10 Years Old Today!

This photo blog is ten years old today. I published the first two posts on it on 8th February 2014. How time flies.

To celebrate, I am uploading ten photos, mostly from the archives, that all have something to do with the number ten or celebration (or, at least, how I like to celebrate).

A Random Photo From 2010

Because it's a celebration

10th Month of 2014

A10

Cake (from my 2015 Witchlight launch party) because it's a celebration

9+1=10 (from the countdown to the 2020 launch of Old Light)

Candles because it's a celebration

A photo from day 10 of my 2020 daily lockdown blog

Flowers, because you have to have flowers when it's a celebration

A photo from the first photo-post on
8th February 2014

Landscapes

Landscapes

 

This is the landscape of others' daydreams

dinner plate flat and domesticated like a tablecloth.

 It’s too predictable to be perfectly safe.

 Small ducks paddle in its bilges

                                                      and moorhens waddle pond-toed

                 over the flat green baize of the water weed.

                Landside and the green is pruned and manicured

                to tidy perfection.

                Even its countryside is disciplined.

                an ordered game of chess played out

                on clearly delineated fields

                with rolled hay-bales for pawns.

                Let your imagination stroll off

                and it will return

                appropriately and impeccably chaperoned.

                                                     There is no chance of inadvertently

                                                      stumbling on where the wild things are.

God forbid there should be wild things.

 

This was your land

though I never saw it.

I thought you were with me

chasing the swallow's tail to the next new horizon

when all you wanted was to play hide-and-seek

                                                        in the not so long grass;

                                                      the extent of the wilderness you hankered for.

While you came and went

my eyes hungrily followed     not you

but the buzzard on its way to the high places.

My ears dreamt of the wind's drum beat

and the sea moaning for the rock heavy coast.

I climbed moorland and mountains in my sleep

but when I came down again

                                                       you were not there.

I had lost you to the hay stack fields,

playing hide-and-seek with reality:

our landscapes sundered without us noticing.

Go feed the ducks

they will need looking after.

"Landscapes" is published in the poetry pamphlet "The Submerged Sea"

by J.S.Watts

Dempsey & Windle (2018) ISBN 9781907435591

©J.S.Watts

Covering All Titles

As it's a new year, I've finally got around to updating my website and other social media images to include Underword (my most recent poetry collection, published at the end of 2022 - and yes I realise it's taken me a whole year to update things: procrastination is my super power).

As ever, the process is always more complicated than I expect. 

First, I take multiple photographs. Then I whittle them down to the ones I like best. Then I have to pick one that works for the website layout, deal with what ever update changes the hosting platform has introduced since I last updated the infrastructure and upload my chosen photo. This in itself can take a long time and the photo that appears to work best is not always my favourite.

To complicate matters still further, the image that works on the website, doesn't always work for Facebook, or YouTube, or... You get the picture (or rather pictures).

I therefore have to repeat the process for every media site that I update.

Anyway, it's now done for 2024. To give you a flavour of the process and the choices it involves, here are some photos that I've used for this year's makeover.

Looking Forward - Looking Back 10 Years!

January 2023

So, another year, another start-the-year blog post. Except, this time round, as promised last January, it has to be a bit special. I started this primarily photographic blog ten years ago (or it will be ten years come February, because my first ever post was Saturday, 8^th February 2014).

So, another year and now a 10th Anniversary blog post. Who’d have thought? Well, I certainly didn’t back in February 2014. Indeed, I worried whether the blog would make it through 2014. If truth be told, last year I wondered whether I’d make it through 2023. I only managed ten posts last year – the lowest level of posting in the ten years this blog has been running. “Why was that?” you ask.

February 2023

Well, actually, you probably don’t, because, let’s face it, this blog and its owner don’t exactly have influencer status, which may be one of the reasons I felt, last year, that both I and the blog were running out of steam. I also had a lot of “stuff” going on and, whilst I was still taking photos, many of last year’s photos were phone pics. The pics made it on to my personal Facebook page, but few were posted here because, well, you know, quality.

 

So, as this is a post in which I look back and look forward. I’m going to make a thing of 2023’s phone pics. On and around the text of this post you will find twelve photographs taken on my phone in 2023, one for every month of the year just gone. The link going forward is that I undertake to post at least twelve posts in 2024, one for every month of the year to come. I may post more, who knows? I certainly don’t. You can, however, expect to find a post for each month of 2024. There will, hopefully, be new photos, but there may also be photos from the archives. It’s going to be a proper ten-year anniversary celebration.

 

March 2023

As they say, watch this space...

April 2023

May 2023

June 2023

July 2023

                                                                                                         

August 2023

September 2023

October 2023

November 2023

December 2023

A Wet Weekend in Wales

It seems that a lot of my times away this year have been exceedingly wet. For example, there was Kelmscott on a Rainy July Weekend and now there has been an exceedingly wet weekend in Wales.

This post is very much a diary of my brief rambles between the rain drops. I won't claim the photographs to be worthy of anything beyond diary entries. Some were taken on my camera, but some were taken on my phone and none of them are technically brilliant or artistically outstanding. They are, however, what I saw in this small corner of rural Monmouthshire at the beginning of November 2023.

For those looking for greater specificity in terms of my location, the above photo is of the Holy Cross Church, Kilgwrrwg seen through a rain splashed window. 

The photo below (taken on an iPhone, but not mine as I don't own one and so with thanks to its owner and the photographer of the picture) is of yours truly, in Chepstow one evening after dark, with Chepstow Castle illuminated in the background.

A Summer Day in Autumn

It's definitely autumn. It's Sunday, 8th October. But, with apologies to Keats, this is no ode to fruitful mists and mellow suns. In fact, with bright sunshine and temperatures in the mid-twenties, if feels like a glorious summer day.

I'm in a light summer skirt, top and sandals. Butterflies are flaunting their gorgeously rich summer colours. Insects are busily out in force and the leaves are barely starting to change colour.

It's more summery than when I last posted here in July.

The horse chestnuts, though, are trying to say something different.

To be honest, though, I'm still not sure whether summer is coming or going.