Peripatetic Postings

New wave

2009-12-26T10:46:00.003Z

"We wish you a Merry Christmas".

From left to right: Sparkly, Peter, Pixie & Dave.

Christmas Morning Stroll with Arty Bits

2009-12-25T12:41:00.005Z

This morning we indulged, for the first time, in a FFCMS (Fab Four Christmas Morning Stroll). The sky was blue, the air crisp and the sun scudded invitingly across the frosted fields. We had scarves, and gloves, and suitable footwear (as found in all good walking shops). We also had Pixie Wimpy, a timid creature, much afrighted by the workings of old Jack Frost underfoot. She tiptoed along, ably supported by two lusty fellows.

Anyway, enough of this nonsense. Sparkly found some splendid ice in the ruts of the cabbage patch (cabbage patch? Where's Mrs Tiggywinkle?). Held up to the light it made a splendid subject for Peter's artful eye and here we see exactly how it was done. What colour, what poise, what gloves

Harmonious Harmonium

2009-07-28T18:40:00.006+01:00

Well, if you haven't got a lighting stand with you, just improvise. A couple of chairs and ten hassocks gave me the height I needed for the shot of the keyboard below, as Dave's record of my setup shows.

What attracted my attention today in All Saints Church, Clehonger, Herefordshire, was the legend "Brattleboro, VT". It's the name of a town in New England. Various of my American friends have taken me there on more than one occasion. I don't yet know how the Esley Organ Company of that place exported their Harmoniums to Victorian England. Perhaps some of you can answer that for me?

Welsh Wales

2009-02-16T23:03:00.006Z

It seems a long time since we last wrote up one of our BDOs. In fact today was more than a mere ordinary BDO as we ventured further afield than usual, crossing the lightly defended border into Welsh Wales. So it was an EBDO where E can mean anything that takes your fancy although Extended seems a safe bet.

After a pleasant stooge around the valleys looking for industrial relics and rows of exquisitely lit, miner's cottages, we headed north over the mountains and down to Talybont-on-Usk. There, sheltering under a small lattice-work bridge, I found some reflections which I found compellingly attractive. I toyed with them for a few minutes, a process which Peter has captured for posterity.

(A note for students of photographer fashion. I am wearing my winter photography apparel which, in essence, consists of an Austrian deer poachers coat. It is extremely warm, exudes a strange woolly smell and weighs as much as a small moose. It includes, along with the obvious deep pockets in which lenses, etc, can be disported*, a large, through aperture at the back in which could be secreted a pheasant or some other denizen of the woods - a hare, rabbit, large vole, who knows. Never know when that might prove useful).

*(PS. Since composing this post I have had the chance to look up the word 'disport'. It means: 'To amuse (oneself) in a light, frolicsome manner'. Now while I have no evidence that my lenses are not amusing themselves at the bottom of my dark, lint-infested pockets, it seems unlikely. Therefore I must conclude that 'disport' was not the word I intended.

I apologise unreservedly if anyone has been led astray. I am substituting the word 'disported' with the word 'lodged' which I feel is more in line with my original intention).

At Full Stretch

2008-08-07T21:35:00.003+01:00

Evidence, if it were needed, of Peter's endeavour as he leads Chris to the summit of the long, slightly uphill, against-the-wind, climb from Toddington to Shetcombe cross-roads.

It's not all tea-and-cakes on a BDOOB (or, for that matter, fun-and-frolics).

Boys' Day Out on Bikes

2008-08-07T08:38:00.007+01:00

Yesterday’s BDOOB had been planned for some time. Guest day-tripper Chris joined us. He’s a man with a very demanding work schedule, so we booked him in with all the necessary advance warning.

Our cycle route was planned by master orienteer Dave, with a virtually infallible eye for wind resistance, rainfall, minimum gradients and road safety. They don’t call him “four eyes” for nothing.

My lowly ambitions were twofold: to complete a twenty mile round trip (that’s long distance for me), without being late for my guitar lesson, or dismounting for any inclines. I achieved them both, with a little help from my friends. Big Dave made an excellent windbreak at times, while Chris spotted that my saddle was too low, then adjusted it for me.

