Pig Sty Avenue

The Samson Carbon 49 looks like the way ahead. Semi weighted, works with the iPad.

new bookcase , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . You've moved in once the books are out of boxes and up on the shelves. The high ceiling meant I could get a lot of them in the one place, for the first time since... well, for the first time ever.  Which is useful, pointing out as it did some gaps. I was sure I had a copy of Midnight's Children, but it isn't there. Likewise Tristram Shandy and Marx's Capital. Which last made me realise I'm also missing copies of books which were life changing by Trotsky, Gramsci, Luxemburg. I've also weeded out for onward transmission to a charity shop on Duke Street several volumes which I've been meaning to read and decided I never will: The God Delusion, for example.  Books that I will read, but haven't yet, have a shelf of their own in the sitting room. Once read, the decision to keep is based on whether I'd really want to re-read, lend-out, or refer to them. Otherwise, it's Duke St.  Which k...

I walked from Chelsea to Euston earlier, and after I got away from the King's Road, didn't pass a single pub until I chanced by The Champion , by which time I was nearly there.  I suppose the peeps round Belgravia just don't need a pub, what with the butler to fetch them drinks, and stuff? The Champion, I must add, has the most amazing frontage of stained glass I've ever seen, almost OTT, luxurious beyond anything in Glasgow or the Catholic Church - with a nineteenth century Sporting Champions theme.  It's a proper pub too, with Sam Smiths Sov., (in London?) and nothing la-di-da, all filling up nicely with working people around 5.30ish, when I left after my en-route quencher and bag of plain crisps.     Thanks to EE Paul for the photo.

Or "New Year's Revolutions", as The Bairn had it. Frankenstein a Holga lens onto a Leica M screw fitting.   Do long exposure indoor portraits with another Holga. Don't buy any more cameras whatsoever. Get the top off the FED2 and mend the springy diopter lever. Get a standard eye-level finder for the F. Learn how to use the digital light meter I bought in 2012. Portraits?  Portraits.  Portraits! 

I was in Shanghai for ten days just before Christmas.  I'd left the FED2 there after the last visit, and took it out on Nanjing Lu where I got these two doing a bit of conspicuous consumption.  Over the hols I read this piece in the Guardian .  It was then I realized, I'd gotten over my infatuation with, my unrequited love for, the "dentists' camera".  Not that I'd say "no thanks" if one was being given to me, but that's not going to happen. And if I ever did have four or five thousand quid to spend on gear, (another member of the set of things that aren't going to happen to me regarding photography), then it would be a Nikon D4 or the like. Anyway, I brought the FED2 home.  What Sarah Lee's saying about her Leica, I could say about my FED, though the motor metaphor would get a bit knotted, would it be a Trabant or a ZIL ?  Anyway, it seems to have found a job for itself as the camera that travels on business trips with me.  After takin...

Not so much a culture shock, as a culture shift.  Small town Ayrshire already feels prissy, dull, but also well ordered, with everything in its place.  Tenement life here is fine, the flats aren't well sound-proofed but the neighbours have been pretty civilized over the holiday.  It breaks down at the communal bins, where some bastard thought it would be fine to dump their bin bags on the drying green, from where it's nobody's job to move them. On working days, even at 6am, you can hear the M8 as a non-stop single breath.  There are lots of things we expected, and which we have: the ten minute bus ride to George Square, the restaurants round the corner, being able to get The Guardian.  There are other things, unexpectedly pleasing: being able to look east from the sitting room, across the all weather football pitch, and see the blue lights of police cars flashing along Cumbernauld Road: and beyond that the Hovis bakery with its windsock, and artics coming and ...