Behind The Curtain, In The Pantomime...

It's opening night. Well, it's still the morning but that's not the point...

And in true form, let's have a complaint. I'M ILL!! Woke up with a blocked nose, a horrid cough and the return of my ear problem. My feet are sore from my trek with Daisy the other day. I'm tired, as me and Taz stayed as late as possible to plot LX.

But it's opening night - I'm nervous, anxious, and incredibly excited.

But this also means it's the last Thursday of the Easter break, which has flown by. I've hardly done anything, although I did get some photographs of Hannah that are lovely...

And it's also nice to see I'm getting a bit of interest on Flickr....reeesult!

Made contact with the Emerald Isle this morning, chatting to Greg about various odd Volkswagen events that are kicking off this summer. Hopefully going to Bug Jam, in July, and Greg's chatting about a VW tour around Ireland, called Eireball - looks very amusing.

So, I suppose things aren't so bad, really. I shall of course let you know how the show goes...

"You know you love me"

Revenge Is Sweet

Here's the first photo post in a while...

Kenneth and I had gone cycling, looking for a weir that we could take some nice long exposures of. It turned out to be an utter failure without a ND filter...

...but to the ford on Watery Gate Lane, what do I find abandoned in the ford? A red Mini cooper - classic Brit, not German shit. With a white chequered roof.

Now there's only one person I know who drives a red mini with a white-and-red roof...Dan, the eejit who kept talking over me at the last School Council meeting. Could it possibly be him?

Hell yeah.

Me and Kenneth loved it... best photo moment in ages and beat the weir by miles! Dan had to get his Dad to come, and his mates John and Adam who bought a Land Rover with a trailer. It took me, Dan, his Dad, John, Adam and a passing old lady [who'd suffered a dognapping] to push the Mini up onto the trailer. I snapped away happily whilst Dan ate humble pie...

Oh, it was a great way to spend an afternoon. I'd have loved to have been there to capture Dan's face as he climbed through the window of his stricken Mini...

Me and Kenenth will go cycling more often...

Batman and Robins

Think Pogues.

It was Christmas Eve, babe, and in a forest, two photographers, took pictures of robins...

Almost. Well, we had a lovely morning shooting today, on Christmas Eve. Squidders popped himself on my doorstep for about 9:10am and after a brief moment admiring each other's new Lowepro bags, we walked the short distance past the Blitz rock, over the bridges, past the pub and the church (in Ireland they're the same thing) and up into the same bit of footpath that Henry and I walked yesterday.

It was blooming freezing. So much so that droplets of water had frozen to a branch. This provided the first oppourtnity for us to whip out the cameras. Joseph [Squidders' real name, for newbies] has the Lowepro Slingshot AW300 which in theory should allow him lightning fast access to his camera. The design is flawed by the fact that his head gets in the way when pulling his bag over his shoulder...

I smugly pulled Kenneth from his new bag, the Lowepro Fastpack 250. We had a bit of an argument about the usual things - white balance, shutter speed and Nikons. I remembered what I learnt from the incident with the robin yesterday and told the camera to always use the centre focus point, not guess at which one I'm trying to use. The Tamron lens is a bit slow and fussy when it comes to focussing, but I nailed a pretty nice shot of the branch...

I win. Anyway, we calibrated the cameras and I dialled in a shutter speed of 1/125 which actually worked out pretty well with some of the later exposures. We caught sight of a couple of birds but it was only until we got to the path up to the hill that I got anything remotely decent...

Epic win, I even danced at Squidders who was a little way off. Silent dancing of course, we wouldn't want to disturb the birdies. We then paced up and down the path, which slopes up to the first stile to the hill from the Croft side. The robins came and went, and after yesterday it was one of them that I really wanted to get and get right. A lot of patience and careful management of the odd-focussing Tamron lens led to a couple of really close shots of some pretty robins...

We eventually got disturbed by a group of runners and then the loudest children in the entire country, so we buggered off further around the base of the hill, eventually putting the cameras away to climb up this really steep, icy, dodgy bit of slope. We sat atop the hill, chatting shit and looking out over lovely hazy Leicestershire that stretched out in every direction...

Our attention was caught by a mountain biker, who had cycled the entire way up Croft Hill. Bloody idiot. Then a jogger ran past, slipping slightly as he ran down the other side of the hill. The cyclist turned and went the other way - straight down the dodgy bit we had just climbed. Brave bloke. We stood there talking about bananas, and Joseph then noticed the cyclist bloke out on the other hill, right round near Huncote! Brave bloke!

Then the jogger went past again, this time falling flat on his arse as he descended the hill. We laughed, naturally...

