Nostalgia...

...it's a thing of the past, as the old joke goes... but I was struck very firmly on the nostalgia nerve when in Newark on Christmas Eve. There I was minding my own business, when the car pictured (above) trundled to a halt at the lights.... a perfect copy of my own first car, an Old English White Morris 1ooo convertible. Suddenly I was transported back to the 60s when I used this car to get everywhere! 2401 Ac gave me the freedom that I craved... and a whole lot of fun too!

Christmas Eve...

... and a job in Newark for the Sunday Telegraph means that JR and I are looking for the subject (who must remain nameless), as no one at the paper checked he was actually at home today! In the event he wasn't, so we spent a jolly hour gathering "interesting" shots for our libraries at Alamy and elsewhere on the net. Newark is a nice place with very friendly people who all seemed happy to chat and spend a few minutes with two bearded blokes wielding cameras....here (above) is JR enjoying the delights of Newark's traditional market!

All of this was in stark contrast to the job yesterday, which was taking photographs of the Northants Police diving team looking for a missing body in the frozen lakes near Ringstead. A very grim job in freezing temperatures, and sadly so far no body was recovered. My sympathies go to the families of the two men that drowned whilst out wildfowling

Out and about today...

in the snow of East Northamptonshire, and I was able to capture some really beautiful and evocative winter photographs.

I spent a little time wandering around Upper Dean, on the Northants/Bedfordshire border and came across the wonderful gravestone pictured here... if the inscription is not too clear it reads "Walter James Green... ...who was called away (suddenly).... I love the use of the parentheses ....! Sadly, it appears that whatever he was called away for, the old boy never returned! Perhaps this was mid-Victorian humour?

I am hoping for a few more crisp sunny blue sky days, to accompany our Alpine scenery, so that I can get out and about in the glorious county of Northamptonshire some more

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

... with a heavy snowfall in Northamptonshire last night. The timing was perfect as I am currently working on my third book, A Winter's Tale - The Countryside between Harvest and Easter, and needed some new snowy landscape shots. Pity that the sky wasn't blue, but you can't have everything!

It's always nice to see your work valued by others and I was pleased to see that one of my old pictures (above) was chosen as a runner up in the Killeen House Photographic Competition. This was shot of Lough Erne in Co Fermanagh, and was taken with my little Sony T7 compact camera - it just goes to show that you don't always need expensive equipment to get a prizewinning shot in the bag!

Bonusses and redundancies...

... are in the news today. The ending of steelmaking on Teesside with almost 2000 job losses comes at a time when bankers, especially the RBS board, claim that they have earned the right to be paid bonus money already!!!! If anyone deserves bonus payments in my opinion it is the men and woman who work so hard in dangerous and difficult conditions, rather than someone who uses his "network" of similarly placed friends to market dubious financial schemes to an unsuspecting and innocent market of people who have been told to trust the very institutions that are making fortunes while they lose their livelihoods.
In another news report, the problem of cancer patients, and other chronically sick people, not being able to afford to hear their homes adequately was discussed. A few hundred pounds could change the lives of such people for ashort time while they recover or prepare for the death. And the Board of the RBS have the temerity to threaten resignation if they are not paid the £1.5 BILLION they have squirrelled away for themselves.... do these bankers and finaciers have NO conscience or humanity left? Clearly they don't....

Here comes the rain again

... as the old song went... it does seem to be wet every day now. This has been going on for most of November and December is starting out in the same way. The people who live on rivers, such as the folk at Tewkesbury where I was last week, must live in a constant state of nervous anticipation - but not ina good way!
I have just been commissioned to start a new book, based around activities and scenes in the county during the period from harvest to Easter;the publishers are hoping for lots of Christmas card snow scenes, no doubt... well, there will be some but I suspect that they will be from my archive unless the temperature drops significantly to allow a good fall of snow to settle. Otherwise it may be a tale of wet leaves and shiny cottage roof tops!
Folk who live in a true urban environment, like can't ever appreciate the disruption that bad weather brings to the countryside. Although I do live in a suburban area, my love of the country means that I try to get out into the fields and lanes as often as possible, and that is when you notice the sodden ground and full ditches which threaten to cause problems later in the winter. Farmers will have planted winter wheat and barley which is now sitting in a paddy field like environment... perhaps rice might have been a better crop!

Saturday at the gallery...

... is obviously the day to be there! Lots of activity and many enquiries and even the odd sale or two. Things are improving and hopefully the people who visited today may mention my gallery to their friends too....
I have had a nice week apart from the ongoing coughing fits (is it Swine Flu after all???) with trips to Sheffield, Tewkesbury and Kettering... on the whole I think that Tewkesbury wins! And it was also good to catch up with an old friend,Steve Darnell, a manager at Moog International in Tewkesbury. Lots of flood water still hanging around down there and evidence of poor drainage which threatens to bring a recurrence of the disastrous floods of a few years ago.

