Category: images

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Dawn, glass table – the view from the friends’ sofa, New York

the view from the sofa - dawn, glass table

Note the two extremely elegant greyhound sculptures reclining, but in a poised and alert way, in front of two huge lenses. And if you can’t see what I’m talking about go below the fold to see a close-up crop. This place is absolutely amazing. Like a tiny art gallery with a huge picture window. The latter, however, has its disadvantages. Even though it’s on the eighth floor I realised that there was an interested crane operator examining me as I typed, naked, on the carpet.

Continue reading “Dawn, glass table – the view from the friends’ sofa, New York”

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Dawn, glass table – the view from the friends' sofa, New York

the view from the sofa - dawn, glass table

Note the two extremely elegant greyhound sculptures reclining, but in a poised and alert way, in front of two huge lenses. And if you can’t see what I’m talking about go below the fold to see a close-up crop. This place is absolutely amazing. Like a tiny art gallery with a huge picture window. The latter, however, has its disadvantages. Even though it’s on the eighth floor I realised that there was an interested crane operator examining me as I typed, naked, on the carpet.

Continue reading “Dawn, glass table – the view from the friends' sofa, New York”

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Sausage’s unconformity

You would be forgiven for thinking that all sausages are alike. Round. As in roughly cylindrical. Ok, there are individual variations on the theme – the skinny pink chipolata; the thicker, and disturbingly flecked, Cumberland sausage; the massively-dimensioned and curvilinear heft of the boerewors. These differences do not detract from the unifying form. Not for nothing is the term “sausage-shaped” in common use and widely understood.

So, like I say, you would be forgiven for thinking that all sausages are alike. But you would be wrong.

In Scotland the sausages are flat and square.

lawn sausages

When I first came across this, um, delicacy, I was told it was “lawn sausage”. What a peculiar name, I thought. I supposed it referred to, er, the squareness and flatness of grass-covered gardens. The word is actually “Lorne”, as in Lorne sausages. But assumptions that they hail from Lorne are, apparently, incorrect.

The cooking instructions advised “blotting” the sausage with a piece of kitchen towel to remove excess fat before serving. With a 20% fat content that requires most of a roll of kitchen towel to mop up and doesn’t leave much actually to eat. It didn’t go down well with the assembled masses (apart from Maizy) but the black pudding was a hit, rather to my surprise.

The title refers to Hutton’s Unconformity, past which we walked all unknowingly. Here is our palatial accommodation guarded by our faithful hound:

home 1

More pictures (mainly of the boys, invisible to those not “friend”s on flickr) here.

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Sausage's unconformity

You would be forgiven for thinking that all sausages are alike. Round. As in roughly cylindrical. Ok, there are individual variations on the theme – the skinny pink chipolata; the thicker, and disturbingly flecked, Cumberland sausage; the massively-dimensioned and curvilinear heft of the boerewors. These differences do not detract from the unifying form. Not for nothing is the term “sausage-shaped” in common use and widely understood.

So, like I say, you would be forgiven for thinking that all sausages are alike. But you would be wrong.

In Scotland the sausages are flat and square.

lawn sausages

When I first came across this, um, delicacy, I was told it was “lawn sausage”. What a peculiar name, I thought. I supposed it referred to, er, the squareness and flatness of grass-covered gardens. The word is actually “Lorne”, as in Lorne sausages. But assumptions that they hail from Lorne are, apparently, incorrect.

The cooking instructions advised “blotting” the sausage with a piece of kitchen towel to remove excess fat before serving. With a 20% fat content that requires most of a roll of kitchen towel to mop up and doesn’t leave much actually to eat. It didn’t go down well with the assembled masses (apart from Maizy) but the black pudding was a hit, rather to my surprise.

The title refers to Hutton’s Unconformity, past which we walked all unknowingly. Here is our palatial accommodation guarded by our faithful hound:

home 1

More pictures (mainly of the boys, invisible to those not “friend”s on flickr) here.

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Water Ship Down

amy

Ok, it’s blurry. She was drumming, the light was a single domestic standard lamp with a bit of yellow plastic over it and I was feeling not so good (actually the food poisoning hadn’t kicked in at that point but it’s an excuse and I’m using it). However is not Amy one of the most beautiful people imaginable? Yes, is the correct answer. Always has been, always utterly unaware of being so.

tomas

And here, unfortunately largely obscured by hair and a microphone, is her elder brother Tomas. Just as delightful.

I’d like to be able to give a thoughtful, insightful and informative review of the music but unfortunately I can’t. Firstly because it was so loud I couldn’t really hear it, was worried about the future of my hearing and retreated after taking a few photographs back to the bar. Secondly because the above-mentioned food poisoning was approaching like an avalanche down a high mountain and I was concentrating very hard on trying not to throw up.