Naturally, the outing included the BDO staples: nerdy conversations about pedal bikes and their accessories, playing with digital cameras, and reminiscences of steam engines. At one point along the way, we suddenly all felt the need to sample some real ale, so a slight detour up and down a hill was considered a worthwhile exchange for a rest, one which involved quality control procedures on some very fine amber liquids in the beer garden of a village pub in Alderton.

Here you see us at the climax of the journey: three middle-aged blokes, happily inhaling the steamy trackside atmosphere at Toddington station, one end of the line of the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, a preservation society run by volunteers in the Cotswolds. Can you identify the really serious cyclist? Clue: look for the hi-tech footwear. Yes, those bare-naked calves of Chris’ have pumped up and down for many thousands of miles. So have Dave’s, but in a more modestly attired manner. Me? I just cycle in my old jeans and shoes. I’m most often seen operating in my spontaneous nip-to-the-local-shops-and-back mode.

Group of Three (Ignored)

2008-08-06T21:42:00.008+01:00

Peter is not one to miss a group of three except, it would appear, when he's stood right next to one. It's not surprising, though. I'm amazed my camera found anything in the murky audience at the gig we attended on Friday.

The wonders of twenty-first-century technology.

And all jolly good fun.

A room full of photographers

2008-08-05T20:21:00.006+01:00

I wrote, elsewhere, about preferring to record the tension back-stage at a recent gig in Stroud, one which Dave and I photographed, together with some others we'd never before met.

It could be argued that a room full of photographers simply added to the collective angst, since it’s long been an established theory that the mere presence of a purely passive observer, however objective, always has the potential to influence the dynamics of any situation.

So there we were, an illumination of photographers (to mint a collective noun), each bringing his or her own unique set of styles, skills and experience to the party, all of us consuming even more free space, adding bodies to the crowd, working around each other, all making our own individual images, never two the same, even of identical subjects.

It’s not the camera that makes the photograph, it’s the person behind it, as evidenced the portfolios.

Ash No More

2008-07-26T20:39:00.002+01:00

I've never smoked but I've nothing against smokers, weak-willed, self-harming folk that they are. We are all entitled to live our lives as we wish, as long as that wish does not impinge on the lives of others. Of course, there's the rub, because one man's smoke is another man's poison.

The desire to banish smoker's from any publicly accessible, indoor space has had an undesirable knock-on as far as I'm concerned, particularly in pubs. Where once they were spread throughout the premises, producing an overall but manageable fug, now they're all concentrated outside. It's often impossible to see one's companions in a beer garden thanks to the desperate, lung-shattering exhalations of the addicted surrounding you.

Anyway this lovely clean, sparkling ashtray beckoned. So I photographed it, as you must.

Big Dave, big camera

2008-07-26T07:21:00.003+01:00

While I was busy poking my lens into a set of garden chairs, Dave was studying the light in an ashtray. What more pleasing way for two grown men to pass the time over a drink in a shady corner of a pub than playing with their boys' toys?

Hemisphere of Light

2008-07-13T07:36:00.006+01:00

Dave really thinks about his lighting for television, constantly battling with the tension between what is technically possible and what his creative eye really wants to produce, in spite of the limitations of the medium and the budget. He still does, improving, to his credit, even specialist programmes such as poker, or indoor bowls.

Years ago, whenever possible, I used to book him as a resident guest lecturer on the lighting courses I ran. He brought his unique style to the learners, imparting hard-won secrets freely and generously to those learners whose knowledge, skill and experience fell far short of his, challenging, then empowering them, to produce a quality of pictures they never thought possible.

One of Dave’s original lighting theories was developed after countless critical observations of how light behaves in real life, as well as studying the craft by which those old Dutch Masters of painterly illumination constructed their interior scenes. He'd experimented with what could be done, in the genre called "Drama", to make sets, scenery and faces look natural in the artificial space of a TV studio. Dave introduced me to the term “Hemisphere of light”. It referred to the mushrooming, ballooning, and scattering in all directions of light through a window. Light shines up, as well as left, right and down. Look for yourself next time.

