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Kenton & I met up for two hours bouldering at The Climbing Works in Sheffield..
My arms still ache!
They have a new web site - www.climbingworks.com/
Bit of a mystery this one. The registration number came to this car in 2000, it originally belonged to a 1962 3.8 litre Coupe, that car is now registered FSL 776.
In the paddock
Bit more for the collection, big thanks to Kitty and Phu for the vinyl.
And big shots to Mr Ortic Noodles for the canvas.
Международный Гранд Форум «Бизнес и ИТ. Вокруг Данных. Вокруг Облака», или BIT&ADAC-2014 (Санкт-Петербург, 30 октября 2014 года)
Міжнародний Гранд Форум «Навколо Хмари. Навколо Даних. Навколо КЦ. Навколо IoT. Навколо Безпеки. Навколо Кабелю. Навколо IP. Smart Building», або BIT&BIS-2021, (Україна, Київ, 3 березня 2021): forum.ciseventsgroup.com/ua/kyiv-bit-bis-2021.html
Devil's-bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis).
Photographed at Agden Bog, South Yorkshire.
OS grid ref SK251930.
More bits of my childhood are sneaking out this summer, these little guys included. Although more or less I found them as a child while running through the grass, this one was spotted in a bush just chillen out in the shade. Harsh sunlit ruined any chance that I thought I had to get a shot of his flasher going off, even with the shades close the sun wouldnt allow it. So I kept the shades open and let this little guy mess around on the newspaper, every once and a while Id flip him over just to get a better perspective. Using my wireless flash triggers also worked to my advantage as I kept changing there position...once at what seemed like every angle. Eventually I found that placing at a 45 degree angle camera left with myself directly overhead said bug was the best light. I should no doubt have taken more shots but eventually let him be free outside in a new bush with a bit more shade.
As a child I remember my father washing out empty peanut butter jars, large size Jiff at that: creamy style (as is the best). Drilling holes thru the lid and in the sides so the bugs would have room to breathe. Taking a handful of grass (with a little dirt included) Id unscrew the lid and plop it in. There were many ways to catch the flasher bug, my favorite way was to wait til one was close to ground level and tip the jar horizontal and run full speed at them. Although it wasnt the most effective, it did get a lot the mosquitos riled up and get myself plenty of itchy spots. Dad was more graceful, gently reaching his hands into the air and grabbing them with cupping motion, only to open his hand breifly to show his hostage before dropping into my jar. Alas child no more, but grown man I am: These bugs are quite a reminder for sure.
(no bugs were harmed in the making of the picture)
Міжнародний Форум «Бізнес та ІТ. Навколо ЦОД. Навколо Хмари. Навколо IoT. Навколо IP», або BIT-2017 (Україна, Одеса, 9 листопада 2017 року): www.odesa-2017.ciseventsgroup.com
Международный Гранд Форум «Бизнес и ИТ. Вокруг ЦОД. Вокруг Облака. Вокруг IoT. Вокруг IP», или BIT-2017 (Россия, Республика Башкортостан, 9 февраля 2017): www.ufa-2017.ciseventsgroup.com
What do I look like in this picture? I dunno. Anyway, that's a bit irrelevant.
Apart from that, it's amazing, this snap, like something off Mr Benn - some sort of hint at other ways of sensing and living and being.
I'm chillin in my bed. Today was interesting and, as has become something of a habit, I'm playing with my phone, looking at some of the snaps I took, thinking.
I came across this one. It's of a door in the centre of the High Street (which isn't actually called the High Street - it's called Vicar Street, which figures). This door, to some Wyre Forest District Council offices, hasn't changed in all the time I can remember.
The memories have faded of exactly what took place when I went through these doors a few times when I was a pretty young kid, but what's left does trigger other memories.
I won't bother going over those, but I like this door. It takes me back. That sentence might not mean much, because people say it a lot. I'm not sure if other people, in saying this get the same vibe, but when I think of this door, separate in time from everything that's gone on around it over the years, I really can reach back and enter an atmosphere that I felt in the 1970s.
Takes a bit of concentration, but it's great to be able to feel the place, as it was back then, granted, missing a lot of what else was going on in looking at it with the eyes of child, but that's not really a bad thing, eh.
Looking at that door, right now, I can feel a bit of a good vibe. Well, a lot, to be honest. It takes me back to before I knew what the world can do to people and what people can do to the world.
That door hasn't changed a bit. It's a bit of a survivor. It's still there, almost against the odds, and still doesn't really look out of place. It cuts through all the years and all the change and all the bullshit, triggering me off into thinking about what vibes can really be like and how people can really be when they're at their best.
In our own particular environments, we've got a multitude of influences that may limit or, alternatively, enable us. They may, for example, be physical, like the design of buildings and town centres, or they may be social, like all the factors that can influence people in how they talk and think and relate to themselves and others: like the TV, politics, and so on.
