jpequal

Updated Blogger Interface

2012-02-03T12:22:00.000-08:00

I've just encountered the new Blogger interface. All I can ask is "Why?!" (It's no improvement)

Old school

2012-02-03T12:17:00.000-08:00

Just found a diary entry from 1986, nearly 20years after I left as a boarder at Lancaster Royal Grammar School.
Visited Lancaster. What a small town, and on what small scale it is built. Change was minimal, but it appeared that inertia was the cause, not conservation. The school was deserted, but open. Not a brick had changed, no texture altered. The same paint on the same door into Ashton House, and I stood looking until I could hear it slam twenty years ago, and feel my own feet leaping up the stone steps and the texture of the red tile floor. I went inside to the smell of muddy rugger boots and dubbin, wash basins and the same hard pink washing soap. Drove around for a while with a sad feeling, but I know not why.

Speedwell

2011-05-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

The school grounds are fifty acres of wildlife heaven. This sprig, picked from a carpet of Germander Speedwell and smuggled home wilting in my pocket is thriving in a glass of water on the kitchen window ledge. A pinch of Demerara sugar helped.

Autism and Mental Health.

2011-01-15T08:07:00.000-08:00

15th Jan. How I needed this weekend off. It’s not the changing of pads, dealing with outbursts or clearing up messes. It’s looking into the sad grey eyes of a mute autistic boy with mental health problems, knowing there is nothing you can do except give him kindness; and wait and hope while the psychiatrists experiment with pills in the hope of hitting the right one..

PM and disabilities

2011-01-10T13:04:00.001-08:00

The school where I work is for severely autistic kids with challenging behaviour and complex needs. X arrived a year or so ago aged 17, still in nappies (diapers), six foot tall and with no means of communication other than crying, scratching and biting. He'd spent his life bumping around schools and homes that could not meet his needs, but were also not quite as expensive.

At first a lot of people wouldn't work with him, because he was stressful to be with and the bites and scratches often hit their target. He eventually moved into the boarding house and to everyone's surprise began to settle into the routine, started to understand a little of what was expected of him. He still scratched and bit and cried, but gradually with the routine, the expertise, the consistency and a team of carers and teachers who understand autism, things started to change.

A request would come as tug on the arm instead of a slash. He began to use very basic symbols to request food. He started to smile with a huge infectious grin. He started to look at people instead of through them. Yesterday after a shower he cried and jumped up and down to get his way, but he didn't try to hurt anyone, and after a few minutes gave up trying to go to bed at 2pm and happily held hands down the stairs. He understands simple words and can make simple choices. For a lad who has been blessed with so little he has made huge strides, and people have started to enjoy working with him.

There are so many children who have no hope of any sort of life without schools like this.

In the summer 10 students reached 19 years and moved on to other places, but only one new boy turned up to replace them. The Coalition cuts were already starting to bite.

One to one care in a school with the requisite teams of carers, teachers, speech therapists, psychologists and so on is incredibly expensive and with nine places unfilled, funding for the school (from local authorities) is getting dangerously low. Councils are trying to find cheaper alternatives, like all the well meaning places that failed X in his life.

Managers at the school are already talking not about how the school will progress, but about how it can survive.

My son's place, a village for severely autistic adults, is having exactly the same problem.

The conversation in the local hairdressers today (not started by me) was about how astonishing it is that David Cameron, who has had his own experience of caring for a profoundly disabled son, could have so little concern about the disproportionate damage his cuts are already starting to inflict on the lives of disabled people and their families.

Tyre Tracks, Norwich.

2011-01-05T13:57:00.000-08:00

DISNEY

2011-01-05T12:34:00.000-08:00

Back in September I photographed the Chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Rich Ross. What a grin! He could have jumped out of a Disney cartoon himself.

iPhone

2010-05-19T03:11:00.000-07:00

I've cancelled the alarm clock, timed an egg, looked at the weather forecast, played a game, checked my e-mails, tweeted, read the Guardian app, played another game, translated something from French, checked the M4 for traffic, checked the train times, perused my online diary, listened to the radio, chosen a recipe, put the ingredients on the notepad, cheated at crosswords with the thesaurus, sent a text, surfed the web, checked some bird song (it was a goldfinch), and used the calculator.
Why am I still standing here looking at this thing? It's not as if I'm dependent on it or anything!

Icicles of Damocles

2010-01-09T05:40:00.000-08:00

Icicles on Youll's Antiques, Hungerford.

Hungerford

2010-01-08T13:42:00.000-08:00

A composite of Hungerford canal basin with a tiny Canon Ixus 100 this evening. Click to view, as they say. I'm so glad I'm not a duck living in that freezing water!

