Life Observed

A posh pub in prosperous Midhurst. Two coffees and a pot of tea, and a nice sit down in leather armchairs.  Aah, here comes the bill:  £12.75   Hmm... First item: "Welcome:  £0.00" Well, at least that was free.

It all depends where you stand. Get up close, dig out the extreme wide angle and you can make the local castle seem huge and impregnable. This is very useful if you are an estate agent selling castles. Stand some way off, dig out the long lens and the castle becomes more squat and less imposing. This is the sort of picture a spy would come back with.

What is so wrong about the Hot Dog? It feeds the hand that bites it....

Artists! They live in a different universe most of the time.....   What can you with them, eh? Here's a disturbing thought: Perhaps photography is more art than science . Does this mean I am part artist? No. Perish the thought.

Here, from the archives, is a slide I took in 1972. How long ago does that seem now. Decades ago. So last century. Another millennium even. Funny, but this is still the sort of picture I would take these days, if the scene presented itself.

Well done Miss Blackburn . Imagine: Running a private school for girls in Presteigne for ten years. See, the good citizens have remembered you with this plaque. Oh, and you also get a redundant petrol pump that once dispensed Motor Spirit on the High Street.  All things must pass.

Three giant Martian spaceships have landed on this distant skyline in mid Wales. They must be four hundred feet high. As you can see they dominate the landscape and yet the pace of life is so slow, things are so relaxed, no-one here seems to have noticed. 

See this? That's your pension that is. Its being eaten up by miserable little bankers.  They end up fat. You end up skint* *Part of a series of socio-economic lectures delivered to the waiting world by yours truly.

Now here is a double glazing salesman that knows his stuff. Anyone that can sell a window to this homeowner is clearly a well trained professional. Selling is, I am told, all about honesty and integrity. Once you can fake those two you have got it made.

Here, in the middle of the night, the full moon creates lovely swirling patterns on the unwatched sea.  Do you think it does this even if no-one is looking? If I had not sneaked outside with my camera, if I had not looked, would it still have been like this? I think this is a question for Quantum Physicists.  Nice view though.

Looking for all the world like a busking band, this couple (a professional classical Musician and an Artist) were perched by the road advertising our Arts Event at church on Saturday: "Can you play over the hills and far away"? :-)

"In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes". Unfortunately, I can't remember who said that.

Raspberries are ugly little suckers aren't they. This was taken with a basic lens on extension tubes, which gives it much greater magnification and brings out all those tiny little details. BTW, I wonder what the hairs are for? What advantage do they give? 

Stupid stupid stupid. What is the point of television cookery programs? They are all over you like a cheap suit. The problem is you can't taste the food, you can't smell the food, you can't eat the food. All you get is other people telling you that it is fantastic. It's a stupid idea, like a radio program about juggling. So: Here's one of our Roses.  Doesn't it smell nice?

I think we all agree this iconic image needs no introduction and no explanation. So here, ladies and gentlemen, is Two Figurines and a pair of Rhino. These bric-a-brac were spotted on a dusty window ledge in a place we visited. Doh. I did an introduction and an explanation.

There was a big get together at the weekend. Prodrive at Banbury are moving factory and loyal Subaru owners turned up in quantity for one last meet up.  Prodrive made Subaru famous in the last millennium with their remarkably successful rally cars.  One thing about Subaru drivers: They sure can park accurately. There were several hundred cars there, most of them surprisingly, worryingly clean. Perhaps I need to raise my standards and buy a bigger sponge.

I wonder what is over there, behind the Red Door. I wonder why they put me here. It's cold and it's damp. Hello, is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me: Is there anyone home?

How times have changed. Can you imagine that we used to store our music in tiny wobbly grooves pressed into a flat circular sheet of vinyl? (For the benefit of my younger reader, yes we did). Together with an approximation to the desired music you also got scratches, wow, flutter and a certain muffled quality. If you tapped the record player, it would jump tracks. After a diversion into the world of tape cassettes that took much of the above but added the possibility of in-car entanglement, we arrived at the fully digital Compact Disk. O what joy! Perfect audio at last. Well, almost perfect, some would say. Also, if you tapped the CD player it could jump tracks. Now we reach for our iThing and marvel at the creation of music from nothing. It doesn't matter how many songs you download, it doesn't get any bigger and most critically, there are no moving parts. Where will this end?  How about this: If you take nano technology, genetic engineering and Quantum...

Does it really have to be done today? What's the big rush about? Can't it wait? No, if in doubt, procrastinate.  Doing things in a rush can only end it tears so whatever it is, put it off until tomorrow. Sit down and have a nice cup of tea.  That's the spirit.

Now is the hour. This is the time to act. Don't let the grass grow under your feet. Carpe Diem: Seize the dog. Get out there, find the right pitch and busk for an hour or two. Let's get Britain on it's feet again.

It is uphill, you are old and tired and it feels that the best of the day is behind you. We are all, if we care to think about it, on the Long Walk Home.

Always go looking in the dark corners if you want to find the unusual picture. This is round the back of the White House. Really...