Blog – Page 21 – Where is Phil now?

A sneaky outing to Epping Forest.

Saturday 04 April 2020 – Epping Forest.

It felt like an absolute age since I took in the air of Epping Forest. I had to look back through previous posts to find that it was mid-January, which in this time slowed down period we are going through, was an age ago. Almost a different period of existence, the pre-covid age.

The official guidance says that one can go for a walk for exercise. I know there have been some police districts stopping people from driving to beaches, parks and areas of natural beauty, as well as the usual self-appointed social media guardians moaning about people going outside. However there is no rule or law that says you cannot, so I drove the ten minutes to Epping Forest for a photography session/walk/wellbeing break. I cannot walk the beach, so this is what I need to do for my wellbeing; both physical and mental. I enjoyed it and it worked. I was not happy with the photos I took, but ultimately that was not the point. Being outside and enjoying being outside; being in the sun, the ever-freshening air and the relative peace were the aims of this morning, as well as letting my creative side out to play.

Nature is pretty amazing, how is this tree still going ?

The roads were really quiet at 8:45 on Saturday morning, and it felt like all the traffic lights were green all the way to the small car park near Strawberry Ponds. There were a couple of cars there when I arrived, but it was fairly quiet, only a few runners and dog walkers out this early. I like the section of forest around Lost Pond and Loughton Camp and that was where I headed. Starting with a stroll along the bank of the twisty and turny Loughton Brook.

As soon as I get the chance I leave the main path and walk up the mountain bike tracks and other small paths that meander aimlessly, often ending at no particular destination, from there I just bush crash through open areas between the scrub and trees. Trying to avoid the worst of the holly that is slowing taking over the places where the volunteers have yet to visit.

I took the tripod and the big camera as I wanted to spend some proper time taking photos, rather than just walk and snap; take the opportunity to slow down and let the forest take over my thoughts. I don’t listen to music on these walks, one of the rare places I am not plugged in. So much easier to let the mind wander up, down and sideways when it is disconnected.

I got to Lost Pond after an hour of slow walking and photography. Not wanting to go to the tea huts, even if they were open, I had elected to bring a flask of coffee and a snack. It was so nice in the sun I stopped, pond side and just sat and listened to the birds, and the occasional twat on an over-loud motorbike roaring along the windy and narrow roads. For most of the 15 minutes I sat I was completely alone. It was lovely, and I would have stayed longer but people arrived, and I didn’t want people.

It was the same at Loughton Camp, I arrived and had ten to fifteen minutes of peace and then people arrived. I moved on, walking slowly back through the trees to the car. I love Loughton Camp, the beech trees here are amazing and spacious and the filtered light is just something else.

I took some intentional camera movement photos as I walked. I am trying for the perfect photographic simulation of an impressionist painting, in-camera as they say, without any post-production trickery. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Today was partially successful.

Like I said I was not particularly happy with my photographic efforts, but as I also said, taking great images was not the point. Walking, as solitary as possible was the point. This was achieved and my morning was all the better for it.

The car park was overfull when I got back, and I could hear lots more people on the main path as I walked the narrow dirt tracks. It was clearly time to leave.

I read the following Monday that people had complained about how many others had driven to the forest to walk so the Epping Forest management people have now closed the car parks. I felt no guilt, but next time I will walk to my local bit of forest, which is not so nice. Best not to be seen as part of the problem.

I hope this was a welcome break from my weekly lock down posts!

The new way, Week three.

Saturday 04 April 2020 – London.

Another Sunday, another week completed and another week closer to this ‘event’ being over and what was deemed as normal returning.

What do we call this thing? I don’t like the word ‘crisis’ though it surely is one. ‘Pandemic’ is too scientific and probably means different things to different people. This government’s use of the words ‘war’ and ‘battle’ scare the hell out of me, this is certainly neither of those things. ‘Event’ seems a bit too casual, not serious enough, but events can be life changing and until I come up with something better, ‘event’ it is going to be.

My one wish from this covid19 event is that society, particularly the UK, has used this time to take a good long look at itself and reflect on how things were before. Society, what did you learn from all the chaos? The broken lives, broken families, broken jobs and workplaces, broken economy, broken environment and totally broken political system that has left us where we are now; scrabbling for test kits and appropriate protective gear for those working in hospitals, care homes, supermarkets. Those deemed as unskilled and unwanted just two months ago.

Can we fix it? Of course. Will we? I doubt it. The selfish will rise to the top as always and we will enter another long period of enforced austerity to fix the damage, though this time the state has gifted itself significantly more power than it had before.

Sunday

Cold and grey out, though El and I still went for a walk for an hour, there were significantly fewer people out than yesterday which was good. There are a lot less cars as well which means being able to walk in the road to social distance, and I like walking in the road.

Now that spring is coming I am getting hay fever. This is disconcerting as I am now huffing and puffing, sneezing, blowing my nose and occasionally coughing. People look at me sideways. I look at me sideways.

We didn’t do much in the afternoon, I am using Sunday afternoons to edit photos and prepare these posts. Day light saving started today. Not that it makes any real difference, time has some irrelevancy now, and there seems to be a lot more of it. Thankfully I have work, and hobbies, and a pile of books to go through.

Monday

Now that it is spring the weather has taken a turn and it has gotten colder. There were far fewer walkers in the park when I went for my pre-work ‘commute’ walk. Work was OK, feeling a little uninspired still. I feed off other people when I work, and as El and I are working on different floors in the house I am feeding off my own lack of enthusiasm.

There was a fox on the roof of the shed for most of the morning, this is not uncommon and he/she has been there before. There are plenty of stories of wildlife returning to cities now there is less motor and human traffic about. This is not one of them.

