current affairs, quotes

Quotes of the Week

Not a lot in the way of quotes this week, although those that follow are relatively chunky, as we’ve spent 4 days over the weekend running an international literary conference (more of which anon, I hope).

I believe Tony Blair is an out-and-out rascal, terminally untrustworthy and close to being unhinged. I said from the start that there was something wrong in his head, and each passing year convinces me more strongly that this man is a pathological confidence-trickster. To the extent that he ever believes what he says, he is delusional. To the extent that he does not, he is an actor whose first invention – himself – has been his only interesting role.
[Matthew Parris, The Times, March 2006; quoted in Oliver James, Affluenza]

Tea Pigs uses only whole leaf teas, whole herbs, whole berries and whole flowers. No dust in sight. Served in biodegradable tea temples.
[https://www.teapigs.co.uk/]

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.
[William Blake, Politicians and Politics]

So there you are … politics diluted with tea. What could be more British?!

books, personal, photography

Available Now: Zen Mischief Photographs

[Fanfare of trumpets!]

It’s here! The first spin-off from this blog, my new photo book, is available at last. Yes, it’s been a well kept secret and been in gestation for quite some months, but eventually it’s here.

Here’s (some of) what I say in the Introduction:

I am fairly sure I took my first photographs with my father’s Kodak Box Brownie although I don’t know how old I was. But I do have a series of old 620 roll film images of my parents and I on holiday at a nudist club when I would have been around 9 or 10; and as the series contains one of my parents but not me, it seems reasonable to assume I took it. And I know had my first cheap camera by the time I was about 12.

I’ve been taking photographs on and off ever since. And that’s now 50 years … But this book is not really designed as a celebration of my 50 years taking photographs. It is intended only as a collection of images I like from the last few years …

I do not pretend that these are world-beating images. Nor would I claim to be an especially good photographer. I’ve had no formal photographic training, but learnt the basics at my father’s knee and by going to camera club with him as a teenager. It was more difficult then: we didn’t have cameras which did everything for us; exposures had to be calculated; every shot cost us real money to develop and print; and you had to wait days or even weeks to see your successes and failures. Like the rest of modern life photography is now cheap and instant.

My approach to photography has always been to take what I see; what interests, intrigues or amuses me. It is about trying to see things and make them into a picture …

Available now on Blurb. Not yet on Amazon, but it should be eventually.

Keith C Marshall
Zen Mischief Photographs: Images from a Space-Time Warp
McTigger Books, 2011
ISBN 978-0-9570017-0-1
RRP £37.50

memes, words

Word of the Week

Zariba or Zareba.

In the Sudan and adjacent parts of Africa, a fence or enclosure, usually constructed of thorn-bushes, for defence against the attacks of enemies or wild beasts.
A fenced or fortified camp.
A formation of troops for defence against attack.

memes, personal, photography

[35/52] Rainbow

[35/52] Rainbow by kcm76
[35/52] Rainbow, a photo by kcm76 on Flickr.

Week 35 entry for 52 weeks challenge.

Rainbow seen from our study window. Should I be measuring the quality of the summer by the number of rainbows we’ve had this year: rainbows are probably inversely proportional to the goodness of the summer. If so then this has been an awful summer. But there have been lots of good rainbows.