Posts

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fortheloveofmike

I came across this today: fortheloveofafrica, created by

Eric Frank Cape Town, western cape province, ZA

Executive Creative Director and Managing Director of The Ideas Company Saatchi & Saatchi’s network in Africa.

I love Africa and it’s peoples. We are unique and enormously rich in culture and diversity. This blog is a forum to share views, discuss issues that affect people’s lives in Africa and to seek understanding of what motivates the people of our beautiful continent.

The first (and at the time of writing only) post in the ongoing project to discuss issues that affect people’s lives in Africa is Best Ever Holidays. What are they in Africa?

This is a very good example of how not to blog in that difficult zone between the personal and the professional. The lack of insight and context displayed here are just breathtaking.

I don’t expect to see this blog featuring in the Global Voices items about Sub-Saharan Africa any time soon.

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Frizzy bush

frizzy

Because it looks like my hair. It was damp, cold and damp today. Maybe that’s what gave it the kinks. (What did you think I was referring to? really?? No. I wasn’t.)
Although it’s not a tree, being as it is a bush, nevertheless it’s my excuse to draw attention (a few days late, sorry) to this month’s Festival of the Trees, hosted at Ginkgo Dreams.

Next month’s festival will be hosted by Riverside Rambles. Courtesy of Velveteen Rabbi I’ve learned that it was New Year of the Trees a couple of days ago, another reason to celebrate the laying down of rings. So get arboreal and send your entries to larry (dot) ayers (at) gmail (dot) com by February 27, or submit entries via the entry form at Blog Carnival.

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Clear the smear

I wondered, vaguely, why recent photographs have had an unintentional soft-focus effect. Yesterday I actually thought to look at the lens of the camera and it was covered with a thin layer of something I can only assume was canine saliva. A great big slurpy deposit which took a considerable time to remove. Note to self – cameras and dogs shouldn’t be on the floor together. Oh, and put on the lens cap.

Thus armed with greater clarity we, boys and dog and camera, set out on a walk. Yesterday was all about sunshine. Beautiful, glorious, peachy, slanting winter sunlight striking from an open blue sky throwing long shadows.

At last a world of subtle gradations and stark contrasts after weeks and months of deepest dullest stultifying flattening uniformity of grey. The camera gambolled like a spring lamb, despite the lack of legs and fluffy tail.

More light and less slobber. A heart-lifting combination.

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Please play with me

please play

It’s difficult to work when being gazed at with such a combination of pleading and accusation. Not to mention having a de-squeaked squeaky hedgehog repeatedly dropped on your foot.

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I've found God AND mortality

Not bad for a weekday lunchtime.

mortal(ity) and God

On the left there we have Ivy Alvarez with mortal, on the right we have Natalie d’Arbeloff (in the guise of her alter ego Augustine) with The God Interviews. Both have very recently been delivered, after long labour, of a book. As you can see.
I shall endeavour to review both when I’ve read them in their entirety. So far I can say I thoroughly recommend both babies books.

Also I can say that I find it puzzling that the name Natalie d’Arbeloff isn’t as famous as that of Maira Kalman. The latter is a wonderful artist who’s clever with words. So is the former. The latter has book deals and a blog with monthly posts which is syndicated by the New York Times. The former, utterly mysteriously, does not.

Unfortunately the NYT has hidden Ms Kalman behind a subscription, but a couple of her posts can be viewed here. And here’s a picture from her December post which I rather liked.

Bach dress

Anyway. The point of this digression is to suggest that anyone who wishes to support an artist and writer of true talent, grit and determination can easily do so by offering her a lucrative book deal for the follow-up which is already in the pipeline. Or failing that (if you don’t happen to be a publisher) buy the first instalment!

Posted on

I’ve found God AND mortality

Not bad for a weekday lunchtime.

mortal(ity) and God

On the left there we have Ivy Alvarez with mortal, on the right we have Natalie d’Arbeloff (in the guise of her alter ego Augustine) with The God Interviews. Both have very recently been delivered, after long labour, of a book. As you can see.
I shall endeavour to review both when I’ve read them in their entirety. So far I can say I thoroughly recommend both babies books.

