in the picture

 I'm featured artist in the new Bristol Review of Books photography section! Which makes me very happy. Their website allows you to read a copy online (Summer 2012 issue is there at the moment). The BRB is available free from all good places around Bristol- they don't have it? -then leave immediately! -for it is obviously not a good place. Or you can subscribe, and have it sent to you wherever you are.

Thinking photographs, here's an early morning shot on the Downs in Bristol. I rather liked the picture, but even so was taken aback when it got into Flickr's Explore, and rapidly became the most popular photograph in my photostream (and I've been on Flickr for seven years now). Goodness!

Popularity on Flickr is reckoned as a combination of number of views, comments and favourites. My next most popular is this fortunately-caught wildlife shot at Clevedon

..and then this balloon that flew past in the fog, a few years ago

In fourth place, this bit of agitprop from the 'Tesco riots'

...this chap in Aylesbury...

..and at last, in sixth place, one that is also a personal favourite. Katie on the Trav, down at East Prawle.

 

brumeux

Getting out of the van at the Ouistreham seafront, I saw a bank of smoke roll across the road a few hundred yards away.
"Something's on fire!" I said.
A few moments later, we were engulfed in fog.
Marta beshawled herself with coats and scarves, and settled in to read Figaro Madame. I set off across a  boundless expanse of hard sand, following the scrunch of waves and the scream of black-headed gulls. "You'll get lost!" Marta called after me. "And then what will become of me, eh? I'll die of cold here and no-one will find me."

My world was a circle of twenty yards, with me at the centre. After a while, the circle contained a small pool of sea with waves coming into it and wheeling gulls. I picked up a cockle shell and set off back.

Presently we were seated in the Broche d'Argent, messily scooping mussels out of their shells and eating them. Outside, the ghosts of Normandy past loomed. A tall man in beret and pea jacket, a woman in large felt hat and cloak; evidently the skipper of a fishing boat and his wife, promenading. They seated themselves near to us, and shed their outer garments to reveal a homeward-bound British couple, who drank bright-coloured drinks through a straw and played questions-and-answers about their tour of the invasion beaches; she questioning, then, after a pause, she answering. I learned that I had been walking on Sword Beach, but not what the brightly-coloured drinks were.

I went on deck as we set sail. One man far below cast off the lines, another pushed the hydraulics button of the passenger ramp and lifted it away from the embarkation deck where I stood alone. As he and France together receded into the fog, I nodded a good night to him, which he quite properly ignored. It is only right that you should be surly if you are a docker, and even more so if you're a French one.

Pressure Cooker Bread

My canal trip last week revealed a disappointing shortfall in artisan bakers on the towpath of the Grand Union Canal. Nearby shops tended to be of the Spar persuasion; a neighbouring narrowboater at Cosgrove, an old canal hand, came by with an armful of tins of economy stew from the on-site shop of a caravan park; "...and they're open till seven," she said breezily. To be fair, my satnav, packed for just such an emergency, guided us next day to the Waitrose at Milton Keynes ("turn right when possible"), but such occasions are few and far between in the indifferent steppes of Mittelengland, where people little think of Elizabeth David.

So I've got thinking of ways of making decent bread in straitened circumstances. This was my first experiment.

Pressure cooker bread

12 fl oz warm water
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp dried yeast
20 oz plain strong flour
1 tsp salt

Put the sugar and yeast in the warm water (warm as in, comforatble to stick your finger in). Stir up and leave to froth.
Mix the salt into the flour. Make a hollow in the flour. Add the yeast mixture, stir and knead so that it's slightly bouncy to the hand. Roll it into a ball.

Put the dough into a cake tin, dust with flour (I use maize flour as it doesn't absorb so much into the dough)
Tie a piece of greaseproof paper over the tin and leave to rise. Or leave to rise and then tie the greaseproof paper over it, and then you can see it more clearly. As you please.

Put the trivet in the pressure cooker, add water to just cover it, and put the tin in.

