The Light Fantastic
I looked outside my window once more onto a grey unpromising world. The forecast it seemed was wrong; there was no sign of the patches of blue sky and sunshine I'd been promised and so I made a second mug of coffee and switched on the television, intending to clear a couple of episodes of "Around the World in Eighty Days" while I had the house to myself. That's the way it works isn't it? Some things we watch together, but on other occasions the one of us who's been dragged into a series they were never that interested in seeing in the first place makes their almost immediate boredom plain by reaching for their mobile within the first few minutes. More than once I've come home to find Sarah Jessica Parker on the screen and stifled a sigh. And I'm not talking about celebrity crushes here either.
As least now I have a little cubby hole to hide in when "Sex in the City" and similar other televisual offerings have won the hour. In the middle of a sleepless night a few days earlier a lightning bolt had landed somewhere between my ears, a moment which found me comparing the relative merits and prices of an almost inexhaustible number of desks on Amazon the following morning. The happy result is that I have an office of sorts in which to edit my photos and write up the accompanying episodes. Before this change, the PC sat next to the sofa in the living room, in the corner where Ali generally sits, and as she's clearly the boss it meant that the creative juices needed to be flowing at exactly the same time that I managed to slip into the hot seat for a chance of any editorial shenanigans to take place. It's a very liberating experience being able to sit at one's desk and be completely focused on a labour of love rather than the hideous mental gymnastics that I used to have to do at work. Even my deputy Katie thought I wouldn't be able to resist the odd spreadsheet after I retired, but in the four months that have flown by, I've left them behind completely. Not even once have I dreamed of turning a data download into a pivot table. Never have I felt the need to apply a vlookup formula to a long column of numbers. I didn't even wince when I finally said goodbye to my last set of management accounts, the seamless report that I'd invented several years earlier and had almost regarded as my third child. Now, the most important thing I have to remember is whether to put the recycling out with the wheelie bin on a Wednesday evening. It makes me very happy indeed. One day I'll finally write the story of that 400 mile touring bike holiday in France - you know, the one where Lee managed to empty an entire shelf at the patisserie one shining Breton morning to the complete dismay of the queue of customers behind him. We needed the calories. What made his efforts all the more impressive was that the only French word he knew was "bonjour." He seemed to be very useful at pointing at things and grinning encouragingly.
Halfway into the second episode, by which time David Tennant and his friends were on a journey across India trying to rescue a lovestruck subaltern from a sorry end at a court martial I glanced towards the window and noticed a chink of blue above and the beginnings of a tell-tale glow to the west. Maybe the good old BBC were right after all - unlike the TV series I was watching, it seemed things were sticking to the original script. It was already 2:30pm and there were little more than two hours until sunset.
Ten minutes later I was in the car, camera bag and all, heading to my favourite spot, and a little after 3pm I was on the beach, smelling the sights and sounds of a deliciously cold January afternoon. The sun had appeared in a misty haze, lighting the beach from where it hovered above the distant bluff. I set up camp on the eastern side of the spot where the Red River runs down the beach and into the Atlantic, dabbling with long exposures on the fast flowing water as it collided with the gentle incoming surf. Later I moved up to the cliff by the lifeguard hut and watched the colours becoming darker and ever more saturated, the yellows and blues gradually mutating into oranges and magentas, and all the while the light reigned supreme in this beautiful sunset moment. The few who'd come here to stroll along the beach had mostly disappeared when finally I sat on a dune watching the day vanish into a lilac pastel dusk, and listening to the waves breaking with an easy rhythm on the shoreline below. What had looked so unpromising had somehow morphed into a memorable golden hour. Better than watching the telly, that's for sure. There's always something different to capture here - it never stops giving me presents, whatever the weather brings.
The Light Fantastic
I looked outside my window once more onto a grey unpromising world. The forecast it seemed was wrong; there was no sign of the patches of blue sky and sunshine I'd been promised and so I made a second mug of coffee and switched on the television, intending to clear a couple of episodes of "Around the World in Eighty Days" while I had the house to myself. That's the way it works isn't it? Some things we watch together, but on other occasions the one of us who's been dragged into a series they were never that interested in seeing in the first place makes their almost immediate boredom plain by reaching for their mobile within the first few minutes. More than once I've come home to find Sarah Jessica Parker on the screen and stifled a sigh. And I'm not talking about celebrity crushes here either.
As least now I have a little cubby hole to hide in when "Sex in the City" and similar other televisual offerings have won the hour. In the middle of a sleepless night a few days earlier a lightning bolt had landed somewhere between my ears, a moment which found me comparing the relative merits and prices of an almost inexhaustible number of desks on Amazon the following morning. The happy result is that I have an office of sorts in which to edit my photos and write up the accompanying episodes. Before this change, the PC sat next to the sofa in the living room, in the corner where Ali generally sits, and as she's clearly the boss it meant that the creative juices needed to be flowing at exactly the same time that I managed to slip into the hot seat for a chance of any editorial shenanigans to take place. It's a very liberating experience being able to sit at one's desk and be completely focused on a labour of love rather than the hideous mental gymnastics that I used to have to do at work. Even my deputy Katie thought I wouldn't be able to resist the odd spreadsheet after I retired, but in the four months that have flown by, I've left them behind completely. Not even once have I dreamed of turning a data download into a pivot table. Never have I felt the need to apply a vlookup formula to a long column of numbers. I didn't even wince when I finally said goodbye to my last set of management accounts, the seamless report that I'd invented several years earlier and had almost regarded as my third child. Now, the most important thing I have to remember is whether to put the recycling out with the wheelie bin on a Wednesday evening. It makes me very happy indeed. One day I'll finally write the story of that 400 mile touring bike holiday in France - you know, the one where Lee managed to empty an entire shelf at the patisserie one shining Breton morning to the complete dismay of the queue of customers behind him. We needed the calories. What made his efforts all the more impressive was that the only French word he knew was "bonjour." He seemed to be very useful at pointing at things and grinning encouragingly.
Halfway into the second episode, by which time David Tennant and his friends were on a journey across India trying to rescue a lovestruck subaltern from a sorry end at a court martial I glanced towards the window and noticed a chink of blue above and the beginnings of a tell-tale glow to the west. Maybe the good old BBC were right after all - unlike the TV series I was watching, it seemed things were sticking to the original script. It was already 2:30pm and there were little more than two hours until sunset.
Ten minutes later I was in the car, camera bag and all, heading to my favourite spot, and a little after 3pm I was on the beach, smelling the sights and sounds of a deliciously cold January afternoon. The sun had appeared in a misty haze, lighting the beach from where it hovered above the distant bluff. I set up camp on the eastern side of the spot where the Red River runs down the beach and into the Atlantic, dabbling with long exposures on the fast flowing water as it collided with the gentle incoming surf. Later I moved up to the cliff by the lifeguard hut and watched the colours becoming darker and ever more saturated, the yellows and blues gradually mutating into oranges and magentas, and all the while the light reigned supreme in this beautiful sunset moment. The few who'd come here to stroll along the beach had mostly disappeared when finally I sat on a dune watching the day vanish into a lilac pastel dusk, and listening to the waves breaking with an easy rhythm on the shoreline below. What had looked so unpromising had somehow morphed into a memorable golden hour. Better than watching the telly, that's for sure. There's always something different to capture here - it never stops giving me presents, whatever the weather brings.