Inscape No 80

 © 1979, Peter Marshall
Street Games, Argyle St area, Hull, 1979. Peter Marshall

More years ago than I care to remember I enrolled on an evening class in the History of Photography being offered at the Camden Working Men’s College just down the road from Mornington Crescent (and doubtlessly coincidentally around the time the famous game of that name made its first appearance.)

It was partly a matter of curiosity – I’d never seen such a course offered as an evening class before, but perhaps more importantly, as I was teaching photography it could be counted as “in-service training”, both cutting down the pressure to go on far more boring courses and also meaning I could claim back both course fees and travel expenses from my employer. An added bonus was that the student card for this short course enabled me to claim a 10% discount from my favourite supplier of photographic materials for the next few years.

From the first session the lecturer, William Bishop, made it clear that although he had all the right art history tools he saw the course as an opportunity for him to learn about the history of photography rather than having a great deal of knowledge about it to impart.  It became very much a dialogue between him and those of the students – myself included – who knew rather more about photography and photographers, and one that proved constructive for us all.

A few years later,  Bishop, who had by this time been reduced by me to Bill in the interests of alliteration, decided to set up a ‘small magazine’ covering photography, producing the first issue of ‘Inscape‘ in Autumn 1992. Immediately I saw it, I contacted him and suggested he might come and make use of my equipment and desk-top publishing skills to improve the production quality, and we produced a few issues this way until he was successful in getting a grant to buy his own computer and scanner.

I had a few pictures in some of the earlier issues and the occasional one since, but I’ve not been a regular contributor to Inscape. My interests have perhaps moved rather in a different direction since those early days, and while the magazine has occasionally published work that interests me, there has also been much that has left me cold or worse.

Inscape is a word coined by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and there is a good short exposition of it on The Victorian Web by Glenn Everett. Inscape for him was essentially a both a Romantic and a religious idea, a revelation of the essence of a thing and an insight into the reason for its creation.  It is one of several attempts to describe the feeling that a particular moment or vision has a special significance.

© 1979, Peter Marshall
Betty’s Corner Store, Selby St, Hull, 1979. Peter Marshall

When we take personal photographs we are perhaps selecting selecting points of view on the real world that seem for us have some particular resonance – an “inscape” and hence the title of the magazine which

is about sharing our personal work, our personal photographic visions, with others. It is about appreciation rather than confrontation and argument, but it is not intended as a cosy corner to slumber in because it believes that the tradition of picture making that has personal meaning is alive and still developing.

It is something of a surprise (although I’ve kept up my subscription over the years) that Inscape is still going 18 years later. I think it started with five issues a year and is now quarterly, and the quality of the reproduction has improved significantly. The three pictures here are from a set of nine printed in Inscape No 80, at least some of which have a connection with its “An Architectural Theme“.

© 1979, Peter Marshall
Albert Dock, Hull, 1981. Peter Marshall

Others might be better suited to the theme of the forthcoming issue number 81, The Urban Scene, for which the copy date is 21 Dec 2010.  Like most small magazines (and unfortunately some very large ones), Inscape does not pay for contributions – the whole thing is very much a labour of love on a minuscule budget by Mr Bishop.

My set of pictures is only one of the contributions to the issue, with photographs by I think ten other photographers and written contributions by the Editor and the mysterious “mjp”.

© 1979, Peter Marshall
Fishers, Spring Bank, Hull, 1979. Peter Marshall

The magazine is now I think on sale in some very selected outlets and costs £3.60 or you can try through the web site, where back numbers are £2.50 post free in the UK. A subscription for 4 issues in the UK is £15.

There are a few more of my pictures from Hull on the Urban Landscapes web site, and I’m currently working through several years of photographs preparing a Blurb book on Hull which should appear later this year, under the title of my 1983 show there, ‘Still Occupied; A View of Hull‘, although the selection of images will be different to the 144 or so I showed then.

Meet Me in Paris?

© 2008 Peter Marshall
All ready to go to Paris

I think that I’ve now sorted out my trip to Paris for Paris Photo next month, along with my interpreter (not that I really need one, but my wife’s French is more than considerably better than mine, and both of us are extremely fond of the city.)  I’ve sent off for my accreditation, booked a hotel room (at the same hotel as last time, which isn’t perfect but is cheap), booked my tickets on Eurostar  – of course I’m not flying.

