Book Review: The Black Ship

Lovers of period fiction will enjoy this entertaining novel, which once again features Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalrymple, the aristocratic and curious wife of Alec Fletcher, a Scotland Yard detective. Just days after Daisy, Alec and their baby twins move into a new house in London, their dog discovers a body in the communal garden.

Despite his reluctance to be involved in the investigation of a murder which will mean him questioning his new neighbours, Alec is assigned to the case. While he works through the official channels, all too soon Daisy is becoming far more involved than she would like with the Jessops - a family who are supplying alcohol to prohibition America. She also has to deal with a bumbling FBI agent, a mysterious and aggresive American visitor, a pair of nosy local residents who enjoy malicious gossip and an assortment of other characters, including a grumpy senior policeman!

I enjoyed this book. The author creates her period setting well, and her characters are well described and interesting. There's plenty of humour, some nice twists and turns in the story, and it all rolls along to a satisfying conclusion. Recommended.

More information can be found here.

Price: £6.99
ISBN: 9781845298661
Published by: Constable & Robinson
Available through any good bookshop or online

A Novice Bell Ringer Goes to Toronto

I've been learning to ring church bells for just over a year now. That means in about 40 years time I might have got the knack. For those who are 'in the club', I am at the stage of ringing Plain Hunt, Bob Doubles (sometimes fairly reasonably) and Grandsire Doubles (on a bit of a wing and a prayer).

It's interesting ringing in other towers, so when I made plans to visit Canada I sent off an email to The Cathedral Church of St James saying I would love to visit their tower, and they very kindly said 'come along'.

There were a couple of significant factors which I perhaps should have been more wary of, the main one being that St James' bells are hung one hundred feet up in the tower and spire and their ropes fall 60ft to the ringing chamber! My home church of All Saints, Faringdon lost its spire during the civil war, and has a rather squat tower. So our bells are only one floor up from the ringing chamber.

Those extra 40ft or so of rope make a big difference to handling the bells as I soon discovered!

After the morning service at the cathedral I introduced myself to the people in the ringing chamber and was almost immediately asked to catch hold and ring. My first effort wasn't good. My second attempt was worse..

Luckily I had said right up front that I was a novice! Happily for me there were some very gracious folk there who didn't say they'd rather I went away at once and left them in peace! In fact they kindly invited me to come along to their practice night the next evening. And to their bell handling practice night on the Wednesday following. So I went along to both, and learned a lot. Some of the things I learned (or was reminded of!) were:

* That 'long straight pulls' mean having to stretch and really reach at the top of the pull.
* That (especially on long ropes) the pull should get faster as you go through, because the bell swings faster as it goes through the turns.
* I learned not to over-pull. This was tricky as I didn't really understand what was meant by it at first. Basically it means don't pull too hard - but maintain the tension in the rope to avoid snaking. Oh yes, and keep on making 'long straight pulls' at the same time!
* And I did quite a bit of practicing pulling a bell off (in two stages) and then immediately setting it at backstroke. On their tiny light treble the difficulty was not bouncing it off the stay! On their heavier bells the major effort was pulling the bell off in a controlled manner to begin with!

I really enjoyed the practice sessions, which made a massive difference to my ability and to my confidence, and I'm sure that what I learned in Toronto will help me in my ringing in the UK. I'm extremely grateful to the ringers of St James, and especially to Nick and Madeleine Cheesmen who were especially kind to me and very generous with their time and patience. I hope to be able to visit Toronto again before too long, and once again ring the bells there. Perhaps slightly less atrociously next time - and perhaps I'll start off with the practice night and not the Sunday ringing!

As a footnote, St James' bells are known as "The Bells of Old York" and are rung by members of The St. James' Cathedral Guild of Change Ringers. Anecdotal tales tell that some of the metal used in the bells came from canons melted down after the Battle of Waterloo. There is a very interesting page about the tower on the cathedral website, as well as a separate page on The Cathedral Guild of Change Ringers on which there are several photographs which give a very good representation of the length of the ropes!

