpf and beyond.
And it doesn't seem to be swinging back anytime soon, unfortunately.
embracing the stem
Bistorta amplexicaulis, the red bistort or mountain fleece.
From Wikipedia: 'The Latin specific epithet amplexicaulis means "clasping or embracing the stem", and refers to the leaves' habit of growing around the stem.'
full to burstin
The Grand Burstin hotel in Folkestone.
the sacred heart of balmoral
public footpath
For those who aren't aware, England, Scotland, and Wales have a system of public footpaths and bridleways collectively recognised as rights of way.
They allow folk to travel across private land without fear of a charge of trespassing. Or threat or reprisal from landowners.
In rural areas, they can make getting from Point A to Point B on foot a much quicker journey than if you had to stick to the footpaths alongside roads. They also make for interesting routes for those of us inclined to photo walks.
The entrance to this public footpath can be found north of Cotton End.
I didn't take it while I was cat-sitting for Jo and Becky this time, but hopefully, if I have the chance to cat-sit Meg and Mog again, I will be able to explore it further.
Or, at least, others not far away which lead to places that seem enticing to my photographic eye.
If you want to see how extensive the right-of-way system is in the UK, check out the Footpath Map.
ross fountain
Apologies for the radio silence the past week.
I'm playing catch-up after a busy week of work, meeting up with old friends and meeting new people, and finding out more about some potential work.
My temporary employment is dropping down to 21 hours this week. I'm both pleased and nervous about it.
I'm pleased to have more time to do creative things for myself (and you!), but obviously, the drop in income is less welcome. The new work may fill that void but not immediately. We'll see.
Dad and I also managed to have one of our lengthy Skype calls this past week, and I've been wrangling with some health issues.
Last night and in the wee hours of this morning, I finally edited my photographs of Ross Fountain in the West Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh. I took these during my last visit in August 2011.
Since it was restored in 2018, it looks different to when I captured it.
I hope to return to Edinburgh sometime in the next few months. I just need to arrange some reasonably priced accommodation or a cat-sitting gig there :)
the lighthouse keeper’s son
Nearby the lighthouse at Table Cape in Tasmania lies the small grave of the infant son of the first Table Cape lighthouse keeper.
Bertram Jackson passed away a little over two weeks after the lighthouse opened in 1888.
The lighthouse keepers left Table Cape sometime after 1920 when the lighthouse operation became automated. However, his little body remains.
banksia
My plant-identifying apps failed me, with one thinking these were an ornamental pincushion. And the other knew they were banksia but couldn't identify the cultivar. They are, obviously, a different cultivar to these beauties.
My gut instinct/plant memory said banksia, but I did check in with Bellamy (otherwise known as Dad)*. He confirmed they are. But as with one of the plant apps, he couldn't narrow it down to a cultivar. He is a font of plant knowledge, but no one is perfect ;)
Either way, they're photogenic. They caught my eye in the front garden of a home on Table Cape that gave a lovely view of Stanley in Tasmania. I took this during my visit in 2018.
My last visit with my parents in October 2019 seems a lifetime ago. It was bittersweet for so many reasons.
My next visit, which could be as soon as this year, will be even more difficult. As though dementia, hospital visits and a car accident weren't stressful enough in 2019.
Some days (or nights), thinking and talking about it, pragmatism wins out. Other times, raw emotion wins the day (or night).
lifebuoy
we come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden
living on bridlington time
untitled #184
There have been rumblings of a potential day trip with friends again this year.
You know, so long as the rumblings about a third wave of coronavirus here in the UK don't turn into a rollback of restrictions before we have a chance...
In September 2016, Chris, Sophie, Paulina, and I ventured down to Margate, then to Botany Bay and Broadstairs.
In 2018, at the beginning of September, Chris, Sophie, and I pootled down to Durdle Door via Brockenhurst and Wilverley Plain.
At the end of the same month, Chris, Sophie, one of Chris' friends and I popped up to Cambridge for the day.
In 2019, Simon and I went further afield a month later, so there was no real opportunity for a proper summer jaunt together as a group.
And last September, well, let's just say we had to stay local, and restrictions meant we weren't all allowed in the same car together anyway.
Days out last year were kept within the M25 or just over the county lines in Hertfordshire or Essex.
So far this year, it's been the same. But perhaps this September we can once again arrange a day out of the city in the sun somewhere.
Destination to be confirmed.
untitled #176
So, I'm trying to be a bit more planned and less haphazard with what and how I share my work with my patrons this year.
Although there'll still be plenty of room for me to be spontaneous, I thought it would be helpful for me to have a bit of a pattern/routine in sharing some of my photography.
With that in mind, the past two Sundays I've shared early-access posts featuring newly edited images from my sepulchre series.
I'd been weighing up how to work these into a weekly programme. Having a hashtag-worthy concept without sounding too flippant, morbid, or offensive.
I'd started weighing up #CemeterySunday (I couldn't bring myself to alliterate to the point of #SematarySunday) but, being the semantic stickler I am, I couldn't settle on that. Some images would be from churchyards, graveyards or other burial places, not all would be taken in cemeteries.
