Watchfield!

Note: This is the second in a series of ad hoc life-writing exercises, published in this blog to enable friends to find it easily. Should any of these exercises ever interest anybody else, well, that’s a bonus…

August, 1975. A summer that would have been remembered as one full of halcyon days of lingering heat and clear, warm nights, were it not for the fact that it was followed by the summer of 1976, which was even more full of outstandingly blue, hot, dazzling days that were followed by long, languorous nights. (Sigh.) But enough of 1976. Let’s get back to 1975.

The last week of August and the beginning of September were full of adventures for me. Not mountain climbing or skydiving kind of adventures. There were journeys, and friendship, and music, and sunshine.

On Sunday the 24^th of August, my friend Terence and I helped our friend Colin deliver a piano to Virginia Water. Colin was attempting to start a removal or transportation business. He couldn’t carry a piano into a house by himself, and it would look unprofessional to ask the owner of the piano to assist in the delivery, so he’d asked for help from his friends. There was no money involved, although drinks were presumably promised, and somehow Terence and I ended up volunteering our assistance. We were all friends, so, really, what better than to kick back on a sunny Sunday afternoon and travel in a Tranny from Wiltshire to Surrey?

The previous night, I’d been to Cradle Hill, where an anniversary skywatch[i] had been held to mark ten years of the Warminster Thing. Terence, Colin and I discussed this event as we travelled to Virginia Water. The skywatch had certainly been exciting, and carnivalesque. Exciting, because during the early hours we had heard the screams of a terrified woman – or a woman acting terrified – and we had seen UFOs flying low overhead – almost certainly balloons with lights attached, given the way they moved. Carnivalesque, because there had been quite a large crowd on the hill, and a mood of excitement and anticipation. Despite the screams, the atmosphere had been light, almost frivolous. Our discussion of the event as we travelled up and down the A30 led to us to agree to visit Cradle Hill that evening, on our return to Warminster.

When we arrived at the hill, it was warm and still, but there were fewer skywatchers than there’d been the previous night. We sat on the bank beside the road, chatting inconsequentially, watching the sky, hoping to see visitors from outer space, but, frankly, never expecting such a thing to happen. We talked a little sceptically, and a little irreverently, about the goings-on around us. We were separate, as always, from the other skywatchers – a part of the congregation, as it were, but somewhere near the back, ready to run for the door. Our irreverence and scepticism had intrigued one lone skywatcher, who asked if he could sit with us, as he found the other skywatchers a little too intense. His name was Geoff, and he stayed with us for the rest of the night and a good part of the next day.

We must have got around to talking about music, and gigs, and festivals, because at some point during the night we began to chat about the free festival at Watchfield, in Oxfordshire. This festival was a state-sanctioned replacement for the Hyde Park Free Festival, which had fallen foul of the authorities the year before. We decided it might be fun to go there the next day. Colin would drive us in his car, and Geoff was happy to tag along

We left the hill having seen nothing, and we all, except for Geoff, went home for a nap and a wash and brush-up. We agreed to meet Geoff in town later. In the better light of early dawn, we noticed that Geoff appeared to be wearing a business suit, which seemed rather odd for a skywatcher. Terence later wondered if Geoff was in fact an alien who had only a limited understanding of earthly apparel. This led us to further speculate whether, to paraphrase Arthur Shuttlewood[ii], Geoff had, after we left him, wandered to the park lake to undertake some Venusian ablutions.

By early afternoon, we had arrived at Watchfield, Colin, Terence and I, and the bloke we found on Cradle Hill. We saw the bands Rich Mitzi and Strife, although I don’t remember them at all. We discovered our friends Angelina and Mary were also there, and I was delightfully interrupted by Mary for a moment. I can only recall Watchfield as a blur of sensations; few moments or events of the day have stuck in my memory. Except for Mary. Perhaps the best way to explain this is via poetry (and be thankful that it wasn’t via the medium of interpretive dance).

In 1975 the man moved
The Windsor Free
Festival to Watchfield.
Watchfield? Where the fuck?

Still, we thought we’d go,
Terence and Colin and I,
And some guy we had
Discovered during the night,
Skywatching on Cradle Hill.

We idled with the other freaks,
Under a sun that was Californian,
Drifted past spice islands
Scented with patchouli and
Sandalwood, joss-sticks and sweet hash.

The irritating bluebottle of bad music
Followed us wherever we went. Then:
A long, drawn out, squeal cut through it,
My name held on a dotted breve
Somewhere above the C above middle C.

