Having been totally frustrated this past few days trying to post words and images only to have them disappear from the screen without explanation and no repsonse from the admin people I am about ready to say au revoir to this way of communicating. It has had its fun moments.
Thanks to those visitors who'd stop by from time to time.
Here I am again - half term - yes - breathing space - yes - tasks to do - yes - so what do I do?
I blog.
I'm so predicatable.
I'm so lazy!
I'm so naughty.
I took on 'A' level Photgraphy this year at evening class - one night a week with five more hours to find alone at home to do more work in.
I may have to teach it next year - seemed like a good idea to see what it was like at the other side of the desk - and besides - if the tutor was any good I'd be able to steal ideas.
All sounds good in theory - yes?
But - seven weeks to go 'til Christmas deadline for the first two assignments. Each comprising five photos. Assignment One - Me
Assignment Two - My Town.
I have to confess neither felt inspiring to me.
I shared the news with B, my proper photographer friend, and she was inexplicably excited. I guess that's the difference between me and a real photographer.
I have thus far produced one image for the 'Me' assignment that looks any where near decent - and that came out of about 100 shots and a whole Sunday.
So, looking at it from a numbers perspective - time is of the essence - so I came here to pass some time that I have coinvinced myself is productive. Readers will know the signs, - I am on the verge of being creative and yet I still have to come here and - and, and - well there's prollies and pyschological term for this behaviour - let's just call it (farting around) displacement activity for now.
The Me assignment is based on my shoes - and what they say about me - and true to my over achieveing nature I have begun to research theories on women's shoes - looked at the fashion aspect of the female shoe - begun to consider ways of incorporating text into the images... look at other work that follows a similar theme - all completely over the top for AS level studies - but - that's just the way I am.
There - I faced up to something .
That feels good.
B's concoction
- dare I say it - her socks were subtle compared to her Sundae. Bubble gum and liquorice topped with mango and chili... maybe you had to be there. I think it looks like B too.
New ice cream parlour in town - I predict lots of 'needed' breaks from editing/painting/beachcombing will happen there.
'Sure - would you like to go?' she asked. And so we did. An extraordinary place. We are blessed with so much great stuff to photograph in my part of the world.
This crazy arranement of utilitarian green sheds are fishermen's huts - and in the background the lumbering giant of the famous Teeside Steel works.
Behind you in this image is an equally strange phenomenon. Far out on a fragile spit of land at the mouth of the Tees, a harbour for fishing cobles... Paddy's Hole. And, no - before you ask, I have no clue who Paddy is/was.
I shall return when the light is better.
I wonder if even a nuclear power station and a steel works look better when the sun is shining.
By the way - for a meander through some proper photographs - visit B's blog - it's much more sophisticated than her socks and sundaes.
http://www.thephotographypages.co.uk/
Beautiful word.
Even better when it happens.
Needed to photograph some stilettoes/stilletoes/stilettos (pick one) on the beach this morning.
Don't ask.
And some polite horses arrived, taking great care to keep out of my field of view. I had to ask them to do me the favour of walking into my images. How refreshing was that!
Have to admit to not being set alight by the titles... lessee if I can make them more interesting.
We'd done what we planned; Venice and Verona. And tomorrow we'd be en-route to Newcastle.
Leavings are always painful - but we promised ourselves we'd learn to speak Italian and revisit Venice in the Winter. Such heady summer promises.
They seem slightly foolish in the chill of a Durham coastal evening.
Maybe it was just being back to work today and falling alseep on the sofa afterwards that made the summer seem finally over.
I have a master's in it. Doing things instead of doing the other thing you're meant to be doing. Today I 'displaced' in the garden.
It's really getting to be a nice place to be out there - losing its 'new house' look. This beautiful 'Green Man' sculpture was given to me by Dave (the table)... really makes the shed into a work of art.
Summer holiday. Three weeks in. Seems to take me longer to unwind these days. (Sorry. I can hear those of you whose holidays only come in fortnightly chunks wailing at me.)
