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I don't bother to record dates these days: I haven't years enough left for the matter to become interesting to me. I merely record the date of processing. I am always eager for results and usually develop a film as soon as I get indoors after taking the final shot. If it's late in the day I may leave it until the next morning ...first thing after breakfast. This is from a film developed on 11th March 2017 and it was the last frame, so was probably exposed on that or the previous day.
It reminds me of all those Spot the Ball competitions that broke out in the newspapers back in the '70s, before they came up with Prize Bingo. I imagine some staff photographer on an unknown rag must have noticed that, in photographs, as here, players are seldom looking directly at the ball, but are instead weighing up its likely trajectory and the positioning of the other players. It was a clever idea for a competition. He mentioned the idea to his editor and it took off. He must have regretted there was no way of patenting his brainwave. I think my father occasionally entered the Bristol Evening Post's version; at least I remember him in his armchair, with his reading specs on, frowning over the week's poser, with his cluster of Xs in blue biro on the photo. You were allowed multiple tries, which gave the illusion of an increased chance of winning.
As a boy I always thought of diesel locomotives with "noses" as "American". This was because an aunt had given me a massive two-volume book about railways, somewhat tattered and dating from the 'thirties I should think. Aimed at the older boy, it took a statistic and fact-rich international view of its subject. There was, for instance, an article over several pages on the German "Flying Hamburger" train, introduced in 1933. There were many photographs of American locomotives, which I disliked because they seemed over-sized and flashy and, being so, were considerably more impressive than what poor old British Railways had. One affected to despise what one envied and coveted ...a common enough, but not very admirable human trait. The first diesel locomotives I remember seeing were all-green "Peaks" on the northeast - southwest trains passing through Mangotsfield and Staple Hill. These, of course, had "noses". I eventually gave the book to Rushby, a bespectacled, train-mad boy at school.
Was this kiddie-train, snapped in an alley in Norwich during May 2016, modelled on a "Warship" or, with its headlight, perhaps the prototype "Deltic"?
From a film exposed in March 2016 that always looked pretty grotty. The other day I remembered that my scanner software sometimes used to have a funny five minutes and "untick" the Unsharp Mask box without my asking it to. Could this be what had happened? So I re-scanned the film and, from the first result, saw a marked improvement.
Here, in Bury St Edmunds, we see one of the noted buildings in that architecturally distinguished town. It is the Market Cross ...the finest post-medieval building in Bury, avers Pevsner. It was remodelled, 1774-7, by Robert Adam. The ground floor, which had been open for corn dealing, was enclosed in 1840. "White" brick ...which, like white wine, is of a yellowish hue... with stone dressings, rusticated on the ground floor, and decorative details of Coade stone. Whilst acknowledging its greatness, I'm bound to say it leaves me pretty cold. More to my taste is the rank on the right, starting with a red brick post office (recently vacated) of 1894; then a former branch of Boots, currently a W H Smith, "a riotous and glorious fantasy" (Pevsner) with stucco and timber framing featuring, in its centre gable, a panel depicting Canute rebuking his flatterers; then a Montague Burton's of 1933, before wishy-washy modern tat takes over. Is it wrong ...somehow degenerate... to prefer what is dim and mediocre? ...to reject Rome and prefer Welwyn Garden City? to turn one's back on Palladio and embrace ...I dunno... Detmar Blow? I suppose I'd have to admit that I prefer Betjeman to Milton and would rather listen to the Beatles than Bach. But is it a symptom of our civilisation's decline that a member of the proletariat should have convinced himself that he has an interest in such matters at all? Albeit, insofar as, notwithstanding... (cont. p94).