The Minack

The Minack theatre built into the cliffs near Porthcurno I. Cornwall. Will always have a pull on my heart. In the late 1970s and early 1980s I spent every summer holiday there. 

My intro to the theatre was through an old friend of the family. 

Lawrence and Gertie were coming to the end of their time managing the theatre and their final year was the 49th year of productions. Over a couple of summers I photographed the theatre and my pictures were published in the golden jubilee calendar of 1982.  

I returned that year and photographed the production of Shakespeare  The Tempest. Which had also been the first production put on in 1932. The new manager, who also was the director of the production, was an ex teacher and had brought the production down with a theatre group in Kent.  

One of the dressers was a colleague of his from his school. 

But that is another story. !!!

Christmas dinner.

There was almost a crisis in our house this christmas, It was possible that V was going to have to cook our christmas dinner.

Due to a curve ball thrown into my work roster it looked as though I was working on boxing day, the day when we were having our christmas dinner. 

Don’t ask why we were a day late that is another story. As I was not going to be there we realised that she had never cooked christmas dinner in her life. This job had always fallen to me. 

This also got me thinking about what I had learnt over the years cooking christmas dinner. The following are things I have learnt.

1 Christmas dinner time is the time that christmas dinner is served.

2 You will always have too much veg

3 You will never have enough roast potatoes

4 No-one ever wants christmas pud after dinner.

5 When carving the turkey ensure that it is breast side up.

6 No alcohol can be consumed until the correct cooking time for the meat         has been calculated.

7 Do not calculate the cooking time for the meat based on the price per             Kilo.

8 Everyone MUST eat at least one sprout.

9 Yorkshire pudding goes with anything

10 If cooking christmas dinner in an unfinished kitchen, in an oven installed         the previous day, ensure the guests include one child having its first               christmas, no-one will care about dinner.

11 Nothing is funnier than a one year old eating sprouts for the first time.

12 No-one will agree on what you had last year.

13 The starter will be forgotten about until just before the main course is             ready to be served. 

14 No one can agree what wine to have.

04:48 22 December 2015

Starting a new project at the New Year is a recipe for failure! 

New year resolutions have become the subject of many jokes and are almost a euphemism for a failed endeavour.  How many diets, exercise regimes and 'new me' projects , are started in the post alcoholic glow of the new year, only to flicker and die into cold ash by the middle of January?

Far better to fall into the deeper rhythms of the year and take the winter solstice as cue to start a new project. The Solstice marks the turning of the year, the shortest day and the longest night, the deepest and darkest time of the year, everyday after the solstice is a day on the climb up to the heat and light of high summer. 

Starting at the solstice also gives some time to get into the rhythm for the project before the new year hits, with all its distractions.

These ten days get you through the death zone for a project when the first rush of excitement is over and the realisation of exactly what has been taken on starts to become obvious, push through these days and the rhythms  start to  become embedded and what looks like an impossible task becomes more manageable. 

It also helps to set realistic goals for any project. Far better to go for three times a week rather than every day. 
Set the target as 'every day' and the first time you miss a deadline then you have failed. Set the target as three of four times a week and the odd missed day has not poisoned the project. 

In the past I have done time limited projects with differing degrees of success. My picture a day between the spring and autumn equinox on Pbase was a success while others on Instagram have run for a time and then faltered as the inspiration fades or self set limits became inhibiting. 

The new aim for this blog will be for three posts a week. With a mix of new images, old images and more wordy posts with stories from my time working as a commercial photographer. 

I am not setting a time limit on how long it will last but my hope is to have a long run at this post rate. 

Guest blog

For the first time I did a guest blog post for another blogger.

Where we we on holiday in the summer was a wonderful greek island called Symi. A British writer who lives on the island as a daily blog. At the moment he is on holiday and was looking for content, I made contact and a guest post was the result.

Symi Dream

Good fun and something I hope to do again.

Agia Marina Beach Symi

The last beach we visited on our short stay on Symi was Agia Marina. We got the same taxi boat as our trip to St Nicks. The cost was slightly more from memory.

Agia Marina is the most developed of the beaches and almost has a country club feel to it. There are green lawns palm trees and a restaurant that serves good food.

The beach is small and sandy, and the sun loungers are all on hardstandings. The cost of the loungers is the same as St Nicks but no discount for using the taverna. We sat in the shade of a tree and all day we had geckos running around under the loungers.

When we first arrived we had mixed feelings about the beach but the day was very relaxing and at the end we both agreed that it had been a good day.