I made a pasta bake thing with vegan chorizo, beans, and paprika for dinner. This is one of my favourite comfort meals and I am really enjoying cooking again, not that I ever didn’t enjoy it. Not having to commute means more time to think, prepare and cook each day and that is one thing I am grateful for. The shops are getting back to some form of normal supply, while there are restrictions on how many people can be in a shop, which is no bad thing, most things are back on the shelf. This means I can nip down to pick up something if it is missing from the cupboard and I have yearning to cook with it. Flour still seems to be in short supply though. Just when I have an interest in baking again, along with everyone else I guess.

Tuesday

There were a lot more walkers and runners out this morning, it was a bit later (8:00) and sunny again. Most people kept their distance, but I now understand why people are getting pissed off with runners. One ran at me and she was not going to change direction; that was up to me. and I was on the ‘right’ side of the path, she just didn’t care. Runners are now public enemy number one, taking the place of cyclists. Luckily I am neither at the moment, though at the start of lock down I was thinking I could start running again. Maybe now is not good time!

I talked to mum in New Zealand while I walked, she has now been locked down in the retirement village, which she is not happy about. Sadly I cannot be there to provide physical support, like shopping etc. Though my sister, son and niece and nephew are helping out, and waving at mum though the fence. My mum was able to take my grandson to the park once a week, but now restrictions are in place this cannot happen, such a shame for both of them as they both enjoyed their time together.

Wednesday

Today I started a three day ‘Administering ArcGis Enterprise’ for work. It was supposed to be classroom based, but obviously the world has moved on from those days. This is my first online course. I don’t like the idea of them, but it was Ok, and I coped, once I disciplined myself to not look at social media it was fine. I would still rather be in the classroom, interacting with real people though.

I have not been sleeping well and was very tired when I got up, then was a lot worse late in the afternoon, I should have gone for a walk before or after work, but was too lazy. This was stupid. I had a bad headache in the afternoon and had a bit of a temperature, though it didn’t last long. I do worry sometimes that I am going to get properly sick, and then it goes away, I feel fine and then stop worrying. I suspect I am not the only one thinking like this.

A couple of weeks ago I joined Twitter again after deleting it in a huff after the last election. I did pretty well to last this long as I was a bit of an addict. I rejoined to keep up with news from overseas, from people I respect in New Zealand, and to get back in touch with what was happening with music. It was a way to reduce the isolation, and so far so good. One of the things I am enjoying is picking up music recommendations and binge listening to artists now I can play music out loud all day. I listened to The Feelies today, their debut LP is 40 years old. I haven’t listened to them in ages, and really enjoyed the relatively sunnyness of their music.

I cooked a Thai noodle soup for dinner, another regular go-to meal, though this one was not as punchy as normal. At least I can still taste and smell.

Thursday

I slept better, thankfully. I probably have sinusitis and will start doing something about it, the symptoms have been around for months and I do little to remedy them. My ears were hurting this morning, and I had a bad headache. Sinutab worked. Putting a name to what I was feeling made it all go away and I have felt find since. The pollen is not helping either I suspect.

I am now thinking about the coming weekend, and all the things I won’t be doing or feel I would be restricted from doing, like walking and stopping for a pint in a pub. I decided that I would get up early on Saturday and go to the forest and take some photos. Photography, the forest and walking are some of my go-to things when I need a break from the world. Taking the camera and the tripod and just thinking about a scene is extremely relaxing, and I have not done it for ages.

This led me to take some photos of dead leaves, a project I started ages ago and let lapse. While El made dinner I took photos in the bedroom, editing them after work on Friday. I have had these leaves for a while, slowly shriveling in a shoe box.

I am still experimenting with camera movement.

One of my sisters has managed to get mum up and running on Zoom, and has now arranged a video call for Sunday morning with the family, which is very cool and I am looking forward to it very much.

Friday

Ah, Friday. Yay, the working week is over, let the weekend and all its activities commence.

I woke up to a huge thread on the Family WhatsApp group, with my daughter now wanting to get out of Sri Lanka and return to NZ. Naturally she has limited access to the internet and my son and ex were trying to book tickets via Australia at some exorbitant price. I logged on and found a flight to Auckland this Sunday, via Qatar, that was not significantly more than the normal price, albeit with a 20 hour layover in Doha. I booked it. I have noticed before that booking flights from the UK is significantly cheaper than booking them from NZ or Australia.

We have talked about her leaving Sri Lanka off and on over the past couple of weeks, but with more countries closing borders, and fewer airlines flying each day it seemed the sensible thing to do. There was not a lot of choice of flights, getting to the UK would have been easier, but she has lots of friends in NZ and would not be so isolated. I was fine with Meliesha being in Sri Lanka, it is a safe country and she was in a fairly remote place but with good facilities and people, so I was not overly worried, but once she is back in New Zealand I will be even less so.

I am just glad to be here in London with El.

Saturday

I was out of the door at 8:30, driving up to the forest for a photo walk. I took a lot of photos, had a nice walk and returned home refreshed. I will do a separate post about it during the week once I have edited the photos; though first look suggests that not too many will survive the cull. This is not my favourite time of year for photography. Today was less about output and more about taking some time out from life. It was pretty successful in that regard and I feel much better about the coming week.

The rest of the day seemed to just pass, even though as I write this it is only the next day I am trying to think what else we did. We finished watching Picard and Altered Carbon on TV and that was about it. I made SE Asian influenced stuffed bell peppers and rice for dinner, and thought they were pretty good. I used the last of the Quorn mince from the freezer. This fake meat product used to be in plentiful supply and we have eaten it for years. Since Veganuary it has been impossible to get as so many people have jumped on the vegan/vegetarian bandwagon, It is good for the planet I guess.

Another week, done and xx more to go.

The new way. Week two

Saturday 28 March 2020 – London.

So here we are; week one of the half hearted lock-down. Stuck inside for the best part of each day on what has proven to be the nicest week of the year so far. Glorious sunshine, though cold, all week.

Confused messages; a confused and confusing government; an ill-informed, populist, journalist come prime minister, who is now sick; death rates rising (as expected); a health system underfunded for a decade struggling to cope; morons breaking basic hygiene rules all over the place. Panic shopping, which now seems to be abating. Welcome to post-truth, post-pre-Brexit, covid19 UK; and we are in some respects a fortunate country.