And suddenly my arms were full of Mary,
Her arms around my neck, her legs
Around my waist, her smiling mouth
So close to mine, our faces hidden
Behind the penumbra of her long curly
Hippie hair, her brown eyes sparkling.

Then: She kissed me.

I still have the badge.

Angie and Mary in 1975 (not at Watchfield)

At some point, Angie and Mary left us to chase after other freaks. At some other point, Geoff also left us. After we’d tired of the bands, bad turntable music, and the smell of frying food, we made our way back to the car. Terence had picked up a copy of the Watchfield Freek Press, from which we discovered that the anarchic free festival was full of problems and whinging.

The free press relates the bad vibes, man

Then Colin drove us home as only Colin could; we appeared to arrive in Warminster before we’d even left, such was the rapidity of the journey. I fell asleep in the back seat much to my horror, as I’d wanted to stay awake to ensure that Colin didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.

As if this I hadn’t been enough excitement already, the next day, I went to Devon to see my friend Phil. This was my second visit to Devon. In an earlier post I related how I went to Devon to stay with Phil in early 1975, and how that had been my first holiday without my parents; yes, I had my friend’s parents to contend with, but still, Phil and I could drift around doing what we wanted, going for long walks, visiting the beach, reading, listening to music, and so on. I’d enjoyed that visit so much, I’d always intended to return as soon as I could, and August that same year provided an opportunity to do so. Back in March I had gone to Phil’s with our friend Chris. This time, I was going alone.

I can’t remember whether I went by train or hitch-hiked. I can’t have started early after the preceding three days of late nights, which makes me wonder if I went by train. I imagine that Phil and I did little the evening I arrived.

It was a warm week, I remember that. Phil and I went out wandering the lanes, visiting Torbay and Totnes. I suspect that it was probably during this holiday that we had a sham seashell fight on the beach at Paignton. Razor shells can be deadly. As usual, I probably channelled the spirit of Duncan Idaho[iii]. I also believe we might have been acting out for some girls who were sitting on the concrete walkway somewhere near the café close to the Pavilion.

Sometime later in the week we went to Totnes and met Heather and Dian at a park. I remember them singing Counting Out Time by Genesis. I was rather taken by Heather, with her long blonde hair and the incongruous yet somehow stylish red dressing gown she wore, which was long enough to sweep the dust of the asphalt beneath the swings.

Later, we went to see some of Phil’s college mates playing in a band in a hall. Were we aware of this gig, or did Heather or Dian invite us along? However we arrived there, it was fortuitous, because the drummer for the band never turned up. As I was a drummer, I said I’d stand in. So the band thrashed around some modern standards – I remember playing along to some Hendrix – and despite the headache, I enjoyed myself. I was, Phil’s friend Jeremy later excitedly asserted, a mixture of John Bonham and Mel Pritchard[iv].

I also recall an afternoon on Dartmoor, perhaps on the Saturday. We had a picnic with Phil’s mum and his guardian, Chris. We went there in Chris’s Land Rover. I distinctly remember – although possibly in a reconstructive and imaginary way – clambering over grey rocks with a red sun in a hazy sky as evening approached.

On the last day of August, Sunday the 31^st, Phil and I went to Torquay Town Hall to see Greenslade. It was an enjoyable gig, and we hung around afterwards, in the hope of having a chat with the band – although I was actually hanging around in the hope of convincing Andy McCulloch to let me have a go on his rather lovely double bass drum Ludwig kit. However, we only saw a roadie, and I didn’t have the courage to ask him for a go on the kit.

What surprised me when I recently looked up the gig on setlist.fm was that there had been a support act – and the support act had been Judas Priest. I found it difficult to believe at first, until I found somebody on Facebook had a poster of the event. Judas Priest and Greenslade seem such unlikely bedfellows, and I have absolutely no memory of a raucous warm-up act.

It’s true! Greenslade and Judas Priest on the same bill

The next day, the first day of September, I returned to Warminster, not knowing then how the last couple of weeks of travel and adventure would remain lodged in my mind.[v] They were, you might say only, prosaic adventures, simply quotidian experiences that seem at the time merely a day in the life of, yet somehow they end up being recallable, recollectable — they become jewels ready to sparkle again in the right ray of sunlight.

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[i] The history here is actually a little hazy. None of the friends with whom I’m still in contact are certain that they went to the anniversary skywatch, and I’m not entirely sure what date it was held. But it being on the Saturday of the bank holiday weekend makes sense.

