Category: Photo Posts

Archive for the ‘Photo Posts’ Category

1 May 2012: Hemsby: happy Vikings, lonely Romans and one scary ole sausage

So, Hemsby then. Small village on the Norfolk seaside, too far north for the bright lights of Great Yarmouth, too far south for the wilder, quieter, less commercial, interesting bits of coast. I’d begged a long weekend in my parents’ caravan, just me and my laptop and my plans for a novel (oh – and a box of college marking, but let’s not mention that).

18 Jun 2011: Rainbow over Hitchin

Yeah, yeah, it’s not the most intellectually challenging or politically charge thing I’ve ever posted here but what the heck – I like rainbows, OK? And when one appears over the back garden it’s impossible to resist running outside with a camera.

12 Jun 2011: Worst job ever?

I saw this gloomy fellow by the side of the road in Stevenage a week or so back as I was driving home from work.

11 Jun 2011: Hunny and Cromer: I do like to be beside the seaside

For reasons that make a long story (novel-length, with any luck) I wanted to visit a seaside resort out of season to remind myself of the atmosphere. So, back in March, we loaded up our metaphorical bucket and spade and headed off to the seaside.

14 May 2011: The passing of time

Continuing my brain-dump of photos and days out from recent months, these pictures date back to my birthday in March when we went for a wander around one of my childhood haunts, Hitchwood.

14 May 2011: One January night in Walsworth

I’ve been having a rummage through my old photo directories, looking for sets I meant to post but never got around to. Here’s one from January 7th this year, of a sunset in Walsworth.

21 Mar 2011: Scratching under the surface in Baldock

So I was in Baldock today, taking the car in for its MOT, and was left with more than an hour to kill pottering around town and seeing what there is to see.

8 Dec 2010: As cold as a very cold thing

Several days of sub-zero temperatures left Hitchin frosted over – no snow on the ground, but a white coating on plants, trees and derelict cobwebs that picked them out as if spray-canned.

11 Nov 2010: It’s only cold when you’re losing

Last night our local football team, Hitchin Town FC of the Zamaretto League division one central, knocked their entry prices down to a fiver and we decided to go along and watch the game.

21 Dec 2007: Give me 12 inches (and make me a wig)

The fear of going bald does strange things to a man – just ask Mark Oaten. Thing is, there’s no turning back from it.

4 Dec 2006: In search of the English Roswell

So, yesterday we went to have a potter around some woodland where, 26 years ago this month, an alien spaceship was seen to land. Possibly. The Rendlesham Forest Incident, in which a group of American airmen rushed out to what they thought was a crashed aircraft, is sometimes known as the”English Roswell”. Some, including a […]

21 Nov 2006: All the news that fits

Newspaper bills – the posters outside shops with snappy headlines – are supposed to intrigue you into buying the paper by giving you a taster of the story. They’re not supposed to leave you so doubled up with laughter that you decide it’s safer to pass them by and look the stories up later online. […]

22 Oct 2006: Live news as it happens!

I wonder if he's landed yet?

6 Oct 2006: Oh Brother where art thou?

The third and final batch of photos from our camping weekend (a dim and distant memory now, I fear) comes from Cleeve Abbey

4 Oct 2006: Moo!

Here's a really cool thing: mini business cards with your Flickr photos on the back.

4 Oct 2006: Vegetable love

For anyone motivated by a passion for vegetable growing, Rosemoor – the RHS gardens near Torrington in Devon – are a 'must see' at this time of year.

25 Sep 2006: Up above the streets and houses

Very mixed weather today

25 Sep 2006: Loitering within tents

Ever gluttons for punishment, we spent the weekend in a small tent on a hillside in Somerset. Friday night served up gale force winds, Saturday gave us thunderstorms, but the tent – a relic from my days in the Scouts and 25 years old if it's a day – was equal to all.

6 Aug 2006: The Romans in Britain

Bit late, this post, but what the hell. A couple of weekends ago we combined two of our favourite interests – good books and archaeology – in one visit to the excavations at Silchester Roman Town.

31 May 2006: Sunset last night

Spectacular. I blame global warming. And the government, of course.

31 May 2006: DNA of London

In my household we tend towards the view that Douglas Adams wasn’t, in fact, a novelist but instead a philosopher and a researcher of the infinite who chose to present his theories and conclusions in the form of radio scripts and sci-fi novels.

26 May 2006: Something going down on Upper Street

My vague potterings were interrupted last lunchtime by a cat's cradle of blue tape across the road in my path, cordoning off (among other things) the scene of a shooting the night before and the restaurant where I'd been planning on eating.

