sunshine

It has been quite wet the last few days after the snow last week. I went out and took some photos in the garden for the first time this year earlier.

The frogs have been busy for the last 3 days and there is now a small amount of frogspawn in our small pond.

I am registered with the Phenology network and the Woodland Trust and as part of Springwatch they ask you to log when you notice changes and events for the first time in your area. There is a live map showing event across the country. Ours seem to be late this year.

Spiers and Boden....

are on at Whitchurch folk club in Shropshire tomorrow night and we are off to see them. We believe there are still tickets if you're quick....

I have just had a look around their website and they now have a blog on Myspace.com It doesn't seem to be working properly and won't let me download music.

Jon Boden also has his own blog on my space and has some tracks to download from his new solo electric album due out in April... I am looking forward to being able to download them! Thanks to Simon from under the green hill for telling me about that one.

But the most exciting thing is that Bellowhead are playing at Poynton Folk Festival and we are dancing/playing there with Black Dog Molly . We are on the same bill as Bellowhead!!!!

We're back

and we've got some 700 photos to sort through!
We have posted some here on atypical and will create some galleries.

Here's one of the pics I took that I really like -



We did not see any live music unfortunately, but on a drive out to look for the northern lights on our first evening we were taken past the studio that Sigur Ros record at!! We then went on to see a spectular show of the aurora for over an hour. It was the first time they'd been seen since December 2005. We were very lucky.

I feel so privileged to have been. Iceland is an amazing country and if you can get there, you should go.

Iceland.....

soon!
In 2 days!
Excited!!

We are busy packing so this is a short post just to let you know that Tone and I have set up a new blog on Wordpress for the occasion - atypicaltravel.

We will try to blog whilst we are in Iceland and hopefully upload some photos if it's easy to do that.

I don't know if we'll get to see any live music - I hope so. We plan to take a trip north of Reykjavik to try to see the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis), and to sit around in naturally heated pools a lot. Sigur Ros are from Iceland, so at the very least we will listen to them on our MP3 player!

I stumbled across.....

..... The SU periodic table - a photographic website, today.

It's really well done - the photos all have something in them with letters on and the thumbnails for the pictures are all sections of the larger picture focussing on the letters of an element in the periodic table - nice idea eh?

I found the site using stumble. Tone signed us up for it - see bloghawk soon for more info including how he found it. It's great - I just chose the topic "photography" and then clicked - I have not found any complete crap yet! I just need to learn how to use it to make favourite lists and tag sites myself.

I think I will probably blog here a bit more now - I seem to have lost my motivation whilst off work - I don't think I need the distraction/ relaxation/ outlet as much when I am vegetating at home.... and I thought I would do it more, as I had more time over the Christmas break.

Anyway - I think there are more reasons for blogging coming up soon - Black Dog Molly are dancing out tomorrow night as it's Plough Monday - the traditional day for Molly apparently.

We booked our next holiday yesterday - to Iceland - it's really exciting - it will be an amazing photographic opportunity. We go in early March with Discover the World Arctic Experience ethically responsible holidays!

Whilst I'm here - just thought I'd let you know my dead camera is now back to life and back home from the menders. I will get round to using it soon I promise. i have taken a few pics with the D70 recently. One of them is this -

It's a picture I have been meaning to take for months. I kept driving and walking past it on my way out of our estate and either didn't have my camera, didn't have time, or the weather conditions were wrong, to take a pic. I finally did it last week when we were on our way back from a walk round our local woods/ streets. Tone called it enigmatic.... I just like the odd buildings on the slope - I think it's a water table.

It's on atypical - so whilst you're there, why not take a look at some of mine and Tone's favourite pictures from just over a year of atypical? Well I am sure you have better things to be doing, but go on, and leave us a comment, that would be great!

keyhole surgery

you'll need the skill level of a surgeon to work this one out!

Go to Clare Sudbery's site Boob pencil and see if you can guess which house belongs to each one of the 13 bloggers. One is mine!

Go on.... have a go.......you've got 'til Friday 25th Nov 05

I'm still here....

blimey I didn't realise it's been so long since I posted here.

I bet you've given up on me.