G11 and Snow in Hungerford

2010-01-06T12:02:00.000-08:00

No car, as the snow prevented delivery of my new springs to the garage where it's squatting on it's broken ones, so a good day for a walk, and to try out the Canon G11. The picture quality is fine, light meter is uncanny, and so on, but if you take hold of it like a normal camera your right hand presses anything up to nine of the prominent control buttons on the back at once, activating manual focusing, macro mode, self timer, flash on, or any number of other things that you really don't want when you're just about to squeeze the shutter. You find yourself holding it delicately between two fingers and two thumbs to avoid the unwanted controls. It's really not a camera for reliably taking pictures quickly, especially when your hands are cold and clumsy. A huge amount of technological excellence has gone into a camera whose exterior design makes it barely useable at times. I certainly wouldn't use it on an assignment except as an emergency backup, but it's a nice one to have in your pocket.

Narrowboat becomes icebreaker

2010-01-06T11:56:00.001-08:00

Not exactly the best day to move to fresh moorings!

Sloane Square Christmas Lights

2009-12-17T12:22:00.000-08:00

Donna Nook

2009-11-30T04:10:00.000-08:00

Took Sam to see the Grey Seals giving birth to their pups on the RAF Donna Nook bombing range on the Lincolnshire coast. I've never seen seals so accepting of humans, and there are more than a thousand youngsters already. Another month and they'll all be gone to sea.
It was almost dark but the Canon G11 coped at ISO1600 in a colourless landscape.
Todays count by Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust was 1082 seal pups, 975 cows and 331 bulls.

Dinosaur feet

2009-11-22T11:27:00.000-08:00

Dusk and driving rain - sheltered in a small beech hanger - surrounded by Dinosaur feet.

Round Barrows

2009-11-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

Aldbourne Four Barrows was used as a cemetery from 2500 to 1500BC, but apparently the bones have been moved to the British Museum, so the round barrows are not too spooky to stand on. Canon G11 1/30th at f2.8 in a howling wind.

Aldbourne

2009-11-22T09:35:00.000-08:00

Fence post remnant of ancient field system dating back to when tractors were small and grey and only 35 horse power. (Canon G11).

So Long Ago

2009-11-18T12:50:00.001-08:00

I found Wansdyke on the map and went to have a look, but never imagined the richness of pre-historic monuments to be found on a 3 mile walk on the Pewsey Downs. I started at the bottom of Knap Hill (above and below) a hilltop causewayed enclosure from about 5700 years ago (BP), where Stone Age folk would meet periodically to celebrate and renew tribal loyalties or deal with their dead.

Then comes Adam's Grave, a chambered tomb (long barrow) of about the same age on it's spectacular hilltop dominating the Vale of Pewsey (below)

A glimpse of Silbury Hill in the distance is unexpectedly through a gap in Wansdyke, made by a farmer to get his tractor through (or perhaps a horse and cart).

Wansdyke shocks. How much labour and determination did it take to dig out this massive snaking bank and ditch? It originally stretched from Savernake Forest near Marlborough deep into Somerset and maybe to the River Severn. One bet is that Ancient Britons built it in the 5th century AD (after the Romans left) to protect themselves from the invading Saxons, but nobody seems sure. If so it obviously didn't work. Perhaps like the Maginot line the enemy just walked around it! Alternatively it could have been to establish the boundary between two tribes.

Then it's onto Pewsey Down itself; magical moss green tentacles of chalk sliding down into the vale.

Across a valley is Rybury (or Rybury Camp), an Iron Age hill fort (5-700BC) built over another Neolithic causewayed enclosure, at least 5000years old, and there long before the first Egyptian pyramid was built at Djoser.

Met some nice friendly chaps - Welsh Blacks?

They gathered to watch two men mending the fence round Alton Barnes White Horse (cut in 1812 or thereabouts) . Perhaps the grass looked greener over the fence.

Back down towards the car, and the present, and Knap Hill had changed colour in the last of the evening light.

Upper Paleolithic Cave V Modern Newbury Car Park

2009-11-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

Drying out slowly

2009-11-12T09:43:00.001-08:00

Jarvis Cocker

2009-11-11T12:19:00.000-08:00

Went to a free three day gig under a railway arch, where the audience could wander in off the street and lounge on scatter cushions, and Jarvis Cocker invited anyone who turned up with an instrument to join in the jamming. The music sounded nothing like Cocker's usual stuff, but just whatever a gaggle of great musicians made up on the spur of the moment, incredible long riffs getting more and more intense, exploding almost into white noise. A twenty minute improvisation on The Who's The Wall (It was the anniversary of the demise of the Berlin Wall) was the only time that Jarvis sang. Miho Wada wandered in with her flute and is in several of these pictures.

The Guardian said "With endless stories predicting the imminent death of the music industry, he also wanted to explore the idea that music could return to simply being an art form."

There was a single light over the players, so most of these were at full aperture and ISO6400. Not bad! The scatter cushion picture was the recombination of two exposures prised from a RAW file, such was the difference in the light on the musicians and the audience. Remember the good old days of film? No thanks!

Windmill Hill

2009-11-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

Walking up on Windmill Hill near Avebury today I'm the only human for at least a mile around. After a time the mind starts going back to times and places that haven't surfaced since I was a child, but then a memory is suddenly elusive; half there, then lost again, leaving a feeling that something important has gone, but I'm still back in north Lancashire treading the fells in a bitter wind all those years ago.