I was instantly reminded of Dave’s thesis when I saw this nicotine stained ceiling in a Malvern pub, uplit by said hemisphere of window-smashing photons. Dave and I sat supping and story-telling, satisfied with good ale, still interested in the fine details of our surroundings.

Q.E.D.

More Tea, Vicar?

2008-05-10T21:29:00.006+01:00

Swapping dainty teacups for mugs, the fearless duo swept through the wilds of Warwickshire hunting down the perfect cuppa. After breakfast at Rhubarb in Blackminster - sausage, bacon, egg, tomato, baked beans, black pudding, mushrooms and fried bread (with tea and, for a change, coffee, and also some food-swapping - I don't eat eggs or tomato and Peter passes on bread and sausages), we meandered to a spot of tea at this railway carriage in Little Milcote.

Having assuaged the bacon-induced thirst to some extent, we ventured to Preston-on-Stour (diet coke and a Fentiman's lemonade), then more tea at the airfield at Wellesbourne and a well-deserved cup of tea at Hatton lock on the Grand Union.

All this was mixed with two bouts of ecclesiastical image-making, a stroll by the canal, rice pudding and a toasted teacake - just a typical boys-day-out.

Tea for two

2008-04-19T18:50:00.000+01:00

A typical Boys’ Day Out (BDO) almost invariably involves a tea shop. The Old Stable is little more than a stone’s throw from my home. Dave and I found ourselves in need of a visit, late one recent Saturday afternoon. Well, our morning’s cooked breakfast had worn off by then, and we’d only had a light snack for lunch.

Happily tired from playing lighting games in a nearby church with our big cams, I simply stuck my little point-and-shoot on a self timer setting, plopped it atop a convenient table, then let it focus where it would, and expose for what it could. We assumed the position: cups and saucers at the ready. Dave waited for the flash. I didn’t, because I knew there wouldn’t be one.

A Bit of Old Wood

2008-04-19T18:13:00.002+01:00

As I've mentioned before, there are times when I grow concerned that Peter and I spend too much time surrounded by the arcane and subtle lures of religion. We had no sooner gained entry to the graceful little church of St Mary's, Hill Croome, than Peter was eyeing up the centuries-old Jacobean pulpit. I could sense his eagerness to get up there and pontificate. And why not; he's a fine speaker.

We needed an excuse and one was at hand. Earlier in the day I'd acquired, second-hand, another Nikon flashgun. I needed to try it out with the original and the ideal combo would be in a set-up sometimes called key and counter-key. On Peter's right was a small window emitting a feeble northern light. I helped it, not with a nourishing mug of chicken soup, but by bouncing one of my flashes off of the cream coloured surround. Over his left shoulder I fired off the second flash, direct and unmediated by any flaking paint finish. The result; a classic combination of a warm main light (the key, soft and bounced) and a hard, cold kick from behind, diagonally opposite (the counter-key or kicker). The candles were lit for effect; in reality the face is over lit for candle light. What surprised us both was how much light came back off the old wood, avoiding the need to treat it separately - normally dark wood soaks up illumination as eagerly as a cat licks up cream (or is it Guinness?).

Anyway, sorry about the technical rabbiting - just fancied doing it for a change rather than talking about the weather, or the state of British roads, or whether we will ever find out where it is in the universe that ball-point pens disappear to (along with small screwdrivers, lens caps and, in my case, shutter releases).

Little & large

2008-03-20T13:47:00.003Z

I believe there's plenty of room in a friendship to accommodate differences, as well as celebrate similarities.

Fleet of foot

2008-03-20T13:41:00.003Z

For a big man, Dave is remarkably quick and nimble: one minute he's standing right in front of you, the next, he's disappeared down the road, out of sight. Mind you, he's usually only gone as far as the nearest tea shop.

Ahoy, Me Hearties!

