Odd Ends / Poisoned
Odd Ends, New Year's Eve 2006
This is my final blog of 2006 and to reflect on the end of an odd year I have garnered a selection of my favourite odd ends of photography that I have taken over the past couple of decades.
If your photography began in the digital age, you may not even be aware of the natural flaws that film photographers encounter. Growing up using 35mm film, the aim was to get as many shots as possible from your usually 36-exposure strip of film. The by-product of this was that the first shot was generally only half or three-quarters of an image, as the rest had been fully or partially exposed while the film was loaded into the camera.
I love these shots with their jagged yellow and red lines and other interesting effects, such as a cigarette stain yellow sheen with much of the initial image silhouetted beneath it, false lateral dawn or a weird, surreal collage of hues and shapes.
These images were taken by me in locations as diverse as Athens, where orthodox clergy anxiously awaited their leader; Cambridge where a little Fiat car appeared to be standing upon the water of the Cam while we punted past (a prank by engineering students, I believe); at a boathouse in Ecuador where the 'odd-end' enhanced the image with its brilliant 'sunrise' glow; inside the Vatican at the Beatification of Mother Teresa; the Edinburgh Fringe with a beheaded comedian; Robert Maxwell's grave in Jerusalem, and many others.
However, I enjoy them just for their odd looks and hardly think of where or when they were taken.
2006 has been a very odd year. I cannot hand on heart say it was a particularly good one for me. I had terrible problems living in Leamington but I will not harp on about them. They are in the past now. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to forget about them and get on with my life.
In terms of other endings in 2006, an old friend, Sam Towers of Cotesbach, died in October. After Sam's funeral at St. Mary's, Cotesbach, I wrote a poem about him, Do A Little, and also a blog, Sam Towers 1918-2006 (16 October 2006).
Recently Sam's son kindly emailed me to say how much he had appreciated the poem which he had read on this site. A friend from Cotesbach Hall told me on the telephone that she had been read it to Sam's widow, Dorothy, who had been moved to tears.
On Christmas Eve, my great aunt Aenne died in Bremen, Germany, at the grand age of 93. I felt very sad; she was a kind and serious lady who always made me and my brothers very welcome in her home. I am told she felt ready to go. She certainly enjoyed a long life.
On Christmas Day, the Godfather of Soul James Brown died, aged 78. I interviewed 'Mr Brown', as everyone who met him was instructed to call him, twice and found him polite and friendly, although you felt he was always far more interested in the young ladies in orbit around him than your impertinant questions!
I have greatly enjoyed the Christmas season. It has been a relaxing time with some wonderful occasions.
The first highlight for me was my birthday on 22 December. I spent it with my family in Lewes and my younger brother Nic, his wife, the Irish poet Catriona Clutterbuck, and their four-year-old daughter who had come over from Ireland to stay with us.
The day started with a full cooked English birthday breakfast. Then my Beloved drove us to Ditchling Beacon from where Nic, Catriona, our daughters and me walked the six miles back to Lewes. It was a gloriously bright winter's day; I have rarely seen the South Downs looking so quietly beautiful.
Back at the house by 4pm, we had a veritable feast of beef and ham joints and a huge platter of roast vegetables, washed down by champagne and other fine wines. A more lavish birthday dinner!
In the evening, Nic and I hit the inns of old Lewes town, hooking up with an old mate of his and quaffing copious quantities of beer into the early hours. Now that's what I call a birthday!
I also received some lovely presents, including poetry books from my elder daughter and a cashmere hoodie from by Beloved. I guess the only drawback of this will having to be hugged by the Tory leader 'Dave' Cameron whenever I swing through Westminster!
Christmas Day was also really good, with Christmas service as Southover Church, Lewes, with the Rev. Steve Daughtery at his most evangelical, followed by the opening of presents (the kids loved theirs from Santa - who was also celebrating his birthday, I guess!), a fabulous Christmas lunch, and the Dr Who Christmas Special, with Catherine Tate who used to play my comedy club, in the evening.