The bell barrow is Bronze Age (1600BC give or take a century), but on a site much older; a 5700year old Causewayed Enclosure, where people may have come to celebrate, or may have come to lay out their dead for Ravens to pick clean the bones. It's almost hidden by time. This faint indentation in the ground curving from bottom right to top left is all that can be seen of the inner of three ditch and bank circles (below).

On leaving, a strange fingered cloud formation points like a dervish back down the track as if as a reminder that this is a place belonging to another people and another time.

Some favourite signs.

2009-11-06T12:48:00.000-08:00

Chalk Horse

2009-11-02T14:56:00.000-08:00

My son's favoured place seems to be the whiskers of the Uffington White Horse. It's just off the Ridgeway and dates back to the Bronze Age (about 1000BC). On Thursday he stood entranced, looking out across Oxfordshire for fifteen minutes; last time we came it was twenty, but always standing on the whiskers, and always, seemingly at peace. One's requested not to stand on this ancient monument, but he's been dealt a raw enough deal in life without denying him such a simple pleasure.

Old Ektachromes

2009-10-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

A plumber came and an electrician and both needed to look under the floorboards beneath a cupboard. I cleared the cupboard, and at the back found slides of Peter Cattaneo who directed The Full Monty back in 1997. They must have been there untouched for twelve years!
I remember using a single Elinchrom studio flash with a huge soft box - about 1.5 metres across - and a 70-200 zoom. The grey background was the wall of some preview cinema that we borrowed for half an hour.

2009-10-15T14:15:00.000-07:00

James Dyson launched his latest invention on Tuesday; the 'Dyson Air Multiplier', or desk fan without blades. A small fan inside the base blows air out through an annular slit in the back of the blue hoop, which has the effect of drawing more air through the hoop, thus saving much electrcity. He said it worked using the viscosity of air. I think it uses Bernoulli's principle - moving air has a lower pressure than still air and low pressure attracts more air, just like a low pressure weather system. Perhaps it's a bit of both.

James came over as a really nice guy, who was perfectly happy to risk making a fool of himself farting about with a scrap of handkerchief.

I took the photographs using the glass table of a conference room at the Dyson HQ in Malmesbury, Wilts, using a single Elinchrom 1500 joule flash bounced off a white wall on my left, and a six foot flat silver reflector slightly behind and to the right of him to fill in the shadows. It was very simple arrangement giving some latitude for him to move around without the exposure going awol - and made up on the spur of the moment. I spent an hour with press officer Mario Seisdedos Garcia (Yes! That's Mario Sixfingers Garcia!) setting up and refining the picture before James arrived, and the handkerchief was his idea.

Available light with low energy bulbs and Canon digital SLRs.

2009-10-07T03:29:00.001-07:00

Now that tungsten household bulbs are to be phased out there is a little problem for digital camera users. There is no setting for low energy bulbs. There's AWB (auto white balance) sunshine, cloud, tungsten, fluorescent tubes and so on, but nothing for the new bulbs. Picture 1 shows how AWB copes with the light from a low energy bulb.

The whites are not very white! The colour meter suggests setting 3100 Kelvin as a colour temperature if you have this facility. There's an improvement, but it's still not right:

So, leaving it at set at 3100K we go to White Balance Shift in the menu and drag the little cursor right down to the bottom left, setting B9 and M9 (I've set Blue 8 and Magenta 8 here so that the cursor is visible).

And here's the result - reasonably white whites and grey greys, and the red, green and blue don't look to bad either. This applies to Canon digital SLR cameras.

I can't vouch for other makes, but hey, have a poke about in the menu, because they'll probably have similar stuff that you can manipulate.

MoonWindow

2009-10-02T13:36:00.001-07:00

MoonWindow
Originally uploaded by jpequal1

View from my window, Canon EOS5D MkII, iso6400 (asa) 1/10th @ 2.8, camera held against the window frame.

Bentley

2009-09-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

Bentley's warehouse car park in Crewe was graced with some beautiful old cars this weekend, as owners and enthusiasts descended for a cut price spare parts sale to help make space for new models. Nobody seemed to mind that the catering wasn't altogether Rolls Royce and the counters were trestle tables.

Twin Squirrel

2009-09-22T13:49:00.001-07:00

Twin Squirrel
Originally uploaded by jpequal1

Beautiful in Black, the helicopter at Denham. Click on the photograph for pictures of London from the air.

Pony clamps.

2009-09-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

Strangely found in a camera shop - they would crush any camera that I have ever owned - these are the most amazingly useful DIY devices ever. Well...... Maybe the screwdriver and saw are quite useful too. And the spirit level. And the tape measure. And the hammer - well anyway they're very useful. Pony clamps also double as devices for building up your lower arm muscles so that you can impress people by crushing tin cans with one hand.

Twin Squirrel

2009-09-11T01:52:00.001-07:00

Leaving Denham

Twin Squirrel
Originally uploaded by jpequal1

Form Follows Function

2009-09-06T12:18:00.000-07:00

Could this be taking Functionalism a step too far? (Actually we're sorting out the damp)

Ayuntamiento

2009-08-31T05:40:00.000-07:00

Ayuntamiento in Spanish means town council or town hall. It also means sexual intercourse. I wonder how that one came about!