Today I've been ringing All Saints' bells half-muffled for a funeral. I'm very sorry for those saying goodbye to a loved one so close to Christmas when everyone else seems to be partying and celebrating, so I was glad to be able to show respect for them by ringing. With 400 years of tradition behind English change-ringing, there is a real sense of marking the seasons, celebrations, joys and tragedies of life.

On Christmas morning the bells will be ringing in celebration, but today, half muffled, they sounded solomn and dignified. The marking of the passing of someone much loved. Yet although subdued by the muffles the sound was not the mournful clang of a bell tolling, but rather the simply rung eight bell musical acknowledgement of a life lived, and the legacy left behind among family and friends.

On Show At: The Tourist Information Centre, Faringdon

During November I am the 'featured artist' in the local tourist information centre. If you're in the area please pay a visit and take a look at some of my work. As well as mounted prints I've included some 'desk pictures' (stand supported acrylic prints) and for the first time some pictures printed on metal. The metal images are quite striking (if I may say so!) and are all black and white this time around. I really like these first few I've had made so will undoubtedly order some more. Perhaps in colour next time! They are extremely robust, useable in kitchens and bathrooms, and even in gardens if not in full sunlight, and they are very contemporary. They're also surprisingly lightweight and easy to hang. I may order one for my own bathroom... The four on display are all local scenes.

If you need further incentives to visit, the TIC now has a full range of charity christmas cards available, along with 2011 calendars, and all the usual local information. You will undoubtedly also get, free of charge, a warm welcome from the friendly staff there!

Tornado Watch. Or: What a Difference a Day Makes

This week has been about work and weather. I've been in Grand Rapids, Michigan, attending a conference. I come regularly and enjoy meeting up with my US colleagues. Because I'm carrying work kit, there's rarely room for much camera gear, so on this trip I had just my Panasonic DMC-TZ6. And even that pocket camera ended up not being with me when I could have used it!

At the start of the week the news was full of severe weather warnings. The worst storm for 70 years was forecast to be coming through on Tuesday - the day of the conference. Boy, did it arrive! The rain became heavier and heavier and increasingly audible even in our windowless conference room, and you could hear the wind roaring.

Halfway through Tuesday morning's sales presentation, the tornado warning sirens went off..

Now as a Brit, this is something I've never experienced before and it did spike my adrenaline a bit as we were all evacuated to the conference centre's basement. Unfortunately as it has always been drilled into me to evacuate without taking anything with you, I left my camera upstairs in my case. Which was a pity as there were some rather good photo opportunities as people tried to work on in the basement.

Still, photographers (like fishermen) frequently refer to 'the ones that got away'... and I was there to work rather than photograph. Work on we did - the sales conference schedule was not going to be flattened by a tornado warning! So we all 'kept calm and carried on', with a great on-the-fly-and-who-needs-modern-technology-anyway presentation of the next set of books with visuals of the book covers shown by using the new catalogue. A bit smaller than the powerpoint presentation upstairs, but it got the information across.

Forty minutes later we all trooped back upstairs. (I must admit that I did look to see if all the cars parked out front were still there!) Ten minutes after that we went through the whole process a second time when the sirens went off again. Despite all the disruption, the conference ran to time, which I thought was pretty impressive.

By the time we finished the rain had eased, though the wind was still incredible. From the shelter of my (rocking) car, I took a grab shot of the amazing threatening sky. You can just about see the outline of the cars at the bottom of the picture. I missed my SLR's manual settings at this point - the general light level wasn't quite this dark - but I think the picture I've got does represent the atmosphere of the day rather well, even if it's not as good as it could be. (Bearing in mind too that this is the picture 'straight out of the camera' with no tweaking or tinkering whatsoever.)

I heard the following day that a funnel cloud was seen at Grand Rapids airport, which is only a few miles away from the conference centre, but most local damage seemed to be to power lines and small things like signs.