Last night (Friday 20 March) the prime minister announced that all UK cafes, bars and restaurants are to be closed to eat/drink in customers until further notice. It was also the final full opening day for schools, though some could stay open to allow key workers to go to work. As you would expect there was a lot of confusion about who is a key worker, something that has yet to be fully clarified. I am apparently a key worker, as is Eleanor. Though we do not have children and are now both working from home anyway. As I said in my last post, we are lucky, very very lucky.

In fact everything is confusing, the messages from the government and the press, contradict each other on a daily basis; what was the thing to do yesterday, is not thing to do today. The only clear message up until this week was ‘wash your hands for 20 seconds’. It is still the only clear key message, and the most important.

Stay at home is the new message this week, though who has to stay at home and what does stay at home really mean are constantly confused and contradicted;

We are told that we can go to the shops for essentials; though up until mid-week most shops were open, and what is essential?
We are told we can go for one exercise walk, run or ride per day, but only with people who live in your house, staying two metres away from anyone else. There is no one to enforce this. This is not a metric country; there is confusion as to how long two metres is, apparently.
What does social distancing really mean? A newly made up phrase lobbed around casually as if every English speaking person knows exactly what it means. I don’t. I dread to think what those where English is a second language think. Self isolating; the same. Come on government, use clear language; it’s almost as if you want to hide behind this loose language when the inquiry comes along and the lawyers get involved…

I got back from the flat mid-afternoon on Saturday and with no plans for the afternoon, or for the foreseeable future decided to make a cake. I haven’t made a cake in a long time. I may have made one since I came left NZ in 2011. It was OK, it didn’t last long.

The son of good friends of ours has covid19, luckily he has only been mildly ill; compared too many others anyway. Though, I suspect he would say it has not been mild, no flu ever feels ‘mild’. Under the new guidelines the whole household are self-isolating for 14 days. On Sunday I made them suffer more and baked a banana cake which I delivered, leaving it on the doorstep and calling it in.

By the end of the week one of our social group was also taken down with, and again thankfully, not a serious bout, of the covid19 flu.

It was good being back with Eleanor, I found it much less stressful being in the house with her. We work well together, and having regular human contact is very much under–rated; by me at least. As I touched on in the last post, I love being by myself and have had a few really enjoyable weeks at the flat on my own. This time it was different. After three days alone, and with the potential for weeks, maybe months, of forced aloneness if I stayed at the flat looming I am glad I came back to London.

Work wise, I found the start of this week tough. Monday morning was OK as I re-arranged my desk and got myself physically sorted for working. We are all set up to work online, as at least one of us works from home most days sharing and banter online is part of our normal day. I was really struggling with motivation by Monday afternoon and Tuesday was pretty bad. There is a lot going on in the world and in my head, and the work I was doing was dull and I just was not interested in it at all. By the end of the week I had gotten rid of the worst of the work and the feeling has subsided a bit. I am hoping that come Monday I will be back fully engaged in it all again, and there will be some interesting things to work on. The department I work in is doing some important work supporting the nation in its struggle to cope with this disease. My team support these people, what they do is critical, though it feels like what I do is less so.

Last Tuesday we started holding an online divisional meeting each morning; to keep in contact, share work plans and make sure that everyone stays well and engaged. On Wednesday one of the team said he had started going for a walk in the morning before work to replace his commute, creating a clear break between home mode and work mode.

I thought this was a great idea and started doing this the following day, though walking along the St Leonards sea front made the ‘commute’ much nicer than walking the busy and dull streets of suburban London.

Eleanor and I are now doing a ‘commute’ walk around Lloyd Park in the morning. It does help make sure we get up, get dressed and get ready for work in the same way as we did when life was normal. I start work at the same time, take lunch at the same time; the only thing I am not doing is ironing shirts.

When I was in St Leonards I bought a new monitor, which I was going to leave there, but knowing I might not be back for a while I bought it up to London for Eleanor to use, though she ended up using my old one as it fitted her work space better. Monday morning I took half an hour to set up my desk. It is small and in a corner of the bedroom, fine for a day a week, but not brilliant for long term, luckily the chair is excellent. With a full rearrange; and with the benefit of a wireless mouse and keyboard I bought a few weeks ago, I seem to have a work space that works and is not too uncomfortable.

The view out the window to one side of my desk is nowhere near as good as the view out the window at the flat.

We didn’t do the walk on Tuesday, El had an early start and I couldn’t be bothered doing it on my own. A mistake. It made a massive difference to my day and I massively struggled with getting going and remaining motivated. I resolved to not make that mistake again, and for the rest of the week I managed to get out. Admittedly it has been really nice out, it will be harder next week when the clocks have been turned forward and it will be darker, and the weather is forecasted to be not so nice.

As the message of staying at home starts to sink in to the general population and more businesses shut their doors or allow employees to work from home by Wednesday the streets around home are getting more deserted. On our walk that morning I was surprised to see not one single moving car at the main intersection at the end of our road. I have never seen the roads so empty. Unsurprisingly reported pollution levels have gone right down…

On Friday I walked alone, though I didn’t walk as far as normal. I took the little camera with me to take some photos of the spring flowers in the park. I find photography very therapeutic, and knowing that at any time there could be a proper ban on going out with an enforced curfew, I wanted to at least make use of the time I had. There will be more next week I hope.

On Friday night we attended an online quiz the son of one of our friends put together. There were close to 20 households taking part and it was a hell of a lot fun. Joe did an amazing job of herding this group of noisy, drinking people through the quiz online. The questions were tough and El and I did not do that well. El is brilliant at quizzes, has a vast general knowledge, though I let the side down by being a bit rubbish. Online socialising was OK, all things being considered, though not the same as sitting in the pub.

