Tag Archives: photography

at home

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It’s still snowing here.


Snow is one of those things about which Jesus definitely is Not Sure.

Just check out his plum tree. . .

The wee man is spending the day inside, but me and Bruce have been out with the camera. I love the transformative effects of snow, even on the greyest winter day.



It was very quiet out there.

Though Bruce tried his best to make a ruckus.

Spare a thought for poor Tom, though, who set off for Liverpool this morning and is currently stuck on a stationary train somewhere in deepest Cumbria. Familiar Words of Doom have been uttered: “Replacement Bus Service.” If he ever gets there, Tom will be spending a few days at a conference. This will be interesting for both of us, as we’ve not been apart since I came out of hospital. It feels significant. Tom is really quite amazing: as well as working extremely hard in the World of Spleens all day, he then comes home and performs far more than his fair share of household tasks so that I can save my energy for my rehab. I know I couldn’t have managed the past ten months without him, and he is top of the list of the many things I feel extremely lucky for. But it seems a good time for me to try a few days of total independence. I am doing quite well at the moment. I mean, I feel a little peculiar all of the time, but lately the little peculiar that I feel has been slightly less. My norm seems more normal, in other words. I have found myself wondering two things: 1)whether this constant-vague-peculiarity is really subsiding or my brain is just getting used to it and 2) whether people realise how generally weird things are for those who have had a stroke. (I know that brain-injury sufferers who have linguistic difficulties carry around explanatory cards to be whipped out in difficult public situations, and there have been several occasions over the past few months when I have wished I was wearing a t-shirt proclaiming “HELLO! I’VE HAD A STROKE.”)

Physically, I am definitely still getting better, though the improvements are slow and incremental and sometimes hard for me to see. In fact, other people seem to notice these improvements more than I do. On Saturday, for example, we ran into a physio friend of ours who regarded my walking as something quite incredible (which I suppose it is, considering that the part of my brain that was most damaged was the bit controlling my leg and foot, and that some of my medical team thought it was unlikely that I’d ever be able to walk without a stick, brace, and one of those electronic thingummies). Recently, when I’ve been out with Bruce, I have even tried running a few steps. This is really very difficult – there is nothing my left leg likes less than moving at speed – but over the past few weeks I have progressed from five lopsided steps to twenty five. It feels quite exhilarating.

While I am on the subject, and as much for my benefit as anything else, I want to record an experience of a couple of weeks ago, after which my gait seemed to noticeably improve. Mostly, on my daily walks, I just pootle along as best I can, but there is a nice flat stretch of about half a mile where I try to make every single component of my gait correct – this takes more effort than you would imagine, and Bruce often becomes frustrated with what he must regard as pointless dawdling when ahead lie innumerable sticks and squirrels. Anyway, I was covering this gait-focused half-mile a couple of weeks ago, and found that I was walking really well – the knee seemed to be working without locking (a recurrent issue), and my steps were smooth and even. This continued for about half a minute, and then I suddenly had a terrible attack of vertigo and nausea – I had to hold onto a tree while I waited for it to subside – and then took Bruce the shortest way home. There then followed the particularly evil bout of fatigue (mentioned in this post), but a few days afterward I found myself capable of walking six-and-a-half miles from our flat to the Modern Art Gallery and back. I have wondered since whether, at that moment, my brain finally made some sort of useful connection, and that this somehow caused the crazy nausea. In any case, since then, my leg has certainly had more strength and stamina and my knee has been acting more reliably.

Anyway, I seem to have rambled far away from the ostensible subject of this post – which was supposed to be the novel experience of doing my own washing up and cooking for a few days. On the subject of which, I better go and put my supper on. . .

on foot

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I’m enjoying a lovely weekend at home after quite a tough week in rehab. We’ve been trying to get my foot to move of its own accord. I’ve spent hours thinking about moving the foot muscles; attempting (in vain) to move the foot; watching the foot hang there like a dead clawed-up thing; and trying not to think too much about the prospect of it remaining like that for good. It is difficult stuff. On the positive side, I’ve been using weights in the exercise class, and this really seems to help with the bilateral rhythm. Just giving the left arm something to resist again meant that, by Friday, I was able to move about to “Starship Trooper” and “Kung Fu Fighting” with a modicum of co-ordination. Bingo!

Several other things have felt like real achievements this week. I finished off some socks for Tom. These are the first thing I’ve knitted to completion since having the stroke. I look at them and I see much more than a pair of plain socks in Noro Kureyon (a yarn I will never knit with again). I see the days of effort in which I struggled to make my fingers move and my elbow to support the weight of both my left hand and the knitting. I also see the difficulty of learning a well-known skill from scratch, and the joy of being able to do something I love again. There are hours and hours of many small achievements stitched into this unassuming and uneven pair. Tom likes them very much.

