There's not much going on here at the moment, which is the main reason for there being so few posts recently. It's been very grey and drizzly, not too bad for walking but less than ideal for photography. But Robin and Roger, over on their New Dharma Bums blog, posted some wonderful music by the great Jeff Beck (and somebody called Clapton, whoever he is.... 😀), so I thought I ought to reciprocate. Now when I first used to frequent folk clubs they were full of excellent, but rather exhibitionist, acoustic guitarists. Weird tunings, odd time-signatures, bizarre chords, and versions of obscure blues and ragtime pieces; all played at finger-busting speed to defeat all but the most dedicated guitar nerd. How pleasant it was one evening then to be entertained by a modest, slim, smiling Welshman who played with relaxed grace, style and gentle humour. He's got just a little older since then but still remains relatively unknown. I give you Mr John James......
Strangely enough this is the way that Scott Joplin, the writer of tunes like The Entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag, intended the music to be played, slowly and elegantly. For Joplin really wanted to be taken seriously as a composer on a par with Chopin or Liszt. But for a black man writing music around 1900 that was never going to be.
I've been trying to sort out some of my photos lately and came across several of Cambridge which I rather liked. Many of these appeared in the early days of this blog and won't have been seen before by many of you. So here's the Cambridge Alphabet... C is for Colleges...
The University has to be included but there's no U in the word C-A-M-B-R-I-D-G-E so "Colleges" it is. Not the most obvious one to show, but this is Peterhouse which is the oldest of them all, founded in 1284. A is for Antiquities...
There are also all sorts of old buildings in Cambridge which are nothing to do with the University. The little church of St Peter's is not the oldest church in the city, but it must be one of the prettiest. M is for Market...
Right in the centre of Cambridge there's a daily market where you can buy all sorts of things, though the prices might have gone up a bit since I took this shot! B is for Bikes...
It seems that everyone in Cambridge has a bike. It's not a fitness thing, or an environmental consideration - it's just the easiest way to get around. R is for River...
The River Cam gives Cambridge its name - and that bridge gives Bridge Street its name! Punting on the river was a big part of my teenage years as I lived then at Grantchester, a couple of miles upstream. I is for Innovation...
I could have shown you Independent shops or Inns as there are plenty of those (though not so many as there used to be). But it would be wrong to ignore the innovative hi-tech scientific work that is carried out by the University and many modern companies that have grown up around it. These are some of the buildings on the Biomedical Campus which stands next to Addenbrooke's Hospital. D is for Diversity...
All kinds of diverse communities intermingle in various parts of Cambridge. This is the poorer part of town, around Mill Road, where just about every religion and nation of the world must be represented. The University of course also attracts scholars of all kinds and there are also many language schools dotted around.
Gis for Gardens...
As well as the Botanic Gardens, that feature regularly on this blog, there are also beautiful gardens belonging to most of the colleges and many public parks. No doubt we'll be visiting some of them during 2020. E is for Entertainers...
Cambridge has a tolerant attitude towards buskers and during summer some very skilled musicians can be seen playing for passing change. These are Fernando's Kitchen who were a regular fixture a few years back. Of course it's not all perfect by any means. I could have included Congestion (as in the gridlocked streets during the evening rush-hour), Expensive housing and, most shamefully, Rough sleeping as there are many homeless people on the streets in recent years. But it's still my home city and somewhere that we'll dip into from time to time during the coming year; there's a lot of things I've never shown on the blog and some that are well-worth having another look at. Take care.
The year 2020 has kicked off with several days of drab, grey weather that hasn't produced many photos at all, though every now a then a little watery sun drips through the blanket of cloud and entices me out.
The little area known as Shepreth L-Moor has become a very boggy place indeed as the fluctuating water-levels in Guilden Brook spill over on to the land. The other tiny rivers near here just rise slowly and gently, but the Brook has been modified in times past to drain the fields more efficiently and therefore fills up more rapidly. I'm increasingly convinced that the farmers quite deliberately left the Moor to flood, so as to prevent flooding elsewhere. Yet another indication of how intimately people knew and understood their land.
As a result these fields, which are only a foot or two higher, are dry enough to work on, though more rainclouds are gathering to the south-west.
A little of the day's meagre supply of light fell on this old pipe which crosses Guilden Brook, right beside the road bridge. I noticed the other week how plant life was tenaciously colonising this unpromising site, so I took the opportunity to steal just a smidgen of the reflected light to make another picture. And speaking of "stealing".....
This naughty individual recently paid a visit to my neighbour's bird-feeders. I'll be back with more posts as and when the weather improves and I have something to blog about. Take care.