There’s another one, of Amy at her drums, here.

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Shorts for summer with an extra leg

I’m quite enmeshed in Facebook and flickr and thus feel slightly decentralised. Tripartite? trinitarian? a tripod? highly stable? [stop. now].

Anyway, from Facebook I hereby reproduce a fengtastic response to the previous post:

I’ve been looking at fly fishing flies. The Purple Egg Sucking Leech comes close to lav:

eggsuckingleech

(from the Wooly Buggers)

There’s the Red Flying Ant and the Red Ibis among the Queens, Parmachanee Belle of the Dry Flies; a whole variety of Italian tapestry shades in the Crystal Buggers, just no lav. Outdone by a landslide though by the feather boas of Pink and Purple Rabbit Leeches.

Personally I like playing with my crab but if it’s size you want, conking the bloody fish out is always a last resort if you’re wired up with Bomber Salmons.

Oh here we go, the standard BDSM superhero vinyl costume types we use back home:

assred

I’m not entirely sure whether this means mr feng squeezes into a glow-in-the-dark rubber cephalopod costume for an exciting night out hooking or goes fishing with squid lures. However I find it appropriate that the picture is titled “assred”.

“Lav”, I should probably explain, is short for lavender well-known, of course, for its calming and soothing effect. Spritz! spritz! And here’s one I saw earlier…

lavender

Which of course brings us from Facebook to flickr. The public element of Tate Britain‘s How We Are: Photographing Britain exhibition has been wrapped up… no more entries are being accepted to the How We Are Now flickr pool and ten finalists have been chosen from each of the four categories. None of my submissions, you will be astonished to learn, is among them.

However a very delightful and clearly highly discerning photographer, Stuart Haden, thought that one of them should have been, which makes me extremely happy. And he gives a fundamentally important piece of advice – “Follow your passion, never give up, enjoy what you do.”

I went to see the exhibition but don’t recall writing about it. Did I? I seem to remember having a couple of passing thoughts about it but all that now remains in my small-capacity brain (apart from the OCD vegetable and fruit photographer who later used his glass plates for cold frames) was that the most exciting moment was standing in front of a huge ever-changing display of pictures by a portrait photographer and seeing a friend scroll by.

Elsewhere I’m really enjoying Xtinpore, with whom I share displeasure about 29, and her friend pluvialis. Energetic, superbright, gorgeous, funny, multi-talented/obsessed and fascinating. Damn! And one of them is a real live falconer. Double damn!

Shortly I am off to a gig about which I was alerted by a friend on Facebook. He is a member of the band. As is his sister (she’s the drummer). They’re both my friends on Facebook and they’re both the children of one of my dearest bosom buddies. Much has been written about Facebook but I have yet to see an anguished plea about what to do when one of your mother’s friends befriends you digitally. (Oh the things I could tell her. Not. Well, perhaps. For a small fee. Silence is also available in multiple currencies.)

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Coneheads

coneheads

Apparently salmon go wild for these things. And what a great name – conehead. Like an egghead but less, um, ovoid. More pointy. Possibly.

These flies sport a wing of soft mobile fur – for example Arctic fox or possibly a soft synthetic fibre. This is tied in facing forward then folded back to create a sinuous teardrop-shaped fly that flutters and darts enticingly in the stream.

I love fishing flies – the sheer audacity of the colours and shapes and textures, exotic and sensuous, fur and feathers and sparkles. I adored helping my father when he tied his own. All the little plastic bags and transparent boxes full of brightly dyed fur and feathers, lengths of metallic thread and shiny stuff like very tiny tinsel. The miniature vice to hold the hook as the layers of extravagant fluff and fibre are built up. It’s jewellery-making for boys. (And girls too of course.)

We were in Farlows, my father and I. “One for me and one for J [my stepmother] to steal off me” he muttered as he poked through the compartments of different coloured and sized pieces of spangly fluff.

“Where is the fun,” I asked, over espresso, later, “in fishing with something infallibly attractive. Surely it takes the skill and excitement out of the chase?”

His answer lasted some time. Almost as long as the video of him fishing in Argentina which I have been privileged to sit in front of watch on more than one occasion. The subtleties and nuances of the exegesis were possibly similarly infinitesimally varied, to the unenthusiasticinitiated viewer/auditor. However for those unversed in the piscatorial arts the response can be condensed.

No.

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A bath of blackberries

Like a bed of roses, something that one should be grateful life isn’t. Too lacerating.

bath

Back from Wales which was mostly misty.

misty

Sometimes drivingly so. The driving being done by the extremely blusterous wind which threatened at one stage to remove the tent. Luckily the driven mist calmed the sunburn acquired the previous day.

cliff creature 2

Maizy had a great time, what with all the walking.

maizy is my darling

So did I. More pictures here.