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!