tanks & tablecloths day out vol. I

Lizzy and I made a visit to the Holman's Test Mine at Camborne School of Mines to look at potential sites for our on-going Tanks & Tablecloths project. There's definitely scope for our film with their Nirex chamber  (see bottom image).

on the road

One of a selection of fine roadside toilet sinks that I've encountered during my hither-thither travels over the last few weeks.

other peregrinations: cyprus

 

Still haven't quite got my head round being somewhere warm-ish in November…

These from when I was delivering a paper at the ICSVC conference in Limassol, Cyprus a few weeks back.

business

Back in a place I've not been for a long while. And just spent time looking out the window at the bird table outside. All the action and frenzy and chattering! I realised I don't care what the birds are (although I did make a list and verified markings in a bird book…), just that they're there. It's somehow reassuring to watch them go about their business with no particular plan other than to survive. It puts a certain perspective on things.

Blackbird

Blue tit

Chaffinch 

Coal tit

Collared dove

Goshawk (perhaps…)

Greater spotted woodpecker

Great tit

Greenfinch
House sparrow

Nuthatch

Robbin

Starling
Tree sparrow

Woodpigeon

One thing I find rather frustrating about living with cats in a seaside town: birds just get driven away. You don't often hear them or see them.

Think I'm back to thinking about birds a lot these days as we seem to have a rogue starling swarm in our little town at the moment. I've not seen if before - they arrived after the big storms and I wonder whether they got a little blown of course. As a team, they are so flamboyant and gossipy! They seem to have different spots in which to congregate at different times (and I never seem to have my camera at the ready). Just now outside my studio window on a telegraph pole: my cats are driven nearly insane by them.

Part of it is also to do with the fact that The Art of Lost Words is due to be shown at the University of Plymouth in the spring and I'd quite like the opportunity to revisit some of the ideas a little differently. Skirr - here I come again.

a different piece of sea

departures

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

There seem to be many different types of departures in life, and many different types of ends. And then there are transitions. Sometimes it's hard to work out which is which. Sometimes something that appeared one way, is in fact not what it first seemed, and it just takes time for that to become evident. Other things are much more absolute.
…
I've never been to a French cemetery before and this one was something rather special. In the tiny village of Montréal, near Carcassonne, where we stayed for a week in August.
…

Note the final picture: even the bees dress up in mourning black in southern France…

primary

 

  

  

  

  

 

Sometimes words are unnecessary.

Gathered in France and Switzerland this summer.

off camping!

ronnie's

spectacle

My new tent. It has a hook to hang my glasses on when I go to sleep.
And - at last - a proper porch.

an indistinct or billowing mass

Leonardo da Vinci said that clouds were like 'bodies without surface.' And in Folding Chair, Regina Spektor wisely points out, 'the sea is just a wetter version of the skies.' So a couple of weeks ago I returned from what has become an annual camping trip to the Isles of Scilly. Islands allow you to see so much wider and further and higher than you otherwise would. There's a clarity of vision that you don't get on the mainland, meaning you see the weather coming towards you, far in advance. It's like looking at your immediate future laid out before you. I rarely pay attention to keeping one step ahead of the weather when I'm in a city or working.

Interestingly, clouds exist, whilst not being visible… read an article on subvisible clouds.

And this site is brilliant for anyone who's in the least bit interested in the skies above them:
The Cloud Appreciation Society.

missing flight vol. III

Searching for owls that aren't there.