Today my lovely Michaela is 46.
We are away on the island of Coll with some friends… a few photos are required I think…
Happy birthday Michaela!
1
Category Archives: photography
Commuting compensations…
Ask any of my friends and they will confirm that I am not a morning person. I do not like to communicate before mid morning, and sometimes then reluctantly.
At present, however, I am doing some work in Paisley, which involves getting up very early and being on the 7AM ferry, this being the only way to avoid sitting in the M8 car park of the rush hour. I get into work just after 8 and have a while before anyone else is there to practice sociability so it is not so bad.
This morning it was not bad at all. A beautiful sunrise, porpoises rolling in the calm water, even the traffic was relatively light this morning.
Unusually, I had my camera…
Ordinary…
The day was all hollowed out;
a cadaver
slacked from unpumped blood
waiting for worms.
.
Was there only one
Lazarus?
.
I am shrouded
in ordinary.
Cowal Open Studios…
Despite all the uncertainties in relation to our house (which will go on the market in the next couple of weeks) we have committed ourselves to being part of the wonderful Cowal Open Studios event again in September this year. It feels ever more important to hold on to the vision of making life through simple creative means…
Our page on the website is here.
Taking photos of the things we make always proves something of a challenge. I ended up making another collage of a variety of things made by Michaela, myself and our friend Pauline Beautyman (with whom Michaela runs workshops.) I quite like the result.
Talking of workshops, Michaela and Pauline are running a ‘Hand Made Craft Fair’ in Dunoon on the 22nd of March. It will also be a chance to do some hands on things too- they will be running sessions of various crafts throughout the day. I will share some more details later…
Here is one of my Clyde Puffers, made from bits of driftwood and the odd bit of copper heating pipe;
The hole it makes in everything…
The family of a man who starved to death four months after his benefits were cut off has called on the government to reform the way it treats people with mental health problems when it assesses their eligibility for benefits.
Mark Wood, 44, who had a number of complex mental health conditions, died at his home last August, months after an Atos fitness-for-work assessment found him fit for work. This assessment triggered a decision by the jobcentre to stop his sickness benefits, leaving him just £40 a week to live on. His housing benefits were stopped at around the same time.
United Kingdom, 2014
.
He works in a shop in order to spend money
In another shops.
.
Some weeks
After the rent is paid
And the meter’s appetite sated
He buys a lottery ticket
(Because you never know.)
.
Yesterday someone starved to death
Four months after ATOS
Pinched tight the withered umbilical.
.
Nanny state
No more.
.
And I can no longer escape the impression
That it is not the money that matters –
(It is not as though it will ever be enough.)
Rather it is the hole it makes
In everything.
Last ferry leaving…
Last ferry leaving
I used to laugh at the Holy Hooverers
Those for whom God is an
Escape pod
From this sinful slough we live in
Called Earth.
But why would you ever want to leave the light
Through spring leaves;
The translucent skin that barely contains
What babies will be;
The gentle rain falling,
Falling?
But days like today will force a revelation;
I could do with a distant angel trump
If he will have me,
I am rapture-ready
I would wait
By some crystaled sea
For the last ferry
Leaving
Hebrides, winter…
A wee poem I have been working on following a trip to Islay. Uncharacteristically optimistic and upbeat by my usual standards I thought… call it an antidote to a really crap day.
.
The horizon rises rust and golden
There is mild steel in the sky
But the curl of the sea still smiles at me
This light falls kind upon the eye
.
A cold north wind unfurls these coat-flags
Slapping like a laugh at the side of your face
Peat smoke clouds my watered eye
Our ship lies soft in harbour embrace
Sometimes it is best to flee from light…
Image
They wave at you, sometimes with gritted teeth…
Michaela and I have just spent a night on Islay- I had to do some work there on Friday, so she tagged along too. It is a hard life.
Islay is a beautiful island, full of rolling farmland, beaches and a dozen or so distilleries that make the finest whisky. The beaches are stunning and the air full of birds.
On Islay, everyone waves at other drivers as they pass by. It is an instinctive thing- everyone gets a wave. It costs nothing, this kind of distanced friendliness. It is possible to maintain the illusion of conviviality despite all sorts of shared history that divides as much as it unites.
Today Michaela and I explored some lovely beaches and walked around the edge of the weather as it waved to us from dramatic skies. What a beautiful world we live in…
Life glimpsed through winter trees…
A few shots from a lovely walk up through the woods to the ‘Chinese ponds’ round past Toward.
We took a picnic.
The trees always still you. They have this way of telling you that life is not for the burning, but rather is what happens as we pass by. Each bare branch wears its lichen colonies well, as birds flit through on some afternoon mission or other, unnoticed.
Meanwhile out beyond the branches, through forks and crooked boughs, the real world looks so angular, so predictable. I would stay in the woods. At least for a while.
this fragile tent 