It's my birthday...

... and it started out not very well! I had to call the hospital to sort out this long running chest infection that has been troubling me for a month. As a cancer patient chest infections can be especially worrying and it should have been better by now, after three weeks of anti biotics... eventually after some PROPER care and tests, it is decided that I have a viral infection and NOT a bacterial one so anti biotics are a waste of time. How come my GP didn't know that?????
The afternoon got definitely much better with gifts from my daughter and family in New York and even a text from my son in London
Over the years this day has been fraught on more than one occasion though; in 2004 I was admitted to hospital to start a radical therapy called radio-immunotherapy, in which a radio active isotope is infused into the blood stream to deliver deadly radiation locally to the cancer tumours. This was an interesting treatment, as amongst other things, my pee became radio active for a short while!!!!
Just two years later in 2006, again on my birthday, I was struck down with terrible pain and was admitted to hospital to be told that the remission of two years was finished and that the cancer, Non Hodgkin Lymphoma, had returned in an aggressive form. This meant the start of about 6 months of ever stronger chemotherapy culminating in a stem cell transplant in April 2007
Happily, I am now feeling fine after a nice hospital lunch (really!) and reassurance that this will soon be gone.. so will be out to enjoy a nice pub meal tonight. Beats cooking anyway!

The Proof is not in the pudding

... but in the post! I put the corrected proofs of my next book in the post today, which is always a strange feeling... all that effort and then it is all sealed up in a brown envelope and sent off!
The nice thing is that my publishers have asked me to start work on another book for publication next Autumn. More news on this later!
A busy weekend coming up... Saturday will see me at the gallery and also in Stamford, while Sunday is lunch with friends to celebrate my birthday....

I had a dream...

... and today it came true! I think it must be every photographer's dream to see their work on a gallery wall, but imagine how good it is to see the gallery walls with ONLY your work hanging there.

Today,the Artie Fartie Gallery in Wellingborough re-opened its doors and I was given carte blanche to hang my pix wherever I wanted. The gallery is in a great location, with ample free parking and a really nice little organic coffee shop just along the way, and to make it all even better it's in an old gasworks, with authentic Victorian buildings that create a good atmosphere.

Most of the morning was spent on a spruce up session, with much dust leaving the building by the huge double doors at the front. Then the hanging began and I hit on a theme of local views on one side and international pictures on the other, which lets customers focus on the type of thing that they are looking for without being confused by a jumble sale effect of disparate subjects all mixed together

As the gallery has been closed for several weeks, I think it will take a while for shoppers to realise that it is now open for business again, but none the less, there were 4 "serious browsers" today who all had ideas about what they wanted, and asked me to search my library of images for suitable subjetcs for them to consider

Signs of the times...

The little town where I live doesn't have much going for it these days. It was once a thriving Northamptonshire boot and shoe town with leather factories and workshops on every street, which gave employment to the men and women of the town. Gradually these closed and finally even the bigger brands moved away, leaving a void in the employment market. But there was one bright light - our local family owned department store, Peter Crisp, which celebrated 50 years of trading earlier this year. I was privileged to be invited to sign copies of my book at one of their events to mark the occasion. The store is one of those proper shops with real people behind the counter, that know about the stock and are pleased to help you. The big chain stores talk a lot about service but rarely do their staff understand it in my opinion!
Anyway, I passed the store today and saw the windows all covered with plain blinds and the signs read, "CLOSING DOWN SALE STARTS ON WEDNESDAY". It was a really sad sight to see what used to be a vibrant family run business being made a casualty of the credit crunch or banking crisis, or whatever lame excuse is offed for the balls up that the financial "experts" have made of the economy. Apparently it's fine for bankers to pay themselves huge bonus payments again as they say things are getting better... try telling that to the 35 staff of this little store that will be jobless this Christmas.
Have I ever mentioned that I hate accountants!!!!

Old Friends...

... are the best friends, because even though they have seen you change over the years they are still your mates!. That is the conclusion that I have come to after spending time with one of my oldest and best friends,Paul, who I have known for about 45 years!!!! We spent our adolescent years together, in happy mischief and innocence, cycling, walking an eventually driving to parties and other friends houses. Paul is also cancer survivor and a man with great social conscience and talents - and is still the bloke that I knocked about with all those years ago. Now living in Tasmania (was it something I said....?) we don't get together as often as I would like, but last night and this morning were great trips down memory lane and other byways of the human condition.
Paul is off back to Tasmania on the 24th so let's hope the rest of his stay is as pleasurable for him as the last couple of days have been for me. I once rang another mutual friend to say goodbye, at a time when I really though it was goodbye, as I was very ill; she replied "au revoir, Bob, only au revoir" - so in the same spirit, I wish my friend Paul au revoir now

Friday 13th!

