Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

My nephew has fulfilled a long-held ambition to be a band photographer. He did a publicity shoot and went front-stage for Swiss band Choo Choo and made a great job of it. I'm really proud of him and so chuffed that he got and seized the chance. (Photo by Jo)

While doing a subject search at Flickr, I came, by chance, across this powerful image of an old woman in a bookshop - her body language expressing total concentration. It's a magical capture that lingered in my mind. I'm glad that finding it it led me to his fine set of photographs of people reading.

An occasional feature among rural homes is sewage disposal without recourse to a main sewage system. My Mum's little house was built in the 60's with drainage to a septic tank and this method continues to be perfectly successful and saves quite a bit on the water bill.

Each July comes the time when we must call in someone to pump out and remove the sludge. In the old days this was referred to as sending for the 'man with the honey cart '- I can't find the origin of the term in Brewer's... Phrase & Fable - I presume it is ironic, unless sewage does occasionally attract bees.

We send for a delightful chap whose name, Dick Fendick, is utterly appropriate for Norfolk. He arrives in a tractor that pulls a large tank and with great skill backs it up the drive; out come the suction pipes into the chamber and a light perfume fills the air.
The whole operation takes ten minutes and sets me back £45. There are jokes about 'sludge funds', inevitably. But the best bit is having a chat with Dick about his travels, and petting his dogs who always ride in the cab with him - he has three. This time only the terrier came but she was co-operative and posed in the tractor window for my American tenant's children.

They were most keen to watch the whole performance. "Mom, is that really all our poo going in there?" "Can I have a ride, Mr. Dick?" "Where do you dump all the stuff now?" It was a great novelty - there is presumably little opportunity to view such primitive practice in Chicago. As he left, Dick took the dog's paw & waved it at the kids, "See you all next year." No big story - just a fragrant little event in the country calendar.

Childe Hassam
The Garden Table (1910) and The Skyscraper Window (1934)

Every so often one comes along that makes it all worthwhile. I swear that this is pretty well verbatim.

Me: Lovely to see you again. Been doing anything exciting?

Elderly Lady Passenger: Well, I've been to Scotland; coach trip with me usual firm, I've been five times now.

Have a good time?

It was OK but I got stuck with an awful old geezer in the next seat to me, a right old woman, he had dozens of ailments. Went into so much blinking detail too. He was telling us all about his possgate, how he had to get up ever so many times a night to have a piddle. Then guess what he comes out with?

Go on...

Apparently before the doc examined him he said "Goodness, you're very small for a man." and he said, "You know, funny enough, my wife always said that." Well I couldn't keep a straight face and the couple in the seat in front got the giggles. They called him Wee Willie Winkie for the rest of the trip. On the quiet of course. He kept bringing up this possgate thing and what a nuisance it was in the hotel. As if wanted to know about it. In the end I just ignored him. I was lucky, my old man didn't suffer from that. Possgate, I mean, not the willy. Come to think of it he didn't suffer from that either, if you know what I mean.

(Later) How did you get on, did you see the lady doctor?

Yes, she's lovely, gave me tablets. I've got shingles right round me middle, can't stand wearing a bra. Trouble is, without it I nearly trip over 'em! I'm a bit heavy. Couldn't do dancing on the social evening away. Just as well with that old bloke about.

Well, that's one problem I don't have, I always wanted a bit more up top.

You're alright, love. Both me and me sister were big busted, got bigger as we got older too. Me husband always used to say they were hand-reared.

You're just terrible, you know.

Well, you got to have a a laugh haven't you? There's too many miserable old gits about with no sense of humour. I like a laugh, me.

