Riding the Waves to Eternity

A quicky.

I have been silent as I have been away on business.  I am going to say no more because I never know who is reading this but suffice to say it was the first time that I have bumped knuckles and said “respect” to someone – actually several people – without feeling like an ass.

There will come a point where I will write more because aspects of the trip impacted on me really quite profoundly and was the sort of experience for which blogging – at leat this blog – was meant.  Sorry to be vague and allusive.  Watch this space.

So, 2012 then.  Frankly, I’m still struggling to cope with the fact that we are into the second decade of the 21st Century.

living in the past

The first eight days have been a bit dull to be honest, so dull that I effectively went back to work before the holiday period was done.  The dreadful weather didn’t help of course and working seemed a decent way to stave off cabin fever.

Still, I did have a minor triumph today in knocking down the price of our cable/broadband package while upgrading the service we receive (hello 30Meg broadband, hello HD TV) although on reflection it was so easy that I now wonder what more I could have got had I been more argumentative and awkward.

Just for once it paid to read junk mail: I normally put it straight into the bin but on this occasion I checked the deal being offered to new customers of my existing provider and realised that it was better than the one I have and considerably cheaper.  Virgin Media customer services didn’t even bother to argue, hence my wondering about what else might have been on offer.

out t'back

I got the first roll of film back that I ran through a Contax 139Q that I picked up from eBay.  I’m quite pleased with the shots although I am trying to work out if there is a slight tendency towards over-exposure .

In stark contrast to last year, we have had little snow this winter but the shot to the left, which started of as a colour pic., was taken on the day that we had some.   Although the colour original looks overexposed on the scan it didn’t take much to bring up some detail and contrast in Lightroom so the apparent over-exposure may be an artefact of the scanning process.

I ran a comparison of the suggested metre readings from all of my cameras a couple of weeks ago and most were in agreement with each other.  Although the 139 did seem to give a marginally different reading to the Canons, which have recently been serviced and calibrated, it wasn’t by much (maybe 1/3 stop) and seemed to tally with the reading from my Leica digital.

I am well aware that it is the photographer not the camera that makes the shots but it does help to know how the camera is likely to react in any given circumstance.  All that being so, I am so enjoying the journey back to film that I am toying with investing in a scanner to copy my old negatives and slides to digital files.

A year ago I blogged that I was going to see in the New Year through a veil of Lemsip and handkerchiefs. Despite that I wrote:

But let’s leave the negatives behind. I have reason to believe that 2011 will be a good year and that is where my focus is now both for myself and for all of you. So that’s it for 2010: farewell to the old year and welcome the new.

A pocket full of money and a cellar full of beer
I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

It has indeed been a good year for me and when I wrote that post I already knew that I would be waving farewell to 27 1/2 years in the public sector and starting life anew in the Spring.  Which seems appropriate somehow: I firmly believe that one should reinvent oneself every so often and the turning of the years and the anticipation of the Spring rebirth is a good time to do it.

Happy New Year

I am not a person who who feels the need to ritualise a lot of stuff in any formal way, but it is nevertheless the case that the old ritual year with its base in the cycles of the seasons in a rural economy speak to deep-rooted instincts, I think.  Part of the power of ritual and myth is precisely that it has evolved to speak in that way – unsuccesful myths don’t get internalised and re-enacted and whither into the unknown and meaningless rituals lose their power and survive only as unsymbolic performances which have no resonance.

But that is all for another post, maybe.

I am fortunate to be able to say that 2011 was a good year for me and I am optimistic that 2012 will continue in the same way.  I’m never sure how many people ever read the stuff that I write here but for those that do, here’s wishing you a contended but stimulating 2012.

Holmfirth 2006

I passed a pleasant hour or so  this morning watching the excellent Way of the Morris, a documentary by Tim Plester ostensibly about the Adderbury Village Morris Men but, as with the best such films, resonating in all sorts of areas.

One of the areas that it focused on was Morris Dance as an expression of English identity, albeit that the European spread of similar dances was also drawn out.   What is not usually commented on is the presence of Morris Dancing in Pre-Reformation Scotland.

That there was dancing of that name in Scotland is not in doubt.  The earliest reference of which I know is in the Scots Treasury accounts for 1501-02 which records a payment

To the men that brocht in the morice dance, and to thair menstralis; 1501–2 Treas. Acc. II. 135.