I have been back at work a while and that has kept me away. I have now done 2 and a bit weeks of my new part-time regime - I now work 4 days a week. I am feeling some benefit.

In the meantime I have done my first dance-out with Black Dog Molly - see our best pictures on atypical here. Tone was the official photographer.
This is me - I was very excited and so I was hitting hard! Chris was facing me and was suprised.

We had white faces and false cobwebs on our hats because it was hallowe'en, in case you were wondering.

There are more pictures here on BDM Fotki.

I was 36 yesterday and my main pressies were a new piano accordion - a nicer sound and smoother bellows (but smaller range - 2 and a half octaves) - and a new MP3 player - my other one died the night before my birthday!!! It is essential so I can listen to Spiers and Boden at work! Thanks Tone, Phil and Rich xxx

Talking of J&J we went to an amazing gig at Northwich folk club two weeks ago - I will remember it for a long time. They were awesome.


By the way - we have found a receipt for one of our broken cameras and persuaded the insurance company to repair it so we get it back in a week or so. What a wait!!! As a result of the long wait I have taken hardly any pictures. I took a few on my D70 at the apple festival at Reaseheath College in October.

music and dancing

Tone and I have joined Black Dog Molly - a Molly side, a type of Morris dancing. It is such fun...... Tone plays guitar and I play piano accordion when I am not dancing. The dances I have learned so far all involve sticks!! but there are no bells or hankies in sight....

We will wear black and red and paint our faces black when we dance out (perform in public). The next dance out is the 29th October at Shugborough Hall for Hallowe'en. Hopefully we will be good enough to join in!

It is such a huge motivator to me for practising my accordion..... and I am also dead keen to find some local tunes and songs. I am hoping the Boat Band can help. I have found some names of tunes from a search on Mudcat discussion forum and think that the library archives might have something......

The other thing that motivates me, also tends to make me feel very inadequate and like giving up - is listening to amazing musicians like John Spiers (Squeezy) and Andy Cutting. We saw Andy last week playing very sweetly and warmly with June Tabor who has the deepest roundest voice I know and such emotion.

This is one of my favourite photos that I took - it's Squeezy's boxes at Fylde.

John Spiers is my idol along with his musical partner Jon Boden. We saw them first at Fylde Folk Festival in 2004 - twice in one day, and then with Bellowhead their band at Middlewich Folk Festival this year, and with Eliza Carthy as two of the Ratcatchers (wonderful festival, dreadful website...they have asked Tone if he is happy to let them use some of his photos!! which will definitely be an improvement).

Bellowhead are so exciting and I CANNOT sit/ stand still when they play - I HAVE to dance with ALL my soul......but it's hard to hear John's playing in many of the numbers. We saw Bellowhead again at Bridgnorth Folk Festival in August so now it's time to see them alone and I booked today to go to Northwich Folk Club on the 4th November. It's going to be a long wait. I love listening to their CD's. There is a new one due out in 3 weeks - have a listen to three MP3s on their site and see what you think........

Eliza is also fab - and her Mum Norma Waterson is brilliant too. We saw them at the New Vic and it was a beautiful evening. Not so keen on her Dad Martin Carthy but he writes well and he went up in my estimation when on watching a great programme last night about Bob Dylan it turns out they were bestest buddies!! Bob is the most amazing songwriter ever! and his early performances were so moving - I wish I'd seen him.....The new Scorcese film "No Direction Home" is so atmospheric and I can really understand why Dylan opted out of the scene - fame was no fun.

The first year we went to Middlewich was mainly to see Kate Rusby - who had Andy Cutting with her. We have seen Kate play a few times now including in Derby and Stafford. She introduced me to contemporary British folk music - I heard a snippet of Sir Eglamore on the radio one evening as I drove home and rushed into the house to turn it on and find out who she was. I was amazed at the energy and beauty of her voice and playing. She has a fantastic set of musicians behind her.

Having said that I first saw Eddi Reader in Fairground Attraction at the Queen's Theatre in Burslem in about 1986. That was probably my first ever folk gig, but I didn't know the genre. Brian Kennedy supported them and I was knocked out by him. I waited 4 years for his album The Great War of Words to come out! He has now sadly become a famous crooner in Ireland who gets women throwing their knickers at him - eeuugghh!!!

