Pieces of Sky

The Finding Manchester – Lost in Bolivia Exhibition opens at the prestigious Manchester Museum!

2010-09-05T03:15:00.000-07:00

After 3 years of research, planning and exploring a remote jungle river, the story of Finding Manchester – Lost in Bolivia opens as an exhibition at the Manchester Museum.

You can follow the story of the search for this lost Manchester, deep in the Bolivian Amazon through journal extracts, photographs and see the actual expedition equipment used. It’s a story of history, mystery and the germ of an idea becoming reality. Two people, one canoe and months of solitude in search for something that may have been lost to the jungle.

You can visit the exhibition now and read about the journey here:

BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/manchester/hi/things_to_do/newsid_8963000/8963544.stm

Creative Tourist website -http://www.creativetourist.com/news-and-blog/football-pitches-and-piranha-in-manchester-bolivia

Entry to the exhibition is absolutely free so pop down and have a great day out.

Finding Manchester - nearly there now.

2010-08-07T01:59:00.000-07:00

Those hot, steamy days of dragging an overloaded canoe through Amazonian swamps, the endless repetitive motion of paddling the canoe along mile after mile of slow flowing waters, seem a far cry from life in the UK. But as each photograph from the expedition has been shortlisted and each anecdote lifted from the journals we kept at the time, the search for Manchester, Bolivia comes to life again.

In line with our belief that anybody can do something like this, we have tried to create an exhibition that is inspiring and will help people believe that they could do something similar, if they want to. It is not an exhibition of expensive and beautifully framed prints, it’s not an exhibition about two people who are super-human adventurers. The visitor will, we hope, see something that makes him or her think “I could do that!” The five metre canoe, expedition equipment, journal entries, maps and over forty photographs from the expedition can all be seen on display from Saturday 4^th September 2010 until February 2011.

The Finding Manchester Exhibition opens at the Manchester Museum and is free to enter. (That’s Manchester, England by the way.) Come and see what the reality of an Amazon adventure really is and be inspired.

Agonising Chairs

2010-02-07T02:56:00.000-08:00

As part of the photographic intergenerational project for Herefordshire County Council I’m in the process of delivering a little sideline project to raise interest in the wider activity. I’ve called it ‘I’m Ledbury’.

It will be a collection of portraits of the characters that make Ledbury what it is. It focuses (excuse the pun) on the faces that people see every day, the barber, the toyshop owner and people like the butcher. Ah yes, the butcher.

The butcher of Ledbury is a lovely chap. Early thirties, well built, approachable and well, looks like a butcher. Ask him anything and the answer is the same, “Not a problem sir/madam.” (Delete as applicable).

As soon as you put a camera in front of someone, more often than not, and quite understandably they start to feel a little self-conscious. But not the butcher of Ledbury. He’s a natural, oozing confidence and accommodating my every request.

“Can you just get in the window with those pork pies and I’ll get a few shots from outside?”

“Not a problem.” In he hops.

“How do you fancy massacring those lovely chops with your meat cleaver and I’ll get a few shots?”

“Not a problem.” And he swings the cleaver in to action.

“Could you get a whole lamb and just stand in the middle of the shop with it and I’ll get a few shots?”

“Not a problem.” And off he goes to get a lamb from the cooler in the back of the shop.

In the meantime I get busy setting up a softbox on one side of the shop (a big softly diffused light that breaks down the ugly shadows which light bulbs can cast across peoples faces) and a reflector to put a bit of light back in on the unlit side of my friendly butcher, when he gets back with his lamb. I’m all set up, the butcher has his meat, I have the camera framed-up on the tripod and the lighting is balanced. But I’m agonising over a detail. The detail on this occasion being a white plastic chair. Do I leave it in the shot and break the symmetry of the image I’m trying to get? If I leave it there, will it draw the viewer’s eye to it every time they look at the photograph? It’s an ugly chair in the grand scheme of things and it seems out of place to everything else. But it’s a part of the shop; its part of what makes this butchers what it is. Its there for the old and weary to sit on, to take a breather and rest while their Sunday joint is prepared. At the risk of sounding pretentious about it, it’s a symbol of consideration. I’ve never been into a butchers shop to find that someone has had the thought and consideration to put a chair out for their customers before. It’s a small but important detail.

Should the chair stay in the shot or should it go? After a few moments of agonising I decided it should stay, and stay it did. It’s just a chair, and only a plastic one at that, but it says as much about the butchers shop in Ledbury as anything else in the photograph. I’m glad I left it in.