In the same way that the camera surrendered itself entirely to Marilyn Monroe, so is the violin the willing creature of Nigel Kennedy. He has musical genius without doubt and something more, that even some of the greats did not have in such measure, the ability to call out the soul of the instrument. He is a one-off, eccentric, scruffy, annoying, endearing, populist, self-promoting, but always deeply in love with the music. On Saturday's prom he gave the Elgar Violin Concerto after an unheard of nine hours of rehearsal with the BBC Symphony Orchestra; playing in complete emotional unison they produced a performance of perfect balance and beauty. The concert is available for seven days on the Proms web page**. If you don't want to listen to the whole thing please just select the section from 29:50 to the end of the movement, nine minutes, and see what I mean about soul. And a Guarneri has a lot of that.
**No longer available at the BBC website, but now up at You Tube.

(The wee Prodigy)

Artist Marja-Leena Rathje has been writing about her 3-D scanning techniques. It fired up some of her correspondents, including me, to have a go. I scanned five of my favourite stones/fossils (lid open, covered up with a black cloth) with my cheap old Tevion scanner from Aldi. The wonderful cat stone found at Brancaster beach gave me the idea of lifting a pattern from each stone with Photoshop and pasting them to connect and decorate the group. I put a grain filter on it to get a bit more presence. It's a bit crude and rough-edged but I rather like it.

I only recently noticed Michael Gambon's extremely beautiful hands while watching an old Maigret episode. Long fingers, expressive gesture, shapely nails are features I might have observed. Always in work, he went big with an extraordinary performance in Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective; I have followed him with pleasure through the Poliakoffs, Layer Cake, myriad TV and film parts to Harry Potter and Cranford. I knew nothing of his life until I Googled him just now. Quite colourful it seems. He can be very funny too.

I had a tooth out today, nasty it was, destroyed by an abscess under a crown. As a metal crowbar and giant pincers began excavations, or so it seemed, I decided to take my mind elsewhere. I toured my grandmother's house, trying to remember the colours of curtains, patterns of brass bed knobs, numbers of stairs and pictures on the wall. I had just got to the Boyhood of Raleigh hanging in the spare bedroom when I heard my dentist say "All done, no need to drill the roots, they came out OK". I discovered tears at the corners of my eyes and a handful of the nurse's overall in my fist, but to all intents and purposes I had been absent. I must try the technique again, it has many potential uses.

How's this for an invention - a pan designed for the ergonomic frying/grilling of sausages? Using a conventional one it's an absolute bore to try to make 10 greasy cylinders evenly brown as they slip and re-expose their burnt side while you adjust their neighbours. Neat rows of divided non-stick valleys would allow perfect management of each banger. Patent is not applied for, so you may filch the idea and go into production with my blessing.

On the principle of the condemned man, I was given a large pre-extraction breakfast in bed this morning (with burnt banger). G had been for a paper and brought it folded to show an ad' for £1 Ryanair flights to Dublin in September and October. Well, of course they weren't a pound - but with taxes exempted and just a baggage charge thay came out at £24 return per ticket. Sounded like a good deal, so without delay I rang two friends who love Ireland, then booked us all in, Sept 1st till the 8th. As well as enjoying Dublin craic, I should be able to pop down to Roscrea to see my relatives for a couple of days. Bit worried about my carbon footprint, though.

That reminds me, I heard a 'Two Ronnies' joke this morning - about the Irish indoor athletics meeting that had to be cancelled because the weather turned out fine. As an ex-Molloy, I'm allowed to tell stories like that.

I'm held by this picture by Matt O'Sullivan, it offers almost a surfeit of beautiful things. If I could achieve even a fraction of the superb content of his photography I would be overjoyed. Among many others, I treasure his Easter Parade group.


The music of Lata Mangeshkar, known as India's nightingale and the queen of Hindi film music, is widely accessible on the net; I have been wallowing in some of it this evening, this one is a favourite. Bollywood music is addictive I find, even if its vehicles are somewhat over florid. The business of the playback singer is particularly intriguing, where motherly, mature ladies sing on behalf of glamorous young stars in voices that have, still, the fresh timbre of youth.

A pretty gesture. Detail from Rembrandt's Danae.