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!