2008-03-19T15:18:00.002Z

Peter's always waiting for me to post something so that he can reply with one of his images showing me in some incongruous or debilitating position. So as not to disappoint, here are a couple of snaps from our recent outing to Gloucester Docks.

Still Waiting

2008-03-03T14:56:00.005Z

While Peter was fossicking amongst the daffs and crocuses (or is that croci?) I was in a common image-gathering pose - lying flat out on the ground.

I'd made an assault on these snowdrops earlier in the week and not been happy with the results, partly because I hadn't noticed that I'd left my camera bag visible in some of the shots. Passing through Cirencester again a few days later gave me a second chance. While still not over-the-moon (I'm very difficult to please), at least there's no longer a big black blob sitting unattractively on top of the tomb.

The interior of Tetbury parish church, built 1780, comes as something of a surprise to devotees, like myself, of the Cotswold wool churches; the columns are minuscule in diameter compared to the robustness of the Norman, Early English and Perpendicular versions I'm used to. As Peter discovered, the outer surface is of wood. This covers an iron core and gives the whole space a very light feel, albeit with a strong sense that the proportions are not of this world. (I think that's my first use of the word 'albeit' in these pages, notwithstanding past efforts - ah, first use of 'notwithstanding' as well).

Nurse! More pills, I'm starting to write in Victorian.

Cirencester churchyard

2008-03-02T13:32:00.003Z

By the way, Dave isn't always supine in the shrubbery. Can you spot him here?

Waiting for God

2008-03-02T13:08:00.003Z

The pair of feet you see here belong to an elderly gentleman who is a regular visitor to the churchyard in Cirencester. It’s an oasis of quiet, situated mere strides from the bustling main streets.

Dave and I were creeping carefully among the spring flowers yesterday, photographing snowdrops, daffodils and crocuses, among bronze-lit dried leaves under a clear blue sky.

We observed the old man from a respectful distance as he read his book. I had a moment’s uneasy glimpse into my own future.

Individuality

2008-01-27T17:23:00.000Z

Give two photographers exactly the same subject and you're sure to get two different pictures.

Improvisation

2008-01-27T17:14:00.000Z

You don’t always have to look through the viewfinder (or at the screen) of your digital camera to take a good picture.

Dave's fine study of a pint of ale, which you see posted herebelow (Glass Half Full), was made using a pub table to support his heavy camera, with added value from a few beer mats pushed underneath the lens, to get the low-angle framing just right.

A trial and error approach soon yielded exactly the shot he wanted.

Glass Half Full

2008-01-26T18:30:00.000Z

While Pixie and Sparkly were out and about in Worcester doing something doubtless involving handbags or lady's clothing, Peter and I took ourselves off to the 'Farrier's' in Fish Street.

There we drank, or is it quaffed, a superb real ale named Hobgoblin. My, was it a cracking pint! Rich, nutty with a mouth warming sweetness and a sizzling slice of hoppiness. Served at a perfect, just below, room temperture. Coolers? Frosted glasses? On your bikes! This was the drink for men, not your namby-pamby, ice-cold, foreign muck.

Gnomonic gnees

2008-01-20T13:50:00.000Z

The expression of intense concentration about me in Dave's profile shot of me has less to do with photography (a point-and-shoot camera is a relatively simple device) and rather more with the brain-hurting thinking I was engaged in. Why, I was asking myself, would anyone put a sundial on the North-facing side of this cube, on a pedestal, in Malvern Abbey grounds?

The answer came later, in a discussion with Dave, when we talked, not only about his knees, but also about how far round “behind” the sun would actually "travel" at certain times of the year. The old adage “The sun rises in the East and sets in the West” isn’t strictly true at all points on our beautiful blue planet.

2008-01-20T12:03:00.000Z

Later that day, and keeping with the shooting into the sun and flagging it off the camera theme, my young friend does something arty with the rather unusual sundial in the churchyard at Malvern Priory.

The difference between my attempts at this sort of shot and Peter's is that his knees still work whereas mine feel decidedly flaky rising from this sort of position. That's the reason I've taken to attaching my camera to a monopod and using it upside down, triggering the shutter with a cable release. It's a bit like using a metal detector.