This was the moon as she appeared last night from my backyard. That darkening on the lower right edge is a penumbral eclipse, caused by the edge of the earth's shadow creeping onto the surface of the moon.I was alerted to this event by a phone call from my brother and the weather was unusually co-operative, with crystal-clear skies. The news media would have you know that January's full-moon is known as a Wolf Moon, being so called by the First Nations peoples of North America. I'd often wondered whether there was any real justification for these names, but never bothered to find out. The nature writer, Jim Crumley, is more tenacious than me and researched the names given by the various peoples in his book The Nature Of Winter. He found that every tribe had a different name for January's full-moon and only one of these had any connection with wolves. There were certainly no wolves around as I shivered in my back yard last night. Friday's Music arrives on Saturday this week. John Field was an Irish composer who found fame in Russia. It was he who devised and named the musical form, the Nocturne, which Chopin later developed further. Here is just one of his short, but perfectly formed, compositions.
If you enjoyed that then you'll find the entire album an absolute delight. Take care.
Time to shake off this post-Christmas lethargy and return to my neglected little blog. Here's my go-to wake-up music:
Six million hits on YouTube and quite a few of them must have been me! Just a little reminder, if any were needed, that music is supposed to be fun. Now what have I been up to? Nothing as raucous as the music suggests, merely a few walks in the countryside....
That photo might make you think that we're suffering severe flooding on the flat lands of East Anglia, but that's how it's supposed to be at this time of year. Those are the "washes" alongside the river at Lakenheath Fen - land left to flood during the winter, which prevents flooding further downstream. I was standing on the floodbank, built to protect the land behind me.
It's a winter wonderland for birds and, though you can see only a couple of Mute Swans and some loitering gulls, there were also Marsh Harriers, Great White Egrets, Little Egrets and several cheeky little Stonechats in attendance. But no Whooper Swans; they were all off feeding on the fields.
The same was true at Welney the following day: almost all of the winter swans were out gorging themselves on the waste from the potato harvest and didn't even bother to return for the 3:30 swan feed which the wildlife wardens carry out to entertain the paying customers.
Despite the relative lack of swans and the height of the floodwaters on the Ouse Washes, the warden carried out his duty. Those swans around the floating wheelbarrow are our resident Mute Swans, while just one Whooper Swan watches from behind. Mallards are willing volunteers to clear up any grain that hasn't yet sunk to the bottom and, when it does, the Pochards, a little diving duck, will plunge down and feed underwater.
As daylight failed the ghostly shapes of the Whoopers flew in to roost on the water. Just about impossible to photograph conventionally, though I managed to rescue the image above from some muddy-looking pixels. The trouble is the swans look black and, in this hemisphere at least, they should be dazzling white. Ah, an idea!
Mess about with a negative picture and you get the above image: the ghost-swans of Welney!
Flying swans like an artist's sketch.
Let's not get too carried away with photo-manipulation though, the natural scene had its charms too, even if that dark bank of cloud hid the expected sunset.
Then the bird-observatory's floodlights came on, illuminating the birds in the foreground. As darkness fell we made our way back across the bridge to the Visitor Centre.
I hope you like the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust's reserve at Welney, because my brother and I have taken out an annual membership, which almost certainly means we'll be back during the year.
******
When I recently published my calendar selection of the year's photographs, I received comments about the appearance of snowdrops in February. Here's what I saw in Melwood yesterday:
Yes, indeed. Snowdrops on the second of January. Not many, but snowdrops nevertheless. Not only that, but at Lakenheath Fen on December 23rd a Brimstone butterfly fluttered by. Presumably something had roused him from his winter hibernation. I wondered whether it would survive this unseasonal awakening, but, according our local butterfly correspondent, Brimstones can wake up and go back into hibernation several times during a winter.
Very few people knew her name. She played her songs to her friends and small audiences in the back rooms of pubs. She was the woman in faded jeans holding an acoustic guitar. She made just one album that sold a few copies and disappeared, though somehow one found its way to me. I missed the only chance I had to see her perform live. She died in 2009 and never knew how good she was. Luckily, although the vinyl album and the eventual CD re-issue were short-lived affairs, there are a few videos on YouTube: In the first I'll include here she sings her version of Dylan's Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, which is enhanced by Simon Prager's slide guitar and the stunning sax of Barbara Thompson.
But over it all is that great voice....
On the other side of our imaginary 7 inch vinyl double A-side we find her own composition Closing Time, accompanied, confusingly, by illustrations of other LPs on the tiny Mother Earth label
Shoulda been a star. Take care. (For more interesting music see Robin Andrea's Music On Friday. I will continue to post some music next year though it may not always be on Friday!)