So it's Friday the 13th eh???

I think it will be a good day, because I have a dear friend coming to stay - my old mate Paul Blest who is over here from Tasmania will be spending the night with us and no doubt we will visit a nice pub !
I received the proofs of my seconfd book today - they are looking ok, and just need a few minor typos correcting. This is not due out until next March so it's good to see my publishers getting on with it so early - the book is called A Boot up Shropshire Hills and it contains 10 different walks in the county. Great for popping in the car for those spur of the moment "what can we do?" moments. I had great pleasure when I was photographing this area, as I have fond memories of my youth walking around Long Mynd and Stiperstones, and more recently have discovered many friends in the county - it gives me an opportunity to catch up with them too! Although it won't be in the book, Ironbridge is a favourite place. I used to go there before it became the tourist honeypot that it is nowadays;there was a little cafe that had a great pinball machine and good cappucino, right by the bridge. The shop is still there but now it is a made over "olde worlde" affair. The bridge remains a marvel of the Industrial Revolution - cast and constructed down the river in Coalbrookdale, it truly changed the way that the world was heading. I'm happy though that only the birth of the Revolution took place here, and developments quickly moved to the South Staffordshire coal fields, otherwise the pastoral county of Shropshire may have been very different.

I have tried to post a picture of the Ironbridge that shows it differently to the thousands that must exist already - I like the way that this shows the contrast between the rich woodland and the harsh grey iron-strangely enough, the quantity of iron needed was only possible because of the trees being turned into charcoal for smelting the ore. Man is ever inventive!

Books for Sale!!!!

I am just back from an enjoyable couple of hours at Waterstone's in Kettering where I was signing books with two other local authors,Ron Greenall and Nick Saunders. Ron's book is a History of Kettering, whilst Nick's is a collection of Gothic horror stories, that he has been writing since his teens. This was all part of the first Kettering Book Week, which hopefully will become a bigger annual event in years to come. It never fails to amaze me, though, how books "written" by so called celebrities, sell in their thousands, when really good works by lesser known individuals struggle for shelf space! Surely we are not all SO interested in what someone off the telly did when they were a kid???? Most of these autobiographies (oh yeah...) are mind numbingly ordinary tales of how they grew up, but don't really provide much of an insight into anything new - and I htink that few celebrities will tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!" (Unless they are Andre Agassi!!!)
Well, we three local writers enjoyed a lovely wide ranging chat and even sold a few books, before being photographed for the local newspaper- see the pic here. This was quite an odd experience for me, as just recently I have been taking news shots and organising the subjects - " look this way, move your head a little...smile etc"
And finally...a clever literary joke!
I heard a wonderfully clever advertising slogan today from a friend - it was a sign on the window of a camping shop - "now is the winter of our discount tents!"- isn't that clever! If I liked camping I might be tempted to buy one!

A level headed view of The Crooked House!

It's been a very interesting few days: on Tuesday I was able to enjoy hospitality at the Crooked House, a famous (in The Black Country!) pub that was built in the 18th century, and seems to have been falling down ever since! Due to mining works beneath the land, the ground has sunk beneatht the foundations, leaving the southern end of the pub 4 feet (1.2 metres) lower than the northern end! This means that there are some interesting optical illusions going on, where marbles seem to roll uphill and doors open downwards... it's the only pub I know that makes you feel tipsy before you have a drink! Two young brothers have taken over the lease of the building from Wolverhampton brewers, Banks's, and they are determined to resurrect ths reputation of the place with new menus and improvements, but they won't be attempting to straighten the building up! leaning ata greater angle than the Leaning Tower of Pisa, The Crooked House is well worth a visit, just for a drink, but a meal will make it more special. Anyway, it's a good excuse to "slope off" to the pub!
The Crooked House website is http://www.thecrooked-house.co.uk/

Signing Books again!

Tomorrow I will be at Waterstone's book store in Kettering, Northants, as part of the first Kettering Book Week, where I will be signing copies of my first book of photographs and local interest, Northamptonshire - The Glorious County - published by Halsgrove at £14.99. This book would make a great gift for anyone who knows Northamptonshire or who used to live in the county and would like to be reminded of home. BBC Radio Northampton's John Griff described the book as "evocative" and informative

Interview on BBC Radio Northampton

Last week I was interviewed on BBC Radio Northampton to discuss my journey from the cancer ward and intensive care unit, to the publishing of my first book of photographs and subsequent exhibitions. Presenter, John Griff, was excellent and very clear on his understanding of how the world looks after a major illness like cancer, and was a great person to be interviewed by. I managed to grab a couple of nice informal photographs of him too, and look forward to meeting John and his producer,Julia,again one day

First thoughts

As this is my first blog entry I will keep it simple - hello! I will be updating frequently with news about my recovery from cancer and my entryinto the photographic world, my books, my gallery and my occasional radio appearances!