© 2008 Peter Marshall
Pont des Arts, Paris, November 2008

Although we met in Manchester rather than Paris, my wife and I spent our first holiday together there a couple of years before we were married, sleeping in separate twin rooms in a student hostel a nine miles south of the city centre in Massy-Verrières, then a rather large building site on the Luxembourg line, although we were in the older part of the town.  It’s the only year I’ve been in France to celebrate Bastille Day, where we went to the celebrations on the main square there,  where people really did dance to accordion music in the streets.

We went back there a few years ago on the day when the Tour de France was finishing on the Champs-Élysées, catching a train back to the centre which should have got us there in time to see it. Unfortunately the line came to a halt around 25 minutes before the cyclists arrived, with the driver settling down in a signal box to watch the finish.

You can read about my last visit to the Mois de la Photo in 2008 in a series of articles under the heading PARIS SUPPLEMENT.   As well as the trade show, Paris Phot, with dealers from around the world showing the work of their photographers, their are exhibitions across the city in the ‘Mois del la Photo’ and even more shows in the fringe festival. For a month, but particular around the few days of Paris Photo, the city is really alive to the sound or rather sight of photography.

In 2008, apart from Paris Photo, which is a great opportunity to see work by established photographers from around the world, I got to see around 40 other exhibitions, as well as attending several openings and a few other parties,  meeting many photographers from around the world I already knew and other new faces.

© 2008 Peter Marshall
One of the fringe shows was on the landings of a social housing block,
Cité des trois fushias, 20e

You can see many more of my pictures from Paris on my Paris photos site, although not from that 1966 visit, when I dropped my camera in a lake!

© 1973, Peter Marshall
This woman was walking along a back street in Montmartre in 1973.

If any of you reading this are going to be in Paris at any time between Nov 17-22 I’d be delighted to meet you – and if you are having an opening I’ll do my best to be there and to write about the work. You can e-mail me at petermarshall(at)cix.co.uk – or add a comment here.

74 Years Since Cable Street

 © 2006 Peter Marshall

Grey though my beard is getting, I wasn’t at Cable St in 1936, but four years ago I was there for the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, which I described as:

“a joyous event, celebrating an important grass-roots victory for the labour movement, when the people of the east end stood up and took action, largely against the orders and advice of the organised Jewish and socialist leadership.

it was a real peoples movement when workers from London’s east end fought the police at Gardiner’s Corner and barricaded cable street to stop Mosley’s fascist black-shirts marching through their area.

(I’ve made a few minor corrections to the lower case original version.)

The festival started on Cable Street itself, and then those taking part came into the gardens where it was to continue for the rest of the day, coming past the splendid mural about the event. I’d decided to try to catch the group holding the letters making up the slogan ‘They Shall Not Pass‘ in front of it, and just about managed to do so, though the exposure wasn’t quite correct.

It was something that there was really no time to do, and of course I don’t believe in posing such things, so it was a minor miracle that it came out. It’s also an example of a file that I could I’m sure process rather better from the RAW file now compared to the rush job I did for the web in 2006. I’ve improved it a little working from a larger jpeg and added my copyright watermark for this post. But I get the feeling that I could get an improved result with Lightroom 3 on the original file. RAW software really has improved in the last 4 years.

© 2006 Peter Marshall.

I try not to pose portraits either, although I did ask some of those who had been there in 1936 to stand in front of the mural for me, and moved myself to get them looking in the direction I wanted. Of course by this time there where other photographers also taking pictures of them.  But I hope this picture expresses a little of the kind of spirit of those who stood up and stopped the fascists.

© 2006 Peter Marshall.

There were of course plenty of reminders that it is a battle that still needs to be fought – and at times on the street as well as elsewhere.

More of my pictures from 2006 on My London Diary, and you can read a number of eye-witness reports on the web, though not I think one by the man I talked to and suggested he write his story. One I like was written in 2005 by NUJ member Reg Weston.

More on AFP v Morel Copyright Theft

Go to duckrabbit to read the latest on this clear case of image theft that I’ve mentioned several times before. Large agencies – and not just AFP – appear to to making an attempt to take over any images that don’t have the photographer’s name stamped across them in large letters.

As it says:

It’s no exaggeration to say that the arguments presented in court mean that this case, if it goes AFP’s way, could affect all photographers who use the web.

A few months ago I started putting a discreet but visible watermark on all images that I post on the web, but of course my images go to libraries without this. I’ve also written many times about the need to embed metadata in all images, and I’ve followed my own advice on this for some years.

