Ironstone Benefice

Posted on January 10, 2017 by Guthlac

manor-house pathway winter-tree

2016 is sooo last year.   2016 was all about Playground of the Midlands 2017 is going to be about Ironstone Benefice.  Before you wonder what on earth I am going on about let me explain.   My good friend and I are slowly visiting all the parishes mentioned in a series of guidebooks created by the district councils of Leicestershire:  2016 was Charnwood Borough Council’s guidebook called ‘ Playground of the Midlands’; 2017 will be the Melton Borough Council’s guidebook called ‘Paint the town red’.   This was going to be the name of the project but this morning whilst walking Scalford I saw on the notice board outside the church that it was a member of the Ironstone Benefice which I thought was a much better name for the project as it reflects much of the character of the Borough.   It was only when I got home I found out that I hadn’t read the notice correctly and it should have been the Ironstone Villages Benefice but it was too late the name had stuck and so I am not changing things now.  (The Ironstone Benefice refers to a similar collection of churches in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds who I am assuming got the name first.   However, as the villages of Melton Borough largely sit on the same rocks as the Oxfordshire Cotswolds I think the name still works – I wonder if this will causes problems further on down the line?   Only time will tell.)

After a shaky start this morning I managed to create three images from the photo’s I captured which actually accurately reflect the day we had.  Before I go I thought it would be useful to mention where we eat today – The Sands Cafe and Deli at Long Clawson is well worth visiting if you are in the area.

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Ducks in a row

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Guthlac

So it is the new year and where are we with Brexit?   Exactly where we were the day after the vote to leave was taken that is: we are still members of the EU; we still pay our dues in full and we still benefit from being members.   This will continue to be the case once the article 50 mechanics have been activated.   From everything I have read and heard nothing much will change either much before the end of 2017 other than we will all be embarrassed by the posturing by both the British and EU side during the first real negotiations towards the end of this year.  It may well be that should I write about Brexit this time next year the headlines will be screaming about some offences or other that they have done to us or we have done to them.   It will probably be couched in apocalyptic terms and it will seem that things are going to collapse but they probably won’t but what if they do?   What will the British government do then?   More to the point what will the British Parliament do then?

The clear answer is nobody really knows but if things do go bad by the end of this year or  the beginning of next year then there may well be a snap election called by the government or at least they may try but as I have explained before it isn’t their choice but parliaments.   What if the terms that have come out the negotiations are so bad that we simply can’t accept them?   This is unlikely as the EU has as much to lose by such an approach as we do but if that were the case then parliament may well step in and say No.   The only way around this constitutional crises of epic proportions would be an election or new referendum along the lines ‘did you really want to leave the EU on these terms?’

Or something else will happen or something else or something else.   The true answer to all of these questions is that no one, if they are being truthful has got the first clue as to how the next two years are going work out and anyone who says they do isn’t telling you the truth.   Perhaps that might well be the litmus test on which to judge the validity of what a person is saying about the Brexit negotiations?   Do you know what is or will happen?   If the answer is yes then they are lying.  If the answer is no then they are probably telling the truth.

How did we get into this fine mess?   I think the answer is far too long and complicated to address here but we are all, both sides of the English Channel and Irish Sea in for one heck of a ride – at least it’s reassuring  that other bulwark of stability the United States of America is being lead by a calm well tested leader who will balance up all the information before acting.   No wait he leaves office in a couple of weeks time. The apocryphal  Chinese curse about living in interesting times has never seemed so relevant.

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Constable Country

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Guthlac

Some people live in an area for just a few months or years and then move on.  Others, myself included, don’t.  We settle in for the duration and this choice has strange effects on our lives.   For me it is the capturing as a photograph the local park.   I read somewhere that one of the reasons why Constable Country in Suffolk was so called because the painter John Constable revisited the area of his birth again and again so the drawings and paintings he made of the area became almost produced by muscle memory.   Over the past few months I have become aware of the same relationship I have with my local park.

As I explored this relationship it would seem that I rarely visit the park in the summer and the winter seems to be favourite time which is a bit odd as it part of the floodplain and so from time to time is under quite a bit of water. (I have some photos somewhere that I need to find but they are on other hard drives.)  Another continuing theme throughout these images seems to be the river – for John Constable it was the River Stour for me its the River Soar.

Anyway it got me thinking about these things and so I thought it might be interesting to visit the park on a more frequent basis over the next year.

So here are some of the image I have made in the park over the last 8 years…enjoy.

20080503_40d_mg_5024-spring-wild-flowers-enderby 20080605_40d_mg_7531-male-white-throat-enderby 20080624_5d_mg_2088and8more-river-soar-jubilee-park-enderby 20090114_5d_mg_5841-playground-at-dawn-jubilee-park-enderby 20090202_5d_mg_5966-jubilee-park-at-night-enderby 20090205_5d_mg_6014-jubilee-park-in-the-snow-enderby 20090515_g9img_9317-flood-meadow-enderby 20090528_1d__n7i8192-banded-demoiselle-male-enderby 20100224_1d__n7i4735-common-alder-fruit-enderby 20101206_5d_mg_1792-jubilee-park-on-frosty-morning-enderby 20101206_5d_mg_1795-jubilee-park-on-frosty-morning-enderby 20121124-dsc02106-three-trees-in-flood-enderby 20150919-img_4656-edit 20161205-dsc01171-edit 20161205-dsc01264-edit 20170105-dsc01421-edit cow-at-dawn reeds-in-the-river sunrise-through-the-trees winter-dawn-over-river-soar

One final thought.  The park is near to the local police headquarters so perhaps this is also ‘Constable Country’.