The Crazies down the Lane.

2009-12-20T08:40:00.000-08:00

“What on earth are you doing Chris?” my neighbour asked the other morning. She’d pulled over beside the bottom of my garden to scrape the ice off her rapidly re-freezing car windscreen. It was 7:30a.m. and –5 degrees C. She was on her way to work, I was putting a jungle hammock up, complete with mosquito net.

“Oh, um, morning” I replied seeing the confused look my neighbour was studying me with. “I’ve got a 10:00 o’clock meeting with the Manchester Museum. They want to look at the equipment we took to the Amazon with us for the exhibition next year.”

The explanation sounded surreal even to me. I was playing with a tropical jungle hammock while crunching around in the frost-encrusted grass of a winter woodland garden. It didn’t help that I still had my dressing gown on. “You’re not like the other neighbours are you Chris” she said chuckling at the bizarre sight before her.

“No, probably not.” I replied, not quite knowing what else to say in the situation. She was also a bit stuck for something else to say under the circumstances. “Well have a good meeting anyway.” She climbed back into her warm car and put it in gear. She looked over to me again for a moment, shuck her head and drove off.

We’ve lived here for three years now and the neighbours still think we’re the ‘crazies down the lane’. I think they quietly like it though. They always stop as they’re walking past to find out what the current developments are on the latest project. “What you up to Chris?”

“Oh, I’m just sawing the handles off these toothbrushes to save a bit of weight.”

“Oh, right.” ‘right’ is said in a slow, drawn out kind of way that really says ‘he’s completely bonkers!’ It does have an affectionate note to it as well though.

Putting the hammock up on a freezing winter morning is just the latest stage of getting things organised for the Finding Manchester Exhibition next year, and things are starting to move forward at a rate of knots now. There is a constant flurry of emails back and forth between the museum and ourselves. Design ideas, space measurements, image selections, display mechanisms, contracts and budget confirmations. It’s an exciting time but sometimes it’s easy to forget that this exhibition is the culmination of three years of work. Freezing my bits off in a dressing gown, standing around explaining myself to the neighbours as I put up a jungle hammock in winter is just the reminder that I need to appreciate that it is indeed an exciting time, if not a little surreal at times.

Budgets, bids and fumigation

2009-11-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

I spy an exhibition opportunity!

Following on from the heady activities of last week, things are moving forward apace with the Manchester Exhibition. Half the budget has been found already, which seems to be a bit of a miracle, and now we just need to find the other half; that’s the ‘budget and bids’ bit.

A 3 hour project meeting with the Museum had us thrashing out the finer details of just what the exhibition will involve and I think that we may have had a couple of cups of coffee too many when the conversation turned to dried piranha on a stick. As well as the photographs and anecdotes from the expedition into the Amazon, its been suggested that we include some of the things we found along the way. Stuff like giant snails, stuffed piranha and soggy journals. Great stuff we thought, and it is, but the conversation did feel a little surreal when we started to talk about fumigating it all just to make sure that we didn’t contaminate the mummies downstairs in the Egyptology Department. Perfectly logical, but its not every day you find yourself discussing the welfare of the mummies downstairs is it.

And the project is.......

2009-10-23T03:11:00.000-07:00

Common newspaper headlines but I don't think this is the reality.

Throughout September and October Pieces of Sky was accepting expressions of interest from intergenerational projects around the country who would like to have their project documented using photography.

I’m pleased to announce that the project recipient of this free photography opportunity is…….

………Ledbury in Herefordshire.

I love innovation and projects which celebrate life and challenge perceptions. Ledbury Library is doing exactly that with a new initiative which is working in partnership with Age Concern, the ‘V’ initiative, local secondary schools and colleges and others. The project will focus on teenage life as it is today and as it was when the term ‘teenager’ was coined fifty years ago. It will bring the teenagers of then and now together to examine the differences that a span of five decades has created. More importantly, it will also examine the common ground. Is life that different? Are values that different? Do people want and need the same things? These are all questions that the project will be asking.

In 2010 a new library is to be built in Ledbury and this project will ensure that the right facilities and services are included within its walls and that those amenities are exactly what everyone in Ledbury needs, regardless of age or perspective. It will be an intergenerational building for an intergenerational community. The new library, and indeed this project will also be outward looking. It is not about the bricks and mortar of a new building, its about people of all ages and what they want. It is about what people believe other generations want and it tackles perceptions. Its about cohesion, understanding and dissolving preconceived ideas. And that is why Pieces of Sky chose this project over other very worthy candidates.