Sounds like a party.

2009-08-28T02:02:00.000-07:00

The wonders of the English language!

Summer

2009-08-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

Over-ripe strawberries fill the mouth with sweet juice. So good.

Combe Gibbet on Gallows Down - maintenance.

2009-08-15T02:55:00.001-07:00

The old piece of orange binder twine has been changed for grey wire! (see Feb 09 blog) The gallows stands on a Neolithic long barrow dating to about 3700BC, presumably still full of very old bones as it hasn't been excavated.

Tawny Owl

2009-08-05T12:34:00.000-07:00

Who would want to do this? I found it coincidentally on Gallows Down last year.

Trike

2009-08-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

A poignant moment watching it crash onto unwanted metal jumbled in a skip, at the tip, this favoured possession red and white upside down, discarded without his consent. THEN, the local kids on bikes thought it cool that it could pedal backwards. He tipped into a bed of nettles and didn't cry. He loved the bow wave through every puddle, but he never learned the brakes. NOW, he's grown up and it's forgotten, but not by me.

Witchcraft and Wizardry

2009-07-29T12:58:00.001-07:00

The thought of Witches and Wizards taking over their church may not appeal to some Christians, but at St Paul's Church in Hammersmith, London, it's happened. Harry Potter has invaded. The church is swathed in a protective cover during renovations and sells the space for advertising, so even adverts for the latest Potter film, 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' are obviously welcome.

Socks

2009-07-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Cameras are getting so small that Canon have started making knitted baby socks for them.

Woodpecker

2009-07-21T02:09:00.000-07:00

We thought it was injured at first, shuffling across the crazy paving in its red black and white plumage, but it was a fledgling, a baby woodpecker that had yet to learn to fly. Comical on the path on its short legs it went like a clockwork climbing toy straight from the ground up one of the Goat Willow's six trunks, probing cracks in the bark for food. Perhaps it might just survive.
In the evening it was settled three feet up the thick stem of a shrub, eyeing up the peanut feeder with its swarm of fledgling tits, but unable to get there without flight. I watched it for a long time, but it seemed to have settled for the night, and when I walked past a yard away, it watched me but stayed put in the foliage. Yes, it might just survive.
I looked out a few minutes later to see if it was OK. A sudden flurry under the bush and a black-as-night cat shot away through the hedge. The woodpecker was gone.

Nothing Changes.

2009-07-09T14:35:00.000-07:00

I've often passed the fabulous Victorian gothic pile at Virginia Water and wondered what it was. Well now I know. It's a collection of beautifully restored grade one listed dwellings, where even the communal pool has a painted hammerbeam ceiling.
What was it? Thomas Holloway had it built in the 1870s as an "asylum for the mentally sick of the middle classes" with the enthusiastic backing of the 'Commissioners in Lunacy'
Now Foxton's estate agency has a four bedroom residence there up for rent at £25,000 a month (or £5,769.23 per week, they say). Not much has changed!

NewburyBlueBadge

2009-07-07T06:40:00.001-07:00

NewburyBlueBadge
Originally uploaded by jpequal1

Idling away a few moments in a Newbury retail park with the tiny Canon Ixus 100 IS

Ex Fork

2009-07-05T04:32:00.000-07:00

So that's the end of gardening for today - where's that Claret?

Matthew Warchus

2009-07-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

Matthew Warchus won this year's Tony Award for 'Best Direction of a Play'. At a rehearsal room in Clapham we arranged two chairs in the light from the windows; he sat in one and I sat in the other, and we talked. While we talked I took some photographs. Nice chap - brilliant director.

Dad's Ashes

2009-06-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

Buried Dad's ashes on Saturday, and when everyone else had left, my brother and I found ourselves chatting to him as if he was still alive in his little grave, or floating around us in some ethereal way. It's good to have a point of focus to remember him from, and a crisp new stone with white writing and fresh flowers in a timeless country graveyard is as good as it gets.
The vicar did a great piece about dead looking things going into the ground, like daffodil bulbs, and producing something unexpectedly beautiful.
Mother cried and thanked everyone, and said how good it was and cried some more. Then she asked if she had died yet, or whether it was just Dad.
After a great tea party upstairs in the care home that has been her home for 8 months, and half an hour in the garden, we wheeled her back into the day room. A look of genuine astonishment appeared on her face, "Who are all these people? I'll never be able to cook for them all."
But despite that, she's starting to make friends now.

Teak

2009-06-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

A crackle of splintering wood and a teak garden chair collapsed. Nobody hurt, but the broken wood was pink all the way through, like cheap mahogany.

School

2009-06-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

A day at the amazing Colet Court School today produced one thousand four hundred pictures to sort through - this one shows lunch time.