On Boxing Day, we went walkabout, first to Oxford to see my parents, and, the following day, up to Chester where my Beloved's sister and her husband produced a banquet for 10 - one of the most amazingly delicious meals I have ever been privileged to enjoy.
After that, we drove over to the Peak District and had a most pleasant stay at the Little John Inn, in Hathersage and a couple of lovely walks in sun and the rain, before heading home.
Yesterday was spent desperately trying to get on top of paperwork and make some sense of the chaos into which my financial affairs so readily slide.
And now it is New Year's Eve 2006. Strange, it does not seem long ago we were celebrating the turn of the millennium, or the end of the Eighties. I even clearly remember how I spent the night when the Seventies became the Eighties (drinking at the Stepping Stones pub and then yelling: 'Good riddance, Seventies!' across the playing fields of Broadstone, Poole, Dorset.
As well as odd endings, this year has seen odd beginnings. This was the year I did my first poetry gigs, the year I moved to Leamington (part-time), and the year I conceived, designed, launched and developed the Oliver's Poetry website.
Oliver's Poetry has been a wonderful journey although I am still not quite sure why I ever embarked on it.
I suppose that because in my first year as a poet - 2005 - I wrote 52 poems, I felt I needed an outlet to display some of them, along with soem of my photographs and the work of like-minded poets and photographers. It has achieved that.
It is fair to say that, although visited and appreciated, Oliver's Poetry is yet to find a mass audience. However, I would prefer it that way rather than compromising my vision for the site by turning it into a commercial enterprise.
In 2006, I believe I wrote 35 or 36 poems. It is hard to be precise about the number because I am not one of those people who sits down in the morning with a pencil and a particular pad and writes for two hours and then carefully transcribes the work.
I am far too busy living. I write on trains and planes and inside buses and on park benches in my lunch break, while waiting in queues at shops and just about everywhere else.
I also write on the back of parking tickets; in scrawny notebooks, exercise books, shorthand pads; on receipts, napkins et cetera, and with chewed biro, fountain pen, pencil, crayon, or whatever comes to hand.
The 2006 work is generally either more thoughtful or funnier than the 2005 canon. One of the things I am trying to do in the dying hours of 2006 is to find and transcript my poems of this year (most of them unfinished and in dire need of revision) onto my computer in case I lose them. Much time in my traditional booze-free January will be spent, I suspect, reworking them.
I have a list of New Year's Resolutions the length of my arm with which I won't bore you. One of them is to spend less time worrying about and working on the website (and its blog!) - and more time writing, learning and performing good poetry.
I wish you all a happy, peaceful and fulfilled New Year!
Odd Ends poem
Poisoned (Flashback to Maundy Thursday, 13 April 2006).
Leamington Garret. 6.58am. Overcast. I should not have gone out last night. I feel poisoned by the smoke, and all the booze didn't do me much good either. Why do I do it?
I was beaten up in my nightmares. I was making an off-the-cuff leaving speech in a room where half the people were sectioned off by a glass partition and would not stop talking. I was most upset.
A play I had written was performed in my honour by the staff. It was atrocious; the script was terrible, the acting worse, and somehow the audience had become soaked during the performance. Certainly they were covering their faces with red towels.
Worse still, live horses were being used in most scenes and kept bolting and throwing their riders. I watched it all in dumb-struck horror with a profound sense of shame.
Leamington Garret. 4.42pm. The Town Hall Clock is bathed in bright sunshine while braving gusty winds.
As I was driving down Leamington's Parade a few minutes ago, a horrible yob shouted really loudly into my ear through my open car window. Boy, it hurt. I have a headache now. Why is there such thuggery instilled in the young in this pretty little town?
Yesterday, a teenage girl spat on my shoe as I was returning from the shops. Her punk boyfriend laughed. The day before, a huge 'yoof' called me a 'wanker' in the street. For absolutely no reason! I was walking along minding my own business. Unbelievable!
I must type out my new poem.
Oliver's Poetry Home
This is my final blog of 2006 and to reflect on the end of an odd year I have garnered a selection of my favourite odd ends of photography that I have taken over the past couple of decades.