We were inundated with a host of fantastic project outlines, describing intergenerational activities which are bringing people together to break down social barriers, engender new understanding, share skills and, just as importantly, are getting people laughing together. To choose just one project was an almost impossible task and it was a close call between the final three short-listed projects but unfortunately there could only be one beneficiary.

Thank you to all those who took the time to put their projects forward. Every project was worthy in its own way and I wish you all every success. Pieces of Sky hopes to be running a similar offer again next year so do contact me to make sure we can notify you of when Pieces of Sky will be accepting expressions of interest again. After all, someone has got to win and it could be your project, but only if we know you’re out there!

To find out more about intergenerational activity and how it is tackling wide and far reaching social agendas please visit the website for The Centre for Intergenerational Practice.

Why not?

2009-09-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

A customer recently asked me why I couldn’t just give them the images the same day as the photo-shoot I was about to do for them. It’s not the first time and it won't be the last, I’m sure of that. It’s a reasonable enough question but this is why…..

You can pick up a camera and just shoot away on Auto all day long and get this as the final result:

Or you can set the shot up and then spend a bit of time processing and then post-processing the image to get this:

And to get that it takes this:

Camera set up =

- Tripod mount camera with remote shutter release
- Mirror lock-up
- Exposure = 3.2 seconds
- Focal length = 17mm
- Metering = pattern type
- Aperture priority = f 14
- Lens filter 1 = 0.6 solid neutral density filter
- Lens filter 2 = 0.6 graduated neutral density filter
- Compensating exposure bias = >2
- Lighting 1 = ambient (natural)
- Lighting 2 = x7 remote strobe flashes to foreground.
- File capture = RAW

RAW file Processing =

- Stage 1 = dust spot removal
- Stage 2 = tonal curves adjustment @ light tones +9 / dark tomes +18
- Stage 3 = clarity adjustment +50
- Stage 4 = hue shift yellow band +2
- Stage 5 = graduated filter to foreground + 7 exposure
- Stage 6 = colour noise reduction + 29
- Stage 7 = sharpening adjustment + 40%
- Stage 8 = set to 300dpi
- Stage 9 = set colour space to sRGB
- Stage 10 = RAW conversion to TIFF file format
- Stage 11 = export to Photoshop for post-processing.

Post-processing =

- Stage 1 = create layer, adjust levels @ +110 midtones
- Stage 2 = flatten layer
- Stage 3 = create duplicate layer, convert to mono, overlay and blend @ +13
- Stage 4 = flatten layer
- Stage 5 = apply warning filter – orange 85
- Stage 6 = apply luminance filter
- Stage 7 = apply dodging to shadow areas
- Stage 8 = apply burning to selected sky and foreground areas
- Stage 9 = apply noise reduction filter
- Stage 10 = convert image to TIFF file format and save.

With 32 separate actions for a basic image like this the customer doesn’t generally ask the question again and everybody’s happy.

The story behind 'Over the Bridge'

2009-09-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

Someone recently said that they’d love to know the story behind this photograph. A few years on, the day is still fresh in my mind………

“You’re not going to take the bike across that are you?” Liz said sounding a little worried.

“You wanted adventure didn’t you. Well this is it!” I hoped I sounded more confident than I was. Having just crossed the bridge on foot to test its strength, only to find it swayed alarmingly from side to side with each step I wasn’t convinced that I would be able to get the bike across it at all. I did however know that if I stopped to think any more about what I was about to do I was never going do it. And that meant that this would be the end of the road, literally.

A year an a half on the road with an overloaded motorbike and now in El Salvador we had come across a few challenges along the way but this was one we hadn’t anticipated. We were by now beginning to realise that the road maps of the various Central American countries we were travelling through were little more than a Government wish list. We were trying to reach the old colonial town of Suchitoto in the heart of the country. Riding a convoluted route of dirt roads from village to village we had already used most of the fuel in the petrol tank and if we didn’t reach the town soon we would have a long walk ahead of us.

After several failed attempts to find the right road out of the previous village we had taken yet another grassy, tree-lined lane down a seemingly wrong turn. Rounding a hidden bend we came across a cattle herder. “Buenas tardes señor, is this the road to Suchitoto?” I asked.

