Stephen Chipchase

The Golden Hour

Sunrise was at 4.54 am. I rolled out of bed, pulled on some jeans and a short sleeved shirt. On impulse I pulled on my walking boots, grabbed my camera and headed out. I pulled into the carpark at Whitesheet a few minutes later, parked up and set off on a short walk to the heathland.

The light was still quite poor and there was considerable cloud cover. I had to set the ISO at 12,800 initially, to ensure a fast enough shutter speed to capture sharp images of moving wild life. After an hour all I had been able to photograph was a distant stonechat and linnet. The light was improving and I lowered my ISO to 6,400 without suffering a deterioration in shutter speed.

I was beginning to think that this was going to be one of those unproductive sessions. My wildlife photography can be like that. In those instances all you can do is write it off to experience. But then it occurred; a moment of serendipity when by being in the right place, the right moment came along. Nearly two hours after setting foot on the heath.

I was aware of movement in the bush next to me and a lot of twittering. I waited patiently. Finally after several minutes not one, but two Dartford Warblers appeared. They moved about constantly in and out of shot, but they didn’t fly off and weren’t spooked by my presence.

At 7.07am I pulled back into my driveway. The house was still quiet. I fed the dog and the cat, made myself a cup of coffee and a bowl of muesli and downloaded the shots from my old-fashioned DSLR to my laptop. These are a few of the pics:

Although skittish, the dartford warbler held its pose just long enough

Sub zero and amber warnings

The temperature dropped this week. I went to scrape the ice off the car. I started the engine and noted that the external temperature was -6 degrees centigrade. It was sunny, but very cold. The car’s gearbox was frozen and at first, I was unable to put the car in gear. Eventually it thawed out sufficiently and I headed to Holt Heath, a local area of Dorset heathland managed by the National Trust, to take Pippin for his walk.

The sun was low in the clear blue sky casting long shadows. I was wearing four layers of clothing, good sturdy walking boots, a thick woollen hat pulled down over my ears, and thick gloves. I also had my camera with me. Despite the cold the birdlife was quite active, more active it appeared than previous weeks when the weather was more temperate. There were several Robins at the carpark and in the woodland. I could hear a couple of woodpeckers tapping tree trunks, and then I could see them chasing each other through the canopy. Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn’t get a clean shot. The birds moved so quickly and the autofocus would get distracted by all the foliage and branches. From the colours I glimpsed, I think they were Greater spotted woodpeckers.

When we got out onto the heathland, I could see the unmistakeable outline of a buzzard perched in a denuded deciduous tree. The sun was to my right, at ‘about 3 o’clock’. It was about 200-300 yards away. I could just make out a slight head movement as I viewed it through my telephoto lens, scanning its surroundings. The footpath I was on passed the buzzard on the left, so as I progressed, the sun was increasingly angled behind bird. It didn’t appear disturbed either by Pippin running back and forth along the path, or by me as I pointed my camera lens at it. But then it got spooked and took to the air. It glided with the occasional flapping of its extended wings over the heathland toward the treeline on the horizon, and then it was gone.

We got to see Stonechats and Dartford Warblers. Both these species like to perch on top of gorse bushes and flit around. Sometimes they are visible taking a prominent position, then they drop to the ground out of sight before rising again. I have my camera to Aperture priority of between F8 and F10 when photographing wildlife. Then I push the ISO up to between 400 and 800 in good light like today. This results in a shutter speed high enough to freeze movement enough to get a sharp image. The only adjustment I make for each shot is the exposure compensation. For a bird against a bright sky, I push the exposure compensation up to between 1 or 2 stops, just enough to brighten the image without blowing the light background through the highlights.