And there are a number of similar references in accounts and occasionally in literature through to at least 1617. Unfortunately we have no evidence of what this dance entailed or how widespread it was.   The fact that it is predominantly mentioned in Treasury Books has led to at least one suggestion (I can’t remember the source) that it was a predominantly courtly dance rather than more widespread.  In my view a valid counter-argument is that they are the principal records to have survived (or even to have been kept) and hence the lack of other evidence is not itself testimony to anything other than the poverty of the materials available to us.

The Fool

Although we have no records of the dances the records are suggestive: the Edinburgh Accounts Books for 1590 record an event put on for Anne of Denmark at which it seems there where 12 dancers in white shoes and for whom it appears 12 ‘hattis of flouris’ were provided. A record from 1508 suggests that  ‘woman’ character – perhaps what we would now call a Dame or a Betty – seems to have been involved as well as a fool.  This may be viewing the past with a modern gloss however.

More generally, though, we can infer the existence of a lively set of communal traditions from the extensive efforts by the Post-Reformation Kirk to stamp them out!  These traditions point to a Scottish past with greater tie in to the European mainstream than is generally realised (though as a seafaring trading nation it really should be no surprise).

Alas for the Reformation!  As the Taliban destroyed ancient Buddhist statuary, the Kirk and its counterparts destroyed and vandalised an ecclesiastical and secular artistic heritage with the attention to detail of a zealot and the absolutely certainty of the self-righteous.  It is difficult to think of a more significant erasure of European life and culture until the First World War wreaked its madness (another theme of Way of the Morris).

It is a mark of the success of the Reformation that so little trace remains of Scottish heritage – at least in the Lowlands; the Highlands had their own scouring – to the extent that suggestions of the Morris in Scotland are routinely mocked and scoffed at, frequently abusively, today.  It is an absurd irony that in the attempts to forge a faux Celtic mythology for Scottish popular culture its true richness is routinely ignored and denied.

I usually get reflective at this time of year and today is no different.  Generally I have things buzzing around in my head to write here but more often than not they don’t coalesce into a post and I thought that might be the way this time but here we are.

I was originally simply going to repost something I extemporised over on Facebook a few days ago in a mutual old-fart self validation session which read:

We were the ones who watched the Old Grey Whistle Test; the ones who remember when Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road were new; who heard Close to the Edge and Foxtrot when they were released and tried to play Sylvia on guitar like Jan Akkermann. We were the ones who saw Roxy Music on Arena, rocked out to Dr Feelgood and the Ramones and first heard Jilted John and the Clash on John Peel. We know that the Doctors of Madness were the missing link between prog and punk. The Last Waltz was current, not a historical curiosity, We remember a day when the UK has an industrial base and there was a reasonable chance of finding a decent job straight from school if you weren’t going to University. And in my head I am still there…

It might have ended there but I spent a pleasant afternoon with Cathy Maclean at the Malt Whisky Society in Edinburgh this afternoon and, as it often does with Cathy, the conversation took a turn.  We were talking about family history, hers in the Hebrides and mine all over the place.  Pressed men turned up as Chiefs of Police in the far east; clerk bandsmen in the Dragoons were invalided out of the Army when they became too fat to sit on a horse.  It occured to me (or I reminded myself) of all of the things from my own childhood which are now gone.

I remembered getting a ride on the boilerplate of a steam engine driven by my dad’s Uncle George which ran from Stanley to Consett in County Durham taking coal one way and steel the other.  Now there are no steam trains, no steel making and no coal mining.  The railway line is a cycle track I think.  The town co-op store is now at Beamish Museum.   On my Mum’s side the agricultural labourers came from Hertfordshire to Derby to build steam trains and carriages and the railway industry in Derby is still there but is attenuated.

Bennet's Bar; Edinburgh

All of these things are gone and they have gone in my lifetime.  All of the things which formed the heart of the industrial Britain into which I was born in 1959 are gone just as the rural world which survived through to WW2 has gone too.  All as much part of history to today’s generation as an Edwardian children’s story was to me in my time.  My children were born into a Britain which builds no trains, mills no steel, makes no ships and mines no coal; they have never known differently just as they have never known a world without an internet.

As I write I am listening to one of the BBC’s magnificent New Radio Ballads from last decade.  It so happens that it is 2010′s magnificent The Ballad of the Miners’ Strike that I’m playing but could have been any of them.   I am not sure that we ever really realise that we are, to use the cliche, living while history is being made.  Listening to these tales set against music and songs from the folk tradition it strikes home.

