Month: February 2023

28 February

Grey and wet outside; I’m stuck in waiting for delivery from an incompetent company that can’t even tell me if it’s coming in the morning or afternoon (are you listening Virginmedia?).

So, given that it’s unlikely I’ll be going anywhere with my camera today, I offer this as a substitute. I screenshotted it from one of those slideshows that Apple springs on you from time to time: two of my school photos (1961, 1962?) merged with one of my father taken when he was a very young man in the army in WWII.

Seeing the three photos thrown unexpectedly together affected me quite powerfully. I was back to the time when I felt closest to my father, my champion. I loved his stories, adored him for all that he could tell me about history; for knowing where the best conkers were; the names of the birds we saw and heard. He was disruptive, exciting, sometimes – unpredictably – frightening, shaking up our cosy, safe home; a breath of wind blown in from the wide world outside.

He said later that he had loved those years too when he felt as though he held us in the palm of his hand. At the age I was when these photos were taken, there was no better place to be.

What I’ve only just realised is that when I was seven or eight he was so much closer himself to his own boyhood. The tales he told were of an age lost to both of us in different ways: years before the war when he fought off all comers, won races, and sang like an angel in the choir. Some of the things he shared seemed like throwbacks to a distant age even then, somehow both essential to childhood and complete anachronisms. He taught us how to hollow an acorn and, with a straw for a stem and tea leaves for tobacco, smoke it like a pipe; how to punch holes in a cocoa tin, fill it with smouldering rags and whirl it around our heads till flames roared out of it; if we’d had an iron hoop I’m sure he’d have had us bowling it down the road. I remember he shaped fragile octagonal kites from bamboo, tissue paper and flour and water that would rise on the air so lightly they seemed to stand straight up above you, almost invisible in the sky.

He would have been 100 years old this year.

FOMO in 1968

I listened to the Kinks 1968 LP The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society for the first time today (!) and, in the age of tik tok, Instagram and the whole explosion of digital photography (it was estimated that 1.4 trillion photos were uploaded in 2020)* came across this:

People take pictures of the Summer,
Just in case someone thought they had missed it,
And to proved that it really existed.
Fathers take pictures of the mothers,
And the sisters take pictures of brothers,
Just to show that they love one another.

You can’t picture love that you took from me,
When we were young and the world was free.
Pictures of things as they used to be,
Don’t show me no more, please.

People take pictures of each other,
Just to prove that they really existed,
Just to prove that they really existed.
People take pictures of each other,
And the moment to last them for ever,
Of the time when they mattered to someone.

People take pictures of the Summer,
Just in case someone thought they had missed it,
Just to proved that it really existed.
People take pictures of each other,
And the moment to last them for ever,
Of the time when they mattered to someone.
Picture of me when I was just three,
Sucking my thumb by the old oak tree.
Oh how I love things as they used to be,
Don’t show me no more, please.

* Chat GPT, in answer to my enquiry about the number of digital images uploaded each year, replied:

The number of digital photographs uploaded every year is difficult to determine precisely, as there are many different sources and platforms for uploading photos, and not all of them make their data publicly available. However, some estimates and projections suggest that the number is quite large.

For example, according to a report by Visual Capitalist, an estimated 1.4 trillion digital photos were taken in 2020, and this number is expected to continue growing in the coming years. Of these, many are likely uploaded to social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, as well as cloud storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud.

Other estimates suggest that the total number of photos uploaded to social media platforms alone could be in the tens of billions or even hundreds of billions per year. For example, in 2019, Instagram reported that users were sharing an average of 95 million photos and videos per day on its platform.

Overall, while it’s difficult to know the exact number of digital photographs uploaded every year, it’s clear that the number is very large and continues to grow rapidly.

25 February

The thing about posting a photo every day is that some days your photos aren’t very interesting. I mean, the subject may have intrigued or attracted me at the time, but I haven’t managed to take a picture that can stand up for itself. I’m not vain enough to imagine that any of my photos are particularly good but I do know that some of them give me greater pleasure than others. Yesterday’s were both snatched quickly at the end of the day, both sights gave me pleasure but neither photo quite captured enough of the sum of that pleasure to make me pleased with them.

Still, who can argue with my first daffodils of the year, or the happiness that the sight of old terracotta pots brings, especially when they are highlighted in late afternoon sun?

24 February

Indoors looking out today – decorating! I’m like my father: I can do it when I have to, but will always try to put it off for as long as I’m able. Sadly times wingéd chariot has finally caught up to me and I am filling and sanding with a will.

It means that these photos were taken through the double glazing, looking out at the bird feeders, of a female Blackcap that’s taken to visiting us. And a squirrel feasting on his I’ll gotten gains.

The sharp eyed will spot that we keep our bird feeders padlocked. Blame the squirrel. He hasn’t learned to pick it. Yet.

23 February

We visited Br___n Park yesterday for the first time in ages. There we signs of maintenance work everywhere – underbrush cleared, paths opened. In the nature reserve the boardwalks had been renewed in places (though they still bounced and sank unpredictably in others).

The area was always very boggy and someone had decided to make more of the old reedy, marshy wilderness, cutting the reeds back and creating small pools and scrapes. All very raw and bare at the moment, it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the summer: what plants and flowers will emerge; what wildlife will congregate.

Just as we were thinking about heading home my eye was caught by quick movement along the bare branches of a tree a few yards ahead of us on the path. It was a tree creeper foraging for food and, for a very few seconds, highlighted by the afternoon sun.