[ii] Arthur Shuttlewood was the author of many books on the Warminster mystery.

[iii] Duncan Idaho is the heroic master swordsman and all-round brilliant fighter of the Dune novels.

[iv] I probably don’t need to explain who John Bonham is, but Mel Pritchard was the rather good and underrated drummer of Barclay James Harvest, whose splashy style I rather admired.

[v] Although it should be noted that the immediacy of these memories has been aided by my revisiting the letters of the time, and reminiscing over the years with Phil and Terence.

Revisiting My Old Manual Focus Lenses

I’ve recently been wondering if I have too many lenses. I’m not a collector, and only pick up old manual lenses for fun, to give me a different starting point in my photography. I was beginning to think that going out with three camera bags in the car was perhaps a little excessive. I was looking at the manual focus lenses, and wondered if I needed all of them. Perhaps, I thought, I should sell some. But before I did such a thing I first needed to experiment with them, to remind myself of their qualities and any pitfalls in using them. As it turns out, I like most of them, and probably won’t be selling them. They all have slightly different contrast and sharpness, and different ways of rendering out-of-focus areas, which gives different starting points for photographs.

This post is a non-technical, non-scientific look at them. First up is the Helios 44-2. Famed for its swirly bokeh, it was unlikely I’d get rid of this one anyway. Still, it was useful to compare it to the other lenses. In this photo, it is used on a Sony A7RII. This photo shows off the swirliness rather well.

Helios 44-2 50mm f2, on Sony a7RII using M42 mount adaptor

One lens that has surprised me a little is a Cosina Cosinon-S 50mm f2, the kit lens on old Cosina SLR cameras. I was given the Cosina by somebody I knew as a non-working camera. I tried selling the lens on eBay, but nobody ever seemed interested. I thought I might as well try out the lens myself. Back then, my only camera was a Sony A99, while the Cosina is a Pentax K mount camera. The adaptor used to adapt K mount to A mount required a glass element in it. When I used the Cosinon on the adaptor, it never seemed quite sharp enough. And I could still never sell it. So it hung around my house, unused.

However, when I got my first Sigma sd Quattro, I discovered that the the Sigma mount is based on the Pentax K mount. The auto-stopdown lever on the Cosinon got in the way of the Sigma mount, but I “adapted” the lens (that is, I deliberately broke it) so that it would work on the Sigma. I eventually replaced my A99 with a Sony a7RII, so I bought a K mount adapter to use this and another K mount lens on it. Having done these things — which meant there was now no additional glass between the lens and the sensor — it turned out the Cosinon is also a nice lens, usable on both cameras. Again, it has a certain look that is different to modern, high-contrast, very sharp lenses, which makes it worth using as an experimental starting point.

Cosina Cosinon-S 50mm f2 (K mount) on a Sigma sd Quattro

One lens I do like but don’t use often enough is the Pentacon 135mm f2.8. 135mm is a troublesome focal length for me. When I go out to take photographs, a Sony FE 200-600G is mounted on the A7RII, and the Sigma has the 30mm 1.4. The 200-600G stays on the Sony until such time as I decide I need a wider lens. Birds and animals move, but scenery doesn’t, so I’d rather have the long zoom ready for action, rather than a landscape-oriented lens. And, practically, the short end of the zoom is close enough to 135 (especially with a crop) that I don’t think of getting a 135mm lens out of the bag. And yet the Pentacon is a nice lens, with interesting bokeh. It is has a 13-blade iris that renders out-of-focus highlights as circles, and it can be respectably sharp.

Pentacon 135mm f2.8 on a Sony A7RII

If there is one vintage manual lens that always surprises me, it is my Saitex 28mm f2.8. I originally bought this lens to disassemble for use in a home-made tilt-shift lens, but when experimenting I found that if the lens was tilted, the image wouldn’t cover the sensor of a full frame camera. So I put the Saitex back together, and started using it for fun. Then I found that, even though it is some kind of cheap no-name import, it has a really nice look to it. Certainly not as sharp as a modern lens, but sharpness can sometimes be over-rated.

Saitex 28mm f2.8 on a Sony A7RII

It also seems to work well on the Sigma sd Quattro.

Saitex 28mm f2.8 on a Sigma sd Quattro

As it turns out, the only lens I’m likely to get rid of is a Pentacon 24mm f 2.8, which for some reason never seems to focus on either the Sigma or Sony camera. Whether this is a problem with the lens, or user error – perhaps I need to focus just backward of maximum focus peaking — I’m not yet sure. I’ll do some more experiments. This does mean, however, that fewer lenses than expected will be leaving the house, so I’m not quite sure where in the bags the lens I bought yesterday will go when it arrives.