Saturday we walked for a bit and picked up some small items of shopping, the shopping madness seems to have abated,, at least in the smaller shops and most of the things we wanted were on the shelves. It is important to us to keep sourcing fresh food while it is available and not outrageously priced. I am not sure if it will remain that way. We also did a massive pantry reorganise, looking to see what we had lots of (pasta) and what we had little of (rice), things to make note of next time we go shopping. We also sorted things so we would use the stuff that was close to its best by date sooner rather than later. This was a good use of time. We have a lot of it now, and have plenty more coming.

I also made another cake, my first carrot cake. I discovered after committing to make the cake that we had two round baking trays, just different sizes. I am also a lousy cake icer, so this will not win any awards for its looks. It tasted good though!

Week one of lock down has passed, mostly successfully, mentally I slumped mid-week, but managed to pick it back by the weekend. Walthamstow remains calm and it is quiet out on the street. Who knows how long this will go on for and what adjustments we have to make. All being well, and if everyone plays their part, we shall get through this.

The new way, Week one.

Saturday 21 March 2020 – St Leonards-on-Sea.

And so it begins. A new but, hopefully temporary, stage of existence. Something so utterly predictable, yet something we are all so utterly unprepared for. A global pandemic. The Corona virus, Covid19.

I have been following the story since it was first reported in Wuhan, though not with any particular dread. I knew it was coming here and was going to impact us, and have been, on reflection, kind of just hanging around waiting for it so I can move on, to here. Now.

I am one of the very lucky ones.

I am fit and well (I think) as is Eleanor.
I have a job that allows me to work from home; I work for an organisation that encouraged us to not to come in to the office.
Eleanor has just started a new three month contract two weeks ago, and can work from home too.
I have some where to live that is comfortable and secure; in fact I have a choice of two places to live.
Eleanor and I have no at risk family members living with, or near us that we could possibly infect. My dad and both Eleanor’s parents are dead, and mum is in NZ.
Having my mum, sisters, son and grandson in NZ, a son and granddaughter in Australia and my daughter in Sri Lanka is stressful, and at times worrying, but there is nothing I can do about it. At this point in time they are all well and safe, and it is easier to not worry about them knowing this.
Both of Eleanor’s sons are living elsewhere and we have the house to ourselves. This means space for us to both work and not get in each other’s way. We can look after each other and it is easier to be cautious when it is just the two of us.
We had stocked up a little on non-perishable food a while ago; we have a ‘Brexit’ box. This means that we did not have to buy much, and certainly avoided the panic buying madness. Food wise we are good, at least for a while.

Last Tuesday we had a test work-from-home day with the whole department out of the office. Most of us work from home at least one day a week, but never at the same time. This was a test of the technology, and how we could all use it at the same time and how it would work for those who have not regularly worked from home. It was pretty successful. This was fortunate; later that day we, along with 2000 other colleagues, were advised to not go back to the office until further notice. Perhaps 12 weeks in the future.

Eleanor had at least one more day of working in the office, so on Wednesday I decided to drive down to St Leonards and work from the flat for a few days. I was hoping to be able to share working between London and St Leonards over the work from home period, though realistically expected this to not be achievable, and I was right with that. While there are no enforced travel restrictions yet, unnecessary travel is advised against and I can see there being a proper locked down ordered. I did not want to be left stranded away from Eleanor for a long period.

Working down there was the right thing to do. I got to experience being on my own ALL the time for three days, and I didn’t particularly like it. I can cope perfectly well being on my own, just having contact and the odd cheery word with someone in a cafe, shop or bar. Without even that small amount of face to face human interaction things felt different, weird and uncomfortable. I also worried that if I got sick I could get stuck inside for a few days on my own, if I got really sick then that could be dangerous.

Everything is very different now. Though things are yet to fully be locked down, a lot of places are shut, most of the cafes and some of the pubs and restaurants in St Leonards and Hastings have closed. My go-to bar, 1200 Postcards shut the doors, hopefully not forever, before I got down to the flat. I stayed in Thursday evening, cooked and took a photo out of the bedroom window. Gloom settling in.

I finished work at 4:00 on Friday and took a walk into Hastings to pick up a book I ordered. I took a couple of photos on the way.

The council have been grading the beach after the all the winter storms, I love the patterns made by the tracks of the diggers.

Back in St Leonards I popped into Graze (only two people in there, so I could stay 2 metres from the other punters) for a glass of wine, suspecting it would be my last time in a bar for a while. Soon after I arrived at 5:00pm the government announced that as of tonight all bars, eat-in cafes and restaurants had to close. I don’t disagree with the decision, hard as it will be on the places I frequent and support, and I will miss going out for a drink and for coffee. My bank balance will be less displeased.

Saturday morning I went for a final quick walk, it was a glorious day, though cold. I love how Goat Ledge have chalked boxes on the ground for customers to stand in while they queue for a takeaway, and keep the required two metres apart.

I also popped into Lucy Bell Gallery, a photography only gallery to look at an exhibition based on, and to raise funds for the preservation of, Prospect Cottage. The late Derek Jarman’s cottage on Dungeness Beach.

I ended up buying a print of a Richard Heslop image. ‘Adam and Eve’, taken from the Jarman film ‘The Garden’, which was shot at Prospect Cottage, by Richard. The print arrived here in London this morning, a week later. It will look great, framed, on the wall back in St Leonards.

I drove back to Walthamstow, knowing I will not be back at the flat for possibly a long time. I found, and still find this quite upsetting.

Leake St and The Vaults.

Sunday 8 March 2020 – London.

As is often the case with my blog posts, this one has been written some time after the event happened. What is very different this time is, the world has completely changed in the last two weeks. This is the last time that I can wander the streets of London with my camera, hangout with friends in bars and watch a play in a small intimate theatre for the foreseable future. I am missing those days already.

Life has been (had been) normal lately, weekdays in London and weekends mostly spent at my flat in St Leonards-on-Sea. Work, relax. Not doing a lot as we have had storm after storm in the UK this winter. I was fortunate that none of those storms seriously impacted the south and I feel for those in the west and north who have been hit with flood on flood and have been so terribly let down by our government.

