… that film companies chose this area to move to. That unrelenting sunshine helps and the light adds a sharpness to almost any picture. I like the bright signs out here, not just the huge billboards which in a rainy dull place would look dreadful, but somehow in this bright sunshine seem to have a majestic feel. It’s all about competition to get noticed here of course. The traffic signs are unequivocal, stop means stop and you can get a ticket if you are spotted not coming to a complete standstill at a junction at a stop sign even though … Continue reading It’s no wonder…

This is Dave, he works on one of only four surviving newsstands in LA, just around the corner from where I’m staying. I meant to take a picture of this last time I was here , so I made sure not to miss the opportunity this time on a bright sunny morning, with the sun on the newsstand. Dave offers a massive selection of magazines here. I recall that we had newspaper sellers in the UK. Generally just a guy on a street corner with a small box and a poster on each side of the box with a headline … Continue reading Last stand of the newsstand.

I wrote this one on the plane out here, so it appears here slightly out of sequence. The images are from a previous trip. There we are in the Heathrow airport departure lounge, doing what you do in airports, mainly avoiding the bright lights of the shops just after the farting about in security. Of course no one complains about security, even if the queue was starting to look like a Royal Lying in State, and none of us wants to fall out of the sky once up there, even though the airlines food makes you contemplate that this might … Continue reading Wear your decorating clothes…

You can blame a chap called Jennings way back in the 60s I think who was the first to apply meanings to place names, a bit of fantasy fun in the days when there were but three TV channels and shops had what was called ‘early closing’. It was a in many ways the death of the corner shop, and later they revived when ethnic minorities never closed them, ever. I can remember now just one of those place names that Mr Jennings gave a new meaning to: Wembley : to feel a bit Wembley was to feel not quite … Continue reading Amberley.

I’m a big fan of modern tech. I was late to this game way back when computers came into the graphic design field thinking like decimalisation that it would never ‘catch on’ and we’d soon be back to pounds, shillings and pence. I carried on drawing in the old way, on paper. I still do, but have caught up with tech as best I can. My approach to it was to ‘never get cross with it’, that way it would never get me ranting on about how dreadful it is ( and it isn’t) and what a time swallower it … Continue reading Technology tipping point

Make soup on a Thursday. It’s the day when the stuff in the fridge might be past its sell by date but will cook up quite nicely as a soup. Don’t expect it to taste the same every time. In fact there are times when if you could replicate the recipe you would because it tasted so good, but you’ll have forgotten what was in the fridge. I’m back at the landscape front fighting the battle to get some drawings finished. I went through the phase of really big drawings and some have been put in the recycling bin and … Continue reading Soup of the day

That’s what I looked like at my son’s wedding. Reviewing some pictures just recently I was struck by how badly I wear clothes. When I worked for the printers in the late stage of my career I was supposed to look smart but being a tad older than most and unused to wearing a tie apart from to keep my trousers up, most clients thought that the scruffy old geezer must be the owner, so a sort of benefit. One of my colleagues regularly used to tease me with the expression ” Who dressed you this morning? ” I thought … Continue reading Like a badly wrapped parcel

There’s nothing like a good walk and a selection of home made biscuits to cheer the soul. My good friend Mike and I managed to avoid talking about politics almost completely today, going on about food instead. There’s something quite relaxing about talking about food whilst walking. We had the bonus of a brilliant days sunshine and were able to partake of some delicious biscuits made by Mike’s wife Judy, who’s baking skills are somewhat legendary. I’d made the tea and doled that out from my flask whilst we sat on a hillside in the balmy sunshine overlooking the Gloucestershire … Continue reading Cooking the Goose…

I’ve never been good at maths, and for you people in the States that’s maths plural. All of them. I just did not do the maths well. I was intimidated by teachers with no patience and who could see that I simply did not get it. I never got it at school, but can see the value of it now and since of course. I struggled to do my homework on the subject. Homework being a bit of a misnomer as we did our homework at school, we did not go home until the end of term or the occasional … Continue reading “Get Carter!”

It was an expression my mother would come out with for almost any sort of calamity. So when I failed my A levels , or almost all of them, ( I just got Art ) she’d have used it then. It always made me feel better and it might have been better if she’d been a bit more cheesed off. She was a woman who never seemed to lose her temper, if she was cross, cross was about as cross as she got, and she might excuse it by saying ‘ I’m a bit cross about ( fill in the … Continue reading ‘ Ooooh! …Never mind’

But I do rather like the look of chimneys and rooftops. We are in St Malo for a weeks walking, which is mainly round the coast. Some great days we’ve had and we splashed out on a lunch out yesterday. I’m not one to take pictures of my food generally, but could not resist these two. Top one is slow cooked beef on beans and the next one is sea bass fillet on carrot. They were truly excellent and mine gave me a week’s protein in one sitting. Holidays would not be holidays if you had nothing to tell the … Continue reading Most people look the other way

I published this about three years ago, with, not surprisingly no response. It would have been my late father’s 101st Birthday yesterday. So in a sort of celebration of that I am putting this out there again. A kindly letter to him on the birth of my brother ( on the same date as our new King Charles, but a couple of years before he arrived ) There’s something very charming about the letter and my father was so appreciative of it that he kept it all his life. —————————————————————————————————— This is a letter sent from Arlou in Belgium on … Continue reading The Belgian letter