10/01/25

in

Hello hello! Hope you’re entering 2025 ok? I felt a bit low towards the end of last week, so I made sure that I headed into town to look at some art. It was the perfect reset, just like I knew it would be. I’ve also got a new camera which I took with me, and I really enjoyed trying it out. I usually shoot with a wider angled lens, so the 50mm one that I used on Friday is literally like looking at the world with new eyes. I’m not sure it’s right for me, but we’ll see. It’s funny how much the blog format dictates whether I shoot landscape or portrait, and I was a bit miffed that I kept going for landscape again, when I’d managed to wean myself off it in the past six months. I never crop pictures afterwards, but when I took the last picture - landscape - I immediately realised that I’d made a mistake. The guy moved before I could re-take it, and I felt Saul Leiter on my shoulder, shaking his head with a sigh. Well, I’m cropping it here Saul - especially for you. And I reckon the picture with the water being swept (NOT cropped) was a little high five between the two of us.

Low lights

in

Haha! Love that the title of my last post applies to both spring and me. I don’t know what it’s been like where you are, but here in the UK we’ve had an abnormally cold and wet spring, with the occasional warm day to confuse us even more. So these pictures from March actually still feel relevant. One Tuesday evening I met with my old magazine crew (not pictured - my old boss) at the Holy Tavern pub in Clerkenwell.

I’m not sure if they’ve always done this, but this winter they had “Candlelit Tuesdays”, as a lot of pubs have done (to deal with the insanely expensive energy bills).

It makes it incredibly cosy, and gives you a bit of a flavour of what hanging out in pubs pre-electricity might have been like. This particular pub is faux-Georgian, in a real Georgian building from 1720, but re-decorated in a Georgian style.

Of course we ate better than they would’ve in those days.

Even though some of us might have fitted in table manner-wise.

A and I used to sit next to each other at work some 20 odd years ago, (when we were kids basically) and we’d always make each other laugh, occasionally singing (more often than not this) and dancing, but on the hush. A knew the whole Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation dance routine, and I would answer with my Michael Jackson face in the Thriller video, when the camera pans round to show him having turned into a zombie, with the following shoulder shrug, sideways hip thrust and claw hands (starting at 0:44). I need to see her do that routine again, for old times sake. I’ve had the (not) joy of having a frozen shoulder since December, so I feel jealous of anyone able to to a shoulder shrug right now.

We’re off to Amsterdam again in a couple of weeks time, and that trip has been my dangling carrot this whole winter. It always felt a long way away, and now we’re in the middle of May, and almost there.

When we met up a couple of days ago D was still wearing the same hat. So come on spring, make your mind up, and don’t pass on your moodiness to summer this year. That would just be too mean.