I’ve also been building up my stamina and strength in more ways than one. This morning I decided that I should try to walk to the place where I had the stroke (on one of my familiar paths). I felt it was important to do this: it happened in a place that I am fond of, and I didn’t want to get hung up about it; for it to be somewhere marked with fear and permanently associated with a horrible event. I was worried both about the walking (one and a half miles there and back) and about how I’d feel when I got there. On both scores it was difficult, but I was fine. I stood there and of course I thought a little about how it felt to fall over on a cold February morning after a gun seemed to go off in my head. But I also thought about the many other times I’ve walked there. With its birch trees, its blackbird and blackberry filled hedgerows, its happy views of the allotments, its motley traffic of runners, pedestrians and cyclists, it is a path that I love to walk along and I know that I shall walk along it many times again. And, seriously folks, I walked for one and a half miles! With my gammy leg and my dead foot! And then I came home and slept for two hours.

I also enjoyed a far less taxing walk in the Botanics yesterday. It was marvellous simply to move about in the sunshine encountering so many signs of Spring (I became foolishly excited when we spotted a bee). A garden really is a very healing place in which to spend time, and I am looking forward to wandering in the Botanics with Tom many times again as I recover. I particularly enjoyed photographing the fresh colours and textures in the alpine garden, so here are a few pictures from there to close.




twenty

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You will note that this advent calendar is turning out to have a determinedly snowy theme. Behind today’s door are some images from our lovely weekend away in the woods and hills. I do enjoy the snow — both for walking, and for photographing. I love its eerie quietness; its crazy, sculptural qualities; the incredible things it can do to the light. When you look at a snowy place from a distance, it seems almost felted, softened, somehow — its sharp edges smoothed away — as if the landscape were sleeping, or at rest. Close up, though, you see that the landscape isn’t sleeping at all, but rather that it has assumed a new outlandish, wintry form. The snow effects a total transformation as it covers the landscape, enacting its own playful metamorphoses. I like the way that it gave each reed its own little hat . . .

. . . and made these grasses shimmer with their own delicate sort of bling . . .

. . . these seed husks bend and tremble under a snowflake frosting . . .

. . . and the shape of these new buds is mirrored in the snow droplets beneath them. . .

I spent a long time with the underside of this fallen tree.

It is a bare, dead thing — but the snow makes it marvellous, makes it more than itself. . .

Snow, of course, is treacherous as well as beautiful, and I hope all is very well with those of you on the other side of the Atlantic, for whom snow has meant severe storms, punishing temperatures, and terrible disruption over the past couple of days.

To close this snowy post, here is a West Highland forest in the act of transformation.

eighteen

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Behind today’s advent calendar door is Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, photographed in 1915 by Frank Hurley. This startling image — which suggests the engulfing beauty of the Antarctic landscape, as well as the vulnerability of the ship (and all things human) within it, features in an exhibition I saw recently at Holyrood. Hurley was a superlative photographer of texture, and his images of the breaking up of the Endurance after it became trapped in the ice are particularly startling and powerful. I was even more drawn, though, to the terrifying quietness of Herbert Ponting’s images of Scott’s Terra Nova expedition. The brutal materiality of some of these photographs was quite gripping, and tremendously moving. It will be no surprise to you that I spent a lot of time focusing on what Scott’s party were wearing: their socks, their sweaters, their balaclavas, their skins and fur. I am reading lots about the history of outdoor wear at the moment, as well as being in the process of making some for myself, and I will say more about this another time. Anyway, if you are in or near Edinburgh, I heartily recommend you go and see this super exhibition. If not, you can enjoy it in a virtual sort of way through its excellent website (and accompanying audio commentary / podcast). Meanwhile, we are off to our own landscape of ice and snow today to celebrate Tom’s birthday in true Highland style. Hope you have a lovely weekend!

seven

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To continue the snowy theme, behind the seventh door is a snowman, back (I think) in 1984. The coat I am wearing was handmade by my Ma, and the hood by my Grandma. It was the era of the knitted snood, and Grandma had clearly given this one a Tyrolean theme. We built this snowman in the passageway between two houses, where the snow would often pile up — I grew up in the house on the right, and my parents now live in the house on the left. Above the snowman’s head is the familiar landscape of my childhood — the snowy banks of the Rochdale canal, and the Whip and Bourne factory, now demolished.

six

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Behind today’s advent calendar “door” we have a couple of studies in green and gold. First up, the not-so-secret ingredient in Tom’s Christmas ale. We are already looking forward to this festive brew! I’ve always been intrigued by Lyle’s Lion and Bees trademark, and only today discovered that “out of the strong came forth sweetness” is a reference to Samson’s riddle in Judges 14:14. The choice of a decaying animal carcass as a brand image seems really quite remarkable — not least when one considers its iconic longevity and success. You can read more about Lyle’s branding here.

After photographing the can of syrup, and leaving Tom to his brewing, I went out for a walk and spotted this green-and-gold lichen covered tree. I went to get a closer look. Me and the camera spent some time contemplating the lichen’s amazing form . . .

. . . like delicate, fluttering wings caught in a moment of stasis.

a vivid, velvet gold.