Steve’s First Trip to Devon

Note: This is the first in what will probably become a series of life-writing exercises, published in this blog to enable friends to find it easily. Should any of these exercises ever interest anybody else, well, that’s a bonus…

I first went down to Devon in 1975. My friend Phil had moved there in the autumn of 1973. I knew Phil from secondary school, where he was also friends with my friends Chris and John. Phil had lived in the same town as us for a couple of years, those formative teenage years when we began to share the same tastes in music, books and other aspects of culture, such as the occult, the supernatural and UFOs, thus making us deeply repugnant to the girls in the school. Phil’s mother and guardian were, however, restless, and they found a house on the edge of Torbay, and so Phil left us.

When Phil moved to Devon, we never supposed we’d all remain in contact for many years afterwards. Why should we suppose such a thing? We were young, and people move on. But Phil’s parents returned to Warminster occasionally to visit friends, enabling Phil to also visit us; and he took the step of actually writing a letter to us, which encouraged us to write back, initiating a long-lasting epistolary exchange. And as soon as we were old enough, having maintained this contact, we started visiting each other.

Chris and I first made plans to visit Devon during the summer of 1974, and various close and not so close friends had toyed with the idea of joining us. After all, what young person wouldn’t like the idea of a trip to Devon? To be sixteen-ish and to have a holiday without parents? Of course, Phil’s mum and guardian would be there to watch over us part of the time, but we could visit Torquay, Paignton, Totnes and Brixham alone, without grown-up concerns shaping our days.

Unfortunately, in the end I couldn’t go. I don’t know why. I almost certainly had no money. I was never keen on shelf-stacking, whereas Chris would happily slave in Gateways in exchange for the money required to feed his appetite for books and albums. I simply visited his house and listened to his music, and bought very cheap second-hand books with my paltry pocket-money. I probably had a paper-round, but money from that was almost certainly used to maintain my drum-kit.

So, in July 1974, Chris alone made the trip to the house on the hill in Marldon. Phil was by now going out with his first girlfriend, Alison, and Chris returned with tales of the fun he’d had down there, how great Alison was, the walks they’d gone on, the places they’d visited. Chris was now, in a way, different. He now had knowledge and experiences I hadn’t.

Chris and I made a plan to visit over the Easter break in 1975. This time, I was determined to go. This would be my first holiday without parents. I was sixteen and three-quarters, Chris was seventeen and half. This was to be the only time Chris and I went to Devon together, and I think this might have been Chris’s last visit to Phil’s.

Chris and I hitch-hiked down to Devon on the 27^th March. The hitch was  smooth, and we arrived at Phil’s relatively quickly. There is nothing really memorable about the hitch, except I do remember that one of our lifts dropped us off on the A303 near Wincanton. There was no bypass then, and the road to the west of Wincanton was  twisty. We had to walk quite a long way to find a safe and practical spot at which vehicles were likely to stop and pick us up.

The house in which Phil lived occupied an enviable position just off the Torbay ring-road, on a hill outside the village of Marldon, with a view of the sea at Torbay. All around were fields and lanes waiting to be explored. Close by was Blue Mountain (which wasn’t really a mountain). There were footpaths to Torquay and Paignton, although I don’t remember visiting either of them on this trip.

What remains most memorable about this visit is snow. Just after we arrived it began to snow. A soft, slow fall of wet, heavy flakes that was to persist into the evening. As it fell into the night enough settled to leave a thin covering of wet snow and slush the next day. For the week we were there the weather remained cold or cool and often grey.

Our three protagonists brave the elements

We slept in a caravan parked in the drive. We had as many spare sheets and blankets, sleeping bags and coats as we could muster to keep us warm. Before we got into our beds we read by, and were kept warm by, gas burners on the wall. Using these, however, caused condensation to form on the walls and windows as the water vapour from the burning gas met the cold metal and glass of the caravan. The heat quickly leaked away through the thin walls once the burners were off. We were young, though, and covered by many layers. Rather than the cold, what I remember is droplets of water running down the walls, and the smell of the gas burners, which is almost impossible to describe as no immediate analogue comes to mind. I think, perhaps, it is the smell of burnt propane and hot ceramics.

The next morning, there was still some snow cover on the hills, and the sun came out.