14 Apr 2006: The house of discipline, and other photos

I can remember when products were built to last and didn't stop working just because they'd been thrown across the room in a cold fury a few times. I say this because my phone finally started malfunctioning beyond a level I was prepared to tolerate, so I had to replace it. Having said I didn't […]

7 Jan 2006: Nailing my colours to the mast

“Winning here!”A washed-up hack with only a short time left in his political career poses for a campaign photo with Charles Kennedy. That photo of me and the boss taken during the 2001 general election, when we both had fewer chins, should illustrate where I stand in the madness that's currently gripping a miniscule proportion […]

4 Jan 2006: From the passenger seat

Something you don't see every day: a London Underground District Line train being driven round the M25 this morning on the back of a lorry. If this is the Greater London Authority's latest attempt to get people to commute using public transport, all I can say is they seem to have missed the point somewhat. […]

26 Dec 2005: Christmas spirit

Christmas spiritChristmas pudding, brandy, white sauce and pies appear on the dinner table

24 Dec 2005: Extra! Extra!

It seems to be the thing at the moment to be amused by newspaper bills – the posters with breathless headlines that papers give to their street vendors and newsagents to help shift copies. The Evening Standard Headline Crisis 2005 set on Flickr has such classics as “TOOTHPASTE CANCER ALERT”, “MAN BEHEADED IN LONDON STREET”, […]

14 Dec 2005: In memorium

David Sutch | Eddie Guerrero | Kirsty MacColl | Stuart Adamson | Glenn Quinn

13 Dec 2005: Start and finish

Both ends of the same day – the sunrise and sunset on November 14th this year. (Links go to Flickr, where you can see the full-sized versions of these photos.) Up…Sunrise over Falmouth, Cornwall, from the Grove Hotel, 14th Nov 2005. …and down.Sunset across the Cot Valley, western Cornwall, from the garden of “The Canyack” […]

12 Dec 2005: Pimpin' da blog, yo

Publicity whoreThe Eden Project, one of Cornwall's biggest tourist attractions, has an education centre with a wall made up entirely of refridgerator doors. If there's a teaching purpose to it, I missed it – as far as I could see it existed mainly to give people the chance to play with the hundreds of letter-shaped […]

11 Dec 2005: All you need is…

Love rocks the universe……at least, it does on the wall of a public toilet in Helston, Cornwall.

23 Sep 2005: Before he was famous

This rogues' gallery all stood for sabbatical elections at the University of East Anglia (UEA) between the mid-1980s and early 1990s. These photos all came from their election literature. If you look hard enough I'm in there, and one or two of the faces went onto greatness of a sort. There's a stand-up comedian in […]

15 Aug 2005: Happy Days

And what happens the very first day I go back to the Royal Mail? One of my former colleagues avalanches a whole load of photos he took during the Bastard Project From Hell onto his Flickr account – including at least three with me in. Now, did that bring back memories, or what? IMG167 copyOriginally […]

26 Jul 2005: Angelic interlude

So far, so good in my return to office-based work. The transport network seemed pretty quiet to me, although the Standard was claiming that was because it was the first day of the school holidays. Whatever the reason, rail and Tube both seemed to have fewer passengers in general, and in particular fewer older people, […]

5 Jul 2005: Railway children

When I was a child, it was axiomatic that all small boys were supposed to want to be train drivers when they grew up. The truth, of course, was that none of us actually did hold that ambition and probably no small boy had done for a least a decade. It just took a while […]

3 Jul 2005: Home and Away

Some photos from the recent camping trip. Despite being cut short, this was an unexpectedly refreshing and much-needed break – even if I did seem to spend most of it on the phone, juggling different bits of work that suddenly started mounting up. Before we went away I was enjoying not having any work on, […]

22 Jun 2005: Compact and biijou

Be it ever so 'umble, this is home for the next few days…

19 Jun 2005: Skyness

A fine summer day here, and the clouds have been doing things that only a poet could properly describe, only a meteorologist properly explain, but even the stoniest heart csn properly enjoy. Summer sky over St George's Church, Hanworth Cloud formation over Tudor Court, Hanworth Yay – one of these photos just got featured on […]

29 Nov 2004: The Sound of the Crowd

Last night was the Human League gig at the Reading Hexagon. Which is an unhappy thing, because now I’m remembering having been to it, instead of looking forward to going to it.

9 Dec 2003: Snapshot

Yesterday I got one of those miniature digital cameras, a tiny little thing made from brittle plastic that looks like it’ll last for about a fortnight before it disintegrates. It has no proper memory, so if you take the battery out (or if it goes flat) all pictures in it will be wiped. But the […]

25 Oct 2003: A few photos from the recent walking holiday.

Have made the most of my unexpected day at home by doing organised stuff. And now that I've done that, it's time for some silly photos. First and LastAt the First and Last House by Land's End with the bastard great rucksack. Onwards, ever onwardsDidn't know this one was being taken, or I'd have swung […]