“Yes, 'n' how many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take 'til he knows that too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind”
Bob Dylans lyrics are still as relevant today as they were in 1962. Sam Cooke sang “A change is gonna come” in 1964, sorry Sam, still waiting, but I think it might be soon. Nobody appears to have got that answer described by Bob Dylan either, he said it was like a piece of paper, fluttering in the wind, it briefly lands, but no one picks it ups and really sees.
I’m not going to bang on about what is so obviously still in the News, there’s enough people who like the sound of their own keyboards adding to the noise from all sides. I’m going to add a few interesting points during this post though, well, I think they are and I hope you’ll agree. Skip through the photos if you wish, or the text if that’s what you’d prefer. I’ll try not to make it one of those stream of consciousness blog posts, I just sit down and type whatever is in my head, so there is a tendency to wander off script, I can’t promise that won’t happen. Meanwhile let’s just say I’m all for equality in whatever form that takes…
A couple of Street shots to begin with, there isn’t many more of those. I briefly walked with the family through Bath a few days ago and grabbed what I could. It’s a Lone Wolf occupation, we all know that and so I vowed this week to venture into the city and see what’s changed. The shops reopened on Monday. I haven’t been yet, the forecast of severe thunderstorms is one issue preventing me. We’ve also had my eldest daughter Alex staying with us and I wanted to spend some time with her. When she arrived it was with my eldest grandsons Hover Board for the children to try. Louis went straight on it and straight off again. Sam spent four hours on Saturday at the hospital and a further three hours on Sunday waiting to be seen and eventually an X-Ray was given as the nurses were convinced he’d fractured his arm. No broken bones, despite the screaming and crying, just badly bruised. Amélie turned out to be a natural on the Hover Board, which is strange because I expected the exact opposite. Louis made a rapid recovery, but as you see from these photos a couple of days ago he’s become more spectator than participant.
Last week I took the opportunity of the now loosened restriction for Covid-19 to visit my parents. Both will be ninety years old very soon. Of course they have their problems with physical ailments, but always remain positive, despite what life throws at them. A couple of quick, rather boring (even if I say so myself), portraits.
That’s interesting. Two separate images almost appear as one in that grid, which actually pretty much describes them as a couple. Here’s another shot of my dad made with a Street Photographers mindset as he enjoys the only real pleasure he has. It’s not particularly flattering, but I like it from a completely different standpoint. By the way, if you’ve seen how nice Mr Rogers was in the recent movie “A beautiful day in the Neighbourhood” then you’ll get the picture as far as my dad is concerned, he’s a lovely human being.
The focus here in the U.K. turns towards the economy, or the lack of one to be precise. Here’s one of those points I mentioned earlier that I heard during a podcast: “It’s interesting how economies collapse when we begin buying what we need as opposed to what we want”. A change needs to come with many things it appears.
There are undoubtedly going to be extremely hard times ahead of us. Many workers, over 9 million of them, are having their wages paid by the government via the Job Retention Scheme and a couple of million Self Employed are benefitting from a scheme aimed at them. Those schemes begin to wind down over the next few months and I fear as they do so we’ll see a huge shedding of jobs by employers, who either have no business or are operating at 25% or so of their usual trade. The self employed likewise will find it difficult to maintain enough income to keep their heads above water, many businesses will sink without a trace. Floating to the surface in some cases will be poverty or the Western equivalent. By the end of the year we can expect the unemployment figures to go through the roof. Whoa there, hold your horses, let’s not get too depressing:
See how effortlessly I inserted a shot of my two daughters and a horse from one of our walks? Impressed? No, neither am I. Anyway, the good news is that the U.K. possibly has a vaccine for Covid-19, it’s the world’s most advanced in terms of development. Additionally it was announced that the U.K. discovered an incredibly cheap and plentiful steroid (Dexamethasone) which cuts the death rate of those in critical care by a third. That knowledge would have saved approximately 5,000 lives here since March. It’s not a cure, but will end up being part of a batch of drugs that ultimately will help us defeat this bloody virus through treatment.
In the meantime, as you might be able to see, we’ve just been hanging around. Sam in the foreground, Amélie in the background. Hanging on to one of the trees we haven’t destroyed, here comes another fact: “Since the arrival of agriculture humans have destroyed around 3 Trillion trees”. Another change needs to come. Here’s a few more shots to accompany the one above from our walk at Corsham and game of, well, I want to say Cricket, or maybe it was Baseball, there didn’t seem to be any rules or laws to be honest:
Here’s another fact and it relates to my opening paragraph: I heard about the loan took out by the British Government in 1835 required for compensation payouts due to the Abolition of Slavery. Let’s just go past the fact that they didn’t compensate the slaves, that in itself is enough to make anyone livid. No, it was needed to pay out the Slave Traders for loss of income. Staggering. A loan was taken out because the amount required was around 40% of the Treasury’s annual income at the time. We completed the loan repayments…wait for it… in 2015. I checked up on all this, because I found it all a bit hard to swallow. Apparently H.M. Treasury likes to publish what it calls a ‘Friday Fact’ on Twitter. I’ve never been on Twitter just for the record. Apparently in this post they told the Twitter audience and British Taxpayer about this and that we should all pat ourselves on the back, well done everyone. One guy commented, and I’m paraphrasing here: “ You’re taking the piss. You mean to tell me that the tax I’ve paid, my father and grandfather have paid, has gone towards compensating the very people who enslaved my ancestors?!” H.M. Treasury removed the post within a couple of hours.