In almost perfect English with no accent at all the herder replied, “Yes, yes, just carry on down this road for a kilometre or so and turn right. When you reach the river, cross at the ford and turn right along the far bank again. Suchitoto is ten kilometres. Have a good day.” He finished with a broad smile, gently whipped one of his cows that was currently using us a scratching post and walked on.

“Thank you.” I called out to the back of his head as he went on up the lane. Liz and I looked at each other dumbstruck. How does an El Salvadorian cattle herder come to speak perfect English? Central America is always full of surprises.

We rode on down the lane, following his instructions and soon reached the riverside. A broad and fast flowing river of forty metres or more wide. But there was no sign of any ford, only a small footbridge. I dropped Liz off and took a quick ride up and down the bank but there was no sign of a ford anywhere. The road simply appeared to stop and without a ford there was no way we were getting across this particular natural barrier. It was too deep and too fast. We both looked up at the footbridge above us. “Well, we can’t get across that can we!” Liz said sounding resigned.

“We could give it a go.” I suggested.

“Yeh, right” Liz laughed. Then she laughed again, sounding more nervous this time as she watched me climbing back up the riverbank to the side of the bridge.

As Central America footbridges go it was a pretty sturdy affair, with high tensile steel cables and thick wooden planks forming a good platform. I walked out onto it and felt that familiar bounce that little suspension bridges have. So far so good I thought. By the time I had crossed to the other side and back again, I had however discovered the full three-dimensional movement of the bridge. The simultaneous horizontal and vertical movement was more than I had bargained for. Not being one blessed with a head for heights my resolve was wavering but it was this way or no way. “You wanted adventure didn’t you. Well this is it!” I’d said to Liz but in reality I was giving myself a pep talk rather than replying to any concerns that she had.

The sensible approach of course would have been to take the luggage off the bike and go across light but unloading the bags would give me too much time to think and then I would never do it. Don’t think, just get on with it, I told myself. I cocked a leg over the bike and fired it up. I looked at Liz and neither of us spoke. Letting out the clutch the front wheel soon rolled onto the first few planks and it sagged as it took the strain. Edging forward, there were a couple of inches to spare on either side and as long as the bridge was the same width at both ends I’d make it, assuming the bridge was strong enough. The movement of the bridge felt predictable, a little like sitting astride the bike on a ferry crossing; up and over the waves. I knew it would only get worse though and I concentrated on the far side as the wave-like movements grew in strength. And then the sidewise movement began to come into play. Up, down, side to side and each time the movement was stronger. I stopped a third of the way across and let the whole thing settle down. As I rested I realised I had a deathlike grip on the handlebars. A trickle of perspiration stung my eye and then I remembered to breath. “You wanted adventure didn’t you. Well this is it!” No, this wasn’t the adventure I wanted but for the moment it was what I had. Anything with just two wheels is designed to fall over at the best of times. And anything on two wheels perched on top a suspension bridge is almost determined to fall over. I was currently trying to keep half a tonne of motorbike and our possessions upright and it wasn’t proving to be an easy task. We had ridden one hundred and twenty miles of dirt roads that day already and I was tired even before I had begun this little stunt.

Looking ahead at the far end of the bridge a small man appeared carrying a bundle of long bamboo canes. Stooping with a bent back he looked up as he stepped onto the bridge, only to find me edging along it with our motorbike and everything we owned on it. He staggered a little and the bamboo swayed on his back before he retreated to the footings. Dropping the bundle at his feet he craned his neck to check he wasn’t imagining things. When he realised his eyes weren’t lying to him he began to repeatedly make the sign of the cross. I set off towards him again feeling even less confident now that my spectator was praying for me. After a drawn out and bloody civil war the El Salvadorians are a tough bunch of people who will readily spit in the eye of danger, so when one is standing some distance away from you and making the sign of the cross, and repeatedly, it’s a safe bet that he thinks you’re insane. And if an El Salvadorian thinks you’re insane then you are in deep trouble.

The bridge continued to sway and the planks creaked under the strain. As the little man crossed himself I distracted my mind by pretending he was simply checking his possessions. Watch, wallet, spectacles and testicles……. watch, wallet, spectacles and testicles. On I went feeling sick.

After stopping three times more on the bridge and feeling weaker and more full of fear every time, I eventually met my single spectator. He greeted me with “Tú eres señor loco" “, “You are crazy sir!” I couldn’t disagree with him.

