It's about time ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a Leap Year today, so I thought I'd write about time. Specifically, the amount of time it's taking the good ol' NHS to see my 86 year old Mum, who broke her back in an accident almost two years ago. I waited with her in Accident & Emergency for thirteen hours and then, after being (very well) treated at Salford Royal Hospital, she was given an appointment to be seen by a specialist in April last year. That was cancelled at the last minute and she was given yesterday as her new appointment. That visit was cancelled with a phone call at 9.30 in the morning, and she now has to wait until next July to be seen. You can imagine how angry and disgusted I am at the moment. I'll spare you the **%$@^^^ words, but all I can say is I'm so glad I don't live in the UK anymore. The place has gone to the dogs ..

Speaking of dogs, today's photograph (Of a clock. See what I did, there?) is from the next of my photography books. Called 'Riding the dirty dog', it is a collection of photographs from a Greyhound Bus trip I took in 1985. I spent a whole week on various buses, trying to get to as many cities as I could in seven days. Why? Ah, you'll have to get the book .. 

Sievey/Sidebottom

 

 

 

 

 

Like a doddery grandad that won't shut up about the past, I'm following yesterday's musical memory with another 'date-in-the-diary' that I thought you'd like to know about. We're going back to February 28th, 1979, meaning it's forty-five years to the day since The Freshies played the youth club at Bowdon Vale. Does that name ring any bells? Yes, it's the same venue in which I photographed Fast Cars and then Joy Division just two weeks later. (Recognise the wallpaper?) Anyway, here's poor old Chris Sievey (right) giving it his all in an effort for world domination. He'd later become Frank Sidebottom, of course, gaining fame and no fortune with a papier-mâché head stuck on his shoulders. Following the gig, I asked the band if we could arrange a photo-shoot, then spent a fun-filled morning snapping them all around the streets of Sale. Sadly those photographs, like the band, got nowhere ..

Heaven knows I'm happy now ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's incredible to think that The Smiths  first LP came out forty years ago this month. February 20th, 1984. I was 23 years old. The band has been a part of almost two-thirds of my life. I'll never forget their arrival on 'the scene', via John Peel, inevitably. They got accused of being depressing, but I hadn't heard anything as exciting and fresh in a long time. Indeed, it didn't take me long before I wore a string of beads around my neck when I went out for a pint. (God, the memory!) The band had split by '87 and, of course, poor old Andy Rourke is dead, but their music goes on and on for me, despite Morrissey's best efforts to make me dislike him. Here's my copy of the record, replete with a photo-pass for their 1984 gig at Manchester's Free Trade Hall ..

Toilet humour ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having a drink with a pal the other day, he mentioned that he frequently read my blog. What a surprise! "Oh yes," he said. "It often gives me a chortle in the toilet." I know my place ..

Ps: Today's shot is a Kodachrome of a toilet in Kenya, and is part of my forthcoming travel-photography book.

Read all about it ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's a TV programme called 'A new life in the sun', on which couples from the UK move to continental Europe to start new businesses. 'We love the slower pace of life," they gush. 'It's so quiet where we live." Well, how's this for a change in circumstances? I once used to work for one of the biggest regional evening newspapers in the country, and now I cycle around the countryside delivering our local village newsletter. From press photographer to paper-boy in one fell swoop ..

Eerie ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ploughing my way through a heap of old Kodachromes - the aim being to produce a travel-photography book - my curiosity was aroused when I came across this rather ordinary-looking picture of a Texaco petrol station. It was from 'somewhere' in America and slightly blurred as it was snatched through the window of a moving Greyhound bus during a trip in 1985. Why I was moved to press the shutter I'll never know, and I doubt the photo will even make the cut when it comes to compiling my book, but I spent a while removing dust and scratches from the image just in case ..

'I wonder where this was,' I thought, as I reminisced about the wonderful time I'd had on the trip. Major destinations I can obviously remember - Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles - but to get to those I had to pass through little places like this. And then I spotted a name. Jim Musolf. It says it below the Texaco sign on the front of the building. I googled the name and there, from a post by the Hendersonville Times-News in 2012 was his obituary. Born in 1921, married for 62 years, a WW11 veteran and an ardent volunteer worker who retired and moved to North Carolina in 1985. And then my answer .. Erie, Pennsylvania .. the town in which he was born and where he returned from fighting in the Pacific to open up his own Texaco station. God, I love photography! God, I love the internet. Rest in peace, Jim ..

Eerie! 

Goodbye, old friend ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Under the optimistic title 'Brighter days ahead', I put this photograph on Instagram yesterday morning. It shows the rising sun shining through a wild old plum tree twixt our garden and next-door's. For each of the seven years we've lived here, the tree's early blossom has heralded the arrival of Spring and, already, its newly-forming buds have given its branches a happy red tint on a grey February morning. In March, as if by magic, its gorgeous pink flowers positively tingle with the sound of thousands of bees enjoying a welcome snack. I've planted Giant Snowdrops by its foot, its shade providing the perfect environment for them to flourish and, in summer, twittering sparrows flit noisily between its branches and the eaves of our house ..

Yesterday afternoon our neighbour chopped down the tree.

"It's dead," he said, over the roar of his chain-saw. (He's still hacking at the tree's murdered limbs as I write.) "It'll fall and cause damage." I wish it had fallen on him. (Alright, I know it was his to do with what he wanted, but allow me my five minutes of fury!)

Goodbye, dear tree. We'll miss you ..     

The Royal Wee ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"You're in good shape," said my doctor on Monday. "For a man of your age!" Oh, why did she have to add that second sentence? I was in to talk about my sore elbow. (Tendonitis). And my painful knee. (Gonarthritis). And my prostate. (Age!)

"Nice to know I'm in good company," I've often said to Lesley, referencing Charles the HRH. "But how the hell did he stop himself peeing during the coronation?" It's a question that intrigues me, seeing as I can't listen to one whole side of an LP without pausing for a bloody piddle these days. And all my friends know not to include me in any conversations, because I won't be sitting with them long enough to contribute. (Joke!) It was becoming a bit of an embarrassment though, until the doctor told me that, actually, I did have a real medical problem and not just a ludicrously teeny bladder. Oh, what a relief (so to speak) and so tablets it is and let's see if we can't shift the problem once and for all ..

A pal of mine is still recovering from prostate cancer and, now that he's on the right side of it, I know he'll allow me the pleasure I feel knowing I've not got the same problem. An enlarged prostate is an inconvenience, not a life-threatener. Apparently, we men don't speak about these things, so it's interesting to note that, by doing just that (try stopping me!) I've already encouraged another pal with similar symptoms to consider he may have a prostate problem ..

Old age is a privilege denied to many. That was written on one of those faux-wooden plaques behind the bar of a pub I used to frequent with my Dad. I was eighteen then, and I'm going to be 64 this August. Time is starting to make itself felt, and there ain't a thing I can do about it. Today though, a lady we know is being cremated. Heart attack. Sixty-four. Old age, denied. Certainly puts a dribbly willy in its place, don't ya think?