Here’s a few more hastily grabbed Street shots from that brief trip to Bath I mentioned earlier:
A huge problem we do have currently in the U.K. is schooling. Our children have been off since mid March and it looks as though they won’t return until September and then it’ll only be part time. We’re left to home schooling with the work set out by the teachers, that they’re reluctant to do. The children, not the teachers. They need structure, they need school. The Education Department needs to think outside the box for this conundrum. Obviously with social distancing (currently 2 Metres here) classrooms and schools don’t have the capacity or space. When I was a kid there was a T.V. programme called ‘Skippy’. He was a bush kangaroo and his friend in the outback (which incidentally used to be littered with trees) was a young boy who used to learn his lessons via a radio where he could speak to his teacher. That was in the sixties. You’d think that with all the technology available in the 21st Century a virtual classroom could be set up, whereby the teachers see all of their pupils and they in turn see their teacher. Each can chip in as and when necessary to ask questions…essentially Zoom for the classroom. By the way, back to Skippy the bush kangaroo, I never worked out how by a series of clicks emanating from his mouth he could relay “G’day. Flamin’ heck…there’s three miners trapped, get your dad to call for assistance and bring the helicopter. Follow me, it’s this way mate”. Perhaps that boys teacher was Dr Dolittle. One positive is we do at least get time to do the things they otherwise wouldn’t during the weekdays.
I have to say that shot above beats being in a classroom. I took the children down to the river at Lacock yesterday. Lacock Abbey which can be seen in the background is known as the ‘Home of Photography’, chiefly because it was home to the inventor of the photographic negative one Henry Fox Talbot along with reasonably permanent light-fast photographs. I think he’d have been amazed by what I was doing down by the river with my camera, specifically at how little I’d improved upon any photographic skills from the 1830’s. I also think he may have called into question my parenting skills.
Even ‘Dottie’ is wondering whether I should allow Louis to bounce around on a branch over a river. Sam was at home working, yes, I know some people still are and also expected to home educate their children simultaneously whilst the Unions cry that it’s unsafe for schools to fully open and should only be done when it is completely safe to do so. Here’s the news, it never will be 100% safe, at least for the next couple of years (sorry about that, a bit of whinge came from nowhere). This wasn’t particularly safe either. Of course I didn’t bring a towel, neither did I tell the children to strip off before getting soaking wet and they seriously believe that I’m responsible enough to guide their education! You can see from those three shots that we begin fully clothed and only then do we take those clothes off once they’re totally dripping wet. After that we’re free to hang upside down from a branch that’s in danger from snapping at any moment (a bit like me). The school’s Health and Safety Officer would have a bloody fit.
I know from bitter experience that branches are notorious for snapping when you least expect it. In the early Seventies, I was around 12 or 13 years old. I decided that an overhanging branch would make a great swing across a wide, fast flowing river in the middle of winter. I reached no more than a third of the way over, expecting to swing back to safety the branch snapped at the optimum moment. Fully clothed, Parka and Doc Martins, in I went. I still remember the darkness, unable to see as you would in a swimming pool, murky dark water, you’d struggle to make out anything more than a few inches from your face. Couple that with being weighed down by winter clothes. Fortunately I was a strong swimmer, I had swam in the school swimming galas at my junior school and had completed numerous swimming and life saving courses, some of which conducted fully clothed. Good job. My mates helped me out over the riverbank. I trudged home, on my mind was the worry as to what mum would say about my wet and filthy clothes, in reality I was probably much closer to death than I imagined. Perhaps the Health & Safety Officers of this world have a point. Anyway, on this day at Lacock it was clear shallow water, no rocks to bang a head on and it was summer. I laid out their clothes to dry, needless to say the children were a little bit chilly.
Then miserable…
All they had to do was sit in the sun. I had to walk home, on my own, in the middle of winter and face the music. The clothes were moved to a tree, but they refused to dry and so we headed for home. They had a great time, I worked the scene and zero education was had, although I learnt a valuable lesson, the next time bring a towel.
To finish. I’m not one to live in the past, I try to move on. Perhaps all this statue business removal business should be carefully thought through. There are some here that need removing, placing in a museum perhaps, but not all, it needs to be weighed up. In the U.S. they would need to remove the statues of Lincoln and Jefferson. For example, Jefferson famously penned the words: “All men are created equal”, he also owned 140 slaves. Washington D.C. and State will need renaming too. Back here Winston Churchill’s statue was defaced with the word “Racist” sprayed across the plinth. He was a product of the Edwardian Era, some of the views he held were questionable, however he saved this country and large swathes of the world from Hitler, the ultimate ‘Racist”.
Anyway, having talked about not living in the past as usual a contradiction in this blog. I’m beginning to plough through some of the archives currently. It’s an interesting exercise. I curate it far differently than I did at the time. I’ll leave you with a couple of images from my last Vegas trip that I dismissed at the time, but now quite like them. Also it’s an excuse to post some Street Photography, I’m sure anyone reading my recent blog posts will be sick of seeing photos of my children. I’ll leave it there.
As always my sincere thanks go to anyone taking the time to read this blog.
All images can be opened by clicking on the thumbnails and are taken using a Leica M with Summicron 28mm Lens fitted.
If you're interested in receiving new Blogposts via email please subscribe using the box below which is titled ‘The Latest Leica Biker Blogposts Delivered To Your Inbox’.