© 2010, Peter Marshall
A discreetly watermarked image from June 2009

What I’d really like to see is a feature implemented on all new cameras (or at least all professional models) that adds a little black border to the bottom (or longer side) of every image containing our copyright message to every image that is taken – so that every picture we take is automatically labelled. It wouldn’t be too difficult to implement or make the images much larger.

It could of course easily be removed – even automatically – by users, but would put the onus on whoever did so to be sure they had the right to do so.

Is this an idea about cameras worth pursuing?

I didn’t mention it when I added a comment on duckrabbit, where I mentioned the need for photographers to join together to oppose these image grabs. At the moment I know my union has been quite supportive of some photographers over individual copyright cases. But if there are large numbers of photographers whose work is being used without permission by some of the large agencies, perhaps their is a possibility in the US of taking a ‘class action’?

Undesired: India’s Dying Daughters

Thanks to duckrabbit for the information about the short (12 minutes) film ‘Undesired‘ by MediaStorm with photojournalist Walter Astrada you can watch on MediaStorm.  Don’t miss watching the epilogue – linked on the page as ‘Part II: More from the photographer‘ which includes some of Astrada’s powerful still photography as he talks about what he found.   ‘Undesired‘ is a powerful and moving film that makes the scandalous situation that most of us were probably at least vaguely aware about real in a very direct way.

Don’t miss watching the epilogue – linked on the page as ‘Part II: More from the photographer‘ which includes more of Astrada’s powerful still photography as he talks about what he found.

The film tells the story of some of the 40 million girls ‘missing’ in India through abortion, neglect and murder. You can also read more on MediaStorm in the feature ‘Mothers of A Hundred Sons: India’s Dying Daughters‘ by Shreeya Sinha, who was Associate Producer for the film, and made the interviews and some of the video, illustrated by pictures by Astrada, as well as elsewhere in a article by Swami Agnivesh, Rama Mani and Angelika Köster-Lossack published in 2005  by the New York Times and a story last year in The Guardian by Ciara Leeming.

Astrada‘s work on his Violence For Women project is also covered in an article in the on-line BJP by Olivier Laurent, who met him when he was showing his work at Visa Pour l’Image in Perpignan. Surprisingly I don’t think this has appeared in the print version, nor for that matter has anything else from Perpignan. Perhaps because BJP is now a monthly publication, and Visa Pour l’Image took place at the start of September, shortly after the September issue this and their other reports from  Perpignan was old news by the time the October print issue came out.

It’s a reflection of the magazine’s changed priorities that I could find nothing in that issue about Visa Pour l’Image, nor, for that matter about the largest photo event taking place in the UK at the moment, the East London Photography Festival, Photomonth 2010. In fact I’m finding it increasingly hard to see any justification at all for the print magazine, though of course it is difficult to survive just on the basis of web advertising (though About.com, who I wrote about photography with for almost 8 years managed it.)

You can see more of Astrada‘s work on the photographer’s own web site, including images from previous work about violence against women in Guatamela and the Congo. A former Agence France Press photographer he is now represented by Reportage by Getty Images.

An invitation

Please come and celebrate with the photographers at the Shoreditch Gallery* from 6.30-8.30pm on 20th October 2010

(*Shoreditch Gallery is in the Juggler, 5 Hoxton Market,
just to the east of Pitfield St, reached via Boot St or Coronet St

Old St tube or buses to Great Eastern St / Old St / Shoreditch Church etc)


Paris • New York • London

 photographs by

Paul Baldesare • John Benton-Harris • Peter Marshall

Shoreditch Gallery

The Juggler
5 Hoxton Market
London N1 6HG

October 2 Oct – 29 Oct 2010

020 7729 7292 Gallery
01784 456474 Other information

Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, Sat: 10am-4pm. Closed Sun

Free admission

Work from three photographers,
three major world cities & three decades

http://parisnewyorklondon.co.uk/

Photomonth logo

Paul Baldesare
© Paul Baldesare
Devil of Threadneedle St, London, Paul Baldesare

Theatrical off-beat street images from the City of London
in the 1990s and Oxford St in the current decade.
Web

John Benton-Harris
“A taste of the Big Apple” from his much larger digital colour
investigation of his home town, that he began in the spring of 2006.
Web

Peter Marshall
© 1988, Peter Marshall
Paris 19e, 1988. Peter Marshall
“Photo Paris”, a poetic vision of Paris’s inner suburbs from
an artist’s book he produced in the 1980s
Web        Book
Copies of the recently re-issued book Photo Paris will be available for only £15 at the party.
Photographs by Paul Baldesare and Peter Marshall are for sale.

