Monthly Archives: May 2024

Well?

Personal, Wittering, ,

I heard you have a blog.

Yes. Yes, I do.

Is it going well?

I’ve got a couple of regular readers, had a few comments, acquired a few “subscribers”. To be quite honest, I’m not in it for the clicks and likes.

So what happened? I thought you were going to post every week.

I was. Life tends to get in the way…

Excuses, excuses.

No, hear me out. Life tends to get in the way. I’ve got a fair amount going on in my real life, and while I’ve got a few ideas for posts, not all of them are likely to make the grade.

So, you’re getting bored with the blogging again?

I didn’t say that. I’m not in it for the likes and clicks.

So what is it for, then?

It’s just another creative outlet. The problem is I’m finding it a bit hard to write about the other creative outlets. I don’t want to post some randomness once a week. I would like posts to mean something to me – like the series on my journey into sound did – but also link with other threads on the blog.

Okay, do you have plans for the blog?

For one thing, probably the main thing right now, I intend to transfer it to a paid-for hosting platform. The chief reason is to lose the advertising the free WP hosting has. I already have the domain name, which will also tidy things up. Doing some writing about photography might be a good idea. That was the original idea behind the thing, after all.

Then what?

Get some more writing done, but only when I have the time to devote to it. I think I mentioned in a previous wittering that writing stuff can be hard work. Once I have more content, I will be able to see where the blog is heading, and whether I like it going in that direction.

Good luck. I look forward to seeing what you get up to.

Thank you.

Grandad

History & Research, Personal, , , , , ,

The rather thoughtful, perhaps wistful, young man in the photograph is my paternal grandfather, Edwin. He gazes benignly at the camera, his slightly wavy hair neatly trimmed and parted, clean shaven, a slight smile reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. He wears a jacket, and we can make out a waistcoat plus what appears to be a knitted vee-neck jumper. There’s a handkerchief in the jacket breast pocket, and a neck tie with fancy geometric pattern is neatly knotted over a collar stud.

Edwin was born in 1901. I don’t know when the portrait was taken, but it’s likely some time in the 1920s or early 1930s.

Edwin, or Ted as he was known to family and friends, is a distant figure for me. I was only 10 or 11 years old when he died, which was in the mid-1970s. In his latter years Ted worked as a gardener, and it was doing this job, out in fresh air and among growing things, that he suffered a heart attack and died.

Continue reading Grandad →

When the Muse falters

History & Research, Wittering, , , , ,

Late last week I was watching a fascinating documentary on the YouTube. It was on the British Film Institute’s channel – well worth seeking out, I might add – and documented the history, design and building of new iron and steel works in South Wales after the Second World War.

As I watched, I was struck by two things. First, the attitudes to health and safety of the time, and second, how there was a tinge of melancholy to the film. There was a sadness felt by the 21st century watcher that large swathes of land had to be gobbled up for the massive project, but also sadness that the optimism of building modern steelworks didn’t really last more than half a century. The site today is a fraction of its 1950s size, and where it employed over 20,000 when at its height, it now employs only a few thousand – and the site’s future is by no means clear.

Watching other BFI archive films from the immediate post-War period, it also struck me that so often the producers were looking back, rather than forward. Travelogues showed, more often than not, agricultural scenes, people working with horses, thatched cottages, winding lanes, and so on. In the “real world”, by contrast, a new welfare state and health service were being forged, and industry was gearing back up to export to the world once more as Britain staggered back to life after a hard-fought world war.

These thoughts rattled round my head, thinking I might make a post about them. I wrote notes, did some screen shots as illustration, but realised I didn’t really know what the point was I was trying to make. The blog muse had wandered off, and so you’re left with this half-baked post instead. Sorry.