This is a strange photo!

St Edmunds Catholic Church

A slightly dark vision, snapped from Nell Keenan’s “rose garden”. The rose garden is/was a squalid mess of empty cans, litter, shit, and the usual paraphernalia (I think the church may be demolished now). Poor Nell Keenan, she has a plaque but what a memorial.

Architecture… now where do we start?

What is it about modern eclesiastical architecture that is so shit? In the past, churches and cathedrals were built to shock and awe.

I love Coventry Cathedral and The Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Fransisco, two modern examples that buck the trend. Sir Basil Spence commissioned artists such as Elizabeth Frink, John Piper and Graham Sutherland for Coventry Cathedral and it shows. In San Fransisco, from the right direction, on a good day, St Mary’s Cathedral looks like a giant breast. Which is no bad thing for a cathedral dedicated to The Blessed Virgin Mary. I’m sure there are others that I am not familiar with, but for me, the overall impression of recent church architecture (in the UK at least) is an homage to a cheap, tacky, soulless 1960s ‘dare to be different’ ethos.

Double murder scene

Nobody seemed to know very much about this. It had happened a few days earlier. There were some flowers by the door so somebody must have cared.

And while we are on the subject, the estate on which this happened was designed/architected along the lines of a Cornish fishing village, Polperro or something similar. Huh? Don’t you want to just curl up and die? I’m sure Prince Charles would approve but is it really the way to create *instant* community for a Liverpool overspill new town? It has been done cheaply and it shows. Polperro it is not. Have the people that commission these things never heard of William Morris or Le Corbusier? Rhetorical question I know, it all comes down to how cheaply they can do it. The ribbon looks good when it is cut and the place is shiny new. Fuck the people who actually live there and have to endure its shoddy physical and social demise.

They get left with the ribbon in the picture above. Cut that Mr Mayor.

I was a one time inhabitant of a relatively successful new town:

“a town designed for healthy living and industry of a size that makes possible a full measure of social life but not larger, surrounded by a rural belt; the whole of the land being in public ownership, or held in trust for the community“

The italics are mine. Margaret Thatcher fucked up that particular vision with “Right to buy” turning the whole thing into very desirable real estate with typical nightmare Little England Tory values. I had no love for the place but had some pride in the principles on which it was built.

Somehow, I don’t think it will happen in Skelmersdale.

And here we go again with our current unelected ‘coalition’ government delivering a right-wing ideological onslaught that looks set to eclipse that of the Thatcher government of 1979, only this time with the complete destruction of public services. To pay back the banks? To save the economy? Fuck ‘em.

Thatcher was elected, a major difference from David Cameron and his lightweights. Weirdly though, Cameron, like Thatcher, is once again helped along by lap-dog Lib-Dems (then known as the SDP) when (back then in 1981) they split the Labour vote and thus helped the Tories keep power in the 1980s and 1990s in a strangely parallel universe.

Nick Clegg, St Vince Cable et al, may you rot in hell. Nothing personal, I felt the same about Roy Jenkins, David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley Williams in 1981. At least most of those had some gravitas, even statespersonship. Unlike your craven, power-seeking, sell-out selves. Do I make myself clear?

I feel like I’m very much stuck in a loop at both ends of my life.

Unbelievable.

Cat

The moggie ignored everything… Well done moggie, you have the right idea

Some heavy post-processing for dramatic effect, aka laying it on with a trowel.

@BearspaceART

Outside The Albany. Uncle Trevor steals some of the limelight. As if he could…

St Paul’s Church, Deptford

I’m amazed this came out as well as it did. Nice shapes and lines

Funny what you find down The High Street

A year ago Nicola asked me to photograph her wedding. Not in a million years was my initial reaction… We’d never met, just exchanged emails & comments about the photos on this site. Nicola liked the photos, is local, and loves Deptford. She had the idea that following the wedding ceremony, they would walk from St Paul’s Church to the reception at The Albany, down Deptford High Street, through the market. Now that sounded inspired. I was interested.

“I’ve got a wedding photographer, I just want you to do your ‘Deptford thing’ down The High Street”.

How could I refuse?

So eighty wedding guests squeezed through the market following Nicola and Jimmy looking for a good deal:

Bargain!

My ‘thing’ was to use a film camera loaded with B&W rather than the ubiquitous digi. Perhaps a little bit more on this choice in a later post, it certainly made things ‘interesting’. No pressure there… But it was exciting. Me bouncing round like a paparazza, the response to the procession from the Saturday crowds and stall holders was incredible!

Let us not forget that once, all weddings were photographed on film… how times change. Respect to wedding photographers (all wedding photographers, whatever format to be honest).

Outside St Paul’s Church

A brilliant idea Nicola & I hope you don’t mind the preview on this site

Congratulations to you both.

What would Johnny Morris have said?

Not only Yertle either, since he seems to be having it away with Myrtle… unless he is trying to reach the moon because it is higher than him (see Dr Seuss). That could be Mack beneath him, about to burp.

These were no small turtles either! I didn’t realise they lived wild or got this big.

Let us not forget that we do of course have quite a famous river bank in Deptford…

Almost opposite the pond in Folkestone gardens I came across these seats:

Scary seats

Not the most relaxing place to sit. Looks like a torture chamber.

There were more alarming chairs as we went round the corner to the dog park on the Evelyn Estate:

Hung not thrown

Another for the Lartigue collection, except this one is as found, not thrown. The dog park, dry as tinder, was (unusually) chock full of dogshit. Even the dog lacked the enthusiasm to play in there today.

And today the area was also more like a chair graveyard…

Where chairs go to die

The wording on this post by Margaret McMillan Park on Idonia Street may be misleading :

Local food?

I think it is a sewer vent and it has probably been there since before Margaret McMillan and her sister set themselves up in Deptford and SE London. They may well have walked past it too, wondering about ‘HAM BAKE’.

Thanks to The Deptford Dame in the comments for pointing me towards Caroline’s Miscellany for more about this stink pipe.

Silly me though, I forgot to look behind it and read what else it really said.

Stoned cat

We took The Dog to Nunhead Cemetery. Very overgrown and leafy since our last visit. Except for this bit:

The ‘atmospheric ruin’ sadly locked up

I always forget that in the summer the leaf canopy reduces the light to very low levels, and what does get through makes for hugely contrasting areas of intense light and shade.

Chatty cherubs

This is one angel that always try and photograph:

My favourite angel (despite the blown out highlights)

And another:

Big paws… Nice bally, nice doggy

Soppy

Tough

Playful

The Dog can also be followed on Twitter – @MyYourTheDog. Parental advisory though, he does have a potty mouth sometimes.

And?

Got lots of  photos of The Dog. He is the perfect test subject, particularly for dynamic autofocus and tracking on the F5.

Trouble is, at 8 FPS, it is possible to get through 36 frames in 4.5 seconds… Oh well.