We saw both Eddi and Brian at Middlewich this year. Eddi was ace - she had Boo Hewerdine with her who wrote many of her best songs. We are due to see Boo at Biddulph Folk Club this Friday and he is doing a song-writing workshop on Saturday at Newcastle library that we are going to. The best thing about Brian was his bass player James Blennerhassett.

There are loads of great photos on atypical folk galleries that mostly Tone took - he's getting good at the hand-held low light action shots y'know!!!

So - I hope that's given you some idea what floats my boat musically in the folk scene...... I love loads of other stuff too - but I just had to tell you all about these people and encourage you to have a listen. A good place to get some ideas about what you like is the BBC2 radio website folk pages. The Mike Harding show is available to listen to if you miss it live on a Weds eve. The discussion forums are fairly interesting if a it obsessive! If you really want obsession take a look at the minute detail in which people compare notes about tunes and songs on Mudcat cafe. It is a good place to find out about particular music you are looking for, but can be overwhelming......

Tone's camera

I took Tone's small Canon IXUS with me to London yesterday when I went to see the fabulous Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Tate Modern.


I also went down to Trafalgar Square to see the new statue on the fourth plinth - a statue of Alison Lapper and I was amazed - it is so beautiful and fits the site perfectly. The marble is white with pale grey veins and looks like skin.

I took a few photos and this is one of my favourites. I have also posted one on atypical and on yclepta.

Just after I took these photos, I dropped Tone's camera and buggered it - and I was so angry at myself - that means we now have 2 non-functioning cameras!! Can you believe it?

I just hope our insurance is worth the money we have paid into it over the years and pays out......

oh how I miss my camera

I know I have the D70 too but I can't carry it around all the time when at work etc.

I am off to London soon so I am going to borrow Tone's Canon IXUS. I am looking forward to being able to be creative.

Being back at work for the full week this week has been rather hard. I have been thinking a lot about Work Life Balance - this is a particularly NHS policy name. Tone and I went along to Black Dog Molly on Thursday night and had great fun - I played my piano accordion properly with other people for the first time and that was a challenge! I also learned a dance.... and we are definitely going back next week.

We also tried the new Community Gospel Choir that is meeting nearby last weekend. It was ok - it's good to sing with other people - but we didn't sing very much and the songs are not quite my sort of thing.....

the next thing to do is join a T'ai Chi class on Wednesday - we were going to go this week but had too much to do.

Blimey - I should be so relaxed and happy - what's wrong with me! I had a migraine on Monday, a dizzy spell on Wednesday and sinus pain all day today.

However - we have been to see the Scottish Ballet tonight and that really entertained me for a couple of hours so I feel a lot better. The dances called The Pump Room and 32 Cryptograms were amazing. I still feel tired but hopefully I am up to the trip to London.

If you see pictures here in the next few days, you'll know I was ok..........

damaged...but not beyond repair

that is assuming the insurance pays out....

The Nikon Coolpix 4500 that I try to keep with me when I'm out and about, particuarly for sky and cone shots is poorly.

When I wanted it to take a photo on Tuesday evening it made a terrible noise and a juddering when I turned it on. I had to take the battery out to turn it off again.

The quote for repair is £240! The Autofocus motor is part of a single sealed motor and lens unit that has to be replaced. So we are going to make an insurance claim.

Hopefully it will soon be better - fingers crossed......

sky

I love the sky and the endless variety - I seem to have taken a lot of sky pictures lately.
Here are a few of my favourites.

inspiration...

I am in awe of the ability of some photographers to see the world from perspectives that I fail to see for myself. Pixibition by Poramit and Michael Singer's a visual notebook are a real inspiration. I try to be open-minded but often really struggle to not be obvious.





This picture was taken just before the picture of cones on atypical. I am pleased with both of them - they are the sort of thing I mean, along with the Sainsbury's shot a few days ago.

coneflower

I have not been taking many pictures of flowers in the garden recently.
This is for 3 main reasons -
1 - I took a lot last year and feel like I'm repeating myself.
2 - the new lens has a low success rate - I take get one good photo from about every 10 I take.
3 - Being at home and in the mood at a time when the weather is right - if it's windy it is VERY hard to get good photos with the lens at 1:1 close-up as the depth of field is so small. I took a few yesterday - in the wind, but with late sun. Only a couple turned out - one of which was this.... echinacea or coneflower just coming into bloom.



