Battling in Waterloo

Well only battling the wind actually, and it was the Waterloo near Crosby of the Anthony Gormley iron men fame. Although I have been to the other Waterloo in Belgium, which is a huge manmade hill to mark the battle. I've only been there once and I was dressed as one of Abba, with three people dressed as the other members. It was as a favour to two Czech performance artists and involved marching up the hill in costume carrying a cassette player blaring out Waterloo by Abba! I think it might be on video somewhere...

Anyway this weekend was the other Waterloo which turns out to be really spectacular in parts and really run down in other parts. There are two beautiful sweeping crescents of houses that stretch for at least half a mile all painted in pastel shades with well preserved front gardens looking over the sea. There is a park and a boating lake, but the little town itself is now like much of Britain, boarded up and past it's best. So the pictures are from that visit and include a window display from a recently closed cake shop called Satterthwaites, that had been in the same location for 102 years. It looked so smart with all the original fittings and a very sad note in the window thanking customers for sustaining them over the years.

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A Lovely Pair of Pins

I knew the expression 'pins' referring to legs but had to Google what the Cockney rhyming slang comes from. It looks like 'pins & pegs', but there are some great alternatives like 'bacon & eggs' and 'dolly pegs'. I think I might start trying to incorporate more Cockney into my everyday speak, I do have London roots but they are more South (Saff) London than East London, where I think it originates. Anyway this is all to illustrate a new picture that sits quite neatly with an older picture. So brogues, legs and a sea view from my two main muses. This might be turning into a set... Oh by the way the top view is Morecambe Bay and the lower image is from The Wirral looking across towards Wales. The North West of England is a beautiful place, with some stylish residents.

Linda McCartney Video Commission

If you'd like to access my cyanotype video workshops, they are still live on The Walker Art Gallery website: Cyanotype prints for beginners Advanced cyanotype prints

Hold Your Hair In Deep Devotion

At last after a week of being indoors, I walked into the light! I went solo and had a photography day in Liverpool, just what the doctor ordered, as they say. I'm a bit out of words at the moment and was going to include a Philip Larkin poem, but I've been thinking that Alex Turner is my modern day poet hero and this is my favourite track on AM, tucked away at the end. He's in his twenties and yet the words suggest a time before he was born, filling my head with images and memories. I've included a link to the track if you want to listen to The Arctic Monkey doing their thing whilst taking in my pictures... UPDATE Well since writing the above it has been pointed out to me that the song is actually based on a poem by John Cooper Clarke, which makes sense of the time frame (being written in the early Eighties) and the fact that I responded to the lyrics like a poem. Apparently Alex Turner first heard it read by his English teacher whilst at school. So mayb...

Marc Provins

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