This weekend was different. I spent it in London. The first in what seems like ages.

El’s son Joe is producing a one person show as part of the month-long Vault theatre festival in the spaces off of Leake Street tunnel in Waterloo. I have been to Leake Street a number times, especially back in the street art photography days. It is still a very important spot for legal graff, and very popular with those who want an ‘edgy’ background to a photo shoot. I was looking forward to visiting again, it has been ages.

I had intended on going to the forest yesterday to take some photos. I had charged the camera and had the bag out and everything. However, I am in a bit of winter slump and ended up not going, doing nothing at all. I was not feeling like doing much more today either, Corona Virus is happening, and I can see it is going to have a massive impact. I just don’t know what yet. To be honest, that was the excuse, I just don’t like winter, and am lacking motivation for anything at the moment.

We had arranged to meet our social group at the station at 1:30, then take a couple of tubes to Waterloo to see Joe’s play, Glitch. Waking early, by mid-morning, I was bored and decided to chuck the big camera with a wide angle zoom in a bag and head in early, take some photos and do a walk. Stretch my legs, get some air and attempt to rise up from the slump. It was sunny and not too end-of-winter cold. I also wanted pizza, but didn’t want to admit that to El, we are supposed to be eating less.

I caught the Overground to Liverpool St and then walked to the Southbank. I took some photos on the way. I was surprised at the amount of people about, normally this part of London is dead quiet on a Sunday. It was great taking the big camera out, I really need to do it more often, it just feels good to use it. Though, even after years of taking photos I still have ‘getting my camera out in public’ phobia…. I also need to replace the 50mm lens I broke, what is now almost two years ago, there would have been a lot less cropping in post-production.

I stopped for lunch in Pizza Express on the south bank, taking some basic precautions, washing my hands when I walked in. The only advice we have been given up till then. I enjoyed the pizza and a glass of wine, and watching the entirely unexpected heavy rain pouring down the windows after I had sat down. The glass of wine lasted until the rain stopped.

Walking the short distance from the south bank to Leake Street felt completely different. The rain had cleared the streets, streets that were only half as busy as normal. With the low, heavy and dark sky it was feeling a little zombie apocalypse, thankfully with no zombies.

Today was International Women’s Day and the annual ‘Girls Can’ event was on in Leake St. All the doom and gloom with the virus, and what has turned out to be a fairly shitty day weather wise, has massively reduced the number of people coming to the event, an opportunity for women and girls to take control of the walls in the tunnel, and have a play with a can of spray paint.

I was very early for the play, the rain had thrown my schedule of walking the South Bank out of whack, I took a few photos in the tunnel, then walked up to the Vault, expecting to be able to go in and have a drink in one of the bars. It was closed, and not opening for another half hour. I found a pub on Lower Thames and watched some football on the TV. Little did I know it was to almost be the last live football of the season I would see, and one of the last pubs I would visit.

El messaged me when the crew arrived and I went and joined everyone and we had a pre show drink in one of the Vault bars – after a thorough hand washing. The new normal.

The play was OK, I liked the premise, though a one-person show is not my thing. I mostly enjoyed it, and the venue was half full, which Joe was pleased with. He had some great reviews and if we were in different times I am sure it would have been a full house.

We stayed for a drink after the play, and I took a walk around the venues and bars and tunnels that make up the Vault, it is a very cool place and I should have prowled with my camera rather than my phone. Still, phones make for damn good cameras these days.

After the drink we decided to walk back to Liverpool St station rather than taking the tube, a decision that suited me perfectly, more opportunities to take photos and not being underground is always good.

Unsurprisingly we all walk at different paces, and less surprisingly I am one of the faster walkers. This put me on the Millennium Bridge a few minutes before everyone else, and the opportunity to play with some slightly longer exposures. I was very happy with how these hand held shots came out.

Sadly, we missed a train at Liverpool St by about 30 seconds, so were forced into the bar at the station for one more drink.

It had been very good afternoon and I am glad we got to go to a theatre, a bar (or two/three) and I had pizza. Who knew then what we know now, and we really have no idea of what is coming.

A work trip to Edinburgh

Tuesday 04 February 2020 – Edinburgh.

There is something magical about train journeys. I am not talking about those short and crowded bursts to or from the daily grind. Or, perish the thought, those that are primarily underground, like most everyone else, I hate those. I am talking about the out journey to ‘away’, or maybe even those back from ‘away’. Though those returns are sometimes less than magical, especially with the threat of having to get up the following morning for work.

Yesterday I made one of those magical out journeys, and while today’s back was not as good as most of it was in the darkness of evening, it was still better than being on the tube. This morning I had a meeting in Edinburgh with some open data people from the Scottish Government, and the train trip from London to Edinburgh is one of my favourite UK train journeys. I am the pedants can list dozens of far better UK rail routes; but I haven’t been on them, and I have done this one at least half a dozen times and loved every one.

I travelled up with one of my work colleagues, leaving London in the early afternoon. We tried to work on the way, but the wifi was not too reliable. This was my expectation (and to be honest, my hope) so I was less worried than my colleague. I had music and a book and was content to slump and stare out the window between chapters for most of the four half hour trip. It is a lovely journey, especially the coastal section north of Newcastle.

I had a few attempts to take photos out the window for my current, experimental ‘out the train window’ project. All were consigned to the virtual rubbish bin on my computer. I much prefer my photo taking to be made when I am not sitting next to anyone, particularly someone I work with. I need to relax, a glass of wine helps, but I was on water all the way to Edinburgh. I was not in any creative zone.

It was dark when we arrived in Edinburgh, and quite cold as we got off the train. I was surprised at the temperature drop. I know I shouldn’t have been, Edinburgh is much closer to the arctic than London and it is winter, but it did catch me by surprise. Our hotel was very close to the station, so we checked straight in and arranged to meet to go out for something to eat. I had a lie down, sitting down on the train is tiring.