Flagging off the lens

2008-01-20T11:31:00.000Z

Shooting straight into the intensity of the sun while including that brightly burning sphere in the frame isn’t usually recommended. It’s best to employ a device to block out the sun. A tree or a signpost will usually do. In this case I rather wanted to use Dave’s unmistakeable silhouette to, as we in the lighting business say, “flag the sun off my lens”.

Splish, Splash

2008-01-18T23:24:00.000Z

Peter has been waiting for me to upload this image but I'm inhabiting a negativity node with regards to blogging at the moment - I get them from time to time; they blow over.

Anyway, here it is. Let play commence!

2007 Dinner, 2008 Breakfast

2008-01-01T21:00:00.000Z

The Fab Four had decided to celebrate the change of year together. On New Year’s Eve, Pixie’s renowned attention to detail and her fondness for colour co-ordination was directed to laying this inviting dinner table.

On seeing it, I realised I should have brought golden Christmas crackers, but, bathed in the warm glow from a lit corner of the room, these silver ones obligingly assumed an auric air.

The next morning dexterous Dave rustled up our call-orders, deliciously fresh from his man-sized stove, adding a surprise splash of Madeira to the pan-fried mushrooms, thereby instantly redefining the term “Full English Breakfast”.

Signpost

2007-11-26T10:27:00.000Z

Peter been waiting for me to upload this image of a canal signpost, taken on a recent BDO. Doubtless something embarrassing is in store. All I can say is that one has to suffer for one's art.

Absorbed

2007-11-25T12:36:00.000Z

There's no surer sign that Dave's in his element than when he gets down and dirty for the sake of a picture.
With a sheer drop behind him of several feet to the surface of the River Severn, I was casting around for the nearest lifebuoy, just in case.

Mirrors

2007-10-20T17:53:00.001+01:00

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

2007-10-10T18:22:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-08T23:36:00.000+01:00

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).

Three-shot?

2007-09-29T20:08:00.001+01:00

The “Fab Four” had another one of their days out today, in the Welsh town of Monmouth. Sparkly & Pixie were in a ladies shoe shop investigating top quality, hand-made, limited edition Italian designer handbags, while Dave and I mooched around in the overcast light, checking the charity shops for bargain books.

We two had a discussion about how often we find opportunities to make pictures about “threes” not many moments before I spotted this dog on self-appointed guard duty inside the door of what were, presumably, his owner’s premises.

Actually, if you look carefully, it’s not really a three-shot at all.

Low cost lighting

2007-08-25T14:01:00.000+01:00

Lighting on a budget appeals to me, as does an elegant engineering solution to a technical problem.

There aren’t many village halls with a fixed lighting rig. Those few which have a couple of front-of-house spotlights generally run them bare, by which I mean that the light coming out of the lens is in its natural state, what we might call “white”.

Whoever thought about how to add colour to the old lamp pictured below must have been a worthy addition to any amateur production team. Apart from offering a choice of four colours (five if you also count white), this lighting designer has used standard brass curtain track and runners, the kind that screeched loudly when my grandmother wanted small boys to get up in the morning.

Full marks to the Owermoigne village hall crew, for ingenuity, craft and thrift.

Steaming summer

2007-08-25T13:45:00.001+01:00

Dave and I are interested in words, and interesting wording on some of the notices we discover on our travels often attracts our attention.

I found this example as I wandered around a splendidly organised summer street fair, held in the Dorset village of Owermoigne. The place was so named because the Moygnes family lived there for three centuries, dating from Norman times.

This clarion-clear proclamation seems quaintly out of place today: I doubt if there have been many steam-driven tractors clanking slowly though Owermoignes’ narrow lanes recently, but a local ruling must, I presume, continually enforce itself, a lack of vapourous locomotion notwithstanding, until either someone revokes it, or the paint peels away.

Almost but not nearly a Poem

2007-08-17T17:55:00.000+01:00

We have not gone, we two.
It's just we've been away,
Dave working in the dark,
Pete by a pebbly bay.

