Remain ‘Ere: Lockdown 2020
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This picture was sent to us from Lithuania, where everyone has to wear a face mask whenever they go outside.
13/4 Sydenham
On our “permitted exercise” walk this afternoon we spotted some bluebells looking rather splendid in a back alley. We can’t go into the bluebell woods this year, so we have to make the most of what we find.
14/4 Sydenham
Bee. The cherry blossom is spectacular this year and the bees have just started coming out too. They were enjoying it this afternoon.
Bee.
See?
15/4 Catford
For the first time a location which is not the same as all the previous ones. This time spotted on a walk through Ladywell Fields in Catford.
Last week I started the Couch To 5K training programme. It claims to get you running 5 kilometres comfortably in just 9 weeks from a very low starting point. Four sessions in and so far so good.
17/4 Sydenham
It’s just about time for the decorations to come down. Shame. Back in your box, little chick in a watering can...
It was lovely to see a wild flower meadow in full bloom whilst out on our permitted exercise.
You need to be careful on your permitted daily exercise round abouts. “It’s à jungle out there”.
19/4 Sydenham
Sunday Funday. It was sunny and not too windy in the garden, so time to get out a few bits for some photography fun. Just sunlight and a garden bench for these, no flash required. “Lemon with that Sir?”.
The trick is to have plastic “glasses” and glass “ice cubes” plus a bit of ink to colour the water. That way nothing gets broken and no tasty liquids are wasted.
A silver background this time.
Balance a Ping Pong ball on top of a bottle filled with water. Squeeze bottle hard. Take photo. Sometimes it works.
Top Life!
How fitting... This is the April picture on our Edward Hopper calendar. It is titled “Summer in the City” and looks like a lot of people are feeling right now.
On the last three evenings we have started reliving our Where Nexxo tours by connecting the computer to the television and following ourselves on our trips. Today we went to southern Spain having found a tin of Mejillones (Spanish mussels) in the cupboard. Not to be outdone, there were also some stuffed vine leaves we had saved from Christmas to make the journey even more European.
22/4 Sydenham
A BTS* of the ice cubes and glasses shoot from the other day. Black background, white tile, spirit level, garden bench, camera, tripod, all sorted, *BTS = Behind The Scenes
And following our walk to see the flowers in the park the other day, here is the garden equivalent. The azalea and rhododendron are looking pretty spectacular at home too.
23/4 Sydenham
The wisteria is now in its third year and is doing us proud. It has climbed over the top of the arch and looks and smells wonderful
A bit more camera fun in the garden today. This time with sparkling water. It took some working out as the fruit slice floated to the top as the bubbles formed on it. A couple of metal nuts tied to the bottom held it down. Then it took more trial and error to find out which way to shoot. But finally with the sun high up and behind, it all came together.
Much easier to tape some coloured pencils together and clamp them in place. Let the bubbles do the work!
24/4 Sydenham
There is so much more green in the garden compared to the same shot on 5th April, just over three weeks ago
Our bluebell grove may be small but it still brings joy
25/4 Sydenham
It is three years since the CO-OP store close on Sydenham High Street. The fixtures and fittings remained and it sat all that time with the lights on. Now Extinction Rebellion have taken it over.
It looks as though it has been sanctioned rather than done by force. So welcome to the New World.
26/4 Sydenham
A tale of a pigtail. This is a pigtail and it connects a gas bottle with the pressure regulator in the campingcar. Every one is dated and has to be replaced when it’s time is up. This one is dated 2020 and so has now been retired and a new one is in the gas compartment in its place. Oh, and the reversing camera has been fixed too.
The bluebells in the garden can look quite different when photographed with the big camera and lit by a shaving mirror reflecting the sun onto them!
27/4 Sydenham
Our permitted daily exercise took us round Sydenham Wells Park. There weren’t too many people out and about. The bluebells there are rather special in pink and white as well as blue.
There was also just one parakeet, which was perched at the top of a tall tree, slowly dismembering it to find some tasty titbits
28/4 Sydenham
The dinosaurs are back, but not thanks to time travel! This is one of the Victorian versions of dinosaurs which inhabit Crystal Palace Park. As you can see by the splashes on the lake this morning’s run was rather a damp one
Neither ‘Monarch of The Glen’ nor one of the stags in Richmond Park, this is another of the statues in the park. How spectacular.
One of the topical things to do is to join virtual meetings using Zoom. This is a presentation by a photographer based in north Norfolk to a group of photographers based around Croydon. At this point there were 46 people looking at his photos of people walking past a white wall in Norwich. His project involved posting one picture every day for a year taken from the same place of the same thing. And he showed them all....
29/4 Sydenham
Not actually from the right day but in the absence of anything happening at home, here is a picture of the dinosaurs in the park. They aren’t obeying the social distancing rules though, unlike the Canada geese.
30/4 Sydenham
The times we live in.
Last night I watched a presentation of photography on my computer. It was was run by the USA branch of a German camera manufacturer featuring the work of a British photographer in London. It was hosted by someone in New York and the interviewer was in Boston. People came from all over the world to watch, comment and ask questions. Most were from the USA but other were from South America, Singapore, Hong Kong, London and Ledbury.
1/5 Sydenham
Sydenham is famous.
This is one of 12 pictures that Camille Pissarro painted while in self-imposed exile in London from 1870 to 1871 during the Franco-Prussian war. The Avenue was a wide, tree-lined street in Sydenham, a fashionable semi-rural suburb near Crystal Palace in south London. The location can be identified today as Lawrie Park Avenue with the church of Saint Bartholomew, built in 1832, in the distance. This springtime scene would have been painted in April or May 1871, shortly before Pissarro’s return to France.
The house next door but one to the church was once the home of Sir George Grove who wrote Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, a standard textbook. He is also well known for arranging a series of concerts at The Crystal Palace and his friendship with Arthur Sullivan.
This is the house next door to the church. Ernest Shackleton lived in Sydenham for most of his life and went to school at nearby Dulwich College. The small boat he famously used to escape from Elephant Island when his ship Endurance was crushed by ice is now housed at the school.
And today the same scene exists virtually unchanged. It is possible to see how much artistic license was used in making the church fit the picture by increasing the height of the tower for example.