Marldon in the snow

I recall very little of the rest of the week, except the notions the photos trigger. There was a lot of walking over the few days we were there. It was cold to begin our visit, as evidenced by the snow and the coats.

Phil’s dandruff was bad that week

One thing I do remember is that I read George Bernard Shaw’s “Back to Methuselah”. Even now, I’m convinced, in an off-hand, amused way, that I’m going to live until I’m 150 simply because I desire to do so, and by some Lamarckian magic my desire will change my genes to enable such a feat.

Phil, meanwhile – trapped as he was on a hill a long way from the people at school he’d only recently got to know, and having split with Alison – had been unable to ramble at anybody for days before we arrived. Thus, we were subjected to a panoply of his fantastic notions and theories. By the time we left, he’d lost his voice. Some might say it was unfortunate for Chris and me that events happened in that order.

As the week progressed, the weather slowly warmed, as can be seen by the change in outer wear. Here are a couple more images from our walks around the lanes. Our coats have become more lightweight, so the weather had certainly become more clement.

Our heroes explore the lanes

In this picture I’m wearing my black military blouson. I had a thing for blousons. This is, I believe a Civil Defence blouson, and had CD buttons (which should, of course, have been removed). Later, I would sport RAF blousons.

Meanwhile, in between rambling interminably, Phil found time to practice his Frog Dance.

One of the exquisite moves performed during the Frog Dance

We went to Brixham, that much is certain, because I describe what I thought about it in a letter to Phil in 1976. I was impressed with Brixham; the harbour and harbourside, the architecture, the houses climbing up the sides of the hills, and the arcades and amusements. The whole trip to Torbay left a distinctly watery residue in me. Not only was there Brixham, but I could see from the dining room at Phil’s house the sea at Torbay and large ships at anchor there. Later, after I’d returned to Wiltshire, I had a dream about Brixham and a sunken ship. The dream went something like this, although this retelling contains the kind of rhetorical flourishes that forty years of writing and rewriting has wrought:

I walked around Brixham harbour. At least, it looked like Brixham harbour. No – it didn’t even look exactly like Brixham harbour. It felt like Brixham harbour, though. I was there with Phil and Chris.

The tide was very high and lapped at the very top of the grey harbour walls. And on this particularly warm, blue and sunny day in Devon, the harbour waters were clear. Not just the clarity of unusually clean Channel water – unpolluted by oil and diesel slicks, crisp packets, polystyrene cups, unsullied by the shit pumped daily out into the Channel from the coastal towns, clear not only of cans and prams, shopping trolleys and tyres, and all the usual detritus of a vast world population eager to rid itself of its disposable but convenient trappings – but a Mediterranean clarity. You could see from the surface of the water all the way to the bottom of the harbour. And even there the mud was clean; nothing marred the rippled and water-fluted surface. But most amazingly, sunk deep to its blue funnel, an oil tanker lay submerged in the harbour. The harbour was empty of all other vessels except this monster. Not a trawler or tourist boat could be seen on the still, smooth water. There was only this oil tanker, completely visible through the glass-clear water.

I stood and looked at the sunken giant for some time. And time and again my eye was drawn to the only part of the tanker protruding from the water: the funnel. The funnel was blue, with a gold star on it. The blue was deep, and electric; so deep it was almost black, yet so bright it seemed to burn. The gold was quintessentially gold – though only a colour, it seemed precious in its own right, a precious colour, a twenty-two-carat colour. I was mesmerised by the combination of colours, and the incongruity of that single giant funnel rising from the clear water of the empty harbour. Phil and Chris had walked on, leaving me alone, contemplating the form and colour of the funnel. After a while I became aware that I couldn’t smell the fish, diesel and oil I had learned to associate with the harbour, and even the seagulls were quiet.

On Thursday the 3^rd April, Chris and I hitched back to Warminster, leaving the croaky Frog Dancer once again to his own devices. Our journey only took three and half hours. Phil’s mum had made us “lovely sandwiches”, but as Chris noted in a later letter, we never ate them until we arrived at my house.

Soon after this, in May I believe, Phil visited Warminster. But that is another story.

Launching my first commercial venture …

It would be rude of me not share my wife’s excitement about her new venture 🙂

Wonders out of a Redhead

I am so excited … hold the front page … This week I launched my first creative commercial venture … an Etsy shop where I can sell my handmade books. I’ve been making handmade journals, commonplace books and sketchbooks for a while now and this week I finally took the leap of faith into the world of setting up my own online shop.

Journaling has always been so incredibly important to me and having beautiful books to write in makes keeping a journal even more special.

