This week’s theme for Tina’s Gallery is Sport.

Surprisingly, given my interest in, and playing of, cricket, hockey and squash in my youth I don’t have a lot of sporty photos. Well not having kids and having had to watch them play football/rugby means I haven’t had that excuse.

So here are a couple from the archives, neither of which was take by me, but I’m in both.

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This is University of York Cricket Club Tour, July 1971. This group photo was taken at Sidney Sussex College sports ground, Cambridge. As I recall we played there, at the Ley’s School, HMS Ganges (near Ipswich) and at Felixstowe. GOK what I was doing on the tour as I was the worst cricketer of the squad by a distance. I can’t remember many of the names now (although they are all on the original), but I’m third from the right in the back row, with glasses and an urgent need of a haircut.

And this second one is a couple of years earlier in summer 1969.

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This is my school (Cheshunt Grammar School) 1st XI vs Cheshunt Cricket Club, at Cheshunt Cricket Club. I think this was taken by the photographer of the local paper and there is an original copy in my files. Thanks to several contacts I’ve now managed to put names to everyone whose face is visible. I’m the guy in the white cap looking at the ground. The man at the rear in front of the white trellis is Roger Clark who was our games master — and a damn fine cricketer too.

Even if I was a crap cricketer (I was never really more than club 3rd XI standard) they were happy days and I greatly enjoyed both playing and umpiring. I do miss that, but I don’t miss the agro which came into club cricket in the 80s as a result of everyone having to play in some league or other — that’s when I got out.

Delicate. That’s the theme for Tara’s Gallery this week. So, I give you …

Frosted Roses

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This was one of the first really good digital photos I took. It is February and this is our large pink rose bush. Flowers still in February? Yes, that’s not so unusual as this rose is so prolific it just flowers and flowers and flowers — and it is unusual if it doesn’t have some blooms on Christmas Day.

And this image started a new tradition for us. We used it for our first home produced Christmas card in 2005. We now have our own Christmas cards printed, as large postcards, each year: it can be cheaper than commercial cards, people get something special (usually something I’ve taken that year) and there are no envelopes to fiddle with. Wins all round!

You can see our other Christmas card images on Flickr.

Another instalment in my occasional series documenting some of the underbelly of Britain. Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.

I took this quite some time back, but I think it is still there. It is opposite Rayners Lane station in west London. A classic in how to make one’s restaurant attractive: everything wonky, badly constructed, off-set, badly decorated and surrounded by bins and other such detritus. But then the rest of the area isn’t so much better.

The theme of Tara’s Gallery this week is Food.

Well now that is something close to my heart. But oh dear! Much as I love food, I love it to eat it and very rarely take photographs of it. But of course I have found a few photos of cake. I especially like this if only for its amusement value.

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I spotted this Mad Hatter’s Tea Party cake in the window of an Oxford bakery a couple of years ago. Not surprising really as Lewis Carroll (the pen-name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898) was a Mathematics Fellow of Christ Church College, Oxford which is where he wrote the Alice books in the 1860s. He was also a highly accomplished, and highly respected, early portrait photographer whose sitters included Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Isn’t the cake brilliant?! I love quirky things like this.

OK, so here’s another regular. Tara’s Gallery this week is called Hands. Here’s my contribution:

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This was taken in June 2004 (when I was still experimenting with a digital camera) sitting outside the Royal Standard pub on Lyme Regis beach-front. This beauty was at the next table; I just casually put my camera down on our table, set at widest-angle zoom and pointing the right way, and “accidentally” clicked the shutter a couple of times. I’ve no idea whether she had seen what I was doing, or whether she really was in a dream of her own, but I remain surprised at how well it came out!

Another in my occasional series documenting some of the underbelly of Britain. Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.

This delight is in Kingly Street, London, W1 at the back of the shops in iconic Regent Street. I have no clue if it is used or if so what for. Is it some night-dive? Or the goods entrance to one of the Regent Street Shops (unlikely; the road is pedestrianised)? Or a staff entrance? Why the padded doors, and fancy gates? Oh and note the tuft of grass on the top of the gatepost!
[Further research reveals that this is the Studio Valbonne nightclub. The state of the entrance is a fairly good guide to the reviews it gets.]

After what seems like a long break Tara’s weekly Gallery is back and the theme is Family.

Hmm, this is quite difficult for me. I’d don’t have a lot of very close family and while my parents and I have always taken photographs we aren’t much ones of taking snaps of each other. Indeed my father hated being photographed so I have only one or two photos of him in his last 20 years! My mother isn’t much better.

But anyway here are some photos of my mother.

I don’t know who took this first shot (probably my father), but I would guess it must date from the late-40s (before I was born) or maybe as late as the late-50s; my mother can’t remember either. It could be any bit of English seaside but is likely to be the Kent or Sussex coast, possibly Rye or the Whitstable/Herne Bay area.

The second shot would have been taken (again by my father) around 1960-61 when I would have been 9 or 10. Yes this shot really is over 50 years old! We were on a having a camping holiday at a nudist club — see I keep telling you I had a Bohemian upbringing! I recall it as a furiously hot fortnight, so my mother is watering me in an attempt to keep cool!

[And before anyone thinks to complain, there’s nothing here you wouldn’t see on the beach these days, or in the gym changing room! Or as Noreen’s godfather would have said “If you seen anything God didn’t make, heave a brick at it”.]

Oh for such carefree childhood days again!

The final; shot is one I took of my mother last summer, as she approached her 96th birthday!

We were sitting in the gardens of her care home, enjoying some rare English summer sunshine. Noreen is in the background.