Dad

2009-05-30T05:24:00.000-07:00

It's six months since her man died, and she sometimes remembers, sometimes not.
He died at 96 of the cigarettes that he quit fifty years before. The cilia in his lungs were too damaged to waft away the infected mucus and the 30% oxygen level in his blood could not sustain his fragile life. He died in his sleep. It was time anyway. Everyone said he was a gentleman, and never complained, even though he couldn't walk from the pain.

Bossy e-mails

2009-05-27T03:07:00.000-07:00

Has anybody else noticed that e-mails that have "Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail" added at the bottom actually take two pieces of paper to print instead of one?

Scotland

2009-05-23T07:35:00.001-07:00

And so for The NY Times to Edinburgh and on with journalist Abigail Saltmarsh to Fenton Tower, an East Lothian castle destroyed by Cromwell in 1650. Ian Simpson and John Macaskill realised their childhood dream of rebuilding it in 2002.
Then to Leith's harbourside, to The Shore, a gastro pub long before the word was invented, to meet fisheries expert and long time friend Crick Carleton for good conversation and fresh fish beautifully cooked - nothing better.

Airport

2009-05-23T01:14:00.000-07:00

Bristol Airport, 4.45am, an elderly lady who doesn't walk well has to put her shoes through the X-ray machine twice, but the three radio triggers in my camera bag go unnoticed.
Departure lounge, 5.00am, a family with five kids has to go without breakfast because the queue of men waiting to buy pints of lager at the same counter is too long.

Subjunctive

2009-05-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

Latin lessons decades ago, French too, included how to avoid the subjunctive. For forty years I didn't really know what it was until a Michel Thomas Spanish tape churned out in that wonderful accented voice "It is important that you be here". "You be" - subjunctive. "You are" - not subjunctive. Wow! I've used the subjunctive all these years and didn't know.
But is the "are" slipping back when it should be "be"? Is the subjunctive dying out? I think we should be told.

Dear Subjunctive, I really want that you be here when I need you!

Crying

2009-05-10T04:14:00.000-07:00

Some days she cries in her room until late afternoon, then emerges to tell the other residents it's time for them to leave her house. Others she packs her suitcase and announces that her family are coming to collect her.
The doctor's prescribed a mild anti depressant, but won't allow it to be put in her food, and of course she refuses to take it. She thinks we're trying to kill her. I take my turn to telephone to persuade her, but she gets very confused to hear me on the phone when I'm not there, gets even more confused trying to find out where I live, and then descends into paranoia, thinks something awful is happening to me, and then to her, "Somethings going on here, and I don't like the sound of it. I don't know what it's all about."
It sounds as if she's holding the phone upside down, but I hear her say to the carers "I'm not taking any tablets". She's too polite to accuse them of trying to kill her, so she says "I know you all want me to go to sleep."
It's like the last dark days of trying to keep her in her own home when she lived in a bed in the corner of the living room, trying to starve herself, thinking she had been captured and taken away, accusing her family, abusing her frail husband, wetting the bed, looked after by all of us and streams of carers.
I come off the phone depressed.
Later the doctor relented

Not another sunset!

2009-05-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

Driving over Wexcombe Down a few nights ago, I had to stop and record this.

Titanic

2009-05-06T04:20:00.000-07:00

To a nursing home in The New Forest on Saturday to photograph the last survivor of the sinking of The Titanic. Millvina Dean, now 97, was only nine weeks old at the time, so doesn't remember too much about it, but she does remember the recent past.

2009-05-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

A song thrush, blackbird and chaffinch were all singing from the ash tree tonight - deafening - but reassuring.

Driving out the Christians

2009-03-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

Some Christians come into the home on Sundays and lead hymn singing. Mid refrain she went to the man on the piano, told him he had no business playing her piano and would he leave immediately. The Christians played louder and sang harder, but she bided her time and waited for a lull. "I would like to make an announcement. I would like everybody to stop singing and leave now please!" The Christian with the strong tenor voice sang into her ear to shut her up. The residents hardly registered.

She'd had a delightful time in the garden with her family and Casper the white lurcher, but she probably doesn't remember.

Gaza

2009-03-05T12:51:00.000-08:00

To Worcester on Tuesday with Rachel Shabi on behalf of The National, an Abu Dhabi paper. Worcester City Council has voted to twin with Gaza in sympathy with their plight, but amazingly was unable to provide anyone to talk to a newspaper from an Arabian country, even cancelling the one appointment Rachel had made. Were they under pressure from above, or didn't they just get the connection?
Anyway, I made a picture that would make a nice contrast with Gaza, and Rachel did a mass of vox pops.

2009-02-25T02:52:00.001-08:00

2009-02-22T12:19:00.000-08:00

Had a Sunday walk today on Gallows Down, Inkpen, an area of outstanding natural beauty.

John Pawson

2009-02-21T12:09:00.000-08:00

Architects never just stick to buildings, so it's off to London to photograph the gentle and brilliant minimalist architect John Pawson with the new range of kitchenware that he's designed. It's called John Pawson for Demeyere and it's heavy and lustfully lovely and way out of my price range - and it's much too nice to smell of haddock.

