Tudor Monastery Farm! That's the surprise TV hit of the household this season! Lesley and I are gripped by the sheer labour-intensive aspect of .. well, everything that went on on a farm 500 years ago. It just took so long to do anything! And we're absolutely fascinated by how all their processes actually evolved. I mean, who'd have thought to add sour milk to fired lime to make concrete, for goodness sake? It made me think of photographic methods back in 'the old days'. Those heady days of film and paper and chemicals! Ok, my methods weren't taken right back to the bare bones of production - I didn't first have to kill a cow to start the production of gelatine, or mine for my own silver - but the processes of photography were a lot more involved than they are today. Just to get one photograph I did have to load my own 36 exposure cassettes from 100 foot rolls of black and white film; I did have to mix 5 litre buckets of ID-11 (Developer) from powder kits before I could develop that film, and I did have to stand in a darkened room waving my hands around twixt a focussed lightbulb and a piece of 'magic' paper to enable me to see an image. God, it almost sounds medieval!...
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