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 […]
Jimbo Guitar – Can I Play My Old Riffs? “Things We Did” by Vehicle Derek
In this video I try and see if I can still play one of my old riffs – the song “Things We Did” which I wrote the riff for some time in 1988 when I was about 17 and playing in a band called Vehicle Derek. We were a fast hardcore punk band and […]
The Results
Since there is a page about Vehicle Derek on this site I really ought to put more silly-named band-related pages up here. My problem is I tend to ramble on and on about everything and it’s hard to get to the point half the time. Something of the history of Spunkle is actually available onscreen […]
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 […]
Merry Xmas!
Geseende kersfees! Καλά Χριστούγεννα! Joyeux Noël! God jul! क्रिसमस की शुभकामनाएं! Merry Xmas! ¡Feliz Navidad! С Рождеством! Wesołych Świąt! Feliz Natal! 圣诞快乐！ Күңелле Xmas! Mutlu Noeller! میری کرسمس! ਮੈਰੀ ਕ੍ਰਿਸਮਸ! ‘Tis the season and all that! I hope you are having a nice time, and if you need an animated GIF for the season, here […]
Matte Kudasai
Matte Kudasai?Mitte kunagi!
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 […]
Rock Bottom
It’s a thing for sure that when I was once zooming up the M40 to Birmingham for a Vehicle Derek rehearsal and blasting Phenomenon by UFO on the tape deck, that it got to the point in “Rock Bottom”, around about 4.23 where the 19 year old Michael Schenker’s guitar solo reaches peak-pant-weeing-ecstasy and I […]
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 […]