I’ve written about this on the blog before (starting in 2003).  Re-reading those posts I don’t see any reason to resile from any of it.  I wrote (slightly edited):

26 January 2003

Re-reading yesterday’s posting I had a flashback to a conversation in the late seventies in the front room of the Gatehouse at Coates Hall. The conversation was around the then fashionable notion that the silicon chip and accessible computing would herald the dawn of the leisure economy and the strains this would bring before we managed to create a society free of the tyranny of having to work for a living. We failed to anticipate the extent to which it would become a ‘sit around on your arse and hope for a big lottery win’ economy.

I think one of the key things which we did not then appreciate (remember Mrs. Thatcher did not become Prime Minister until 1979) was the extent to which the core industrial infrastructure would not simply be allowed to disappear but would be tacitly encouraged to do so as a function of monetarist ideology and competition legislation. The importance of this industrial infrastructure was that it also underpinned the social infrastructure and therefore an ethical infrastructure (by which I do not mean any particular set of moral values but rather the bigger picture of social interactions within which behaviours were judged).

Some of my words yesterday might appear to be sentimental yearning for the noble toil of the working classes. That wasn’t my intent. I do think though that growing up without any expectation of economic opportunity has destroyed the outlook and prospects of at least two generations in the UK and provided conditions for many of our other social problems to take hold and fester.

And so Merry Christmas.  I do not mean that sardonically.  It is precisely because so much has gone that I get more traditionalist in my own way in the holiday season – not the tat and crap that goes down but a celebration of what survives and is good: family. And, in the depth of winter, the passing of the old year and the coming of the new and the promise of rebirth in the Spring.

I have just returned from the US with a heap of work to get finished before Christmas.  Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible – or at least as soon as that work is out of the way!

Smile!

It is getting chillier; no great surprise in December of course but a shock to the system after an unusually mild November.  This time last year we were on the cusp of the heaviest snowfall Edinburgh has seen for several decades.

It was nice to be out though, and nice to be over in Morningside again where I was picking up my fantastically refurbished and serviced Canon AT1.  It had been refurbished in part with parts from a non-functional AT1 which I bought off eBay (although I didn’t know it was non-functional when I bought it).  The same cannibalised camera will also provide at least one spare part for my Canon A1 which went into the workshop to be sorted out today.

The AT1 is now loaded with Ilford HP5 black and white film and has been reacquainted with a f1.4 50 mm lens.  I only ran a couple of shots through but it was great to feel its heft and weight in my hand again and look through the viewfinder at the classic ‘match-needle’ meter display.

I think my camera acquisition is at an end for the moment.  By next weekend I will have four functioning SLRs, one non-functioning SLR which I’ll get sorted in the new year and, I hope, a Kiev4m rangefinder which with any luck will even be working.  My plan is to load the Kiev with either Tri-X Pan or the Rollei 400 Retro film which is made by Agfa.

God rest Ye Merry Merchants...

In any event I have no excuse for not now making the best of a good selection of equipment which will handle pretty much any situation which I can imagine in the areas which interest me – which are effectively available light street and landscape photography and random portraiture.

*

I have in the past acquired something of a reputation as a grump at Christmas, and I suppose the fact that I used to keep a jar of humbugs on my desk during the festive season did not help much in dispelling that impression.

In fact I have, in my dotage, come to appreciate Christmas more and especially the classic Christmas verities based around the family.   I have for a long time made it a point to make my mince pies on Christmas Eve (and various blog posts over the years since 2002 record that) and it goes without saying that the Christmas Dr. Who is a fixed point in the day – usually the only  reason I tolerate having the television switched on at all.

I am particularly keen that Christmas decorations are put up in the week before Christmas (not the month before Christmas) and I prefer not to have my visits to town interrupted by an overabundance of jollity.  I will make an exception for Salvation Army brass bands because I enjoy brass bands at any time.

This year I have fallen off the wagon a little though with the discovery in the cupboard of an unopened bottle of mulled wine from last year.  Kirstin and I have just polished it off from mugs bought at Christkindlmarkt stalls in Vienna in December 2008 – which is a good excuse to post the photos below.

A couple of weeks ago I popped some film into Jessops to be developed.  I didn’t know anything about them except that they were black and white and had been in the back of a drawer for a long time.  I got the pics back today and am really please with what was there.

Lindsay

For a start, the films can be dated pretty much precisely because many of the pics are of Lindsay as a baby – so the earliest they can be is July 1989.  Also, because over the years the emulsion has degraded, sometimes in interesting ways, the pics have a nice quality about them which is a bit out of the ordinary.  Finally, I was pleased by how many of them stood up as photographs, irrespective of any sentimental value.

