Staircase

The staircase in The Mineral Water Hospital, Bath is rather special.  Ok so the actual treads are a bit uneven in places (not that suitable for people with mobility issues I guess) but the finials (is that the correct term?) are beautiful - if a little dark in this print:

HP5+, Adox paper, mild sepia tone

I had the Pentax ME Super with me this year and I just stuck it on A and shot away in blind trust to Pentax's metering system - in any case, there is no manual metering option.  I always rate HP5+ at around 200 anyway but even so, perhaps I should have used the compensation dial by the rewind knob and let even more light in.  But the print is a fair reflection of the scene - the wood (mahogany I would guess) is very dark.

Tells a story

This little print tells a story.  It's upstairs in The Mineral Water Hospital, Bath.  All up the rather grand staircase we have (unusually for a hospital, but that's The Min for you) proper big oil paintings, mostly depicting past surgeons in the hospital.  This is what greets you on the top floor, where no-one usually goes unless you are on the AS course and are looking for the laundry room:

Level 2 in The Min, 2017

A snapshot of the state of play in the National Health Service, perhaps?  Some grand old oils on the wall - a wall that could do with a spot of redecorating at best and maybe re-plastering too.  The oils go well with the splendid wooden staircase with brass guard rail (a recent addition, it has to be acknowledged, but very sympathetically done).  Then we have a beat-up radiator heater in the recesss, which looks like it should have been dumped years ago, and old armchair sneaking into the shot from the right (I can't really see the need for it myself, unless you want to rest while admiring the art) and CCTV camera.

The Unit

There aren't many places in the world you'll see a sign like this:

Deep inside the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, Bath, 2017.  Adox paper with some very old bleach and sepia toner.

The RNHRD is one of the few - perhaps the only - hospital on this little planet of ours which has a dedicated team to support people with Ankylosing Spondylitis.  AS (as if you didn't know, eh?) is an inflammatory disease which affects joints and soft tissue - muscles, tendons, ligaments and the cause of syndesmophytes and all that.  When I went to Bath this year I took the Pentax ME Super with me and to be honest I didn't take very many snaps at all...but I wanted to document the place which has been such a good friend to me for the last 35 years, before it finally closes it doors sometime in early 2019. I think the building is being preserved - and quite rightly so as it is pretty iconic, being in the centre of Bath for nigh on 300 years.  But turned into an upmarket hotel?  Ah no...come on, now - you can't be serious.  Can you imagine being the Chief Executive of the Health Authority which signed off on this?  I mean, there he or she is (although I suspect it's of the male variety of the species) with his grand-daughter on his lap, some 50 years from now. 'So Grandpa, what was your greatest achievement on this planet?' to which he answers 'Well, we were faced with mounting loses in the old Bath Mineral Water Hospital so after nearly 300 years I was the one who finally was able to sign off on the deal to sell it to The Big Hotel Company for Wealthy Tourists'.  Nice.  Yeh, I know, I'm as bitter as hell about it but I'm allowed to be as this place has saved my life many times since the first time I entered its doors in 1983.  The Unit is moving to the Royal United Hospital at Weston, on the outskirts of Bath and by all accounts it will be pretty amazing - but it won't be the same.  No longer will AS patients be able to walk out of the hospital just after treatment into the hustle-and-bustle of downtown Bath, drop into a cafe and feel 'normal' for a while - whatever that is.

Bath Christmas Markets

I was, as you may know, over in the Min (aka Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases) recently for my usual round of physiotherapy - I go every couple of years of so and it's a bit of a service for the old joints.  Although in-between treatments you can go out and about, this year I did a lot less of that than usual.  But I did venture out on my last night in Bath, which coincided with the opening of the Christmas Markets.  So I loaded up the Pentax ME Super with HP5+ and took to the streets:

Christmas Markets, Bath, 2017.  Adox paper.

Spirit of Christmas?

This ghostly apparition was snapped up outside the Garrick's Head public house in Bath the other week:

I hadn't realised that this building was once the home of the famous Beau Nash.  It lies next door to the Theatre Royal and you stand a reasonable chance of spying a luvvy or two if you happen to be around in the evening.  I once saw Lionel Blair dancing his way through the public bar - raised a cheer and a smile, he did.

the sun and her flowers...

...was what she was reading at the time I snapped her up:

Via the Pentax ME Super, for a change.  Adox paper.

Not much in focus, apart from the logo on her top, but so what.  She's a good wee reader, is Missy - likes her books, she does.  No doubt Santa will be bringing her a few more...

Oh la la

Another from the Archives.  Funny how pretty girls ended up being photographed by one or other teenage boy in the McNeill household back in the day.  This one was somewhere in France, I believe - where we holidayed a couple of times in the 70s.  Taken by the brother, if I recall correctly - I was too young and innocent for that sort of thing back then.  Still am, of course...

Billy Reid's Fresh Meat Market

OK so this hospital thing is dragging on a bit.  I haven't been near the darkroom for about a month and while there is light at the end of the tunnel I'm not out of the woods yet.  Enough mixing of yer metaphors, I hear you say!

Here you go, then...taken and printed around the late 70s, this shows Railway Road in Coleraine:

The big bollard things with the plants in them at the sides of the road were put there after an IRA car bomb decimated that part of town in 1973.  Six people were killed and many more injured - if you're up for it, there's more about it here but it's not a particularly easy read.  Thankfully events like this in the North East Liberties were few and far between.