Cook under pressure for ten minutes. Remove pressure cooker from heat and leave to cool and depressurise naturally. Rather than running cold water over it (or indeed, as I did the first time I used one, force it open. V dramatic, let me tell you).

in the pressure cooker

out of the tin

the first slice

Result: a fairly dense, bagel-like loaf, with an unearthly pallor. Daughter was v happy with it, as she hates crusts, and this loaf simply does not have one. It tastes OK, though I might add interesting things to the dough if I do it again.

PS: two days old, it makes terrific toast!

poets who lunch

Down to the Bristol Old Vic yesterday, for Poetry Can's monthly 'Can Openers' lunchtime event. The guest poet was Sally Jenkinson. She went down a storm, which was not surprising as she is really good. And it was nice to see a quote from Holly of The Lovely Eggs on the cover of Sally's book, Sweat-Borne Secrets. You can respect a band who get Richard Brautigan into one of their songs.

I read a squib I wrote a couple of weeks ago, when Deborah and Pameli were talking about the task that they'd been set in their workshop, of writing a metaphysical poem."That sounds like fun," I thought. Poetry as therapy....

To Her Once Mistress

Like unto a telly set was our life together,

And you it was th’remote control that wielded;

What now the programme we should watch, or whether

To the pub to go; and me the one who yielded.

But now, your batteries flat, the telly long since landfilled,

I fly, in spirit aerial, unlicensed and unchannelled.

home is the sailor

Settled in after an epic voyage along the Grand Union Canal. I'll write it up presently; but it had high adventures, like almost conking out in a tunnel

...encountering cannibals in Leighton Buzzard

...rescuing shipwrecked sailors, and meeting friendly natives.

"You smell of oil" said Katie when I got home...

Three Hares in Devon churches: a map

get a copy of this map here

(edit, added June 2020: I have updated my map, and you can see the newer version here)

The image of three hares sharing three ears can be found all the way from here to China, where the earliest examples are found. But Devon, and especially Dartmoor, is particularly rich in them.

I've been visiting the churches where the hares can be found; the search has taken me to some beautiful places. Deborah Harvey has written a poem about them, which you can read here. Some of her poem features on the map...

Here are places where you can find the hares in the churches, but do take a torch!

Ashreigney
Bradford
Broadclyst
Chagford
Cheriton Bishop
Iddesleigh
Ilsington
Kelly
Newton St Cyres
North Bovey
Paignton
Sampford Courtenay
South Tawton
Spreyton
Tavistock
Throwleigh
Widecombe

Here is photographer Chris Chapman's Three Hares Project, with lots of excellent pictures.

The map is available as an A5 print, over on my Etsy shop.

Uffington crabs

 

On our way to Buscot the other day, we went looking for The Best Place To See The Uffington Horse. We found a couple of likely contenders.

..a Hercules flew by as we gazed admiringly at the ridge across the wheat stubble. I recalled my ATC annual camp at RAF Brize Norton, back in the 70s, and tried to remember the names of the big aircraft they had there then. It's getting harder.... hmm, Argosy; Belfast; Andover; great big things, long gone now ... we did a march on the North Downs (military people apparently don't ramble, saunter or bimble; they march. Which is like rambling but in serge). It was my first visit to this area; I'd got a vague notion of the South of England being a vast amorphous suburban sprawl, and it was a pleasant surprise to see the wide open spaces of Oxfordshire. We sat in the sun, gratefully eating our RAF packed lunches, and a middle-aged couple who were Serious Ramblers (you can tell by the sticks and hats and stuff) paused so that the woman could aim her nose at us and say "Ay HOPE you're going to take your litter haym with yew".

Ah, different times.

We stopped at the foot of the Down and picked up a pile of crab apples, as I first did at the same place  two years ago. Most of the crabs were out of reach, but there were loads of windfalls. "Shall we just pile them in and share them out at home?" I asked. "It's OK, you take them," said Deb. "I'd like a jar of jelly though, if you can spare it." 

 

I thought I might be able to manage that.

Nice things to do on an equinoctal day: boil up crab apple jelly with cloves, mace and ginger, while listening to Hatfield and the North. Some things don't change very much... Share It!