Staying positive - it's around now that my sense of 'me-ness' kicks in. It's hard to explain, but teaching requires the me-ness of me to be, for a large part, to remain unacknowledged. And in the evenings - only enough energy to fall asleep on the sofa.
But now - mid-vacation - I feel energised. I want to eat art, consume books, visit everywhere, see everything!
Creatively - I have made a good start. Being part of edan is a great motivator - deadlines to work towards are most effective for me. Deep down I suspect I am a sofa sloth.
I continue to collect 'stuff' from the local beaches but at last I have managed to 'use' this eclectic flotsam.
28th June
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_letter_day
Already you’re divided. Some of you are thinking what the hell’s she on about. Some (the more learned ) are smug in your knowledge of why it’s called a red letter day. The curious will go to wiki and find out.
I am wondering which letter I’d paint red.
Probably ‘S’ for surreal
I remember the Scarlet Letter – BBC series – gal with fabulous eyes.
I’m in the front garden at mum’s old house.
It’s mum’s birthday. Well it WAS mum’s birthday. If she was still here it would be her birthday. It’s the first birthday she had when she wasn’t here. I think you see what I’m struggling to say.
As if that wasn’t surreal enough, I spoke to my dad today for the first time in about thirty five years. The words just flowed as natural as if we did it every day of our lives. Only we haven’t. I’m amazed that I could. That the sounds formed themselves and came out of my mouth without curling and twisting and drying and turning into barbed wired and fluorescent , stinking, vomit.
All the nights I’ve lain awake and practised what I’d say. How I’d say it. Where we’d be. And it wasn’t like that at all. And he didn’t sound like I remembered.
Well – he wouldn’t would he. He’s 75 now. His voice is thin and whispery and raspy and rough from a lifetime of tobacco and lies. His teeth are mostly missing and his brow is shiny from the skull that strains to split the skin beneath. His hard earned tan has mottled his skin and he looks like his mother. Dark beady eyes that shift and glint. Pliable lips capable of anything.
He climbed off a bike that he wouldn’t have been seen dead on at forty. Age mellows our fashion sense it seems – even in bicycles. Before I know what I have done I have smiled and said hi and he has smiled back.
He comes into what is now my brother’s garden and walks up the path towards me.
It’s too late now. It’s too late to look away and too late to disappear round the side of the house. It’s too sunny to expect him to say what I rehearsed him to say.
He doesn’t say anything resembling sorry.
He looks at the body parts on the lawn at my feet.
The marigolds are nodding orange and yellow heads under the too blue sky and I hear myself telling him about photographing a friend’s sculpture – as if I owe him an explanation about anything in my life.
“Somebody’s been busy.”
I don’t know if he heard what I said about the sculpture.
He leans very close to me and peers at the Canon slung around my neck – as if he is my father and is allowed to come that close.
I don’t back away.
I’m grown up now I don’t have to back away.
“Same as mine,” he smiles and walks towards my brother’s front door.
“Well, it’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it,” I say to his back.
My first retort to him as adult to adult. It’s not scary. I don’t have to swallow my words. I don’t have to let them scurry about in my belly like hot coals.
He half turns back to me with his hand on the door knob.
“You’re right,” he tells me then goes into my brother’s house.
Like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
I stand on the lawn where just less than a year ago my mum lay dying with a fatal heart attack and I look at the nodding marigolds she planted and I am guilt ridden and sorry but I am not afraid and I am not trembling.
A promontary on the East Durham coast, just south of Durham. It overlooks the Blast Beach (so named for the Blast furnaces that toiled there before the colliery kings arrived to add their own special brand of pollution - along with the chemical companies and the glass works - but I digress.)
In actuality this is a piece of texture found just around the corner from the Blast, at the docks. But for me, it's the magnesian limestone cliff and eroding shelf of waste familar to those who regularly approach Noses Point from the south.
It will be a painting. Planning to try crinkled aluminium foil and staining it with thin layers of acrylic.
Watch this space.
There is a queue of ideas.
They percolate then grow stale.
Writing them down here may prod me into action