I'll likely use #CemeterySunday appropriately on social media depending upon the subject. But, for Patreon, I'm thinking of this collection as #SepulchralSunday, falling back to the (now glaringly obvious) use of my overall series name for the alliterative and catchy collective term for these images.
#SepulchralSunday images will include those from my stained glass series, season's grievings curated series and any new curated series. As well as one-off photographs appropriate to the theme.
Another genre within my work 'upvoted' in my recent polls on Patreon (which are still open until the end of the month!) was my travel photography. So I'm going to default to social media type and declare this the first of my #TravelTuesday posts. It seems particularly appropriate to focus on these one day a week while most of us can't travel far from home.
As these are two genres strongly represented in much of my photography, it seems like an incentive to gradually work through editing images long overdue to see the light.
Without any particular catchy hashtag to accompany them, I'm hoping to share a more in-depth post with you each Friday. A small series of images focussing on a specific place or subject, likely accompanied by a bit more writing than I might offer on other days.
With these new plans, sepulchre and travel images won't be restricted to Sundays and Tuesdays*. But I hope they'll become regular features my patrons come to eagerly anticipate in their inbox.
Along with my new Love letters to London series, I'm hoping to write a new instalment of my postcards from another's life series to share with my patrons each month.
I have more plans for this year, but let's start with these.
And let's start with a view of Bruges taken in 2014.
a supreme sea view
black river
One of my photographs taken on Mersea Island last year (cropped to square)
is in issue 1 of black river journal.
The first issue garnered submissions from over 200 photographers and is well worth a browse.
gorgeous view
on the edge
I don't know how the hell I got here.
I mean, really, I do: I walked up here.
Mostly due to the coaxing and pressure from Sean and Nathan not to be a chicken. To climb under or over the barrier off the main path and ignore the clear signage telling us we weren't to go beyond that point.
They were dead keen to see the view. It looked amazing. Me? Not so keen.
I don't like heights for many reasons so sitting up here was a little beyond my comfort zone.
Not a little. A lot. Who am I kidding?
I waver between an overwhelming feeling of invincibility and the overwhelming feeling I'm going to bring up the burger and fries I consumed only an hour or so ago at a nearby pub. They would be preceded by the ice cream I enjoyed about 30 minutes before we headed down the path toward the beach.
The sea below is the most amazing blue.
I simultaneously feel it washing calm over me and calling to me to leap off into it. The second option could surely only result in death.
But the pull of the voice in my head - the physical pull I can't really adequately describe - is real. It's the same pull I feel when I'm right up against the yellow line on the platform in the Tube. A combination of magnetism toward the water or the metal of the train tracks and absolute rigid fear of what my body acting upon that magnetism would mean.
It's equal parts compulsion and revulsion so I avoid both situations as much as I can. Because I'm not ready for what comes after a wrong step; a loss of balance; the loss of equilibrium caused by being that close to the edge.
I sit and talk with Sean and Nathan studiously ignoring the sound of the waves below crashing in my ears. Studiously ignoring the point where the blue of the sea and sky meet that we like to call the horizon.
I focus on Sean's lips. The words pouring out of his mouth are kind of irrelevant. I don't really care about the substance of what he's saying. But they're absolutely imperative to me at this moment. If I lose focus on his lips, the words he's speaking, I lose everything.
I sneak a glance down at the beach. The crowds are growing as the day becomes warmer. Women of all shapes and sizes, in all manner of swimwear. The odd one catches my eye. Sometimes it's her figure. Other times it's an unfocussed splash of colour my eyes burrow into. Colour I can lose myself in. That isn't unending blue sea that hypnotises and calls to me.
Sean is also keenly aware of the women on the beach. He passes judgement and rates each woman who catches his eye. At least from this distance, he can't really see detail. Whether they have part of their swimming costume awry. Whether you can see the outline of their nipples. Whether you can see their tan lines, cellulite, curves ('good' or 'bad') or whatever else he's fixating on this week.
Nathan seems settled at this height but similarly uncomfortable about Sean's critique of the women on the beach. We both stay silent. Listen, but don't engage. Nathan looks out over the sea clearly wishing he was elsewhere, or that Sean was elsewhere.
As vacuous and offensive as Sean's commentary is, my mind focusses on it. Something to distract me from the closeness of the cliff.
I wonder how long we have to stay up here.
I shift uncomfortably on the rock and try to mentally coax Sean to suggest we head down to the beach. The shingle will still be uncomfortable under my arse, but at least I won't be so far up with so far to fall. So far to jump.
The sea never calls me this way when my feet are nestled in the sand or shingle. The sea can lap at my toes as much as it likes but it will never drown me in the siren sound that buffets my ears sat here on the cliff.
I can swim into the sea and feel it buoy me up. I can do handstands and swim out beyond where I can feel the sand under my toes. I can feel its welcoming, hopeful and calming caress against my body down there.
Up here, all I hear is its insatiable need for me to fall into it.