No one reads much at this end of the blog these days (not even me). So I can quite safely warble on about being all old and nostalgic about years long gone. Listening to Jellyfish and thinking about the strange, strange year that was 1993 (for me). Pondering 1988, seemingly a “nothing year” for me […]
Writing
Download 20, Thursday 8th June 2023 – A review!
I’d been to Download last year to see KISS, as it was supposed to be the last chance to see them…and then they played here this year again. Still I don’t mind, it was f**king awesome and far better than an arena gig. This year it was the 20th anniversary of Download, and Metallica were […]
Being Positive About Something That Was Negative
I have written in a lot of diaries over the years. Sometimes they hardly even define a point in my life as anything in particular. Sometimes I will look up a bit of my life I have strong memories of, and be disappointed that I didn’t write much down at the time that tallies with […]
OMG
There is an LP that I own, and its spatial sound, the sound of the mix of all the songs and its lush, reverberating production remind me of a time and a place that I experienced “between lives”. The place and the time are combined, though the place existed long before the time. The time […]
Bicycle Car Nostalgia
Whilst walking in a place I used to live yesterday I spotted a Citroën Xantia peeking out of a garage and was astonished to see it later on when I checked Google Maps Street View in both 2008 and 2012. That sparked a memory of Sunday bike rides around my neighbourhood as a little boy […]
Farewell Dad
13 years ago today I was in a kind of strange no-mans land. I absolutely knew my father was dying, imminently, but he wasn’t dead…yet. We had the call from the care home on the Monday night that he had been taken very ill with pneumonia and went up to the hospital, saw him conscious […]
The Night We Met I Knew I Needed You So
The death of Ronnie Spector this week reminded me of one of my earliest memories of “musical significance”. I grew up in the town where my mum’s family were from, and my dad’s family lived much further away in the north. My brother and my mum and dad and me would go to see them […]
Self portrait, 1994
Found whilst looking for something else.
Photo Chat Vlog – Slow Photography Revisited For Lockdown
During my lockdown experience at home in Banbury, I’ve been thinking about how my hobby of film photography has been theraputic as well as motivating for the long strange wait we’ve all had to experience. For a long time I’ve been a slow photographer. That is, my approach to taking photos on film is very […]
Lomography Purple
There was some chat on Facebook the other evening about Lomography Purple film and why it is rated between 100 – 400 ASA rather than being fixed (it has no DX code for example). The way I always see it is the chemists in the labs of the film companies work hard and are usually […]
Totality
Back when I lived in East Oxford and could ride my bike to work I developed a special game to play on my commute. It was called Totality. It actually began in about 1986 back in Boston, Lincolnshire when one of my brothers came home once from his girlfriend’s house and told me that he […]
The Fuji TW-3 – Light Leaks And Looking At Photos!
Because my last video on the Fuji TW-3 was quite popular, I made another video to show you a bit more about the camera, including how to load a film into it and how to protect it from light-leaks too. I chose one of my films from my fantastic stash of 24 exposure films. I […]
The Zen Of Listening
I wrote an article back in 2003 about listening to the radio which was posted on a long-gone radio-related email list. Since I found it recently, I’ve published it on here, but back in its proper place date-wise. I’m daft like that.