Pig Sty Avenue

A Hasselblad C/M. And colour developing. And home enlarging, (Number One Daughter told me yesterday that she'd bought a load of darkroom equipment, including a good enlarger, from someone who went digital. She's never used it and will pass it on to me). This is the way to go: serious, high quality portraits, indoors with the Hasselblad, outdoors with the Leica. Make the prints, get them framed, put them on the wall or give them to family and friends as presents. Voila! Everything I've ever blogged or even thought about photography has been leading to this conclusion: unique images hanging on a wall. All of the online photo-sharing fandango is so much frivolity.

Woman aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, Calif. Shown checking electrical assemblies (LOC) , originally uploaded by The Library of Congress . From the Library of Congress photo collection on Flickr. Try getting that colour with a digital sensor. But click on it and read the comments and remember the maxim: If you don't have anything useful to say, shut the fuck up.

I notice that the Albert Kahn account on Flickr has been shut down, which means that this post looks somewhat bereft, (broken links: internet alzheimer's). So here are some other autochromes from Flickr to make up for the loss. And here's a post at a blog called The Blue Lantern, all about the Mademoiselles Mespoulet and Mignon.

Wenger's probably the PL's best whinger . However, one does live in a fucking glass house and shouldn't perhaps throw too many stones...

To all the Avenue's readers. And to the crew of The Antarctic , which has been at anchor in Irvine Bay since Christmas Eve.

, originally uploaded by beebo wallace . In a pub in London.

This was quite something into the early 80s. So far as I know, it dated back to the times of full employment and when most working class men on Tyneside were employed in shipbuilding or other heavy industry. It was a kind of party for men who "balled up", left work at midday, on Christmas Eve. It became institutionalized a bit when working men's clubs started to put on a buffet, a blue comedian and a couple of strippers. Looking back, it was part of an oral culture - you'd never see a sign advertising a ballers' balls. Instead, you'd arrange it with your mates and male relatives a day or two before, and it was always dependent on your being able to get away from work, which in those days depended on the system of the "pass out" and an amenable foreman. I'm not sure about the etymology, or even, frankly, the spelling. It could be bowlers' , I seem to remember some people pronouncing it that way. According to the OED, a baller is one who a...