So, what is a journal?

It’s your story, your history, your present moment. It’s a gateway into who you really are and how you really feel. It’s a place to play and a place to get down to some serious work. Keeping a journal, whether you do it every day, once a week, or only in moments of strong emotions, good or bad, can…

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The Bokeh of Various Lenses 1

So, this summer I was experimenting with still life photography, using various pots and garden flowers, and various lenses. While I was doing this I thought it might be educational for me to take a series of photographs using the same subject and background using various of my lenses at their maximum aperture, so that I could get a feel for the quality of the out-of-focus areas (the bokeh, indeed). Having done that, I thought it might also be of interest to any other passing photographer to see the results.

There is nothing scientific about this “test” or “comparison”. It is qualitative rather than quantitative. So, without further ado, let’s get into it.

All photos were taken with a Sony A7r2 on a tripod, using appropriate adaptors.

The first lens is an Autochinon 50mm f1.4 (PK mount). This is the version with the six-bladed iris, rather than the one with … more blades (I can’t remember exactly how many, but I know the other version is a lot more expensive). It’s a busy but bubbly kind of bokeh.

Autochinon 50mm f1.4

The second lens is a Canon 50mm f1.8 (manual focus, FD mount). This lens is from an old Canon AV-1. The bokeh seems quite similar to the Autochinon — although perhaps the bubbles are slightly better defined.

Canon 50mm f1.8

The third lens is the good old Helios 44-M f2.0 (M42 mount). I appear to have moved the camera slightly closer in this shot. You can, however, see the difference in the bokeh. There are still some bubbles, but fewer of them, and it all feels a little more swirly.

Helios 44-M f2.0

Finally, the fourth lens is the Sony SAL 50mm f1.4. The bokeh here seems a little harsher; certainly less bubbly than the Autochinon and Canon, and not swirly like the Helios. There’s something kind of… sharp… about this bokeh. It’s not offensive but it wouldn’t be my go to lens for out-of-focus highlights, However, it does have other advantages, chief among them autofocus on my A99 and A7R2.

Sony SAL 50mm f1.4

One further interesting comparison might be with the Canon 40mm f2.8 lens. This doesn’t open as wide as the other lenses, so more of the background is in focus. Still, in this scene, I find the OOF areas a little gnarly. As with the Sony above, it’s not offensive, but I don’t… quite… like it. Again though, it is a small, light, AF lens, even on an adaptor, so very useful.

Canon 40mm f2.8

My favourites are undoubtedly the two old manual focus lenses at the top of this post, the Autochinon 50mm f1.4 and the Canon 50mm f1.8.

(The head photo at the top of this post was taken with a projector lens with a homemade cardboard triangular iris. More on the bokeh of other lenses in the next post!)

Review — “The White Cliffs” — Alice Duer Miller

The White Cliffs by Alice Duer Miller

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


A very short and easy-to-read verse novella. A reviewer at Goodreads complained that the poem was doggerel. I didn’t think the entire poem was doggerel — there are various forms in the complete poem, some more “simple” than others. But the novella is in a sense a propaganda piece, so it makes sense, I think, that the beginning of the poem should have the kind of rhymes and rhythms that would draw the average reader in, the type of reader whose normal reading fare is perhaps not poetry.

The poem has the same feel to it as Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death – a conversation between Britain and America about why England/Britain/the United Kingdom should be helped by the United States in its fight against Fascism — the protagonist’s father fills much the same role as the adversarial advocate in that film’s heavenly court. (In fact, as I write this, I wonder how much of an influence The White Cliffs had on the film).

As in the film Mrs Miniver[1], which was also intended to persuade, the novella is set in a certain class of British society — there are children with nannies, husbands who think that first children should always be named a certain way, people who think that primogeniture is very good thing, people who live in the countryside in big houses. It conveys a stereotypical view of England (we’ll call it that) that reflects the mores of, say, the upper middle-class, and believes that those people, those mores, define England. For that reason the poem feels very located in a particular time and place, and doesn’t speak to a wider or modern audience. Yet, it wasn’t really written for a “wider” audience, certainly on this side of the pond. It was written to inspire an American audience to agitate to save a stereotypical Britain.

And, after all, stereotypes can be powerful. This poem was apparently successful in speaking to the American public about the perils Britain faced. The battered old copy I read was a 15th edition, so “doggerel” in part it might have been, but that doggerel struck a chord with readers in a way that more “elevated” or “sophisticated” poetry might not. And as I mentioned earlier, the poem is not doggerel throughout; there are some nice structures and lines later in the poem that indicate that simplicity of form might have been an intent. (Caveat: I do not know enough about Alice Duer Miller’s other poetry to be sure that this is so.).