Antony hegarty

2009-02-20T05:57:00.000-08:00

In a small street of vinyl record shops and cellar bars that open after midnight, up a narrow staircase behind a repair shop, is a single room where John Marchant runs the Isis gallery. He's hung the amazing art of Antony Hegarty, better known for his music. Sadly Hegarty was in New York. It's in Hanway Street and still open. http://isisgallery.org

Haddock Free Zone

2009-02-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

Baked a nice piece of haddock for supper last night. This morning we cleaned the oven, washed the kitchen walls, cleaned the kitchen floor, laundered the tea towels, replaced the waste bin, rewashed all the utensils - and after 24hours the house still STINKS OF FISH! So we have now officially declared that as from today, this house will be a strictly enforced HADDOCK FREE ZONE.

Water Rail

2008-12-19T12:57:00.000-08:00

Looked out of the back door to see a Water Rail walk up and tap three times on the glass, flutter a bit, and then walk off down the garden again. I never really expected that I would ever see a Water Rail.

After the Fall

2008-11-16T00:57:00.000-08:00

They came back from the hospital and the care home devastated, frightened and confused. Ten weeks later the old man is dead and his wife is in a care home. She looked around the lounge at the other residents and said, "I don't think I'll go to the funeral. I'd have to lock up, and what would I do with all these people?" Then she cried, partly for her husband, but also because being able to cope had always been the most important thing to her, and she knew it was never going to be that way again.

Google Earth

2008-09-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

Google Earth? I changed my car three years ago, but on Google Earth the old one is still parked outside my house. And it shows a parking lot where my son's college now is, even though he's been there for over three years. Lets call it Google History.

The Fall

2008-08-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

She fell in the night, trying to get to the lavatory. To her credit, she remembered the button round her neck and used it ten or fifteen times, and the police came to the door in the early hours, but if she could hear them she could not move, and when they heard her alive they went away again rather than break down the door. She was lying in a pool of excrement and urine, trying to wake her man, who's hearing aids were switched off by his bedside. Mid morning a carer, with much effort, entered and found this frail 96year old man trying vainly to lift his wife to her feet.
So the bossy psychiatric nurse finally has her way, and the elderly lady is going to a home for several weeks for a psychiatric assessment, from people who became psychiatrists because they didn't really understand how people work, or for that matter, themselves. And they will come back with an assessment based on lists of question and answers, that will tell us exactly what we, and the amazing carers who wipe elderly bottoms for £8 an hour, knew all along. And the elderly gentleman has been taken to a care home, because he cannot function without her.
So to rest from the battle to meet their needs and leave them in other hands? They don't have their hearing aids. The house is locked, but they always had the heating set at 30 celsius, 24hours a day. They don't have wash bags, and hospitals don't wash patients clothing and they are 150 miles away and have no changes. The milk and papers and meals on wheels are cancelled.
And my lovely disabled son is coming home on Sunday, so I've given up giving a stuff for a few weeks, and the NHS and social services will just have to cope, and Mum and Dad too.

Hawk

2008-06-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

Our bedraggled, half-feathered blackbird singing from the ash tree this evening looks all in, although his singing is fine. The sparrow hawk came again two days ago and left a circle of feathers, not a wood pigeon's this time, but a blackbird's. I think it was his mate.

Sorry Blackbird, but thanks for the song.

Looking out

2008-06-19T05:58:00.000-07:00

She tells me again about a visit from her granddaughters, how they did cartwheels and handstands in the garden and gathered flowers for her, and how happy it made her. But she cannot remember that I was there, standing next to her at the window.

How?

2008-06-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I visited a small complex of rented flats in north London, where people of every colour and race live together; families, single mums, kids, different religions, different origins. They live together on first name terms, know each other, help each other, joke together, and go off to do their regular jobs and earn their livings.

Makes one wonder how wars ever start.

Snake

2008-06-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

We found a young grass snake writhing up Bridge Steet today. It was hardly bigger than a pencil, but beautiful rich green with a yellow collar. I put it on the river bank among long grass, and hopefully its terror subsided. It must have hatched from an egg that was laid very much earlier in the year than grass snakes were supposed to lay before we humans noticed global warming.

Puffin

2008-06-09T01:25:00.000-07:00

Found an old print with no negative, dragged out the ancient scanner which weighs nearly as much as a fridge (remember those connectors with dozens of little prongs that we had before USB and Firewire?) and an even older laptop with the software in it. Not a bad result though!

The chair (awaking)

2008-06-08T12:10:00.000-07:00

She woke in her chair and rang; "Why am I so tired?" "Do you sleep at night?" "Yes, except when the man comes to ask if I'm alright."

The chair (the yield)

2008-06-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

So the chair, from behind and under its cushions, yielded about sixty knives forks and spoons, 2 toothbrushes, 1 tea bag (loose), 1 box of tea bags, 1 jar of coffee, 1 slab of chocolate, one box of chocolates, 8 pens, 1 cheque book, 3 socks, 3 tea towels, 2 pairs trousers, 3 shirts, 2 fitted bedsheets (folded) and 1 place mat.
It's occupant, who had for lack of space moved to another chair, was able to move back into residence, the elderly gentleman was able to have a cup of coffee at last, and it became possible to eat the salmon and asparagus that I'd cooked for lunch and to pay the gardener who comes once a week.