.

sky over Sainsbury's

Tone and I have just come home from a weekend T'ai Chi for beginners course. I am feeling very dozy. It was challenging, fun and cleared my mind rather successfully.
On our way home we called at the supermarket for the ingredients to make our own ice cream and nice things for tea with our friend Kim.
We had the camera with us, as Tone took some photos of the teacher and the class - which I guess he will post later to either bloghawk or atypical.

sky over Sainsbury's
Originally uploaded by atypicalblog.

I saw this photo on the car park - I like the dynamic angles of the porch against the sky. It is a hot bright day. I don't usually like supermarket architecture - and the rest of this shop is a large corrogatedmetal shed - but this feature drew my attention today.

grass

grassbw[1]
Originally uploaded by atypicalblog.

Well... this is my first time with flickr - Tone and I sat together for hours tonight setting up an account and uploading pictures. I needed to test it out before going to bed. I chose this one as it's black and white - it was taken with the D70.

flickr is grt!

Gormley

On friday night our neighbours came round for a meal - then they moved house yesterday to a place about half an hour away. We will miss them all - Dawn, Andrew, Jacob and Alysha.

On Saturday though we had a cheery day visiting Ness gardens with Jude and Alastair. The gardens were mildly disappointing although we took quite a few snaps. So, we went across to Liverpool under the tunnel (aaaggghhhh - don't like long tunnels much!), to Crosby. There is an amazingly splendiforous art installation by Antony Gormley of Angel of the North fame there.


Gormley

It's one hundred iron casts of the artist standing upright facing the sea, placed along the 3 km beach.... and we have posted some pictures here already to give you a sense of it. Take a look at these websites for more info - BBC, Visit Liverpool, Sefton Coast, The Lightbox, and get yourselves down/ up there from wherever you are - especially if you are into photography - it's very inspiring with the industry, the beach, the Wirral and North Wales mountains in the distance and then the fantastic figures.

Dorothy Clive

The Dorothy Clive garden is a beautiful, varied and peaceful garden open to the public in North Staffordshire next to the border with Shropshire. We visit a couple of times a year. Today we went with our friends - James,Mandy, Chris, Jude and their friend Noe. We went in Chris and Jude's vehicle which is they bought as it converts to a sleeper/ camper. That may be the type we will get. Chris and Jude are about to move to Cumbria - they hope the move is next weekend. We had a really relaxed afternoon - Tone took a lot of photos - James and he love to talk photography.

I will miss Chris and Jude a great deal - and I hope we will be able to visit them often in the Lake District - which is at least a fabulous place to have to go to to see them. Bon voyage friends... x

Bare

I've just bought Annie Lennox latest album - Bare - and it's wonderful beautifully produced. The cover photo is fantastic. It prompted me to go to her website to try to get a picture - I could not download one as it's all flash, so this is from another site. However - go there and visit the gallery- the photos are amazing - she is so beautiful - more so with age I think...and she has worked with a friend of hers to do the photography herself so you see what she really wants you to see.

The description she gives of this photograph includes the lines "I have exposed myself through the work to reveal aspects of an inner world which are fragile.. broke, but not entir$ely smashed... I am a mature woman facing up to the failed expectations of life and facing up to the "core" issues. I don't want to represent myself visually in some kind of cliched, air-brushed, saccharine kind of way. I want to reveal myself as I am....The image is timeless, genderfree and racially ambiguous."


annie lennox

Alison Lapper's photography - buy it!

Alison Lapper

yclepta has posted about Alison Lapper - I also saw the programme about her - I have done some research and found that she uses photography and other media to explore herself and perceptions of others. I also saw a programme a few years ago - I think it was Child of Our Time - about her pregnancy and bringing up Parys as a baby. She is a true inspiration - celebrating her body's beauty and using her skills to show that she is more than able - society disables her by our attitudes. There are some beautiful images here. They are for sale too.

And did you know you can get an interest free loan from the arts council to Own Art yourself - up to £2,000!