These four images really give a feel for what photographs I was producing in 2009 (Apart from the obvious xPan crop – a much later innovation). I invested a lot of money into my equipment and I was starting to make certain progress. It came to nothing. But I still have the photographs I made during that time.
2009 was a year for best laid plans coming to nothing. Yet it was also the year that I started to explore other creative avenues. So, with the benefit of 17 years of distance, it worked out really quite well for me.
On the 10th April 2024 I thought it might be a good idea to start a new occasional series called (drumroll please) … On this day. Being very self aware I did say on launch
Well I managed three posts in April 2024 and then promptly forgot about it. Lets see how long I keep it up this time!
The idea of the series is that I revist images that I captured on the the particular day in question – in this case 29th October. I remaster the images captured on the day in question and produce them here. Today we have images from 2009, above, and 2019.
I could go on and on. The best I can say about these are that they are windows into my life that may last longer than me. Bit of a morbid thought so I’ll quickly move on!
I have been revisiting the excellent Anthony Seldon’s Truss at 10. It is about the crazy, calamitous, and thankfully, short lived premiership Liz Truss. It was really something to live through. The other night on Have I Got News For Youa former aide to Boris Johnson (do some people have no shame?) was ranting about how all Labour government’s run out of money. She was looking quite happy with herself having scored a clear political point. It lasted about 3 seconds until Ian Hislop said the two magic words ‘Liz Truss’ and all the smugness disappeared in a heartbeat.
It really is a killer argument against the Conservative at the moment. An argument that they have no answer to because, well, there isn’t an answer. Until they can come up with an answer they’ll never be trusted with the economy again.
At the moment the Conservatives are congratulating themselves on their new economic plan. They have suddenly found £70 billion pounds of savings that they can use for tax cuts for the rich. They argue that Labour is incapable of doing anything and only the Conservatives can be trusted with the economy. To which there are two legitimate arguments:
How come they have just found this magical £70 billion. Why didn’t they do so when they were last in government only two years ago?
And
Liz Truss. How can a party that cheered her on whilst she almost crashed the economy now be trusted to run the economy? Pretending the last 14 years of Tory rule never happened isn’t good enough.
Strangely enough the British 2024 General Election seems to be recurring in the United States of America where, if the polls are right, then something unusual is about to happen. Many safe Republican districts and Senate seats are swinging towards the Democrats. (Sounds familiar) As they get closer to election day it looks more and more like the Republican Party is going to experience their own Conservative melt down. If this happens then goodness only knows what will happen in the White House. At least the Conservatives in Britain quickly got rid of Truss but the damage was done. Will the people around President Trump do the same? I haven’t got the first clue but if they don’t then the Republicans could be facing a generational shift in their fortunes.
A word of caution. First I am watching things from afar and only have my own shallow social media pond to guide me. Second, trying to predict something that will happen in another country based on what happened in your own is a fools game. But here I am playing it nonetheless.
If any American were to read this they could rightly tell me to keep my nose out their elections and that would be fair. It is just that we have been through this and if the collapse does happen I am not sure anyone on the other side of the Atlantic, or whatever President Trump thinks it might be called, has really woken up to what it means.
Leicestershire is a county of two halves, at least as far as high vantage points are concerned. The west is dominated by the Charnwood Hills and Bardon Hill in particular. On a clear day you can see as far as the Malvern Hills. In the east it is the it is the much younger Jurassic ridge that dominates and is only c 70 metres lower than Bardon Hill. On a clear day you can see for kilometres, not as far as from Bardon but well into neighbouring Northamptonshire to the south.
Why you might wonder was I enjoying the brisk breeze in the east of Leicestershire? Well to try and capture images of the Red Kites that have started to colonize the area. I have been working on this little project on and off for sometime. Now I am making a concerted effort, of sorts, to try and capture the images I want. It is taking time but I believe things are starting to come together.
If that doesn’t jinx everything I don’t know what will.
At autumn dawn, the world seems to wake reluctantly, as though it would rather remain folded inside the night. The light arrives without brilliance, pale and diffused behind a veil of mist. Walking into that softness feels like stepping beyond the ordinary boundaries of the day. Familiar paths become uncertain, hedges dissolve into shadow, and distant trees hover like charcoal sketches not yet completed.