I like Edinburgh, it is my sort of place, at least the part of it I am familiar with is; the nice and clean tourist bit. I have been here a few times, but I think this was my first Monday night. It was pretty quiet. We had pizza in a place just off Princes St and it was doing good trade, the pizza was really good, tasty and hot and a good sourdough base. We stayed and chatted over a drink for an hour after dinner, heading back to the hotel about 9. It was cold and damp, but not anything like cold and damp Newport, thankfully. I wasn’t ready for bed, so decided to go for a walk.

The hotel was sort of halfway between the station and the place we were going tomorrow; St Andrews House, opposite Calton Hill. I walked that way first, thinking I would go up the hill if it looked liked things were lit at that top. Though this did not seem to be the case.

The back of the hotel.

St Andrews House, where we meet tomorrow. In this civil service job I do get to visit some amazing buildings, and this a lovely looking building, though the photo does not show it.

The Balmoral Hotel.

I decided to walk up to the castle, with the thought that there maybe some life up at the castle end of the Royal Mile, it is a very touristy part of town. I was wrong, it was pretty dead everywhere, even the pubs were closing, and it was only just after 9. There were a few people about, it was cold but not freezing, there was a light drizzle falling at times, but nothing that suggested snow. I was a little surprised at how quiet it was, though glad as I was happy to not get lured into a happening bar.

The Witchery, one of El and my favourite restaurants is in Edinburgh, and one of the few places that was open, I imagine it is full most nights of the week. It is the sort of place that should never be empty, the food is very good.

I was pleased to see the castle was well lit, I wished I had brought up the lightweight tripod with me, the camera is good in low light, but not that good!

Walking back down to the Royal Mile towards the North Bridge I stopped to take photos down some of the ‘closes’, the small alley ways from the main road to the houses, squares and back alleys behind. I can imagine these were dark and dangerous places a hundred years back. Fleshmarket Close and St Marys Close both feature in the crime novels by Ian Rankin, an author I quite like.

I took the stairs down Fleshmarket Close, unfortunately just missing the opportunity to finally sample one of Scotland’s finest offerings to the culinary world as the cafe had just closed as I walked past.

I walked back to the hotel and had a pretty good night’s sleep, considering how close my room was to a main road. Looking out of the window of my room in the morning, I discovered I had one of Edinburgh’s least finest views.

The meeting that we went to Edinburgh for went well, using up all of the four hours we had allocated. I had an hour to kill before my train so stopped for a pint with a colleague who was up from Manchester, before heading off to the station and settling into my book and music for the five hours back to London.

I took some photos out of the window for my train window project, and was pretty happy with the result. It may not be the type of image that most people like, but the top one is approaching the type of thing I am trying to achieve.

I also drank a lot of red wine. Something I regretted the following morning…

Penelope Isles, Winter Garden, Hanya @ The Piper.

Saturday 01 February 2020 – St Leonards-on-Sea.

I was contacted earlier in the year by Mark who I met at a Walthamstow Rock n Roll book club event last year. One of his friends has been looking at flats in St Leonards and has made an offer on a place not too far from mine. He wanted to know what I thought of the town, so I gave him a run down on St Leonards and mentioned The Piper had recently opened and had some quite good gigs. A couple of weeks back mark got in contact to see if I wanted to go and see the band Penelope Isles at The Piper. I said yes, so tonight we did.

I offered Mark the flat’s spare room for the night, our first overnight visitor since my sister stayed in May. We left for dinner soon after Mark arrived at the flat, choosing to eat at The Royal; a recently refurbished, re-opened, turned into a London priced gastro-pub near Warrior Square station. The food is very very good, worth the price, and it is an enjoyable place to eat in too.

We arrived at The Piper about 9:00, time enough to catch the last couple of songs of the first band Hanya, they were OK. I didn’t hear enough of them to form a proper opinion. The pub was packed and I heard one of the organisers say that the 145 capacity venue was sold out. El and I found a spot at that back, we could still see OK, but it was slightly less crowded and the sound at the venue has always been good no matter where you stand.

I went closer to the front for a couple of songs of the second band, Winter Garden. They weren’t really my cup of tea, nothing wrong with them, they had a very good guitarist, but the songs didn’t really set me on fire. I did like some of the guitar and looped synth noodling between songs, there was a great gothy noodle of the intro to Neil Young’s ‘Hey hey my my’ that would have been a good cover, though it was just an in between song thing sadly.

I have listened to Penelope Isles debut LP ‘Until the tide creeps in’ a few times in the past couple of days. It is OK, a gentle dream pop LP, something to listen to and enjoy, though it didn’t catch my attention as immediately as the Hey Colossus LP (the last band I saw at The Piper) did. Though after seeing them live, performing most of those songs, a grittier production would have suited that record better in my very non-expert, but very biased opnion.

They have some very good songs, but the LP is a little too shiny for my taste. The track ‘Gnarbone’ was so much punchier live, a highlight of their set. The recorded version does not capture the possibilities the song offers; noise, feedback, looped pedal generated squeals, all the things I like from a live band. I have no desire to see a band doing their studio thing!

Noisy squealy feedback things during Gnarbone.

I very much enjoyed their set; they are a great live band. What set them apart from the other bands that performed tonight, apart from the songs; was stage presence, they really know what they are doing, and how to work the crowd. There was nothing they did that was massively different to the support acts, but what they did do, they did so much better.

El and I both went to the front for their set, standing to one side, against the wall. I had the GX800 camera with a fast lens, so it was great for low light. The lens is not very wide and as the place was packed it would not have been any use if I stood in front of the band, so I stayed were I was and just took photos from there.

Unusually for The Piper the light was really good, thanks to some visuals from Brighton’s Innerstrings. I have been to shows with their light system before, most recently a gig in Dalston, and it does make a massive difference. I hope they come back to The Piper

I suspect Penelope Isles will be big one day, so go see them while you have the chance to see them in a small room. Small rooms are always best.