In the garden a spinach plant that had long gone to seed blew over, and the gardener put it for compost and dug over the plot. The elderly lady made so many calls demanding the 'stolen' spinach back, that the gardeners family and her own eventually had to unplug their phones for the evening. Without memory, sense sadly goes too.

Loire or chair?

2008-06-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

The trip to France was too good to be true, so it's off to Budleigh Salterton to retrieve tea bags and tins of fruit from behind the cushions of 'the chair'; then there will be room for it's occupant to sit and doze without sliding to the floor.

Loire

2008-06-03T14:12:00.000-07:00

"Have you contacted the writer about the assignment in the Loire Valley?" the e-mail said. "No, please tell me her phone number, please, please. Je le ferai volontiers." Twelve minutes have passed and still no reply. What's the assignment? Will I overnight in a beautiful Chateau and sample their wines. Will I fly; will I TGV? Cyberspace is a desolate and empty void for me this late in the evening (translation - they've left the office). In the morning will it all turn out to be true?

Toad

2008-05-30T02:39:00.000-07:00

A toad was waiting to be let out through the french doors this morning. Don't ask! I don't know.

The chair

2008-05-23T13:54:00.000-07:00

The elderly lady is very pleased her delivery from Tesco Online has changed to Sainsbury's. She thinks it's more upmarket and she likes the orange bags; "We used to have one in Gerrards Cross when I was a girl," she says. She doesn't know that Tesco is suing three Thai journalists for criticising it's expansion in that beautiful land, and will probably bankrupt them and have them in jail if it wins. She doesn't know that a group of leading British authors described Tescos action as "Deeply chilling". She doesn't even know that she is boycotting Tescos, but she is; or at least I am, and it's me that orders the food.

The chair (dream)

2008-05-20T13:08:00.000-07:00

The elderly lady's won the battle, and no carers are going upstairs to clean (her sons can do that). But she slept in her chair today and had a dream that all the carers came at once and sat around the table for a conference, and it tired her so much that she rang to say she didn't want any more conferences at the house, and could I stop them please?

Hawk

2008-05-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

Wood Pigeons perch in the ash tree, bombarding the paving stones beneath 'til they're splattered with slime of different colours, depending what the fat birds ate. A Sparrowhawk took one out yesterday, double its own weight, and carefully plucked every feather and left them in a neat circle on the ground.
Bon appétit, Sparrowhawk; come back soon.

The chair

2008-05-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

The elderly lady's well spoken, but shouting "Bugger off!" in the background as the carer talks on the phone. He's come to clean, but she believes she still cleans her own house. I reassure him. In the afternoon she rings, "I'm so ashamed; I've been asleep all day in the chair and done nothing. I had terrible dreams and nightmares; a man kept coming to the house with his own hoover and tried to clean."

The chair 01

2008-05-10T07:28:00.000-07:00

An elderly lady, struggling to make sense of the little that remains of her life and her mind, slid to the floor in her sleep this morning and had to be lifted by carers. She had so much stored behind the cushions of her chair that there was no longer room for her elderly bottom. There were tea bags, cutlery, chocolate bars, her husbands clothes, tinned fruit; all the things that she feared would be stolen. She's my Mother.

Wild Geese

2007-10-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

Twenty years ago Little Egrets lived in places like the South of France not in the bucolic greenery of central southern England, but now two live in Hungerford, this one flying over Freeman's Marsh in the late October sunshine today.
Nor would I expect to see a Greylag Goose here; I always associate them with wild empty saltmarshes and the call of the curlew, but thirty plus were honking their way northwards over the River Dun this morning in a great diagonal line to who knows where.
And Stonechats - I thought they lived on Cornish clifftops, but now we have at least three clacking away on the same marsh, two males and a female.
Needless to say West Berkshire Council have given permission for a marina and hotel to be built on this Site of Special Scientific Interest, and the owners are busy advertising for investors. It beggars belief.

Rat

2007-06-23T13:47:00.000-07:00

I had to kill a rat today. At first I thought it was an oversized dormouse shivering on the concrete by the washing machine, scrunched in and fluffed up. But it was a young rat. It had eaten poison. I picked it up by the tail and its legs cycled as if it was running slowly in a nightmare. I smashed it's head against the corner of a brick wall, but it's eye was still open looking at me. I smashed it again and it died hanging in the foetal position, paws pulled in, eyes closed. And it wet itself. It was a girl.

2007-03-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

Kite

2007-02-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

Watched a red kite sail on big lazy wings along the ridge of our 17th century cottage, searching for carrion like its medieval ancestors . Only a TV aerial spoiled the picture.

London Fashion Week

2007-02-14T09:56:00.000-08:00

The highlight of the day was the Preen show, not so much because of the clothes which were very nice, but because the amazing venue at Lords Cricket Ground was so brightly lit that writers were complaining of headaches. But the models seemed to be floating in space, and the photographers had room to work, and we went away happy.
Those who think that catwalk photography is all glamour and fun and frippery, should know that a certain well respected British national newspaper uses one of its war photographers to cover the London, Milan and Paris collections.