It has historical interest, certainly, and also has pertinence to cultural studies. It has some interesting lines and some nice turns of phrase. So: A short read, that some might find irritating for a variety of reasons, but others might find inspiring for a variety of reasons.


[1] I like “Mrs Miniver”… That bomb shelter scene!

FatSig, as it is Known

About 10 years ago, one of my oldest friends died. He kindly left me a sum of money to play with. I’d just got back into photography, and was at that time using a Sony R1. I liked the interface, and the handling. Around the same time, Sony released the A850 as a cheaper alternative to the A900, and that, and a couple of lenses, were within my reach because of my friend’s kindness.

Cow Parsley in the Defensive Ditch at Ludgershall Castle

So, an A850 went on the shopping list… But what lenses? Well, I only needed a couple, I thought. And who needs a bagful of prime lenses? A nice wide angle zoom, and a long-ish telezoom would surely suffice. The Sony 70-300G had been well-reviewed, and who needs anything longer than 300mm, right? The wide angle presented a bit of a dilemma, but after reading a few reviews, I settled on the Sigma 24-70 f2.8 IF EX DG. It was a big, heavy lump of glass, with a big front element to let the light in. Due to its girth, it’s become known as FatSig.

Scabious and Cranesbill

I’ve always been impressed with it. Other lenses have come and gone over the years, but old FatSig remains with me.

Sunset Neat Compton Abbas , Dorset

The 70-300 gave way to a 70-400, then a 150-500, then a 150-600. And of course…only two lenses? What was I thinking? I discovered M42 adapters, and the fun of finding old lenses to use. 50mm M42 lenses made me realise I might need a 50mm AF lens as well… And, oh, look, there’s a second hand Minolta 50mm f1.7 on eBay!

Still, though, FatSig was always there. It has nice contrast and lovely colours.

Oil Seed Rape and a Blue and White Sky

Sometimes you feel the need to go a bit wider than 24mm, so yes, you might need a Cosina 19-35, or a Sigma 17-35, or a Tokina 20-35. So each of them was duly experimented with, and the last remains with me. The Tokina is a nice lens too, for the the price.

A Winterbourne Ford (Tokina 20-35)

And, of course, when I moved to the telephotos that started at 150mm, there was now a gap between them and the top of the Sigma’s range. Some experiments later, I ended up with the Minolta 100-200 which I still have – a sharp lens with lovely colours.

A Tiger Moth Takes Wing (Minolta 100-200)

As time goes by, the lens bag has filled with more lenses (mostly cheap and fun). But the Sigma 24-70, good old FatSig, remains in the bag.

Water Dean Bottom

Ten years of use, dropped once and fixed once, still a lovely thing.

Over the Black Heath

Review — “One Green Field” — Edward Thomas

One Green Field by Edward Thomas

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’ve liked many of Thomas’s poems (when forced to learn “Adlestrope” when I was fourteen, I took against him, but learned the error of my ways later in life), and have often wondered what his famous nature writing was like. So, I dipped my toe in the luxuriant waters with this short collection of essays published by Penguin in their English Journeys series.

Now, I found in this book what I feared most. I’ve always been wary of nature writing, and the recent increasing interest in it has brought to my attention snippets in magazines and papers, writing that I’ve tended to find a little over-wrought, a tad repetitive, and just a touch rich. And it was the same with the essays in this book. I think I like my writing… with slightly less cream and sugar, let us say, a little less piping across the marzipan.

I can’t count the number of times a moorhen appeared, or a pond. Whether it was the same pond or the same moorhen, I’m not completely sure, but there was often a pond, and often a moorhen. I also began to lose my way in lists of flowers, and trees and routes, colours, sounds, leaves everywhere, the textures of bricks and stones and tiles, and it was definitely too much; it all tumbled down in a cascade of adjectives and nouns.

For me, the best essay was “The Village” — I think because it had the feel of a narrative, that there was a little life writing, some biography in it. Of course, there were passages of loveliness in many of the essays, but, as I say, after a while it all became a bit too much. Still, many people greatly admire Thomas’ essays, and find the richness a pleasure. But I think I’ve learned that I prefer the spare fictions of a Maugham, Greene or Rendell. And one idea returned to me again and again as I read through the essays: that I preferred the compression and discipline of the poems; that, for me, Thomas had said everything he needed to say about his love of nature and his connection to the countryside in Tall Nettles.

