New Camera

This is a trial picture taken with my new camera...

I have been used to having a camera somewhere about my person for the past few years, whether it has been to record events like weddings or the art work taken home by young people from club. Since a walk in the Chilterns some weeks ago, I have been without a camera and for this time have felt bereft.

Below is a list of the pictures I did not take:

The discovery of the first red chilli grown in the club garden
The young people making their own trees from autumn leaves
Strange creatures at the Departure Lounge
Magnetic sentences made from magnetic words
A barbeque smoke filled room
A bag of apples that broke a year long silence
Wooden car and plane construction
A cafe made from a real life train carriage
A Peace Flan
Learning how to DJ & MC
The marathon Risk game that Thomas lost
The two boys excitedly putting up the french words for colours on the wall
The olympic medals made and worn by Junior Club

And many more pictures which have been simply dismissed by my mind and have not been stored in my memory as effectively as at the click of the button of a camera.

First Day of Autumn

The first day of autumn (equinox) is today
even though we have to wait until the 24th to have sunrise & sunset 12 hours apart
but day & night are only equal on the 22nd...
according to the maths!

The Sorcerer of Les Trois Freres

Saint Patrick might have plucked a shamrock to explain them, may even have called them the Trinity – God the Son, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, three Gods in the one God, three parts of the one body. If, perhaps, he had lived and the shamrock had existed 15,000 years BC. We see no shamrocks on cave walls. Has what has not been recorded existed? Do we believe what has been recorded? What if, like this, it is fiction? A sorcery of the truth.

How do we then read the writing on the wall? As art. As fiction. As truth? Three in one. Man, bird and beast. Perhaps the three elements of man’s quest for truth. The baser, earthier, more beastly qualities mixed with the soaring, high flying qualities all in the one man. The beast’s front legs rise from the ground to eventually escape into the sky, no longer a being that is earth bound. Breuil called him the 'God of Les Trois Freres'.

The writing on the wall is fictional. Not a photograph. bit a representation. We examine it 15,000 years later and wonder. We search for meaning in our quest for truth. The meaning of life.

So we interpret it thus. As a portrait of a first member of a first species. We see the original tribe’s features, of part man, part bird, part beast. A great river which flows out into new tributaries creating new rivers over time. The conjoined triplet brothers who in time are separated. The three gods of the earth as one evolutionary sorcerer, transforming eternally. Conforming to the norm until the norm is not good enough any more. Until the norm is substandard and a deviance becomes an adaptation with the Atlantic genetic drift. And natural selection bears the brunt of the pact made to ensure survival of the fittest. A bloody, barbaric wrenching of the brothers apart. Separating them from each other. Pointing to their difference. Mutations of mutations. Meaning only imperfection can survive.


This is the moral of the Sorcerer of Les Trois Freres: Seek perfection and you seek death.

The Sorcerer ca. 15,000 B.C.

This is a famous sketch of an engraving of a fabulous creature, from Les Trois Freres, sketched by Breuil.

The Smell of Apples

The smell of apples
Dirty potatoes
Carrots
Stew
Cabbage water
Bacon, cabbage & spuds
Lavender
Honey suckle

A woman I know, suddenly, without explanation and for no apparent reason, stopped talking to me. I tried to find out why and she ignored me. I would walk in the room and she would turn the other way. For a year I waited patiently, still including her in my general greetings but never pushing for an engagement she seemed to abhor. Today, the smell of a fresh bag of country apples broke through the silence.

These are the smells and tastes and words which made up our first conversation in a year.

Isn’t the smell of apples lovely?