Artistic Yearnings

I have always wished I could paint but it is amazing the effects you can get with a cheap out-of-focus digital camera. This was Port Meadow in Oxford this morning doing a good job of pretending to be 1909.





















Don't you just love the way the animals are all lined up like those Britains plastic farm animals?




















You never know. This could be a latter-day Haywain. Which reminds me I must get back to penning my forthcoming best-seller 'The Constable Code' solving the mystery of why so many thousands of people bought that print to hang above the mantelpiece on their living room walls. I am sure there must be some complicated mathematical equation behind it all. Not to mention Opus Dei.





A strange bird I found in my garden. I think it might be related to the Magpie family.






I haven't been able to afford a holiday this year, but these are some snaps I took on a weekend in Brighton for a family reunion in May to celebrate my mother's 70th.

Impressionistic in Oxford

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Ok, so I possess a crap camera!

A few night shots taken recently that you might enjoy (click on View All Images button for captions). I'd have taken photos of the rest, only sodium lamps haven't yet taken off everywhere and the fluorescent illuminations are horrid! Some folk are vehemently opposed to architectural lighting, claiming it causes 'light pollution' and blots out the stars! However the Randolph Hotel is more or less Oxford's only example of proper architectural lighting so far.

And hey, if you have buildings to rival the stars, you should definitely flaunt them! I think we have few enough left in England to negate any environmental detriment, personally. It is also a sad fact of life that the better illuminated our cities and towns, the safer it is to walk the streets at night.

Regeneration of Oxford City Centre

First you take your tree... Ok, so Bonn Square wasn't perfect, but not sure I find the 'award-winning' architects' design much more soulful (final image) and worthy of a place at the heart of a mediaeval city. And did they really have to bulldoze one of the city centres' only remaining trees? Surely good architecture is about designing around features worth keeping and in sympathy with its surroundings. Alas the surroundings in this part of the city include Westgate Centre - a 1970s white elephant shopping cathedral they are proposing to replace with an even larger white elephant cathedral dedicated to St Shopping so we can compete with shopping capital Reading. And obviously Oxford is world renowned for its shopping...

Christmas In Coventry

Ahhh. The city that God forgot and its own council carried on destroying, long after Hitler had finished lobbing his doodlebugs and assorted bombs at it.
Such was the stomping ground of my youth from failed goth to 27, not to mention the location/inspiration for The Specials' 'Ghost Town' (a timelesss pop hit if ever there was one!).

Thought it might be a good spot to undertake the first nationwide survey on that eerie phenomenon known as Life Before Death and find out if there might be any truth in the theory - ie any in Coventry.

Note the ingenious municipal use of paving slabs that look exactly as if they are covered in chewing gum and dog-ends, to deter Joe Public from dropping chewing gum and dog-ends.