If your photography began in the digital age, you may not even be aware of the natural flaws that film photographers encounter. Growing up using 35mm film, the aim was to get as many shots as possible from your usually 36-exposure strip of film. The by-product of this was that the first shot was generally only half or three-quarters of an image, as the rest had been fully or partially exposed while the film was loaded into the camera.
I love these shots with their jagged yellow and red lines and other interesting effects, such as a cigarette stain yellow sheen with much of the initial image silhouetted beneath it, false lateral dawn or a weird, surreal collage of hues and shapes.
These images were taken by me in locations as diverse as Athens, where orthodox clergy anxiously awaited their leader; Cambridge where a little Fiat car appeared to be standing upon the water of the Cam while we punted past (a prank by engineering students, I believe); at a boathouse in Ecuador where the 'odd-end' enhanced the image with its brilliant 'sunrise' glow; inside the Vatican at the Beatification of Mother Teresa; the Edinburgh Fringe with a beheaded comedian; Robert Maxwell's grave in Jerusalem, and many others.
However, I enjoy them just for their odd looks and hardly think of where or when they were taken.
2006 has been a very odd year. I cannot hand on heart say it was a particularly good one for me. I had terrible problems living in Leamington but I will not harp on about them. They are in the past now. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to forget about them and get on with my life.
In terms of other endings in 2006, an old friend, Sam Towers of Cotesbach, died in October. After Sam's funeral at St. Mary's, Cotesbach, I wrote a poem about him, Do A Little, and also a blog, Sam Towers 1918-2006 (16 October 2006).
Recently Sam's son kindly emailed me to say how much he had appreciated the poem which he had read on this site. A friend from Cotesbach Hall told me on the telephone that she had been read it to Sam's widow, Dorothy, who had been moved to tears.
On Christmas Eve, my great aunt Aenne died in Bremen, Germany, at the grand age of 93. I felt very sad; she was a kind and serious lady who always made me and my brothers very welcome in her home. I am told she felt ready to go. She certainly enjoyed a long life.
On Christmas Day, the Godfather of Soul James Brown died, aged 78. I interviewed 'Mr Brown', as everyone who met him was instructed to call him, twice and found him polite and friendly, although you felt he was always far more interested in the young ladies in orbit around him than your impertinant questions!
I have greatly enjoyed the Christmas season. It has been a relaxing time with some wonderful occasions.
The first highlight for me was my birthday on 22 December. I spent it with my family in Lewes and my younger brother Nic, his wife, the Irish poet Catriona Clutterbuck, and their four-year-old daughter who had come over from Ireland to stay with us.
The day started with a full cooked English birthday breakfast. Then my Beloved drove us to Ditchling Beacon from where Nic, Catriona, our daughters and me walked the six miles back to Lewes. It was a gloriously bright winter's day; I have rarely seen the South Downs looking so quietly beautiful.
Back at the house by 4pm, we had a veritable feast of beef and ham joints and a huge platter of roast vegetables, washed down by champagne and other fine wines. A more lavish birthday dinner!
In the evening, Nic and I hit the inns of old Lewes town, hooking up with an old mate of his and quaffing copious quantities of beer into the early hours. Now that's what I call a birthday!
I also received some lovely presents, including poetry books from my elder daughter and a cashmere hoodie from by Beloved. I guess the only drawback of this will having to be hugged by the Tory leader 'Dave' Cameron whenever I swing through Westminster!
Christmas Day was also really good, with Christmas service as Southover Church, Lewes, with the Rev. Steve Daughtery at his most evangelical, followed by the opening of presents (the kids loved theirs from Santa - who was also celebrating his birthday, I guess!), a fabulous Christmas lunch, and the Dr Who Christmas Special, with Catherine Tate who used to play my comedy club, in the evening.
On Boxing Day, we went walkabout, first to Oxford to see my parents, and, the following day, up to Chester where my Beloved's sister and her husband produced a banquet for 10 - one of the most amazingly delicious meals I have ever been privileged to enjoy.