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Killin’ Time…

Posted on January 5, 2017 by Guthlac

doctor-mysterio_

Just a few minutes to kill before my evening meal….what could I do to fill that gap?

Posted in drawing, Graphic Art | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Cold Cold Again…

Posted on January 5, 2017 by Guthlac

frost-on-car three-pigeons two-women_ winter-dawn-over-river-soar

We’ve had several days of frosts which I’ve tried to ignore but this morning it was time to wrap up warm and wonder around the local park.   Before this I walked into Leicester through the De Montfort University.   Making photographic images here has a certain irony given my history with the institution but there we go.   I believe somewhere in the dark recesses of this blog I do discuss this but I can’t be bothered to reconnect with that but feel free if you want to.

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Not that kinda girl….

Posted on December 31, 2016 by Guthlac

mycroft

The last day of the year, time to take stock about the previous 12 months and then open a vein in a warm bath! Or was it?   The truth is we really don’t know as the momentous decisions that were made by the British and American electorate have yet to be implemented:  Britain is still a fully paid up member of the EU and Barack Obama is still President of the United States so what has changed?   Of course the answer is everything and yet nothing.   No longer is it seen as unusual that a foreign government should use espionage techniques to try and influence the election of the President of the United States – we should all just move on.   Nor is it considered out of the ordinary to question whether Judges in  England are patriots for just doing their job, a job that those attacking them for only a few months ago were campaigning for them to be allowed to do without interference.

Perhaps the biggest losers, if you don’t count the dead of Aleppo et al, are members of the Metropolitan liberal elite who by all accounts have been given a body blow.  Equally, in America the Washington insiders have been turfed out on their ear by the incoming President Elect.  Of course this is nonsense because both are alive and well and governing just as they did before.  So before we attending the wake of the Mycroft Holmes of this world just remember that we need his kind to get us out of the EU and then negotiate the trade deals that require to make a success of our new found ‘freedoms’.  Equally across the pond it is noticeable that ‘the Donald’ hasn’t exactly drained the swamp of Washington D.C. with his nominees for Cabinet posts.   Perhaps 2017 might indeed be the year of buyer’s remorse?   Only time will tell.

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Pierre Noire

Posted on December 30, 2016 by Guthlac

mary-watson sherlock

One of the joys(?) of using Pierre Noire is that it really is quite soft and so with my heavy weight fingers it tends to break off quite easily so these are the only two sketches of the forth coming Sherlock characters I could bother to do before the faff of having to sharpen the pencil/crayon got too much – I bore easily!

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No snow but frost

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Guthlac

frosty-morning-over-river-soar frosty-sunrise-over-river-soar mist-over-frozen-river-soar

Far too cold to venture out in the morning (I am a man of advancing years after all!)  Instead I decided to do the next best thing – sit in the warmth a revist the images I captured a couple of weeks ago – I think that was worth the effort.

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Blurring the lines

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Guthlac

rose

There was a time when I knew where I stood.  A time when a painting was a painting and a photograph was, well, a photograph.  Those days are long long gone and we now live in this digital post analogue world where nothing seems to be what it was.   Even in the digital world I had my boundaries but now I am slowly blurring those as well.   This painting is a case in point.  I used to make paintings with paint then I moved to using photoshop and everything was fine.   Now as the end of the year approaches I find that I am moving away once more from Photoshop as my digital painting medium to replace it with Procreate on my iPad.   But even here the lines are blurred as the original painting was then post produced using photoshop into something looks almost like a photograph.   So we come full circle…sort of?

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Callin’ America

Posted on December 28, 2016 by Guthlac

rai

So more and more well known people seem to have chosen this time of year to take their last breath.  Carrie Fisher is the latest and possibly best known or rather her 20 year old self is/was.   One of the advantages(?) that the famous have over we the great unwashed is that they never actually die, apart that is from those who actually know them.   For as long as their is some way of showing star wars movies then Carrie Fisher will live again as much as she ever did.   Of course in this digitally connected world we who inhabit this world also now don’t die, instead we will continue on in the cloud so in one sense we have started to move beyond our own mortality.   Of course the shadow we leave in the cloud when  we have died is not really us, although given the many FB friends we have who we haven’t ever met or perhaps we did when we were much younger and have had any real face time in years, who would know the difference?   Of course there are companies out there that would actually maintain our digital presence   so we might all start to find shortly we may find it difficult to tell who is physically alive as opposed to only cloud alive.

None of this will be of any comfort to the family and friends of the famous who have recently died.   Carrie Fisher was a real person to them but as I wrote the other day there are many many more people in the world who are feeling the same pains and anguish for the loss of a friend, loved one as those felt by a famous actress.  To all of those people I wish you the best and hope that some day you will be able to come to term with your loss.   But don’t feel you have to rush this…we are all different and we grieve in our own way.

PS

If this all seems just a little matter of fact for you well in my defence I have seen and dealt with many deaths in my professional life.   I have seen many many ways that people die by choice or not and so after all of this you tend to view death as, well, matter of  fact.   Although one of things I didn’t have to deal with is how to end someone’s digital life which I suspect may well be really difficult as it would dredge up too many painful memories when dealing with intimate matters such as passwords that is assuming that the dead person didn’t use Password as their password.   One day someone will have to do that for me – I don’t envy them.

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