Today has been something of a stroll down memory lane. I'm in Exeter for a conference (which I'm busy blogging), but it's taken me to places from one of the most important few days of my life. For example, the hotel where this morning's immersive session was held:
That'll be the hotel that Lorna and I were staying in the weekend we got engaged. And the restaurant for the lunch session?
Yes, it's where we ate the evening of the day I proposed.
The Cathedral I proposed in front of?
Under renovation. There's probably a metaphor there somewhere… :-)
It shouldn't be this way – some of my best friends are farmers, my girlfriend is a farmer's daughter, I even work for Farmers Weekly. But The Archers epitomises all that's wrong with so much radio drama. It's too acted; too hammed up. It's as if the actors are trying to compensate for the lack of pictures with grunts that are a extra grunty, stutters that are over-stuttered, ooh-arrs that are a little too rustic.
One of my obsessions that I have to keep at bay is a love for found photographs. I find photographs at sale at antiques fairs or in junk shops almost unbearably heart-rending; objects that were once beloved momentos thrown away and up for sale, totally removed from the context in which they were created.
I've had to be disciplined and resist their lure, because I have vast amounts of fmily scanning to do before I can think of any found photography scanning, but this tale of rescued photography just fills me with joy. Well worth checking out.
Back in my final year of school, a group of friends invited me on an Easter holiday with them. It wasn't expensive; we took the train from central Scotland, where we lived, up to Aviemore, and then stayed in a youth hostel for the week. We cooked ourselves dinner, and entertained ourselves by spending our days walking through the Cairngorms, stunning mountains in the Highlands.
I was 17, and this was my first real holiday with friends, and I loved it. After a small accident, involving ice, gloves, my face and a swinging frame in a children's adventure park, I had a blast. I had experiences that week I have never repeated since:
being caught in a whiteout, and then finding our way to a nearby bothy to shelter, by holding on to each other's backpacks.
going from snowy winter to glorious spring simply by heading down from the mountains to the valleys between
being so tired at the end of the day that sleeping in the communal bunkrooms was easy
It would be four years before I would go away on holiday with friends like that again, but this really felt like the first big step towards independent adulthood that would continue six months later when I left for university in London. Sadly, I'm no longer in contact with the four other people who were on the trip with me - Daniel, Phylida, Claire and Katy - but scanning my way through the transparencies I shot that week reminded me of what a great, life-shaping week that was.
