Author: David A Lockwood

Amateur photographer with an interest in Prehistory (Rock Art).

Early morning.

Pre-scheduled post.
Early morning walk before the rain returns, it has been a very wet couple of months, way behind with all the jobs we had planned.
Going out with a camera in the heavy rain is not my idea of fun !!!
Started doing some clearing of fallen branches, gathering plant pots that had blown away and generally checking things around the house, until the rain sent me back indoors. Have not even started on our static caravan at Castle Howard, at least we have avoided the floods that many people have suffered. Don’t tempt fate David.

It could be worse:-

1607: Bristol floods
Some 2,000 people drowned around the Severn Estuary, with 200 square miles of farmland inundated. Long blamed on a storm surge, it is now suspected that the devastation was caused by a tsunami.

1703: Great Storm
The Great Storm of 1703 was described as the worst natural disaster ever to hit southern Britain. Between 8,000 and 15,000 lives were lost and the lead roofing was blown off Westminster Abbey.

1891: Great Blizzard
More than 200 people died and Cornwall and Devon completely cut off from the rest of the country by a great blanket of snow that covered much of the two counties.

1953: North Sea flood
A severe windstorm over the North Sea combined with an unusually high spring tide caused a storm surge in both eastern England and Holland. Over 300 people died in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, and in Holland around 1,800 died.

1962/3: the harsh winter
From Boxing Day 1962 to March 1963 much of the UK was covered with snow. In January the sea froze for up to a mile out from Herne Bay and the upper Thames froze over.

1987: Great Hurricane
Michael Fish (metrologist on BBC) laughed off suggestions a hurricane was on the way. A few hours later 22 were dead, 15 million trees uprooted and wind speeds of 122 mph were recorded in Norfolk.

Info from Mark Piggott (IBTimes UK)

The world is FUBAR !

The days of innocence and fun. Then again there was the Vietnam war (remembering the French with  ‘Bataille de Diên Biên Phu’ being ignored by America / UK / Australia, et al.) the shadow of the The Bay of Pigs invasion, The Cuban Missile crisis and J.F.K assassinated, not forgetting a positive “one small step for man….”, and the present generation think they’re badly done by.

I don’t think so.

……I can see by your coat, my friend you’re from the other side
There’s just one thing I got to know
Can you tell me please who won?
Say can I have some of your purple berries?
Yes, I’ve been eating them
For six or seven weeks now haven’t got sick once
Probably keep us both alive……

“purple berries” (potassium iodine pills) taken prior to radiation exposure and help counter the effects of radioactive iodine on the thyroid.
Happy days.

As the sun goes down.

As the sun goes down on a cold Autumn evening..

It’s nice to see that all my scheduled posts have been published, I have never used the facility before.
I have been away from Driffield over the New Year so internet has been rather haphazard; there is only one reliable provider in the area and it’s not the one I’m with.

The Little Fete from · Vangelis China.

“I take a bottle of wine and I go to drink it among the flowers.
We are always three … counting my shadow and my friend the shimmering moon
Happily the moon knows nothing of drinking, and my shadow is never thirsty
When I sing, the moon listens to me in silence. When I dance, my shadow dances too.
After all festivities the guests must depart. This sadness I do not know.
When I go home, the moon goes with me and my shadow follows me”

 

The end of a walk.

From my files.

In the foothills of the Ḥajar Mountains there are many tracks that have probably been in use since the Bronze Age if not before, quite a number are still well-trodden to this day. They would follow a Falaj (water channel) system to its source or between two villages and could quite often be several kilometres long.
This is the sort of view that would usually tell me it’s time I turned back, although sometimes if determined enough, I would take my boots off and wade. When the route I was following had a definite final destination and the water was not very deep, then wet I would get !! Quite often I would have been walking for 3 or 4 hours and if I wanted to find an abandoned village or the possibility of rock art, I would only have to make a return journey. Not being able to mark ‘done’ on my list, other than because it was just not possible to overcome an obstacle, would not satisfy my curiosity.

Difficult negative.

Bent old tree.
Yashica Mat 124G on Ilford HP5.

This was a negative that I was never able to print in the darkroom, I messed up the processing by using a rather hot stopbath by mistake. It caused mild reticulation & a slight increase in the film grain. I had filed the roll away and thought nothing more about it until I came across it again the other day, but nothing ventured nothing gained. Could I scan it and make a digital print that came close to my original visualisation ?

I used Lightroom and Nik software then printed it on matte art paper that has a slight textured surface, so although this Jpeg doesn’t give a true representation it’s close enough and I am pleased with the print.

I digress.


Reading Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England: and in book 1 “The rights of persons” I came across a quote that I thought rather pertinent for what’s going on here in UK at the moment:-

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

It was said by the lord treasurer William Cecil, 1ˢᵗ Baron Burghley (1520 – 1598), the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer from 1572. (From The Encyclopædia Britannica).

For those wondering why I would read such a book, curiosity got the better of me after noticing it being refereed to rather a lot just recently.