Richard III - An Arab Tragedy

2007-02-08T14:07:00.000-08:00

Photographed the dress rehearsal for 'Richard III - An Arab Tragedy' by the Sulayman Al-Bassam Theatre Company at the RSC's Swan Theatre. Just brilliant to watch Shakespeare's relevance to modern day Middle East - West politics, and mostly in Arabic too! Sulaman Al-Bassam was directing with a stinking cold, poor man. The photograph shows Richard III in his "My kingdom for a horse" moment played by Fazek Kazak.
(Richard was the ruthless one who's thought to have killed the princes in the tower to secure the crown and was ousted and killed in battle two years later by Henry Tudor)

Snow

2007-02-08T13:43:00.000-08:00

Global warming went on hold in England today for 24hours and for once it snowed, and it was just a treat to look at. Thing was, I drove 180 problem-free miles to Stratford-upon-Avon and back. My writer couldn't make it from London because the trains were disrupted by weather. Airports were closed for part of the day, schools closed, and people stayed at home. I sometimes feel guilty about using a car so much, no matter how low its emissions, and repeatedly hear politicians spouting off on the subject of overcowded roads, but it's usually me that turns up on time, not the public transport users, bless their cotton socks.

Shipwrecked Napoli

2007-01-24T02:26:00.000-08:00

Visited the beach at Branscombe yesterday, where some of the looting from the MSC Napoli was pretty disgusting: all of a South African family's possessions taken from one container, for example, but most was just very sad. Two men were dragging a small engine block two or three miles uphill to where their white van was parked - just how much would its scrap value be? Oak barrels had to make the same journey along winding lanes - just how much is an improvised rain-butt worth?

The pull must be that it is free. No matter how pointless the object or how great the effort, the triumph is in getting something for nothing.

One surprise was how far out the Napoli was grounded after seeing all the telephoto images in the papers. The other was how few police were on the beach: they were all too busy directing traffic in the clogged up lanes that lead down to Branscombe.

Saving the planet

2007-01-20T12:31:00.000-08:00

I was just in Somerfields supermarket, where neatly packaged courgettes from Spain in a little plastic tray were three times the price per kilogram (all but 6 pence) of identical loose courgettes from Spain. I watched a stream of people picking up the packaged ones.

We blame the supermarkets for using too much packaging, importing food by air and so on, but if customers actually prefer to pay almost three times the price to have packaging around their vegetables, what hope for the planet?

Wessex Downs

2007-01-20T12:25:00.000-08:00

I walked up on Walbury Hill near Inkpen today and saw a buzzard and a red kite sharing the same updraft; the wind was so strong the kite was flying backwards at times. Eight Roe deer made their way across the fields below, grazing at first, but then in full flight as something unseen startled them. Returning down the lanes I stopped the car fifteen feet from a hovering kestrel, close enough to see every feather, and with the car window closed it ignored me. It's wings were working like crazy in the blustering wind, but keeping its head and eyes absolutely still relative to the ground below, and then after several minutes it dropped the few feet to the ground and flew away with a vole in its talons.

Walbury Hill is a fortified iron aged settlement dating back about 2700years with ditch and bank defences. Walking across it is a half mile walk from one set of defences to those on the other side, nearly as far as walking up nearby Hungerford's High Street. It must have been a major population centre all those years ago, but now it's an isolated place with views across much of Berkshire and the wind whistling in across nearby Gallows Down. There was a raven here just before Christmas, but it seems to have moved on.

Clacton on Sea

2007-01-19T02:26:00.000-08:00

Had to photograph a Granny in Clacton, far from West Berks on yesterday's day of storms. Blown over trucks and lorries littered the roads, some motorways were closed, railways out. Everywhere lines of lorries parked in laybyes waiting for the wind to subside. A man unconcious on a pavement in Clacton wrapped in a policeman's day-glo visibility jacket, worried faces crouched around him, waiting for an ambulance. Clacton didn't even manage to achieve that depressing (but somehow appealing) gloom of Englsh sea side towns in winter. Just a line of holiday flats along a shore. The only building of interest was being allowed to rot away over a Weatherspoons pub.

Oxford brass

2007-01-09T15:20:00.001-08:00

Looking for JRR Tolkein's old house in Oxford yesterday, I came across this brass plate on a doorway. Thanks goodness she's not a brain surgeon.

Oxford brass
Originally uploaded by jpequal.

The Road

2007-01-09T13:41:00.000-08:00

I've just finished Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". The journey of a starving father and son struggling through a post armaggedon wasteland makes Nevile Shutes post nuclear story "On the Beach" seem positively jolly. In the end though, their repetitive mind numbing struggle against impossible odds towards an unknown future leaves a spark of optimism about what the love between a father and son can acheive when everything else is stripped away. The most moving book I can remember. Prepare to feel as if you have been clubbed around the head.