After that, we drove over to the Peak District and had a most pleasant stay at the Little John Inn, in Hathersage and a couple of lovely walks in sun and the rain, before heading home.
Yesterday was spent desperately trying to get on top of paperwork and make some sense of the chaos into which my financial affairs so readily slide.
And now it is New Year's Eve 2006. Strange, it does not seem long ago we were celebrating the turn of the millennium, or the end of the Eighties. I even clearly remember how I spent the night when the Seventies became the Eighties (drinking at the Stepping Stones pub and then yelling: 'Good riddance, Seventies!' across the playing fields of Broadstone, Poole, Dorset.
As well as odd endings, this year has seen odd beginnings. This was the year I did my first poetry gigs, the year I moved to Leamington (part-time), and the year I conceived, designed, launched and developed the Oliver's Poetry website.
Oliver's Poetry has been a wonderful journey although I am still not quite sure why I ever embarked on it.
I suppose that because in my first year as a poet - 2005 - I wrote 52 poems, I felt I needed an outlet to display some of them, along with soem of my photographs and the work of like-minded poets and photographers. It has achieved that.
It is fair to say that, although visited and appreciated, Oliver's Poetry is yet to find a mass audience. However, I would prefer it that way rather than compromising my vision for the site by turning it into a commercial enterprise.
In 2006, I believe I wrote 35 or 36 poems. It is hard to be precise about the number because I am not one of those people who sits down in the morning with a pencil and a particular pad and writes for two hours and then carefully transcribes the work.
I am far too busy living. I write on trains and planes and inside buses and on park benches in my lunch break, while waiting in queues at shops and just about everywhere else.
I also write on the back of parking tickets; in scrawny notebooks, exercise books, shorthand pads; on receipts, napkins et cetera, and with chewed biro, fountain pen, pencil, crayon, or whatever comes to hand.
The 2006 work is generally either more thoughtful or funnier than the 2005 canon. One of the things I am trying to do in the dying hours of 2006 is to find and transcript my poems of this year (most of them unfinished and in dire need of revision) onto my computer in case I lose them. Much time in my traditional booze-free January will be spent, I suspect, reworking them.
I have a list of New Year's Resolutions the length of my arm with which I won't bore you. One of them is to spend less time worrying about and working on the website (and its blog!) - and more time writing, learning and performing good poetry.
I wish you all a happy, peaceful and fulfilled New Year!
Odd Ends poem
Poisoned (Flashback to Maundy Thursday, 13 April 2006).
Leamington Garret. 6.58am. Overcast. I should not have gone out last night. I feel poisoned by the smoke, and all the booze didn't do me much good either. Why do I do it?
I was beaten up in my nightmares. I was making an off-the-cuff leaving speech in a room where half the people were sectioned off by a glass partition and would not stop talking. I was most upset.
A play I had written was performed in my honour by the staff. It was atrocious; the script was terrible, the acting worse, and somehow the audience had become soaked during the performance. Certainly they were covering their faces with red towels.
Worse still, live horses were being used in most scenes and kept bolting and throwing their riders. I watched it all in dumb-struck horror with a profound sense of shame.
Leamington Garret. 4.42pm. The Town Hall Clock is bathed in bright sunshine while braving gusty winds.
As I was driving down Leamington's Parade a few minutes ago, a horrible yob shouted really loudly into my ear through my open car window. Boy, it hurt. I have a headache now. Why is there such thuggery instilled in the young in this pretty little town?
Yesterday, a teenage girl spat on my shoe as I was returning from the shops. Her punk boyfriend laughed. The day before, a huge 'yoof' called me a 'wanker' in the street. For absolutely no reason! I was walking along minding my own business. Unbelievable!
I must type out my new poem.
Oliver's Poetry Home
Labels: Beatification of Mother Teresa, Bremen, Cambridge, Godfather of Soul James Brown, New Year's Eve, photography, Robert Maxwell, Sam Towers, St Mary's Cotesbach, Vatican
posted by Oliver at
9:54 AM
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