My dear friend Andrew held a small gathering to celebrate his 60th birthday a few days ago and a fine time was had by all. I was particularly pleased to meet up again with Mike, Andrew’s younger brother, with whom I shared a flat back in the late seventies and who I hadn’t seen for a very long time. The photos are here.
Here is a photo of Andrew and I on the Mayday demo in Regent’s Street in 1974 and here is a photo of the two of us from the party. As far as I can see the only thing that has changed is that we no longer have a red flag and I seemed to have mislaid my favourite striped tanktop.
Christmas festivities seemed to go on for a very long time this year, I think we spent almost a week sitting around tables of food with large crowds of family and friends.
It started with Christmas Eve at Eva’s Name Day party. As usual the food and the company were both excellent. Here is a photo of just a part of the feast that Eva had laid on.
Christmas Day was spent with Rosie and Dom and more food and then some pleasant dozing in front of the TV
The next stop was Hackney – more food – and a long and chaotic game of Trivial Pursuits. The photos are here.
Then we gathered at my brother Chris’s new house for our usual sedate Swash family gathering. There were so many of us that we had to have a shift system for eating at the table. The photos are here
The highlight of the evening (it even beat the supremely entertaining secret santa) was a musical interlude when the kids demonstrated their nascent musical skills. Lucky you – here is a video
Next we had Ilse and Mick around for dinner – more good food and good company.
Here is a photo of Ilse brandishing some chocolate nugget
Finally we managed to get to Chris and Janice’s for a small new Year’s Eve gathering – time for a bit more food
Isabel and I travelled up to Bridlington at the weekend to meet up with John and Moira to go to a Specials concert. The journey up was wild with torrential rain and the motorway was littered with wrecked cars. When we arrived the sea at Bridlington was heaving and I managed to get a few nice shots of the storm.
The next days was sunny and windy and we walked out to Flamborough Head.
in the evening we went to concert. The crowd was predominantly middle aged men, lots of cropped hair, tone tone paraphernalia and the odd pork pie hat. The Specials came on with an explosive entry and the crowd went bonkers and several hundred blokes started to leap about and relive their youth. Isabel and Moria retreated to the balcony but John and I decided to get stuck in and proceed to leap about, crash into people, shout and generally get very hot and sweaty. The Photos are here.
I managed to shoot a bit of video in crowd and here it is. John is in the white T-shirt. The sound is not great because the volume of the band overwhelmed the mike on my little camera.
Isabel and I travelled up to Bridlington at the weekend to meet up with John and Moira to go to a concert by The Specials. The journey up was wild with torrential rain and the motorway was littered with wrecked cars. When we arrived the sea at Bridlington was heaving and I managed to get a few nice shots of the storm waves.
The next day was sunny and windy and we walked out to Flamborough Head.
In the evening we went to the concert. The crowd was predominantly middle aged men, lots of cropped hair, two tone paraphernalia and the odd pork pie hat. The Specials came on with an explosive entry and the crowd went bonkers and several hundred blokes started to leap about frantically reliving their youth. Isabel and Moria retreated to the balcony but John and I decided to get stuck in and proceed to leap about, crash into people, shout and generally get very hot and sweaty. The Photos are here.
I managed to shoot a bit of video in crowd and here it is. John is in the white T-shirt. The sound is not great because the volume of the band overwhelmed the mike on my little camera.
A generally tremendous evening. The next morning as Isabel watched me climbing rather creakily out of bed she gently sang “You did much to much much too old….”
We went to Debbie and Annette’s hugely enjoyable joint birthday party at the weekend and I managed to shoot some photos of lots of old friends partying. I used the compact camera and the light was really difficult so I have rendered them as black and whites so that the image shortcomings look arty. The photos are here.
I shot this pleasing panorama of the Thames today using my iPhone from the balcony of the Tate Modern. This photo is actually made up of several photos shot on the iPhone and then stitched together into a single panoramic photo using software on the iPhone itself – very clever and great fun.
Jane Grant held a party dedicated to drinking margaritas and celebrating her birthday in passing. The food was great and the company delicious. I decided to process the photos from the party as Black and Whites, partly because I am just really into B&W photography at the moment but also because the colour information in photos taken in low light with a compact camera (as these were) is often poor and thus a distraction . The photos are here.
We gathered for a family barbecue at my brother’s flat in Caledonian Road at the weekend. It was also a chance to say goodbye to the place, scene of many a family gathering over recent years, because in a few weeks Chris and his family will be moving on. The photos are here.
I finally got around to sorting and uploading the photos from the trip Isabel and I made to Scotland back in June. On the way there we stopped off in Morecombe for a short visit before starting our holiday in Scotland in Crianlarich where we walked some of the West Highland way before moving on to Loch Lomond.
Then we spent some days with Isabel’s family at Lochgoilhead where, amongst other things, we undertook a marathon Trivial Pursuits contest over several evenings. Finally Isabel and I went on to the wonderful Isle of Arran for a few days before returning home. The photos are here.
Isabel and I spent a very pleasant day wandering around the impressive, and pleasingly empty, Maritime Museum at Greenwhich before getting the boat back to Westminster – the weather and the day was perfect. Here are some photos.
I took a really nice little trip on my brother’s boat back in July and I finally got around to sorting our the photos from the day – so here they are.
I jumped aboard his boat down by the Angel and went thought the long, and rather daunting, tunnel to Kings Cross and then on to Camden Lock. All in all a really pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
We looked after our two nephews, Max and Ronnie, this week and after flying (or rather trying to fly) a kite on the Heath we played with a giant bubble maker. The results were amazingly photogenic – so here are some photos. To see all the photos click here.
