The Paragon

We were lucky enough this weekend to get a little tiny taste of spring.  

It hasn't been a particularly cold winter, (there has barely been a frost) but it seems an age since the sun was last here. To make the most of it Ben and I walked up to Clifton Village, the fancy part of Bristol, and wandered around the fancy shops with all the fancy people. I took my film camera along, to finish the film off – the rest of the photographs didn't work quite so well, but I quite like how springlike these ones are.

We came across a little curved street that I've never spotted before called The Paragon, which is the most romantic street name I've ever heard. It was a beautiful little terrace, with brass door knockers and enormous windows looking into equally enormous and expensive lounges. I can't help but look in when a window like that presents itself. 

Disjointed

My days have been entirely consumed by righting other people's grammar wrongs lately, so there has been little time for much else.

Inspired by this post of Kate's though, (which I try and revisit in my head every time I feel like I don't want to get out of bed – it's a good tactic!) I've been getting up as early as I can in order to get as much work done as possible. Although it's harder to do now that it's darker in the mornings, it does feel as though you are utilising a whole new period of time that didn't even exist before, which is very satisfying.

So, as a consequence, this is a slightly disjointed post of photographs that I took a month or so ago with my film camera. Next week I will be more joined up, I'm sure.

Woven

I got another film back this weekend, one that I had in my camera all through last month's 'Indian Summer' (it takes me a while to get through a film), and I just can't stop coming back to this picture of the ropes on the dockside. 

The reason I like it so much I think is because it so directly relates to to what I've been scouring both my wardrobe and the internet for over the past week or so – that is, good, seriously cosy, wintery woven things – so I was really interested to read Suzy Menkes' making a similar connection between the weave of rope and the weave of knitted fishermen's jumpers in the New York Times this morning.  

She writes: 'Thick ropes, naval knots and the diamond weave of fishing nets were absorbed into the psyche of the faithful wives and daughters ... who created the protective wear for their fishermen' 

Image via Muir Blog

It's such a romantic thought that there could be such a perfect synergy to the process: the rough untreated rope leading to the rough, untreated wool that the fisherwives knitted their men's jumpers with – the rope would work the sea, the woven knits would protect against it.

I love the way things like this evolve over time, and that waxy rough rope can be ruminated on enough through the decades to eventually evolve into something like the Missoni FW 2011 show in Milan, with its soft, droopy cables and (my other woven winter darling) tweed.

I also like the synergy of the fact that those basic woven mainstays of practical living – the cable knit sweaters, the rugs, blankets and plaited hairstyles – that were likely in use in the days of those knitting fisherwomen, are just as useful to me, in this twenty-first century winter, as they once were then.

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Darks of Summer

Thank you all very much for your very kind comments on my last post – I'm so pleased you thought they all worked out ok. As I mentioned, here is the dark side of summer, at least as it emerged from my camera. We've had plenty of the dark side this year (as the BBC corroborates), so it fits. To be honest, these murky photographs are probably more testament to my inability to use the camera properly than anything else, but I rather like them all the same.

The flowers I found on a Sunday evening walk around a bit of Bristol I've never visited before, and the dark room is my bedroom just at the moment before the sun sinks behind one of the other buildings on the street. The poor little garlic bulb isn't so very seasonal, but he (or others like him) has featured all the way through my summer, lending purpley cloves to hot sauces and cool dips – it seems fair that he gets a little look in.

The harbour is the one I visited in Cornwall a few weeks ago, just in the evening, when all the tourists disappeared and the little boats came back for the night. Talking of little boats that arrive in the night: as I post this, I am on one myself – the late ferry to Islay, for a home weekend.

Lights of Summer

I once said to somebody that the world of film photography, and learning about it all, was similar in nature to opera, or fine wine – they are bottomless pits of niche expertise where you can keep on learning forever – which is a little intimidating.

Nevertheless, I took my first camera film in at least a decade to the developing shop to be developed this weekend. It had taken me all summer to finish the film. Convinced that I would be embarrassingly handed a packet of blank photographs, I was surprised to see that they all came out, and not just that, but split themselves merrily into two distinct camps: the light summer, and the dark.

As today happens to be a day of luminescent pastels and sunshine in Bristol, I thought I'd post these summer lights, with all their pastelled optimism, and save the darks for later this week, when it will probably be grey and dark, raining, and altogether more fitting.

The lights are all luminescent and bright, while the darks are underexposed and brooding. It sums up the summer we've had quite well: there has been some lovely hot light, but plenty cold dark.