East London Photomonth Opens

Tonight I was one of rather few people at the opening party of the 10th East London Photomonth, a festival which had been organised over the years by a Maggie Pinhorn of Alternative Arts along with her very small team.

There were quite a few other photographic events on last night – and I’d come to this as one of the several hundred photographers taking part, whereas otherwise I would have chosen to be elsewhere.

This year’s venue – Amnesty in Shoreditch – didn’t have the attraction of last years Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, and certainly the show there by Paul Trevor attracted a number of leading members of the photographic community, making it a very much more upbeat occasion.

Photomonth has grown into a pretty vast event – as we saw from a continuous projection during the evening showing the press images from the participating galleries (though unfortunately as too often at photographic events nowadays showing them not quite sharp so I kept reaching for my glasses only to find I was already wearing them. There are apparently over 200 events in the programme.

Photomonth is the only photographic festival we have in London and I’ve supported it over the years, organising shows for the last three editions, but tonight I couldn’t but feel that it needs to evolve. One of its great strengths is participation – anyone who can find a space can take part – but it is also, as that projection at times demonstrated, a weakness.

It seems to need a clearer focus, perhaps with a more central photographic core. The festival events do include some lectures but possibly there should be some more high-profile shows as a central feature – rather than the current rather peripheral events (and some of which I’d gladly see downplayed.) Comparing it with the Mois de la Photo in Paris, at the moment it seems to be almost entirely the fringe ( Le Mois de la PhotoOFF) with nothing at the centre. It isn’t just or even mainly about quality, although perhaps some lines do need to be drawn, and if you’ve visited Paris during the festival or read some of my accounts of it here you will know that some of the best work is to be found in L’Off.

(This picture was the only one where the low light levels in the hall became a problem. Digital has made it quite possible to work in almost any available light, but the girls (who were waiting to collect a bottle of champagne on someone else’s behalf) were in a fairly dim area, and at f4 there wasn’t quite enough depth of field.)

You can look at the full programme on line or pick up a printed version at any of the participating spaces which this year include a great many eating places in what is called eatyourartout.  On Saturday we hang our show Paris – New York – Londonat the Shoreditch Gallery, which is part of a café, The Juggler, though unlike some café shows you can see it easily without having to clamber over café clients. The gallery, although linked to the café has a separate entrance, and though I can personally recommend the rolls and coffee (and they sell one of the few truly drinkable bottled lagers) you can see the show without feeling that you have to buy anything. It was due to open on that day, but anyone who comes early will have to look at it on the floor rather than the wall.

Today I got the copies of my postcard for the show, and earlier in the week some copies of the Photo Paris book. The next post here is the invitation I’ve been busily sending out for our ‘opening/closing’ party on October 20th. We delayed it for a couple of weeks until John Benton-Harris gets back from another visit to New York. And if you are in London it really is an invitation to come and meet me and the others and to see the work.

A Busy Day (Part 2)

The minimum wage in the UK has just gone up – from today it is £5.93 an hour for adult (over 21) workers, an extra 13p. Of course it isn’t enough to live on in London, where there is a strong campaign for a London Living Wage, (LLW) established  by the Greater London Authority, which was raised earlier in the year to £7.85 per hour.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

Groups including ‘London Citizens‘  have led a powerful campaign (I photographed their launch in 1976 and a number of their actions since, for example here and here as well as their big marches and demonstration) , particularly in the City of London, to get employers to both pay the LLW and improve working conditions. It’s in the City that we get some of the most blatant examples of inequality – with the same offices being worked in during the day by bankers getting million pound bonuses and cleaned at night by people being paid less than enough to live on.

Trade unions have played a part in these campaigns, though it often seems to be much more driven by local branches and activists than real support from the centre – except in the case of the RML. And on Saturday the Tube Union branch of the RML called for a demonstration outside the London headquarters of Initial Rentokil who they allege is making use of irregularities in the immigration status of many of London’s lowest paid workers to bully and intimidate its workforce.  Workers who complain about unsafe working conditions and try to organise their workmates to stand up for their rights have been reported to the immigration authorities who have then carried out ‘dawn raids’ on workplaces.