All of them were taken on my Canon AT1 on either Agfa Pan 100 or Ilford FP4.  Some of the Agfa Pan ones were pulled to 25ASA (according to a scrap of paper in one of the film containers)  I think the shot of Lindsay here is one of the 25ASA ones.

I have played with the shot of Lindsay a little – the emulsion degradation meant that the shots came out over-exposed so I knocked that back a bit and deepened the blacks a little.  I like this portrait a lot though.

Not only do I think it has captured her well, I like the composition (think rule of thirds) and the direct look in her eye.

Kirkcudbright-shire

This next shot has also been tweaked slightly to deepen the blacks and to simulate a gold toned print.  I like the simplicity of the shot as well as the effects of the emulsion degradation on the textures.  This pic is from 1990 when we had our first summer holiday with Lindsay.  We stayed in a cottage by Dalbeatie in Kirkcudbright-shire for a couple of weeks (I think, it might only have been a week).

As far as I can remember, at that time I usually had colour film loaded into my Canon A1 and Black and White in my AT1.  The colour pics were all developed at the time so these films must just have somehow never quite been handy when I went to the developers.

All of this, of course, deepens my resolve to use my 35mm cameras again.  I took the AT1 into a local repair shop for a good clean and service today and will sort out my other Canons over the next couple of months.  The Contax 139Q that I got from eBay has a film in it at the moment which is being used for some random shots that I’ll get processed soon – mostly to check the exposure and the light seals before I start to use it in earnest.

The Lads

Meanwhile, here are a couple of the lads modelling for your viewing pleasure! The Contax in particular is resplendent in a new leatherette covering to replace the old covering which was badly worn. Unfortunately the Canon is non-functional until I save up the pennies to get it sorted.

The hacking scandal” has become part of the backdrop to this year and amidst all of the hulaballoo it is easy to forget what is at the heart of the issue.  In the last two days Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan have ceen the celebrity witnesses but I found myself particularly moved and appalled by the statement of the Dowler family.

It is really worth taking the time to read it and to reflect on the experience of the family and the issues it raises.

And then boycott the hell out of News International and any other news organisation which is demonstrated to be complicit in this behaviour.

Steve Howe

It has been a bit of a gig-tastic couple of days with Martin Carthy at Edinburgh Folk Club last Wednesday night and Yes in Glasgow last night.

Aside from the obvious difference in musical forms it was also interesting because Carthy and the senior members of Yes are of the same age and generation.

Although the Yes gig was a good night out it was not the best Yes show I have seen: rather the opposite.  That isn’t to say that it was bad, just that usually Yes live rock my socks off and last night they didn’t.  Although the show had several highlights – a good version of “And You and I” and some great stuff from the new album (including a great version of the title track) it had some lowlights too. My pal Brian and I reckon that they were having some kind of problem with the on-stage sound but I think it may also be to do with them getting no younger.

The opener, the usually thrilling “Yours is no Disgrace” kicked off at about 2/3 its usual tempo and was in serious need of its own zimmer frame until the pace cranked up during and after an extended solo from Steve Howe.  “Wonderous Stories”, which is a song I like, was distinctly ropey.  The night did pick up towards the end, though, when the audience took it into its own hands to get in front of the stage during “Starship Trooper” and the inevitable encore of “Roundabout” and at the end there was genuine pleasure on the face of the band that they’d pulled it off.

10/10 for determination and professionalism but 6.5/10 for the end result.

Dr. Carthy

Martin Carthy, by contrast, was on stage by himself in a small room with naught but 200 years of material to choose from.  He was on very good form and filled his time effortlessly.

Despite protesting that he “isn’t really an instrumentalist” he proceeded to demonstrate conclusively the opposite.  I didn’t note down a setlist but My Son John was a beauty, as was the Blind Harper of Lochmaben.  The Tailor’s Britches came out of nowhere and he finished off with a storming Prince Heathen.

Instrumentally, tunes included Heroes of St Valery/Retreat from St Valery, The Downfall of Paris, Swaggering Boney and The Bloody Fields of Flanders (The Freedom Come Aa’ Ye).

The contrast between Steve Howe and Martin Carthy was interesting in another way – both were playing their signature Martin guitars and Carthy had a much better sound – he actually sounded like he was playing an acoustic guitar.  His playing style, is off course, completely different to Howe’s and he especially concentrates on stripping the tune down to its essentials and catching the momentum of the piece.

Anyway, I’ll finish this off with two clips of Carthy in action with The Downfall of Paris and then the Harry Lime Theme.