Newport, Wales

23 January 2020 – Newport, Wales.

Newport was an unusual place for me to visit. It wasn’t (and still isn’t) on, let alone high on, my ‘must go to’ list. However, it was good to get the opportunity to go there when the boss suggested we visit the data team at the ONS (Office of National Statistics), a government department we do some work with. They are ahead of us in a number of areas, so we wanted to see them in location and pick their brains. It was also a chance to spend some time out of the office together and for a bit of team bonding; i.e. sit in the pub over a glass of wine or two…

It was also a very good opportunity to take more photos out of the window as the train moved through the countryside. I have experimented with this in the past, and had recently decided to investigate this again as a possible photographic project.

This project was partly inspired by the recent purchase of the 1997 record by the Montreal based post-rock band, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. There are different versions of the cover, and this one makes me think of long distance train travel, through somewhere sparse and empty. The accompanying music suits the image just fine, and sparseness in both image and music suits me just fine.

I had the GX800 camera with a wide angle lens with me and took a number of photos out of the window as we traveled west towards Newport in South Wales in the early afternoon. This has been edited a bit in Lightroom, all of my photos are; but not by much, conversion to black and white, a bit of a crop and some tonal adjustments. I was pretty happy I managed to capture the spirit of the LP cover!

We arrived in Newport around 4:00, and after dumping bags and laptops at the Travelodge by the station we left for a walk to explore a little of the town, before an early dinner and couple of glasses of wine in the Wetherspoons over the road from the hotel. Newport is on the River Usk and we wandered down to the water front first. The river is not the most scenic, I am guessing it reasonably shallow and sand or mud based, and quite fast flowing. It was very brown. I can almost see why it has been cut off from the rest of the town by a busy, hard to cross road. More on those roads later.

The town is run down, it was a grey late afternoon, and it was not hard to feel a bit low and feel a bit for the people of Newport. We ate very early in an Indian restaurant at the far end of what I am guessing is the high street. We were the only people there.

Walking back to the pub next the hotel we passed too few people, too many closed shops and the pubs and restaurants that were open were pretty deserted. The pub was half full, mostly middle aged men drinking cheap pints. The three of us (metropolitan liberal elites from London) drank red wine. There was only three bottles on the shelf and we drank two of them, hopefully they had more hidden away else we depleted there stock. Not a lot of call for red wine in a Newport Wetherspoons?. It was not a joyous place, but neither was it a sad or miserable place. It was an early night.

We had arranged to meet at 8:30 for breakfast at the nearby McDonalds; no expense spared on a work trip! before grabbing a taxi for our day of meetings. I had had a poor sleep and had been awake since 4 or 5 am so got up at 6:45, had a shower and a coffee and wandered off out for a walk soon after it was light. It was grey, cold, dank, again.

I went back down to the river to have a look at the ruins of an old fort on the riverbank. The light seemed perfectly adequate for taking photos, especially at 1600 ISO, but it was difficult and a lot of the images I took were blurry. There was a lot of deletion.

I found a series of tunnels crossing under the busy main road between the town and the river, all meeting in a roundel in the middle, like a smaller version of the bear pit in Bristol; and not as well looked after. This little corner of Newport is just one big collection of roads.

There are some nice buildings in the centre, it was a wealthy river port town in its heyday and there was obviously some wealth here.

Crossing under another main road, this one separating the station from the town, I was soon walking up hill.

There is a tall tower looming over the station side of the town which I noticed when we arrived, I had 15 minutes left before meeting the guys so wanted to see what it was. I found it easily enough; there was nothing else that high!

It is part of the council buildings, and it is a pretty cool tower. It must have had some purpose, though I have no idea what it was, or is. Reading about it, I think it is just there to be a vanity tower, and it was certainly controversial when it was built with many residents not wanting it.

It was time to meet my work colleagues back at the hotel, looping around the other end of the central train station, and meeting another busy road.

I know Newport is not a tourist town, and it will unlikely ever be. It is very much a car town. Like Hastings there is a station and buses, maybe they don’t go where people want them to go so they drive. Everywhere. Leading to roads and roads, and more roads, and a pretty rubbish experience for walkers. Sad.

The work part of the day was pretty good, we had meetings with two different teams from the ONS, talking to them about data, data management and governance. It was far more interesting than it sounds here 🙂

I experimented with a few more photos out the train window on the way home, I think the monochrome look is much closer to the one I want, and I definitely want the focus to be on the window rather than the countryside. Weird as that sounds.

The top one is my favorite from the day as it has the unusual focus I want and some of the reflection from the lights inside the carriage to enhance the feel of rapid movement and a snap observation of the outside world.

The Clash, London Calling @ The Museum of London

19 January 2020 – London.

Opening with a twice repeated ratatat burst of snare drum, followed by quick fire down and up strum of overdriven distorted six string and bass guitars, mimicking the sound of that famous weapon; Tommy Gun burst into the ear drums of the 17 year old me. The music, the words, the voice; this was everything that had been missing in music. Working class, political punk rock snarl at its finest.

My memory is poor, but I do remember this song being played two weeks in a row on the Barry Jenkin’s hosted Radio with Pictures TV show in New Zealand. I am pretty sure no other song was treated with such reverence. It is a good song, my favourite song by The Clash; and they wrote a lot of very good songs.

Tommy Gun was the the first track on ‘Give ‘em enough rope’, The Clash’s second LP. It was released in 1978 and was the first LP I bought with my own money, I am guessing I bought it very early in 1979. I am imagining that I had the first album on a cassette, taped off a friends older brother’s record. I didn’t buy that first LP until much later. Cassettes worked just as well for my teenage years (and teenage ears); plus I could play cassettes on my walkman or the small single speaker boombox I had in the early 80s. Music portability was as important then as it is now.