This was the scene from the top of the hill, looking towards what I believe to be Broughton Road in Croft. Pretty misty, we mused. Then the jogger ran past again, this time choosing to run back down the hill on the slightly grippier edge. We stood and saluted the single most brave man in the county of Leicestershire. Feckin' nutter...

How Batman fits into this I'm not quite sure, but the title looks good. On the way back home, we bumped into a couple of Croftian locals. Joseph thought we were going to get mugged for a moment, before realising it was somebody he actually knew. We then went ice skating with them, and I decided to try and crack the ice. I even tried bunny-hopping through it on a scooter the Croftians had stolen, to no avail. Joseph was getting a bit worried for my safety, especially as large cracks had formed, spider-web style around the epicentre of my jumping.

As we were coming off the ice, a broken bit near the edge showed us that it was a good four or five inches thick...my jumping was a pointless waste of energy, I'd have never gone through that...

It's Christmas tomorrow, lads. Have a good one...Beannachtaí na Nollag xx

Well and Truly Walked

Henry and I went for a bit of a trek today, with Kenneth and Barney. After delivering a Christmas card and stopping to chat to Chris, we headed out towards Croft Hill on the woodland footpath that lines the Huncote Road.

Almost perfectly, a little robin flew down and landed on a fencepost. I froze, and Henry did too. This little robin stayed politely on the fence post, I raised Kenneth to my eye and...everything was black. Bugger, lens cap...no, there wasn't one on, it was in my pocket where I'd left it. I checked the viewfinder again, but it was definitely all black. The robin stayed on the fence, waiting for me to realise.

I'd hit the "SET" button and activated Live View - flipping Kenneth's internal mirror up and blocking any light getting to the viewfinder. In the trade, we call that "fucking stupid".

So, I missed my National Geographic award-winning shot of a cute little robin. But it's alright, I had gorgeous Henry to pose for me, instead.

That was nice of him. We spent a few minutes up the Hill and Henry took Kenneth to try his hand at DSLR photography. His shots were pretty good, and he got a quick crash course in basic composition rules (IE not sticking the subject slap-bang in the centre of the frame) before we headed off towards Huncote with the intention of going to Annabel's in Enderby.

We never made it, instead deciding the weather was too unpromising. The horrible grey skys had long since rendered Kenneth pointless, but we carried on walking and did a full circuit back up the B4114 to Croft.

Of course, it was hell when I got home - the puppy was filthy. I gave him a quick bath, but he's still not clean... To be fair he wasn't spotless when we left. I think Henry's more worried about his feet...a bad choice of footwear. I know that feeling...

Christmas Shopping

Baby, it's cold outside...

Firstly an apology. As Elinor correctly pointed out last night, for all my complaining I never actually gave my opinion on the Florence song. However this blog is not a musical review site, instead it is a journal of photography and semi-comic complaints.

I liked the song. It was very good. She has an amazing voice. However, anybody who ever attempts to re-record an Irish punk drinking song should be that - drunk. Florence was far too sober, and same applies to the KT Tunstall version I heard recently.

Let's move on. It was the final day of the Borders sale today, with up to 90% reductions in store. Well, we just had to go along and have a looksie, didn't we? As you do. Mother, Father and I descended on the store. Imagine an explosion in a city centre pound shop, with the debris being books, DVDs and calendars. It was a bit like that. There was a bloke who paid at the till next to us, with a big basket packed to bursting with novels, cookbooks, soft porn, how-to guides...hardbacks, paperbacks...you name it, he had it in this basket. The woman behind the till was pulling her hair out. He then asked if she would look after this mountain of books for him whilst he brought his car round.

Naturally, she refused. Good for her, and also I bet he didn't spend more than fifteen, maybe twenty quid. Closing down sales are always fun, and fair play to the Borders staff - considering they were spending the last few hours of their employment watching vultures scavenge for last-minute Christmas bargains in the format of the written word, they were a jolly bunch. One was even dressed as Santa, however another did assure me that they were all "high".

A brief tour of Fosse Park followed, sorting Hannah's Christmas present and condemning my fingertips a little more to frostbite. This weather really seems to be staying, hold out hope for a white Christmas (I still have my case of MO-OCD by the way)

We got back and my keen photographers eye caught sight of the beautiful sky. Kenneth had came to Fosse Park with me in his new backpack, but I popped in to grab a tripod and ran off down the bridle path towards Stanton to take some pictures. I say ran, of course, I lie. I didn't have last nights ridiculous shoes on, but there isn't a lot more grip in my Emericas, which were pretty flat to start with. I swear, I've never concentrated on walking so much since that hike in Beaumanor 2005.

I'll leave you with mine and Ellie's favourite pictures, but I got a nice one of a pylon too. I don't know what this new obsession with taking pictures of pylons is. Maybe it's because they're photogenically symmetrical. Or I've got a case of...ummm...Copenhagen Fever?