The mist changes the scale of everything. It draws the horizon close, enclosing the walker in a quiet chamber where each detail matters. A wet leaf, copper-red against the dark earth, appears almost luminous. Beads of water tremble along a spider’s web. The tips of grasses bow beneath silver droplets, and every footstep releases the deep, clean scent of soil, bark, and fallen leaves. Autumn is often praised for its colour, but in the mist its beauty is also muted: russet, gold, moss-green, and brown are softened into a harmony too subtle for summer.
Sound, too, is transformed. The usual traffic of the countryside is hushed. A blackbird’s call travels from an unseen branch with startling clarity, then vanishes into the whiteness. Somewhere, water slips through a ditch. A single acorn falls, striking the ground with a small, decisive knock. Even one’s breathing becomes part of the landscape, joining the soft rhythm of shoes on the damp path.
There is pleasure in not seeing far ahead. Mist asks for patience. It removes the next bend, the far field, the destination, and returns attention to the few yards immediately before the feet. In that narrowed world, walking becomes less a journey towards somewhere than an act of presence. The mind, so often racing beyond the body, is persuaded to return. Thoughts lose their sharp edges. Worries that seemed solid indoors loosen and drift, no more permanent than vapour among the trees.
Then the dawn begins its quiet work. The eastern sky brightens from pearl to the faintest gold. Shapes gather weight: a gate emerges, then a stone wall, then the dark ribs of branches overhead. Where sunlight touches the mist, it glows from within. For a moment every droplet is suspended fire, and the whole wood seems lit by a hidden lamp. The beauty is brief, which makes it more precious. Soon the veil will lift, the path will become familiar again, and the day will fill with names, distances, and duties.
Yet something of the mist remains with the walker. It has revealed that mystery does not require distant mountains or wild, undiscovered places. It can gather beside an ordinary lane at first light. It can hide a hedge, soften a bell, silver a field, and make a known landscape new. To walk through an autumn dawn is to move briefly inside a world half seen and deeply felt—a world where silence has texture, light has patience, and every step is an invitation to wonder.
_______________
Did the words move you? Have I finally learnt to string complete sentences together? As for the former only you can answer that. The later well of course I have. I asked A.I. to write it. So it is going to be missing all that wonderfully nonsensical drivel I normally produce.
At autumn dawn, the world seems to wake reluctantly, as though it would rather remain folded inside the night.…Beads of water tremble along a spider’s web.… Yet something of the mist remains with the walker.
What the hell does A.I. know about any of that? What? Nothing at all. Yes I am sure that AI will help in certain aspects of our daily life. It will never know what it means to be human. Yet we are told that AI is the future. We must embrace it or we will all be swept away. Perhaps that will happen. Or perhaps all this AI hype will bring about one of the biggest crashes in human history. Sweeping away whole countries in a tidal wave of debt. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps … I haven’t got the first clue.
This scene from Good Will Hunting sums up much of what I think about AI.
Oh by the way if you think the photos were also AI produced I’m sorry to disappoint you. They are all me and the last time I looked I am not artificial. Intelligence? I’ll let you be the judge of that.
PS
As I posted this WordPress’s AI suggested more Tags I might like to add to this post. I being the ever obedient human clicked on the insert button.
A lack of energy is something we all have to get used to as enter our senior years. I watch enough mind scrambling slop to realise that there are some humans or at least their avatars out there who don’t agree with such a nonsense. Usually they have a magical supplement that can bring back energy levels we haven’t experienced since … insert outlandish claim here. The rest of us know that what we may have been isn’t coming back. To quote Melvin Udall this is ‘…as good as you get…’.
So why all this maudlin nonsense? Well I’m just lacking any real creative energy at the moment. This started sometime in the summer and I haven’t really shaken it off. I just can’ get going. Perhaps that is a better description of aging …I just can’t get going. Nowadays that is happening more and more.
This is so correct and yet. And Yet… it was a strangely watchable movie. I don’t think I can say anymore other than the trailers DO NOT spoil the movie.
I don’t know why but the Wings’ hit Silly Love Songs keeps bouncing around in my head. The only partial answer I have been able to come up with is these are some silly doodles…not sure that was what Paul McCartney had in mind when he wrought the song.