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Genial: The Love Song of Simon and Julie

In July I published the latest in the Dereham Nodes, Genial: The Love Song of Simon and Julie. Genial is the next novel in my Dereham series of novels. I don’t like to think of it as a series, really. The novels are stylistically and generically different. The novels are simply interconnected. They are set in the same town, and that is where the interconnections occur.

Genial is Node 4.5. Why Node 4.5, you might wonder. There is a reason, naturellement. This node is more a novella than a novel, as it is only about fifty thousand words. The story is also, in terms of genre, quite different to the other novels. It’s a love story, as the subtitle indicates. It doesn’t really involve spies, UFOs, the paranormal, crazy people, or any of that stuff. It does involve friendship, which, I realise, is quite a theme of the later novels in this series. It also takes place in the background to everything that is happening in Raven of Dispersion (Node 4), while Simon later becomes a major character in The Ethical Hitman (Node 5). So, to me, it felt like a novel that was in the same network, but slightly off the main routes.

So, what is Genial about? It’s about the summer of 1976 — the dazzling summer, the long hot summer, the summer when the sun shone always, and would shine always and forever — and young old friends Simon and Julie drift through the glorious lazy holiday that stretches before them, wondering what they should do about the loves they somehow left behind, before the sun came out. As they share time together under the blue skies, in the sultry heat, with their friends — the friend who loves his car, the friend who loves fixing cars, the friend whose boyfriend loves his drink, the friend who loves all the boys, the friend who loves somebody else’s girlfriend — they wonder who it is they should love. Out on the hills, out in the fields, and riding in cars with the wind in their hair, Simon and Julie become languorously entangled. Can this entanglement last longer than sunshine? Or is it only a creation of this magical summer? Their story is episodic, picaresque, sentimental, romantic. And most genial.

Various characters from other novels appear, and Simon and Julie themselves re-appear in later novels in the series. The novel also holds another secret or ludic notion, a notion at which the blurb on the back of the book hints.

I had a break from writing after finishing Genial. It’s been a pretty intense 15 years of writing and editing (especially when you consider that my day-to-day job is technical  writing!), including five novels and three non-fiction books. However, this year will see me get back into the groove as I work with sometime co-author Kevin on Node 0, and start writing Node 6. And I will be chasing a publisher/agent again.

Review — “Judgement Day” — Penelope Lively

Judgement Day by Penelope Lively

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was my first Penelope Lively novel. Her name on spines has followed me around bookshops for the best part of my reading life. But in my drive to read more women authors, I found a couple of Lively’s second-hand, and thought I’d give them a go. She is a prolific author, and the first two purchases were pretty much pot-luck. Turns out that Moon Tiger, the first of the two I bought, was a Booker prize winner. However, I began my Lively journey with the slightly slimmer Judgement Day.

Judgement Day is story set around a church. That might make it sound like some kind of story about religion or belief, but it’s not really about that, although those topics are touched on. We meet the people involved in the church, but not all of them are religious. They are the members of a fund-raising committee — the old church is in need of repair. It is through this committee that various inhabitants of the town meet. There are also other characters who are not part of the committee and not interested in the church who nonetheless interact with the central characters and add colour and motivation to the plot.

The central characters are, for me at least, Ruth, the atheist with an interest in church architecture; the ineffectual and doubting vicar, George; the church Warden and veteran of World War 2, Sydney; and Martin, the troubled child of warring parents who lives next door to Sydney.

The story is told from various viewpoints, first one character and then another. Lively chops the viewpoints around quite quickly, with perhaps half a page devoted to one voice, then a page or two to another. Changes in viewpoint are clearly signposted, so the story is easy to follow, and each voice is distinct enough, because of their internal dialog or concerns, to keep the characters straight.

The novel follows the characters as they interact – through the fund-raising committee, or because they are neighbours, or because their children play together. Even though what happens might be considered mundane, still I wanted to know what was happening, what the result of these relationships would be. Because it is a novel, of limited duration, you know there will be a pay-off, a crisis. But how? And what? Why the title? What is, when is, judgement day? To reveal that would be to write a spoiler.

Suffice to say that a novel I thought would be about one relationship was very much about another. And ultimately, it is very sad book. You begin to see a glimmer of hope, changes occurring, a blossoming, perhaps. But that is cut short. And you can see and feel sad lives stretching out beyond the end of the book.

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