Kneads must

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

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

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

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

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

Road closed

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

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

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.