. . . before being disturbed by a curious dog, and its owner, who was doing her best not to seem interested in my tree-gazing activities. Anyway, green and gold are a very seasonal combination, and put me happily in mind of another tree, which we shall be bringing home and decorating next weekend.

one

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The days aren’t too easy here — there are some things I am really struggling with. But the start of December always feels like the turning of a corner. Last year, three of my favourite blogs featured their own versions of the advent calendar. I loved tracing the month through Alexandra‘s wry and subtle photographic eye, Felix’s sonic brilliance, and Colleen’s always-marvelous writing about memory, the material, and the seasonal. Each day, I looked forward to opening the next ‘door’ on their calendars, and I was so happy to see that all three are following similar advent paths this year. I’ve decided to join them with daily doors on my own December. For the first day, here is the waxing moon, recently seen above a favourite landscape.

And for the many of you who have been inquiring about the satchel: yes, that’s right, it is made by the wonderful Cambridge Satchel Company, who I cannot recommend highly enough. I love my satchel (a masterpiece of beautiful, careful, and unfussy design) and I love the CSC! Also, to any of you who have expressed interest in the Fugue tam and mittens — Lilith is now keeping a ‘kit list’ for anyone who would like to be informed when both pattern(s) and yarn are ready (for shipping to all locations, domestic and worldwide). Just drop her a message at infoAToldmaidenaunt.com and she will let you know when things are ready to go.

seeing the light in a station bar*

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comm9
(Newcastle Central)

Tom and I were talking about station bars the other day and discovered that as teenagers, living many miles apart in Stretford and Rochdale, we both liked to hang around the one at Manchester Victoria. This had, before it fell victim to nailed-down chairs and the homogenising effects of Travellers Fayre (shudder), a marvellous, atmospheric and (to our teenage selves) immensely exotic interior: all stucco, coloured glass, and plush upholstery. (I’ve not been there for quite some time, so have no idea of its more recent fate). Anyway, our conversation turned on how station bars form a particular genre of British pub: how they are purportedly spaces of transition, of waiting, and therefore never a destination in themselves. But then we changed our minds and decided, that precisely because of their liminal status (being the place you go to before you get to where you were going; neither one place or another) station bars really are distinct destinations: in-between spaces, half-way places, purgatories of refreshment.

sign
(Halfway hoose)

It then occurred to me that, largely because of my own transitional existence between two cities, I am a regular in two great examples of the genre: The Centurion in Newcastle Central and The Halfway House, just a stone’s throw from Edinburgh Waverley. Both serve a good range of ales (always a bonus); both are superlative station bars, and they both celebrate their particular in-between-ness in very different ways. The Centurion does so in a manner entirely in keeping with its surroundings in the grand Victorian sweep of John Dobson’s Newcastle Central station.

column
(The bar at The Centurion)

The bar pumps, which happily dispense a swift half of Rivet Catcher or Old Kiln Ale to me after a long day’s teaching, nestle behind glorious late nineteenth-century columns decorated in this stately and very excessive manner. Some of the tiles are exuberantly suggestive of fin-de-siecle train travel along the East Coast mainline: of steam, sunrise, and the view crossing the Tweed near Berwick:

tiles

The Centurion sits in what was, in the 1890s, the station’s first-class lounge. But, by the 1960s, it was frequented not by well-heeled passengers but disgruntled prisoners, after it was transformed into holding cells for the British Transport Police. British Rail then apparently did their best to destroy the tiles with a bucketload of paint, before the interior was finally restored to its former glory in 2000. Now The Centurion’s fabulous interior and fine ales can once again be enjoyed by travellers through the station, as well as all the good folk of the toon, (including a well-known group of knitters).

centurion
(Dear man who also likes The Centurion’s interior: thankyou for being in my picture)

The Centurion’s real showpiece has to be this mural which displays for North-bound travellers their promised destination: all dappled braes and rocky shores, green and gold and . . . rhododendrons. After looking at it many times, I think the landscape must be meant to suggest a view across Loch Lomond from the East shore (which of course became a popular tourist destination in the 1800s, largely because of train travel). It’s such a luridly late-Victorian highland fantasy, and I absolutely love it.

The interior of The Halfway House (HWH) also celebrates trains and transition, but in a rather different way.

waitingroom

While The Centurion is the epitome of opulence, with its high ceilings, elaborate decor, and luxurious surroundings, the Halfway House is all about being snug. This is the smallest and cosiest pub in Edinburgh. Within seconds of your train arriving, you can step out of Waverley Station, walk a few steps up Fleshmarket Close, and be in the welcoming interior of the HWH, enjoying a very reasonably priced lunch of hot stovies or cullen skink, and (oh joy of joys) a well-kept pint of Bitter and Twisted.

hwhbar
(HWH bar)

The pub is stuffed with railway paraphernalia, chief among which are posters and postcards celebrating the destinations one might reach on the old LNER.

lner
quickerbyrail
nightstar

Though the HWH is meant to be a stop-off point, a waiting room, a resting place between places, I am most fond of it because for me it is my final destination (and not purgatorial at all). I frequently meet Tom in there for a pint at the end of the working week, and I look forward to that pint immensely. Cheers.

beer

Where are your favourite station bars?

hwh

*apologies to Nick Drake