We seem to be on (an admittedly slow) roll with pubs at the minute. The Nag's Head. Nice. Fancy a pint? Why not, eh? Abingdon, again - by the Thames.
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| The Nag's Head pub in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. On FP4+ thinking it was HP5+ HC110 for a good while, Foma 133 paper and then dunked in a-bit-too-strong freshly made Pot. Ferri. |
I read that the number of pubs in England are in rapid decline. I guess the Covid lockdown was a game-changer for many - people stopped going out and maybe by the time lockdown was lifted their habits had changed. A lot of pubs now rely on food to boost their profits - and then you have the dreaded 'gastropubs' (whoever thought up that 'orrible name has a lot to answer for if you ask me). I do have a lot of sympathy for the pub landlords, to be honest - rising utility bills, rents, raw material and staff costs combined with fewer customers must mean many are in financial trouble. Pubs, even ones which have been around for hundreds of years, aren't exempt from the basic laws of economics. The simple answer is we all just need to get back out there and support our local businesses - especially our pubs!
Anyway, pubs. Or, more specifically, pub names. You get the classic Rose and Crown, King's Arms, Red Lion, Royal Oak and so on. Occasionally you come across one you've never seen before and that was the case when we had a little day trip to the town of Abingdon, just outside Oxford. The Thames flows through the town and not far away from the river we came across The Broad Face. Now that was certainly one I'd never seen before and I reckoned it warranted a frame of 35mm film.
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| The Broad Face, Abingdon, complete with 'Men at work' sign - 'cos there's roadworks everywhere, all the time nowadays (or so it seems). FP4+ exposed at 320; HC110 on Foma 133 paper. |
The various theories behind the name is written on the wall of the pub (an unusual curved corner it is too!). Some say it was the face of the local hangman (the town jail was just opposite the pub) but I've read that the pub predates the jail so maybe that's not the origin of the name. Alternatively, it's the swollen face of a man's body fished out of the Thames. That seems unlikely to me, but then What do I know? I guess you can't beat a good old-fashioned mystery when it comes to pub names - 'tis a good topic of conversation over a pint or two, that's for sure. Cheers!
A couple of weekends ago we were in the City of Dreaming Spires, to give our daughter a little lift before her finals, which are approaching at the speed of a bullet train. As my wife and I wandered around the city I was thinking to myself this could well be the last time we do this. Next time we are there will most likely be for graduation - and that is probably going to be a quick-in-quick-out affair. So I was making the most of it, complete with the M6, 28mm Elmarit and a bunch of HP5. The icing on the cake was that as we passed by the entrance to All Souls College we noticed a sign saying 'Open to visitors'. That was very unexpected, since mostly the colleges have signs stating 'Closed to visitors'. So in we went. Had a wee walkabout the front quad and marvelled at the interior of the Chapel. I took a few snaps - glad I had the rangefinder since light was low and I was down around 1/15s, which is just about doable with the M6.
Fast forward to the weekend just past, when I developed the first of the films. I knew there was something wrong when I saw the negs - too thin. What had gone wrong? Turns out I had somehow managed to load FP4 into an HP5 canister. So not only was my exposure off but so was my developing time. Rookie mistake - and one I have never done before. But of course, it had to happen with an important film, didn't it. Tried to print yesterday morning but it was pretty hopeless - this is about the best it got, taken from the inside Quad of All Souls, looking out towards the Radcliffe Camera:
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| Dreaming spires |
I've another film half-shot still in the camera, so I'm going to have to do a clip test and see if that too is FP4, or HP5 as I thought it was. What a pain.
Update: Mystery solved. I did the clip test, and good job I did as it too was FP4+ in an HP5+ canister. So I developed the rest of the film for 17mins in HC-110, dilution B (1:31). The negs look better, but I won't know for sure until I try to print from them.
I also did a clip test on the film inside my bulk loader. That's where the problem lay. The sticker on the top said HP5+ but inside was, you guessed it, FP4+. How I didn't change the label I will never know - must have been half-asleep.
