Catching Up # 01…Compton Verney…

Posted on July 5, 2022 by Guthlac

Another day another art exhibition. This time it was a return to Compton Verney and their summer exhibitions of David Batchelor’s work, a selection of portraits which were both photographs and a couple of paintings from the National Portrait Gallery and a selection from the Magnum collection called ‘Where ideas are born’. Of the three the Magnum exhibition was by far the best. It was a series of portraits of famous artists with one or two who were not in their studios.

As for the main exhibition, I guess you could call it a retrospective of sorts of well it certainly didn’t ‘rock my boat’ but I guess each to their own.

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All You Need is Love…..

Posted on June 29, 2022 by Guthlac

Corny I know but it does seem appropriate for the new Robert Indiana exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Before I visited the exhibition all I knew about Indiana’s work was the sculpture from 55th and 6th Street in Manhattan, New York. I now know a lot more which is a credit to the curators at the YSP.

Just in case you got a bit bored with all this Love…here are some numbers…

It was a hot, sunny day and was just a great day out. What better recommendation could I give it?

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A New Toy and a Couple of Days Away…

Posted on June 17, 2022 by Guthlac

We took a short break in East Anglia which allowed me to go to Norwich and but a super wide angle lens for a very reasonable price. I then spent the next couple of days coming to grips with the lens and realising that it is a great lens for certain circumstances. It certainly isn’t an everyday use lens, which I knew before buying it, but that was reinforced over the couple of days away.

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I refuse to get involved…

Posted on June 6, 2022 by Guthlac

So here we go again. Another Boris psycho drama. The latest episode is all about whether enough Tory MPs feel their chances of winning at the next election are better or worse with Boris as Prime Minister. Forget the rest of we poor saps or the dignity of the office of the Prime Minister this will have nothing to do with the vote tonight. It will be about survival of Tory MPs at the next election.

For what it is worth I think he will win and then proceed to drive the Tory party into the ground.

To misquote the Bard only a little:

Boris  “is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing

This could also be the same for the confidence vote tonight.

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Bees’ Knees

Posted on June 2, 2022 by Guthlac

Do bees have knees? I’m sure they must: they certainly have joints galore on their legs but are any classified as knees or is there some other name? I am not an apiculturist I couldn’t say. What I can say is that just at the moment the little creatures are working hard in my garden and thank goodness for that.

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Nature plays by its own rules….

Posted on May 24, 2022 by Guthlac

It is time that the latest brood of Blue Tit chicks that have been produced in this nest box to fledge. The parents have been patiently coaxing the chicks out of the only world they have ever known for the past day or so and finally they have started to take the hint and leave.

Unfortunately, they don’t really know how to fly at the moment so the first leap out of the box usually ends in the chicks crashing to the ground.

Eventually they recover and make it into the large number of trees, I know this as we planted them all, near to the nest box. Fortunately, we don’t have a great number of cats visiting the garden at the moment but even so it is unlikely many of the chicks that have fledged will make it to the end of the summer. Nature doesn’t care if the chicks are cute – only the lucky few survive.

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Noise and Fury….

Posted on May 17, 2022 by Guthlac

Late spring i starting to merge into early summer. The garden is throwing off its spring splashes of garish bulb colours and slowly adopting its summer hues. Along with this the bees have returned in their frantic search for pollen.

Whilst this is going on the air is full of the frantic clicks and screeches of Starlings as the first fledglings are abandoned to the uncaring world of self reliance whilst their parents are once more going about the business of finding new nest sites for the second broad of the year.

And finally summer can’t be too far away as the swifts and swallows have returned. it’s not a bad time to be alive, at least here in my small corner of what will be forever England.

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Bird Song

Posted on May 15, 2022 by Guthlac

As I prepare this for publications my world is surrounded by birdsong. There are far worse background noises in the world at the moment.

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Sitting in the Garden…

Posted on May 9, 2022 by Guthlac

I know all these empowering guru suggest that you should grab the day, get out an see the world or whatever passes for inspirational nonsense at the moment. Well I say nonsense. You can’t beat just sitting in your garden and watching the birds come and go and so that is what I have been doing for the past couple of days….oh and capturing a few images along the way.

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Up With the Birds….

Posted on May 7, 2022 by Guthlac

One of the joys (?) of where I live is that at the moment the dawn chorus is really really loud and so if you happen to stir around about dawn from your slumbers the chances of going back to sleep are slim. So it was this morning. Nothing for it but to get up, get my morning walk in and enjoy the joys of spring.

I have been travelling through a bit of a photographic hiatus at the moment. This is isn’t the first and I doubt it will not be the last. Thankfully I can give myself the time just to let the creative juices to start to flow again (not the most becoming metaphor but you know what I mean). I’m not sure I’m fully out of my slump but this morning is a start.

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