The companies who employ these workers break the law by turning a blind eye at sometimes doubtful paperwork (or lack of it) and London would soon grind to a halt without the essential work carried out by its estimated 400,000 improperly undocumented workers, many of whom have lived and worked here for many years (the Conservative Mayor of London has actually given his support to  considering an immigration amnesty for the majority of them.) Because of their status, many of these workers do not want to bring attention to themselves by demonstrating in public, so this protest was by a group of trade unionists and workers rights activists.

Freelances of course are not covered by any minimum or living wage, and many of us work long hours with very little financial return. There were three NUJ members covering the protest. My story and pictures appeared on Demotix, and are unlikely to result in any income. You can see them rather better on My London Diary.

Earlier in the day, while stuck in traffic on the top floor of a double decker I’d had a slightly mystifying photographic moment while taking this picture.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

One third in from the left edge is a woman in a yellow coat, and looking from my seat all of her head was clearly visible, while when I looked through the camera she was partly obscured by the frame between the bus windows. I moved back as far as I could in my seat and she was still obscured, and for just a few moments I couldn’t understand why.

Then I looked at the lens I was using, the Nikon 16-35mm f4 on a D700 body. Despite the short focal length I was using (it was taken at 19mm) the lens actually sticks out so its front element is around 8 inches in front of my eye. Without going into any optical theory I think that means that it is actually viewing the scene from around that distance less 19mm – still over 7 inches – in front of my eye. So or the camera to see exactly from my viewpoint I need to move back that 7 inches. Which in this case would have meant being in the seat behind. So I didn’t quite get the picture I wanted.

From Old St it was a short ride on the 243 to Haggerston, where there are considerable changes taking place with the regeneration of the Haggerston West and Kingsland estates. Its a process that (seen as an outsider) seems to have learnt something at least from the great mistakes of earlier years and the kind of fight that I was personally involved with in Manchester in the 1960s with the Moss Side Housing Action Group, one of the pioneers in this country both of the use of direct action over redevelopment and the involvement of the local population through ‘planning for real’ participatory events.

What is probably London’s largest photographic show, along the length of a large block of 1930s council flats (and I think around the side too) facing the canal expresses the importance of people in planning, with its huge portraits of former residents covering the windows of empty flats. The portraits are photographically straightforward head shots – some, apart from size would fit the requirements for a passport – and I think some have possibly faded rather (or were badly printed to start with – certainly some images on the web are better .) But ‘I Am Here’, initiated by residents of Samuel House and  produced by Fugitive Images,  an artist collaboration founded in 2009 by Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Lasse Johansson and Tristan Fennell (information about the regeneration and the project is on the web site) is on an impressive scale. I spent a few minutes working out the best way to show the whole frontage in a single image, and ended up with taking pictures at around 12 pace intervals with the 16-35mm, which I later cropped and combined into a single image in Photoshop.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

One of the problems in photographing the artwork (as often) was reflections, with the sun making some of the heads invisible when viewed obliquely. Shooting straight on helped to solve that issue, but not eliminate it entirely. It wasn’t possible for me to get further away and still see  the whole of the flats, although students at the new Bridge Academy on the opposite bank of the canal would get a good view.

The Nikon 16-35mm attracted some attention while I was photographic this. A man came up and asked me if he could take a photograph of it, and got out his phone, but the battery was dead. Could I stick around for five minutes he asked, while he ran home to get his camera. I was amused and also wanted to take a few more pictures and said ‘Fine’.  So he came running back and took a few pictures, wanting an image of an impressive looking lens to use in a video project he was working on. I’ve had people ask me if they might take my picture many times, but I think this must be the first time anyone has asked to photograph my lens.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

As a former teacher, I’ve been appalled by successive government’s education policies which have almost totally ignored all proper educational research and had a profoundly divisive effect on our education system. Academies like these were one of several great follies of the last Labour administration, a continuation of disastrous Conservative policies – and the LibCon alliance will doubtless find a way to further weaken state education.

I have some happier memories of Laburnum St, where the Academy is, and in particular the two Laburnum St parties I photographed in 2006 and 2007, and it was a little sad to walk down it today in its current rather dilapidated state. But at the end of the street the minaret of the Suleymaniye Mosque on Kingsland Road lifted my spirits a little as I walked to the bus stop.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

But later as I sat on the 243 we passed the former Foundry pub, and I felt sadder again at the loss of a vital resource where I’ve attended several interesting shows over the years.  I read the advert across its frontage and completed a literal translation ‘I don’t know what’ with ‘we are coming to’ and the guy on the phone at left seemed rather to be scratching his head.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

There are more of the pictures from Haggerston (and elsewhere) on My London Diary.