A right mess of rocks and waves it is. It looks like clouds but it's all just angry sea:
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| 'Blad/250mm/FP4+ with red filter so a few seconds exposure - on a tripod but not that you'd know as it was very windy. Foma133 with thiourea tone. |
Not the sort of doorways you see around The Liberties, I must admit, but I guess these sorts of grand entrances that we came across from time to time in Budapest aren't that uncommon in the old cities of Northern Europe.
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| Spotmatic, 28mm, home-brew thiourea tone on Foma 133 paper. |
Interesting fact: it occurred to me during our short trip that this was the first foreign trip I've made where I didn't take - or need - any local currency. Hungary uses Florints - and there were 450 of them to the pound. Not an easy number to do on-the-spot conversion, unless you round up to 500 in which case it's a little more straightforward. Still, when you see something advertised at 14,000F it's still hard to get your head around the fact that equates to £28, more or less. I think that was the cost (each) of our open top bus tour ticket for two days, which included a short river cruise. The guy taking our money - well, scanning our credit card with his machine - was very pleasant and offered to throw in a third day for free. Not much good to us when we only there for two days, unfortunately. The cruise was an hour long and everyone told us to go near sunset so that we could appreciate the lights of Buda Castle and the Parliament Building. We weren't that organised though - we'd spent the morning and most of the afternoon hoofing around the city before we found ourselves near the river. We were in dire need of a sit-down so we just decided to go for it, earlier than planned which meant we missed the lights. It was interesting enough but a cruise is just a cruise - not much to do other than look left and right and listen to the commentary. Still, it was a welcome rest and the commentary was pretty good with lots of historical stuff as you might expect in such an important city.
What was surprising was that the subway machines (well, machine might be more accurate as usually only one seemed to be working), which looked like they were ancient, actually gave us tickets when we tapped our card. Every other outlet - restaurant, pub, shop all were geared up for contactless, no matter how small or large the transaction. It still seemed weird that we were able to take a 3-hour flight, walk around a city in a foreign land for a couple of days and not even think about (or use) cash for anything. 'Tis the future, begorrah - right now.
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| Initially I had this as a Pegasus, but they are winged horses, so then I thought, Ah, a centaur. But a bit of Googling (cheating, I know) tells me the centaur usually has 6 limbs - four of the horse and two human arms. So this might be an onocentaur, but I'm not sure they have wings, so I'm back to square one on this. Suggestions on a postcard, please (or comment below). |
Last year I had a milestone birthday (60) and as a special treat my wife took me on a short trip to Budapest. Yes, I know - but I'm worth it. Haha. Budapest was a city I had always wanted to visit, ever since I found out about the trip my uncle made to the city in the late 1930s (documented here, in case you've forgotten). It didn't disappoint, although we only had two full days to explore, so it was a quick in-and-out. The best part? - we could fly direct from Belfast, which made the journey so much easier. Well, except for the fact that we had to get up almost before we went to bed in order to make our early morning flight home. We went in October, which was probably a good time to go, since I'd imagine it gets very busy in the main tourist season. The downside was the weather wasn't great - the first day was very dull and overcast, with some rain, so not much good for photography. The second day was a bit brighter. To be honest, although I had plans to shoot lots of film, in the end I only shot one roll. I think because it was the first big trip away for my wife and I without our daughter - we kind of focussed on enjoying the trip together and although I carried a camera I didn't much feel like breaking away on my own to do a bit of snapping. So I came home with a few postcard shots and that was about it. Still, a good excuse to return one day - and maybe for a bit longer next time.
