Ayrton Senna drove my Mum’s Car…

   

Bit of nostalgia this…but back in the early 80’s…the 1980’s before you suggest otherwise…my mates and I had just learnt to drive, passed our driving tests and were relying on our Mum’s to let us practice our skills. After all Mum’s car was just there, parked outside…

Unfortunately my Mum’s car was a maroon metallic Austin Rover METRO…not cool!


We’ll gloss over the fact this replaced her Volvo, which I crashed…though in truth the sight of the Police car passing the crash site…backwards…followed by the appearance of the two officers…walking…clearly “upset”…carrying the “Road Closed” sign...along with the expleatives with which they described the road…suggests it wasn’t all my fault…honest Mum!

With new found opportunity and interest in all things smelling of petrol we quickly developed an interest in all motorsport, particularly rallying, as around us…well a short drive away…in Mum’s car…you’re seeing a theme here…were the great forest stages of North Yorkshire.

I still vividly remember the blaze of lights and blarring howl which heralded the sudden appearance of the first AUDI Quattro we’d ever seen…”seen” being a slight exaggeration, in the freezing cold and driving rain of a night stage in Cropton Forest! Too quick even for the whistled warning of the marshals…the shockingly efficient appearance of four wheel drive was a revelation…the future in rallying was clearly 4x4!

So when Rover unveiled the “visually challenged” Rover Metro 6R4 I didn’t feel quite so bad…because it was my Mum’s car…well the roof was, but apparently not much else! When Aytron Senna got behind the wheel of one… well that was it, Mum’s car was clearly a bit cool…ish!

I’ve always had a soft spot for the “ugly duckling”…I think it’s got charm, character and looks great…purposeful. I did back when I first tried to capture them with a Pentax ME Super, Fuji 400D E6 and with “on camera flash” (moving on now…nothing to see here…quite literally, most times!!) Better above…Canon 5DMk2, EF 400 F4 DO IS…a few years of practice helps...and whilst shooting a stills package on a video shoot last month I met a kindred soul…who actually now owns one…but that’s another story…

Halloween...

It's that time of year already, where our young girls thought's turn to... sweets, chocolate... oh and more sweets! It must be all of minutes since the subject was last mentioned by one or the other!

They have been planning their "trick or treating" for some time now... trying on the dresses they will wear and choosing which bucket (oh yes, you read that correctly) they will use to hold their stash of goodies!

Mum's choice of suitable gifts for their young friends, who may dare to call at our door, has also been under investigation... they tried to get a sample for testing purposes but Mum was wise to that "trick!"

Thankfully they have no intention of being anything other than charming and cute when they visit our neighbours... "tricks" just aren't in their mind... but make sure you have sweets to hand as the sound of a very small "Mad Midget" who doesn't get the same as her older sister ( it's just soooo not fair! ) could definitely be classed as a very nasty Halloween surprise !

Now to explain to the neighbours exactly what I was doing lying out on the front lawn...

Happy Halloween Erin and Freya

“In memory of…”

Why do I take photographs… why do I put myself through the mental torture… because I get to go where others can’t, talk to people who I’d never get to meet without a camera in my hand and get to indulge my curiosity…

So there I was standing in a “tin hut” with a stillness and a quiet calm that defied understanding… not that it looked much from the outside, but this tin hut had a story to tell.

Apparently it originally lived on a shipyard on the banks of the Tyne, a mission chapel and a social club for the workers. When it’s days there were over it was dismantled and rebuilt in a suburb of a small North East town, as a church and community centre.

The walls were still lined with horsehair insulation, beneath the “modern” tin panels… perhaps that’s what made it so still and calm inside, amidst the memories of countless church services, children’s excited laughter, Saturday afternoon jumble sales…

But for a few short hours I had the small hall all to myself, just me, a camera, a tripod and the still silence… oh and the bright, but cloudy sky that through those windows gave a glorious simple light that seemed to match the mood…