A Busy Day (Part 1)

Last Saturday I had a busy day in London, starting outside the French Embassy:

© 2010, Peter Marshall

I wasn’t sure how welcome male photographers would be at an all-women demonstration, but although one or two women turned away or hid behind their placards when they saw I was taking their pictures there were no problems.

More pictures of this demonstration by Hizb ut-Tahrir against the French decision to make wearing full-face masks on the street an offence – and some of my thoughts about it –  on My London Diary.

As I left I walked back and got on a bus to get another view of the protest, and found myself stuck in a traffic jam. Unfortunately having moved very slowly until reaching the protest, the bus then moved past it fairly rapidly, giving me little chance to take pictures – and none were worth using. It didn’t help that half of the protest was taking place below some scaffolding. Of course the bus got stuck in traffic again before the next stop, but fortunately the driver let me off through the front door and I hurried along to take the tube to Covent Garden. I like travelling by bus – particularly on double deckers where you get such a good view from the top deck – but the slightest problem can lead to long hold ups, and in central London at least the tube is often much quicker and generally more reliable.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

Outside the Ahava shop on Monmouth St, close to Seven Dails, there were two demonstrations taking place. Ahava sells beauty products produced by Israeli settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank. Supporters of the Palestinian cause  call for the government to stop the illegal trade and for people to boycott the shop, while the Zionist Federation and the right wing English Defence League were opposing the boycott – and handing out leaflets which compared those calling for a boycott to the Nazis.

Although the boycott demonstration was scheduled to take place from 12-2pm, things were pretty quiet when I was there shortly before 2pm  and it apparently only really got going around an hour after I had left.  More pictures.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

A short walk from Covent Garden took me past Aldwych station, which had reopened for a special event as a part of the celebrations of the Blitz, 70 years ago. There were tours (they sold out rapidly) inside the station, where many sheltered from the bombing, and an old London bus parked outside, with a Picture Post advert on its front. Aldwych, a short branch down from Holborn on the Piccadilly line closed as a station years ago, but was kept for staff training and to hire for film use. I took a few pictures inside on a visit there back in 2002. But what really caught my eye was the advert on the front of the bus for ‘Picture Post’, showing two large eyes. Getty Images, now the owners of the Hulton picture collection, organised  an exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of its demise in 2007, and you can see some of the images from it on the ‘Time’ site.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

The ‘Life 4 A Life‘ march calling for increasing sentences for murder was gathering at Temple,  but one of the groups taking part asked to to go with them and photograph them in front of the Royal Courts of Justice, a short walk away.

Most of those taking part were the families and friends of murder victims, and it was impossible not to feel for their grief. And there were certainly some cases where it seemed that the legal system had failed – as with Danny Barber whose friends are in the picture above.

But in general harsher sentences would not help at all, and have no deterrent effect. We already have a very high prison population and clearly the system isn’t working properly, but rather than keep digging we need to change direction and find ways that work. We need to change the whole way that we police communities – and it isn’t something that can be left to the police. It calls for a cultural shift involving the mass media as well as attitudes throughout society – perhaps something that the ‘Big Society’ should really be about. More pictures

To be continued shortly in Part 2.

A Country Walk

And now for something completely different. Landscape. That green stuff you find away from cities. Though as you’ll see from what I’ve written on My London Diary, I mainly went for the beer.

It was really a day out with a few members of my family, all except my wife older than me, so we don’t walk very far, unlike the kind of route marches I sometimes get dragged on with my wife and one or two of my sons. On those I keep finding myself trotting behind them trying hard to keep up, especially after stopping to take a photograph.

Anyway, I’ve put up a few pictures on My London Diary.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

As you can see it wasn’t the real country but more a rather diluted suburbia. Many people who live here will commute to the city, perhaps catching a train from Bourne End or driving along the M4. At least there are a few browns among the greens.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

And also some greys. I find it sad that horses – which when my father was young were a major form of power and transport – are now just playthings for the rich.

Eventually we reached our goal:

© 2010, Peter Marshall

Which was actually where we started from. I couldn’t resist making that hand look even more flesh-like than the original. Nor a pint or two of beer, though we sat inside and I had some rather nice (but overpriced) sausages and mash and ate the cucumber and chips the others didn’t want from their salads.  It had been rather a nice morning, but I really wanted to get back to work.