Mirrors

Peripatetic Postings is the virtual space in which occasional random, disparate strands of yarn are plucked from the time-worn fabric of the lives of two middle-aged men who like, among other things, their photography, then woven together, just for fun.

Dave, as those of you who are reading his journal this week will know, is, voluntarily, sensorily deprived, working long hours, mostly in the dark, which would explain his recent appreciation of the crisply delineated early morning light this October has been heaping upon our sceptred isle.

Even though he and I are now separated geographically, on Thursday evening I felt I’d made contact with at least an echo of my old mate. It was when I visited one of our common venues this week, when the delightful Emma (the boss) made her usual thoroughly professional job of cutting my wayward hair, which nowadays is an assortment of grey which grows at alarmingly different rates across my head.

As a photographer, I often like playing with mirror shots. Keeping my head as still and level as I could, I lowered my eyes to focus on an arrangement of scissors lying on the glass shelf in front of me. Once the cut was over, I explained my intention. Emma’s reaction was, thoughtfully, to clean the work surface, so that I could make a neater picture. It was all part of the service-with-a-smile attitude prevalent at my local branch of Sweeney Todd’s.

Tea time

If cups of tea and slices of cake are mandatory on Fab Four Days Out, imagine what happens on a Fab Four Long Weekend. If you can't, Dave's post below offers an insight.

This snapshot was carefully set up by the ever resourceful Sparkly, who improvised, ingeniously, a miniature camera platform using three sachets of sugar wedged under the lens of my pocket-sized point-and-shoot, which had been in danger of toppling forward onto the table and cutting our heads off, pictorially speaking.

The self-timer did the rest, while we four grinned at a brightly blinking orange led, wondering when the camera would actually go off. I leave you with the evidence, recorded in the below-mentioned Polly’s Café, Thirsk, on our way up North.

Feeding the Hungry Two

For a change I thought we'd get away from the obsession with cake and have a look at what Pixie and Sparkly consume during our Fab 4 days out (these are, in effect, augmented BDOs, with added shopping and bargain hunting and lots of male hanging-about at previously agreed rendezvous points).

So here it is, the traditional Yorkshire Pudding, served on its own and filled with thick onion gravy. The venue was Polly's Cafe in Thirsk, North Yorkshire and jolly fine food it was. It kept them quiet for a while (where while is defined as a period of time greater than a moment but shorter than long enough).