By Wednesday morning the worst of the weather had gone through, leaving very strong winds following. The power went out (again) at the offices I was visiting, but not for too long. Though the traffic lights going out for most of the day on one of the major intersections meant some very lengthy traffic queues which I accidentally ended up in! It was quite literally hard work to walk into the wind, and my car door was snatched out of my hand and slammed. But the black clouds of the previous day had been utterly blown away. This picture was taken about 18 hours after the last. Apart from the storm force winds, it was hard to imagine the tornado warnings and torrential rains of the previous day.

These photographs are not among the best I've taken. I didn't take very many, and they were taken on a camera which perhaps isn't best suited for extremes. Nonetheless, there are times when the pictures you are taking are about personal memories, not pictorial perfection. In photography, as in many other things, there is infinite diversity. And that's one of the things which keeps it so interesting.

A Spitfire, Some Grapes and a Folly

Today I decided to take my camera and walk a route I frequently run. It took me at least ten times longer to walk one stretch of path than it normally takes me to run it, owing to periods of 'stopping and staring' as well as stopping to take photos.

As I was strolling along contentedly, I suddenly heard an engine. An aircraft engine. Not just any old engine though - this was a Merlin engine. A Merlin has a completely distinctive sound. A Merlin means that something special is in the vicinity. So I rushed out from the hedges to where I could get a clear view and saw - a spitfire! It streaked across the sky in the distance while I struggled to get near it with the medium zoom on my camera, all the while thinking 'please come this way!' (as if you can somehow send a telepathic message to an aeroplane).

Telepathy or no, it shot across the valley right in front of me, made a wide turn and came roaring back, before doing a roll which caught the sun on it's wings, and then disappearing out of sight. The sound of that fabulous engine faded away and I was left peering at the screen on the back on my camera, trying to see if I'd managed to get a single reasonable shot. The pictures I got certainly aren't great technically, but they will remind me of the moment when an ordinary Sunday walk turned into something exciting.

I would've been just as thrilled to see a spitfire even if I'd left my camera at home. If I had been running as I usually would have been at that time on a Sunday, I would have stopped to watch it. Some things are just worth taking time to enjoy - even without a camera!

Feeling very cheerful, ok to be truthful feeling rather 'hyped up' and restraining the urge to jump about and yell in a rather childish manner, I continued on my walk. After taking several of the sorts of pictures I'd set out to take (such as the one shown left of the local Folly) I walked back along a road I must have run along hundreds of times. At the edge of this unexciting country lane came the second surprise of my walk.

I've often noticed the shrubs growing up and over the stone wall which runs alongside the lane. Today I noticed the fruit. Grapes? Really? Yes, grapes! It really is the case that less than half a mile from my house is a vine, with ripening grapes growing just above the pavement.

I would have said that photography has made me look at things more closely, but perhaps that isn't always the case... Note to self: 'Could do better'! It just goes to show that you may come back with some photos you didn't expect the next time you set off for a walk with your camera!

I nearly didn't do this morning's walk at all. Just one decision made differently, and I would have missed so much more than a few photographs.

Book Review: Choosing to SEE

There are some books I talk about because it's my job. There are some I talk about because they are wonderful books. This is one of the latter. (Though in fact it is also one of the former!)

In Choosing to SEE Mary Beth Chapman talks very frankly and openly about her life's path, and the ways in which things didn't go to plan, despite the way everything looked on the outside. Her family has had to walk through a Grand Canyon sized valley of the shadow of death. Yet this book is not depressing. Sad, yes, but often joyous too. Sometimes I laughed and cried reading the same page. I found the chapter covering the meeting with their first adopted daughter deeply moving, and the love which is shown there clearly binds the family together during the dark days following Maria's death.

Their faith is inspirational - not least because Mary Beth is very honest about asking the hard questions which many of us run up against. Hers is not a 'champagne lifestyle' faith, but one which has been shaped by hard work and hard knocks. All in all I can't recommend this book highly enough. It's the best biography I've read in ages and ages.

Read it. You won't regret it.

More information, including sample chapters and an author video can be found here.

Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9780800719920
Published by: Revell (Distributed by Lion Hudson)
Available through any good bookshop or online