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| The Danube, as it flows through Budapest. Old Pentax, 28mm, HP5+ on Foma 133. Thiourea toned. The retro style of the paper suits this scene quite well, I think. |
We stayed some way from the main drag and that ended up being a good move, since we got to see parts of the city that looked like they hadn't changed much since the days of the Soviet bloc, of which Hungary was very much a part. Amazingly, it was only in 1991 that the last Soviet troops left the country. I guess that went a large way to explain why everyone we saw over the age of about 50 looked liked they'd lived several lives, with a definite sense of world-weariness. There was some serious poverty in evidence too - both men and women sitting (living?) on street corners with a cup for money and clothes that you and I would have thrown out a long time ago. Of course down near the Danube, which was full to bust with large river cruisers like the one in the shot above, it was a different story - fancy hotels (Ritz-Carlton, for example) and plenty of designer shops. I'm glad we got to see the other side of the city, although riding on the subway was, shall we say, interesting. Not that we ever felt unsafe, but the subway stations look unchanged from those Soviet days.
Still in a very cold and windy Portballintrae, but looking west this time:
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| That would be Inishowen Peninsula in Donegal way in the distance. Blad/250mm/FP4+/Foma 133. I had a 10-stop ND filter on this one which took me down to about 8 seconds. |
I finally got those last frames of FP4+ wasted and actually made it into the darkroom on Saturday morning. I was a tad rusty, of course, but got something out in the end:
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| Looking out over Runkerry Beach towards the Causeway, which lies just beyond the headland Blad/150mm/FP4+/Foma 133. |
I'm pleased to report that the various things that have been keeping me from the usual nonsense on this place are gradually coming to an end. I actually got a film loaded into the 'Blad the other day and got the shutter release pressed, oh, at least three times. Impressive, I know. I hope to press it another few times soon and then you might get to see some new stuff. In the meantime, here's a oldie from a few years ago - Ballintoy, on a stormy day:
On a side note, we've had an uncommonly large number of pretty violent storms this winter. Missy was booked on the Belfast-Liverpool ferry a few weeks ago and at the last minute decided that was not a good idea and rescheduled for a couple of days later. Good job she did, as we read later the incoming ferry was unable to dock safely and spent several hours bobbing about Belfast lough waiting for the seas to calm down sufficiently to allow it to come into port. Even when she did travel, it was still a pretty rough crossing but obviously she made it across OK, although she's probably thinking it's a mixed blessing, given the amount of work she has to do this final semester.
One from a while back. In my mind this was Birkenhead docks from the rear of the overnight Stena ferry from Belfast, but the big ballast thing on the top of the leftmost crane says 'Belfast Harbour'. Hmm. Well sure it's either one or t'other, makes little odds.
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| Not much is sharp, even though I was resting the camera on the big steel thingmy at the back end of the ship. |
Missy has just left us again, to complete her last semester before graduating later this year. It was really lovely to have her home for a good long time - we reconnected and we were all sad when the time came to say goodbye. It's going to be a year of change for her - come August she'll have to move out of her accommodation and that may well signal the end of her Oxford adventure. To where she goes we don't yet know - jobs are being applied for and there is vague talk of 'travelling'. I said to her last week, Don't worry too much about the future - it has a habit of sorting itself out. For now, all you can do is get the head down and get those grades up.
My talk last week at the local Club was well received. I'd forgotten what a thoroughly decent bunch of people frequent the Club, so it was a really rather nice to be back amongst them again. The lockdown over Covid obviously killed face-to-face meetings and it's been an uphill struggle for the Club to get people back. A struggle which I understand - once you get out of the way of doing something, it quickly becomes the new norm.
It was quite fun to go through my prints from the last couple of years and make a coherent presentation from them. This is the shot that I kicked off with:
I remember taking this shot - there was lovely warm morning light coming in through the porch window and these beautiful soft shadows from a plant were being cast on the wall behind a old chaise longue thing that lurks in our hall. Looking at it again last week I thought how much I still like this shot - the curve of the wooden frame of the sofa is just right for the scene and there's enough mystery about the shot to make it worthwhile looking at, I think - for a couple of seconds, anyway.
Just letting y'all know it might be a-while before I have anything new to show on this place, but I'll endeavour to keep you vaguely entertained in the meantime.