Most, I think, are designed to limit us, to get us to think in ways that other people thought were in their interests, and maybe even ours, if we were lucky (most of this has historically happened out of our view and involvement), like many influences in the world of commerce and politics and power. There are different ways of thinking about all this though: do these influences really benefit us as individuals, do they bring us together, do they tear us apart? Is there things fundamental that are also constructive and achievable that could be done or even discussed openly and collectively?
What ARE the implications of all this that goes on around us, in the short-term, and what could be the consequences in the long-term, not only when we're somewhere, walking down a street, say, but also from what we've 'learned' through all manner of contexts, including media, throughout our lives, in ways that can even predate our birth, with influences reaching beyond, to our parents and their parents and so on in such ways that bad ideas can and do affect lives in ways that can go unchallenged?
Are there ways of breaking free from all that and thinking in ways that are healthier to and more constructive for us and our environment? Can we improve on all this by looking at how we interact with our world and looking for ways to improve on that, that isn't just limited to any narrow interests, but takes into account that if you want to solve a problem, you're almost certainly going to have to think of possible solutions in terms of a broad context, as well as the immediate detail? To take a fresh look with fresh thinking?
So much in the world in general and in my environment of Kidderminster in particular can place limitations and restrictions on even thinking about such fundamental issues. Why? It seems to me that conservative, limiting ideas, ways of living and thinking (if that's what you can call it) don't do anyone much good, but we may have gone along with it for so long partly because it's been so successful at obscuring to many people why it takes place, how and with what effects. We often hear stories of the positive effects of this approach - through things like the conventional, mainstream media, for example. We often hear of the negative side of things through these channels, too, though. But, I think we very rarely get to the heart of the matter on most things, partly because there are, surely, too many limitations on us in our environment to genuinely thinking openly and creatively in ways that challenge us and our environment to be better, too look for better and improve. There's nothing wrong with celebrating the success stories, so long as they really are success stories and they don't detract from the idea that our lives, our relationships and our world may need a fresh approach.
I look around me now and see a catalogue of failure: institutions, processes, environments, people, relationships, media, politics, communication, ways of being and thinking and talking and living and the many ways we can easily pass our failures (though our successes, too) down the generations, and mainly because we're faced with so many limitations on how we can think and approach our lives and environment.
Maybe many of us haven't really got the time or the tools to see and consider much of this (though this thinking can be used as a great way to limit ideas, ironically because limited thinking can be used to say none of this is worthwhile, usually on the basis of limited evidence) and so, instead of even bothering to question all this at an early stage, we're usually faced with little choice but to try to make the most of this short life, often with bad ideas, with so many people having to sort of learn the hard way with others thinking they're living it as best as they can.
We're in a special era, though. We have the Internet and social media, for example, technologies that can reward everyone for thinking in more enabling, healthy and constructive ways about our lives and our world. We can think about things and, maybe, discover other people, near and far, who also think like this, or would like to. The great thing is that good ideas about enjoying life more could reach even more people. Even that possibility's something to motivate you.
It's easy to look at our immediate environment and just go with it, forgetting all those influences that are in it and were working us before we even got there and will work us after we've left. It's more challenging and maybe more exciting and interesting - and might actually lead to better things - to think more for ourselves and share those thoughts in ways that might even improve us as people by the very process of thinking and doing this, not to mention the hope it can give us that we might be able to improve things in everyone's interests.
But all things considered, we have to be practical and boring, sometimes. In Kidderminster's High Street, than, there are many environmental pressures, both before during and after being there, that limit possibilities and work to prevent us from thinking more healthily, freely and constructively - I'm sure of that. I've seen the effects of the environment too many times to be convinced different. But, like I say, in the centre of all that, it's nice to have the memories of this door and the ideas it can trigger off, now and again. It's a nice vibe, that, being in the centre of a place with so many influences pulling you in so many different directions, there's something in the environment that can just make you stop, pause and think and see things with a sense that the environment wasn't designed to make you think with and to think for yourself.
I like that door to the Wyre Forest District Council offices, partly because it's a door that now means something different to what it was intended for. For me, at least, it has a meaning of its own, pointing to things that say a lot more. For what it does for me, and for what it's allowed me to communicate to you, I think it's a great door, probably the best I've ever seen.
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Slightly awkward (me) on this route.. Some interesting moves to get up it too.!Hanging out with friends down at Climbing Works today!
OK ...a bit of a cheat but this is a detail crop from a collaborative shoot the Sunday before last that I'm hoping to publish, so I can't show more of the leaf dress or head piece...but it was definitely autumnal and with a black backdrop to accentuate the colours, so it meets the 'recent' theme. We were also running with 'Decay' and can take more submissions on that, and Andrew suggested 'House Plants' as a new theme to run in parallel so we can have a crack at that too.