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.

 

Bristol Review of Books

 The Bristol Review of Books, spring edition, is hot off the press! With Geraldine's crow-feeding expedition story, and my picture.

And lots of other good stuff, too.

Available free from all good bookshops and libraries. As long as they are in Bristol. If you see no copies, then you will know that you are not in a good bookshop. Or a good library. Or you're not in Bristol. Or they've all been taken.

How awful would that be? -well, fairly awful, obv. Fear not, gentle reader, for the magazine is also available by subscription from Tangent Books' website. And they'll throw in a couple of free books too.

waterside

I was down at the scout hut on Redcliffe Wharf last night, for a reading by Philip Gross. It was a good location for his readings from The Water Table, whose subject matter is the Bristol Channel and its to-ings and fro-ings. The event was organised by Stephen Morris, editor of the Bristol Review of Books, who had kindly invited me. As he seemed a bit busy, I took over the galley, and doled out the wine at £2 the glass. Big glass, mind you. So I can authoritatively report that people who go to poetry readings all drink red wine rather than white, unless they drink Rooibosch tea.

Philip's voice was accompanied by the bells of St Mary Redcliffe, which were being enthusiastically exercised above us. Stephen closed the door out onto the balcony, which made not the slightest difference. A blackbird joined in from up on the roof above; and there was a regular low rumbling, like distant cannon fire, which I eventually identified as the sound of traffic on the bascule bridge. All in all, it kind of worked, as an accompaniment.

From my perch at the back of the room I watched the boats splash up and down Welsh Back - the rowing club was out practicing, and so were the Guides and Scouts. I saw the cormorants and Canada Geese swing by, the sky darken.

Later, walking back to the car, I met my friends from the Bristol Flickr goup, sitting outside the Ostrich pub. The Rag Morris people were dancing on the quayside right next to them, and the temptation for a group of people heavily accoutred with camera gear was far too great to resist; there was a regular broadside of flashguns going off, and the suggestion of a naval battle was further encouraged by the tattered costumes, suggestive of sails and rigging shot away, of the Rag Morris team as they danced The British Grenadiers.

wild places

At last I've got into gear and am painting pictures, and I'm pleased with the way this one is going. It's a fox catching hailstones in its mouth. It was something that Geraldine Taylor spotted on the Zoo Banks, on the Downs. Assuming I don't mess the picture up, it'll be in the Bristol Review of Books and in Geraldine's new work-in-progress book.

There's been a lot of nature around the place lately. I walked along the Severn estuary on Sunday, exploring the bit where the railway tunnel and the new bridge intersect.



This is a shaft that was dug to tunnel outwards from, and is now used to pump water out of the tunnel. The one on the Welsh side is more impressive, because it pumps out the Great Spring, which was discovered in dramatic circumstances during the construction of the tunnel, and which has in its time supplied an ordnance factory, a paper mill, and, now, the brewery that makes Becks and Stella beer.

Anyway, the recent snows have been thoroughly washed away by the rain, and the sun shone brightly, and the birds agreed with me that it felt like spring, and were singing in a chirpy sort of way all over the place. A couple of blue tits were bobbing round in circles, occasionally performing sudden vertical climbs. Similarly, a grey squirrel in next door's garden was performing high-speed circles punctuated by great leaps into the air. Lord knows what that was about; perhaps it was art.

And the magpies in the plane tree at the front of the house have been repairing the nest where they reared their single chick last year, before it was killed by the local fox. Gratifyingly, the car parked below the nest was spattered with twigs and magpie crap. It is this car's owner who cleared the snow before driving away last week, throwing the snow onto the footpath where I had cleared the snow. Karma!