The third album, London Calling, was released in 1979 and the song and video for the title track were on fairly high rotate, at least on the TV and radio channels aimed at me and my tastes. I loved the song, though recently went off it due to over playing. I bought the album at the time, but was pretty disappointed with it not being as ‘punk’ as I wanted, I never really got over that. Eventually going off The Clash.

All my records were stolen in a burglary in 1981, and I didn’t replace London Calling, though I did buy the first two LPs again, then sold them with most of my collection in 1985 when I moved to England for the first time. Replacing them yet again between then and now, and now I can only find ‘Give ‘em enough rope’, and the single.

The Museum of London is holding a small, free exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of the release of London Calling. Black Market Clash was another small exhibition in Soho of The Clash memorabilia that El and I visited back in 2013. It had a slightly different focus to this one so it was good to see some different things. The famous bass from the London Calling album cover was at both. As it should be, the finest album cover of all time. Apparently Pennie Smith, the photographer who took this photo in New York did not want them to use it for the cover as it is too out of focus! It is one of the best rock photos ever; capturing the energy, the anger, the frustration of that show.

Every few months our Walthamstow social group do some sort of day time social activity, usually involving an exhibition, a walk and some food and/or drink. Today eleven of us caught the train to Liverpool St and walked to the museum via the Barbican. I love the Barbican, though haven’t been there for a good explore for quite a quite a while. I will have to go back again.

The exhibition was good; busy, with a lot of middle aged men and women walking down memory lane. As I mentioned above it was not big, there were three guitars, some photos, clothing, a couple of screens, some smaller memorabilia, notebooks and lyric sheets.

Even though it is a long way from my favourite The Clash LP I very much enjoyed the exhibits, and it was great checking them out with a group of friends who all had similar, youthful tastes in music.

The exhibition displayed a very good map of Clash London, places they hung out, rehearsed, gigged and recorded. I discovered that the London Calling rehearsal studio from 1978 was in a building I walk past every day I go to work. The now ‘London Dioceses House’ (rather ironic) at 36 Caulston St in Pimlico.

After a coffee and a long chat we left the museum of London with half of us going to a food hall off Brick Lane for lunch. I haven’t been to Brick Lane for ages, I could not believe how many people were there. It was a really nice day so I guess it was a good day to be out. And it is tourist central these days.

We walked back to Liverpool St via a passage in the back of one of the office blocks that runs alongside the station. Another place to come back to with the camera…

Christmas in St Leonards

20 December 2019 – St Leonards.

In a departure from the norm El and I decided to have Christmas Day at the flat, on our own. We both had the week off work and wanted to get away for some, if not all of that time. We gave plenty of notice to El’s sons and they arranged to have Christmas Day with their partners family, so we had ‘family’ Christmas the Saturday before and on Sunday morning I packed the car and drove down to the flat. El followed me down on the train later that day. She is a season ticket holder at Tottenham Hotspur, and wasn’t going to miss a home game. I got the flat in order, while she had fun at the football.

This was going to be a week of doing not a lot; reading books, watching TV, cooking, eating too much and drinking almost too much, all balanced with the occasional walk. I drove down as we had a car load of stuff; Christmas presents for each other (we broke all the buying each other presents rules), a load of records to listen to and a lot of food and drink to be consumed over the week. I wanted to do as little supermarket shopping while we there as possible.

The first thing we did on Monday morning was walk over to Hastings. I wanted to get the supermarket shopping done as early as possible, while the head was in the right space for hitting a supermarket on the busiest day of the year. It was busy, very busy, but we survived and it was not as awful as it could have been. The good thing was all the food shopping for the week was done.

I took photos on the way.

Christmas day was a stunner, from memory the best weather I have seen on a Christmas day since I have been in London. An almost cloudless sky and very little wind, it was too good to be sat inside all day.

After breakfast we went for a walk along the sea front, along with pretty much everyone else who was in St Leonards and Hastings. The rest of the day was spent either preparing or eating food. I have never prepared Christmas lunch before, though very much enjoyed it. It was the most complex meal I have made with a vegetable wellington, and two different types of vegetable; followed by a form of Eton Mess. The Wellington was great, though I was a little disappointed that the brussell sprout dish ended up being a bit cold by the time I had finished serving. I like working in my small kitchen. Lots of TV, wine and brandy followed. It was a good day.

I was really surprised to see surfers on out on our Boxing Day walk. There are always paddle boarders out, but I am pretty sure this is the first time I have seen surfers. It is probably the first time I have seen a decent even, though small, break. We ate a lot again…

The following day we walked the opposite way, towards Bexhill, but only going as far as Bulverhythe beach before turning back. I took the Polaroid along. I am enjoying playing with this camera, I am never quite sure what is going to come out, which makes it quite interesting. Not sure why I started writing names on the Polaroids, I won’t be doing it again.

As we were walking on the beach I was telling El about hagstones and the hagstone curse. A hagstone is a stone with a natural hole in it, they are of course, fairly uncommon. Aleister Crowley, the (in)famous occultist who died in Hastings in 1947 once cursed the town saying, and I massively paraphrase, ‘No-one can fully leave Hastings unless they have found a hagstone on the beach, and if they do leave they will end up coming back’. I guess I will be able to leave Hastings, as unbelievably, minutes after talking about this I found one.

I am starting to collect photographs of the ever changing beach and the way the sea changes the pebbles. I really like how the beach is slowly burying the beach furniture. The irony of the sign is beyond humorous.

Having driven down from London for a change it was good to have the use of the car to drive over to Pevensey Bay for a walk, and a visit to the castle; which was closed. I will have to go back one day when it is open, and will then write a bit about it then. Working on the assumption that I will keep maintaining this blog. The castle was pretty cool, mostly Norman in origin; it was built soon after William invaded England in 1066.

I liked the church as well.

There were a few cracking sunsets during the week and I am glad I took the big camera with the big lens, as well as the small camera and the Polaroid. So many cameras!

It was a really good week, and it was a real shame to go back to London to go back to work after the week was over.

It was good to have Christmas at the flat!