Suchitoto is a beautiful town and the El Salvadorian people there are every bit as wonderful. I’d suggest you take the main road if you ever decide to go though.

Knobs

2009-08-18T00:11:00.000-07:00

I've always said that I'll photograph anything if it interests me. However, on this occasion I took the commission because it would be a challenge. God knows the subject didn't interest me.

I had been at a business marketing seminar in the hope of learning something new and creating a global explosion of interest in Pieces of Sky. The idea was that the delegates would all sit around and listen to a guru who had been there and done it all. To be honest, all of the speakers were very good and I did learn things so it was well worth going to . I did however take the examples all a bit literally before the seminar had even begun. It was supposed to be a marketing conference so, to me at least, it seemed a bit silly to go along and not market myself. On that basis I took along a portfolio of work, a fist-full of business cards and proceeded to stand in the reception area with my work up on a couple of display boards and collared anyone who got near me. The organisers assumed I was supposed to be there and just came over to admire the pretty pictures.

So there I was between lectures, handing out business cards and marketing myself and it was all going well. I was generating a lot of interest and got some good leads. One of those leads was for a job that would prove to be a little different to the norm. A company needed a suite of product shots for their brochure and a new website that they were having built. The products turned out to be industrial ink and anything and everything associated with it, ranging from thinners to rubber gloves and from printing stamps to the ink itself. I had never considered trying to make something like a printing stamp look interesting before so I thought 'why not'!

Days later the commission had been negotiated and the Pieces of Sky office was looking more like a warehouse than a studio. The smallest pot of ink was a whopping 5 litres and there were several hundred pots of that alone. I thought the hardest part of this shoot was going to be getting the lighting right but the reality was that the hardest part was just keeping ink off everything. It got everywhere, and being ink it was designed not to come off. The normal approach for most studio product shots is to place the subject on a seamless background paper and then arrange the lighting to cast flattering shadows and present the product in, well in the best possible light. Unfortunately the seamless background paper was left looking like a primary school art class after each shot, with ink spots everywhere. A different approach was called for and Tiles-R-Us was the answer. I needed something that the ink wouldn't stick to, unlike the paper backgrounds and large kitchen floor tiles were may saviour. Off I went into town and once I had convinced the shop owner to let me have all his chipped white or black floor tiles for free (because no one else was going to buy the chipped ones) I returned with arm-fulls of the things and was soon snapping away with total abandon.

Three days later I had photographed nearly 1000 litres of ink and everything you ever could possibly imagine being connected with the ink industry. The client was happy and I was happy. As a bonus, one of the cameras now sports a rather attractive pink thumb print on it too. It just had to be pink didn't it!

The story behind the 'Boy and the Ball'

2009-08-10T00:34:00.000-07:00

This is the story of a photograph. If you visit the Pieces of Sky website (and I hope you do, obviously) the first photo you will see on the home page is 'The Boy and the Ball'.

I had been commissioned by a national charity to document the achievements of eighteen social regeneration projects around the country. The kind of projects that work with various people to change something in the area where they live and perhaps gain a new skill along the way. Projects that see a new play area popping up on a once vacant plot of land, projects that get people talking to each other where previously the conversation had consisted of swear words and two fingers, that kind of stuff.

It was a dark, grey English morning and I had arranged to turn up at a Youth Club to photograph a graffiti project that would bring a bit of colour to the front of a slightly grim 1950's block of shop fronts on an equally grim housing estate in the East of England. I was greeted by a couple of the youth-workers and several teenagers who were in the process of ignoring a 'graffiti artist'. The artist was trying to pull a few ideas out of the teenagers about what they might like to paint on the front of the building. The guy was doing his best but to be fair to the teenagers he was making the whole idea sound about as interesting as the removal of a bunion. He just had one of those lazy tones to his voice that made him sound like he wanted to be somewhere else. The teenagers looked around at everything but him, kicked their feet, kicked each other and finally saw me as their get out clause.

Kids and teenagers love cameras. They all love to be on one side of it or on the other, either looking through the viewfinder and clicking away or, for the more vain, posing in front of it and working it as they say. Within seconds the graffiti artist was left talking to himself and I was trying to decode a barrage of questions coming at me in east-of-England youth speak. The youth-workers wrestled to get some order back into the session and it wasn't long before the four of us (the youth-workers, the graffiti artist and me that is) were working as a lose team. Some of the group were obviously just not interested in the idea of spray painting the front of a converted shop so we agreed that I'd take some of the group around the estate so that they could show me some of the other stuff they'd been doing as part of the project.