A sure entrant for most dire poem of the month

Kneads must

2007-07-31T21:54:00.001+01:00

The dark interior wood and stone kneaded a little lift from a judiciously placed electronic flash unit, in order to balance the lighting against the bright exterior.

I had to kneal down, because that was knecessary for framing the shot. My kneas were hurting, but knot as much as my brain, which was dealing with knumbers.

Knealing in Church

2007-07-30T19:25:00.000+01:00

One of the purposes of Peripatetic Postings is to chronicle our joint outings; what the other purposes are we don't know as yet but I'm sure it will come to us.

Regular followers of the Boys' Day Out will know that we spend a lot of time in church. It sometimes worries me that it might begin to rub off and that my essentially humanist approach to life will be corrupted. Judging by this picture from today's jaunt, for one of us it's already on the way.

For the sake of his knees, please pass him a knealer.

A bit o' flash

2007-07-30T18:26:00.001+01:00

Dave and I had a splendid Boys Day Out today, a jaunt full of nerdiness concerning photographic lighting experiments, random conversations, an excellent lunch and time for an afternoon, toasted teacake for Dave with even a wheat-free flapjack for me.

It’s not every day I get to sit inside a Yew tree that’s a thousand years old. This one is in the churchyard at Saint Bartholomew’s, the parish church of Much Marcle. The trunk of this old timer is about thirty-one feet in girth, and there are nail holes still visible from where bygone parish notices were affixed.

It was as dark as a dark place inside, sheltered under a light-blocking canopy of lush green foliage, even though the sun was shining brightly in the graveyard behind. I pressed a small electronic flash gun into service, to see into the shadows, just for the fun of it.

Boys’ Toys are essential prerequisites for a fulfilling Boys’ Day Out.

Family life

2007-07-29T19:18:00.001+01:00

I drove over Eckington Bridge today, for the first time in over a week. A set of temporary traffic lights replaced the waterlogged fixtures. The flood waters had retreated significantly, though the river was running fast, brown and high. The sky was blue, peppered with puffy, pure white clouds: a perfect summer afternoon.

When I got out of my car to survey the scene, the air smelled of rotting miscellanea. A thick crust of damp sludge covered the entire surface of the riverside car park. The grassy banks were everywhere coated with a crisp shell of dried mud.

A family of swans paddled purposefully upstream against the strong current. Life appears, superficially, almost normal again, as the land recovers from the elemental devastation wrought by the torrential rains of last weekend.

Experiment

2007-07-28T20:40:00.000+01:00

A little test to see if I can post from my PDA while drinking red wine.

Road closed

2007-07-25T19:02:00.001+01:00

I was out and about today, driving on those roads which were open. A local journey of about seven miles had been extended, by detours and doubling back tactics, to over forty.

I visited a workplace, where the staff present were on duty, in spite of many having had their own homes flooded, endured power cuts and suffered an absence of piped drinking water supplies. Representing a large Social Housing Association, they were, ironically, patiently answering questions, as responsible landlords, from anxious tenants, about the planned repairs to the weather-damaged properties the not-for-profit company manages.

Tewkesbury is, today, still a difficult place to access by road, even though the surrounding flood waters have receded. Now begins the long, messy and expensive business of assessing the damage, verifying the insurance claims, and, slowly, painstakingly, putting things right.

And a Hat

2007-07-24T12:19:00.000+01:00

Well, while we're on fashion, here I am on a drama shoot somewhere in central England after the costume department thought I'd look better in a hat. (To be honest, I'd look better in almost anything)

The make-up team suggested my moustache should come off a part of the make-over but I resisted. That salutary event had to wait several years until I got bored one stormy night on the west coast of South Island, New Zealand.

Time travel

2007-07-24T10:07:00.001+01:00

Dave’s courageous revelation of yesteryear’s fashion prompted me to ascend the attic stairs, to rummage through my scrapbook files, whereupon I discovered a similarly telling record of what now seems to be “not a good look”.

I am the bearded one in the flared trousers. Well, at the time, I knew no better, nor, I suspect, did any of us.