Also I can say that I find it puzzling that the name Natalie d’Arbeloff isn’t as famous as that of Maira Kalman. The latter is a wonderful artist who’s clever with words. So is the former. The latter has book deals and a blog with monthly posts which is syndicated by the New York Times. The former, utterly mysteriously, does not.

Unfortunately the NYT has hidden Ms Kalman behind a subscription, but a couple of her posts can be viewed here. And here’s a picture from her December post which I rather liked.

Bach dress

Anyway. The point of this digression is to suggest that anyone who wishes to support an artist and writer of true talent, grit and determination can easily do so by offering her a lucrative book deal for the follow-up which is already in the pipeline. Or failing that (if you don’t happen to be a publisher) buy the first instalment!

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Frayed

frayed

Possibly even threadbare. But hanging on and admiring the view.

Now if I were a proper photographer I would know how to make the detail sharper, the range of tones greater etc etc. Might be something to do with compensating for a back-lit exposure I suppose. So much to learn!

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Pondering

I went to the canal this afternoon, the usual little walk we’ve done so many times before. I wondered dolefully whether there would be anything interesting to take a picture of. I’ve managed to maintain my picture-a-day discipline, even if some are very poor, and I can’t stop now. (I’ve temporarily mislaid Thursday 18 January – it’s inside a camera I left behind somewhere by mistake and still haven’t retrieved.)

There were of course many interesting things to photograph along the canal. Now the dilemma is which to put here… should it be the weeping eye? too miserable, and we’ve had more than enough of that around here. Besides I’m still coming to terms with the fact that the best tree face ever has been enhanced with artifice. And my picture is out of focus.

Should it be daisy daisy (give me your answer do)? Also not entirely cheerful since there’s drowning involved.

There’s one man and his dogs which has the virtue of some spots of brightness. But I think I’ll make that the official picture of the day. The man in question was delightful, and his dogs even more so. One had, so he said, had won at Crufts. I asked if their coats were hand-knitted, he said he’d bought them on the Kings Road in Chelsea. Maizy looked disgusted during the entire exchange. She also smelt disgusting since she’d rolled vigourously in the copious Canada goose excrement to be found along the towpath.

So, back to the pictures, we’re left with the bushy bush and its reflections. There are two, but they’re pleasant and light and bright so here they are:

canal grass

reflection

I think I utterly lack discrimination when it comes to my own pictures, I just like all of them, even when they’re clearly no good.

And in other news, this blog was four recently. Still having tantrums though.

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Oh you pretty things

Look through my camera what do I see

A crack in the sky
A crack in the sky

and a hand reaching down to me
and a hand reaching down to me

All the nightmares came today
All the nightmares came today

And it looks as though they're here to stay
And it looks as though they’re here to stay

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Another suicide jag

This is getting so tedious and exhausting. Three now in, what, ten weeks? It’s like recurrent bouts of malaria only instead of getting weaker they’re getting stronger.

The shrink says double the shrinkage. I say sure, whatever. I’m ceasing to care very much. When this whole palaver began its current phase, more than four years ago, I remember saying to the doctor I didn’t mind what they told me to do, I would hang upside down naked from the branches of the tree outside the window or walk barefoot across broken glass – anything to take the pain away.

Nearly five years later and doctors and pills and trick cyclists and shrinks and different pills and more pills and different doctors and guess what – hurts more than ever. Not all the time, like it used to, but in such massive, apocalyptic convulsions that the effort of getting through them is almost beyond me.

Am I a coward? am I selfish? maybe. Even probably. Do I love my children? of course, passionately. Do I love my friends? yes, greatly. I am so lucky – two beautiful children, many wonderful friends, a roof over my head and so on and so on. Don’t think I don’t know. But it doesn’t make the pain go away.

We have a bowl among our crockery that has an almost invisible crack. The only reason you know to look for it is that is sounds wrong when you put it down on the table. Looks quite normal on cursory inspection. But one day it’s going to shatter because somewhere along the line it was subjected to a force which nearly broke it, but not quite. We still use it, of course. It’s a bowl, after all. But the exigencies of daily life are such that one day it will fall apart irrevocably. It’s only a matter of time.