They set off ahead of me while I picked up my cameras and stuck the stuff I didn't need in a secure cupboard out of the way. By the time I caught up with them, about 90 seconds later, they'd managed to have a couple of fags between them and were looking innocent again. I smiled, knowing it was exactly what I would have done too when I was fourteen. We wandered around looking at mosaics and newly planted trees and repaired fences. They'd done some good stuff too. I took a few shots at each spot and let a few of the group take the cameras from me and take a few shots of their mates themselves. Sometimes if a group are a bit self conscious in front of their friends when a photographer is sticking a camera in their face its easier and more fun for everyone to hand the cameras over and run a spontaneous photography session instead. Everyone relaxes and with a bit of guidance a few good shots can be found in amongst the chopped off ears, closed eyes and decapitated heads.

By the time we made it back to the Youth Club the graffiti artist was well on the way to having the basic outline of the sketch drawn out. Clearly, both he and his group were enjoying the session. Appropriately, but perhaps a little unimaginatively (but who am I to judge), the sketch was of the giant words 'Youth Club' in graffiti-stylie. My group donned already paint stained overalls and after ten minutes of merciless mikey-taking they were taking it in turns to spray vivid colours into the outline of individual letters. A pink Y, a flourescent green O and a bright blue U. The teenagers were spraying, the youth-workers were smiling and I was snapping away. All was good in this little corner of the world.

And then it all changed. A couple who I would guess were in their late 50's but who looked like they were in their mid 70's stumbled past in a haze of alcohol vapours, literally propping each other up at eleven in the morning. One of the teenagers stepped back to admire his work and with the drunken reactions of a sloth the woman stumbled into him. A barrage of abuse erupted from the woman's mouth, including a few words I don't believe I've heard before. To his credit the young lad kept his mouth shut and looked at the rest of the group with eyes that showed a mixture of pity and amusement. A few seconds later the couple had fallen into the shop next door where Vodka was being advertised at £7.20 a litre and I suspected they'd been drawn in by the lure of this tantalising prospect. Normality resumed after a few comments and the spray painting resumed. "They're the local piss-artists." one of the kids whispered to me. I had guessed that they probably were.

Five minutes later and the drunk couple were pulling on the shop door that said PUSH and hailing a shower of verbal abuse on the inanimate object in what appeared to be the falorn hope that it would give way to their insults. They were saved from a life of imprisonment by another customer who wanted to get in, and after a short struggle with them both pushing on the door from opposite sides the door gave way to the superior strength of the sober customer. The couple pushed past with a bag of rattling bottles and more abuse. Unlike my young friend who had already had an encounter with this couple moments before, the sober customer wasn't going to stand for being called any number of different body parts. An almost static charge instantly filled the air as we all knew what was coming next. The customer turned around and came back out of the shop, looked at me and said "Sorry lad", pushed me back in a way that was more protective than aggressive and punched the drunk man right in the teeth. It only took the one punch and he fell to the ground like the proverbial sack of spuds. "Who you callin' a ......... now then?" he said with a satisfied tone in his voice.

A supportive cheer of "Nice one, kick 'im, and wanker" as well as a host of other encouraging calls went up from the group. The drunk woman lurched at the man and began pulling his hair and kicking his shins. The body at his feet moaned, the teenagers shouted, the woman shouted louder, the youth-workers did that ushering movement that protective adults do when they don't want young-ones to see something that any self respecting young-one would give their right arm to see, and I took photographs. It was all kicking off, literally. And then I looked away, just for a second, and I saw a young lad playing with a ball on a concrete basket ball court. He was fifty metres or so away and in a world of his own. All hell was breaking lose at my feet and this kid was just playing with a ball, oblivious to anything else in the world and it looked like poetry in motion. And all of a sudden I was oblivious to the war at my feet too. I just watched this kid with his ball and thought now that's bloody brilliant!

2009-08-09T23:59:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia says ............ 'A blog (a contraction of the term "weblog")^[1] is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs.'

Well, here's one more blog to add to the pile. Hopefully its one blog worth adding to the pile though. Random (and perhaps not so random) stories, anecdotes and general ramblings will appear here as and when I have something which I think is vaguely worth saying. Hopefully, whatever I write in this blog will have been vaguely worth saying but I'll let you be the judge of that.