Seeing Stonechats didn’t surprise me, but the Dartford Warblers were unexpected. I don’t normally see them at this time of year, even though they are resident all year round. My quest was not made any easier by Pippin’s presence. He is a young, energetic, skittish, Springer Spaniel. At one point I had lined up to take a shot of a Dartford Warbler sitting on a gorse bush. The light was perfect, and I was slowly stalking the bird to get as close as possible without spooking it. Just then a black and white bundle of energy charged past me crashing through the heath causing all wildlife, including my Dartford Warbler, to flee. I was livid as Pippin returned to me, tail wagging, tongue lolling out of what appeared to be a broadly smiling mouth.

I walked on a little further and met another photographer out with his dog, a black labrador. We chatted about the respective merits of each other’s cameras. He had a rather nice compact mirrorless camera with a telephoto lens of 18mm – 150mm. It was much easier to carry around than my bulky full frame DSLR with a 100mm – 400mm lens, but it didn’t have quite the reach for wildlife. I also think the battery life of the DSLR was better than the mirrorless. We were approaching mid-day and he felt that he had missed the best of the light. We exchanged information on possible photo ops on the way back to the car park and carried on, on our respective paths. It was interesting to meet another photographer and share different perspectives. Different equipment is interesting, but the conversation just made me feel again that it is photographers who take photos not cameras. The equipment simply records the photographer’s vision.

I will return to this location, without Pippin, but I’m not sure when. We are promised milder temperatures, but there is also a yellow weather warning (recently upgraded to amber) in place for the next couple of days as Storm Isha is on the way with winds of up to 80mph. The country is bracing itself for more floods and property damage. The ground is already water-logged and the prospect of more rain and high winds is quite concerning.

Added to the threat from Storm Isha I discovered a probable mains water leak this morning just outside my front drive. Fortunately, it is draining away from our property, but our front lawn is getting quite soggy. I have reported the leak to the water authority, and they have promised a response, but the timing isn’t great.

Winter Watch returned to our TV screens this past week. The BBC team were located at Arne on the south-west edge of Poole Harbour. It’s about 20 miles from home by road, but only about 12-13 miles as the crow flies. It’s good to see such mainstream interest in a local RSPB site, but it is probably a mixed blessing. I can imagine that visitor numbers to the site will increase because of the increased publicity. The road from Wareham to the Arne car park is 3-4 miles along a single-track road with occasional laybys for passing places. I didn’t see much of the coverage, but there was a piece on the successful reintroduction of the White-tailed eagle. It’s a huge bird, colloquially referred to as a flying barn door because of its size. A buzzard’s full wingspan is just one wing length of the White-tailed eagle. I haven’t seen one yet, but there has been a lot of excitement generated by its reintroduction in recent years.

Whilst visitor numbers will increase at Arne, it remains to be seen whether other local sites such as Holt Heath will also see an increased footfall. Holt has a mixture of woodland and heathland but is inland. It is primarily used by dog walkers, but there is some cattle grazing and horse riding. During spring and early summer, the heathland has nesting birds such as skylarks and so dog walkers are under instructions to keep their dogs on a lead and under close control during the months that nesting takes place.

I anticipate not being quite so active over the next few days as we batten down the hatches. I have enjoyed getting out this last week. The colder weather brought its challenges, but the brighter crisper weather did improve the light quality for photography and brought out the birdlife more than the recent wet weather. Hopefully, Storm Isha will pass quickly. I will be giving time to some of my indoor projects.

The archiving of old family photos is progressing well. I found an old studio photo of me from 1962 or 1963, which I am now using as my Facebook profile picture. I should be able to make quite a bit of progress whilst Storm Isha rages outside.

I will also give a bit of time to improving the look of the Tuba I am playing in the brass band. It is a silver instrument, and the silver is tarnished in places. I’ve used a mixture of bicarbonate of soda and water to get rid of some of the tarnishing. I also gave it a bath to clean it up. There are a couple of dents which it would be nice to get sorted, but they don’t affect the sound. I’ve ordered some silver cream, which is recommended by the manufacturer to restore the silver to its original condition.

Welcome

I volunteered to cook Christmas dinner this year. This news was met with a mixture of incredulity and disbelief from the ten guests. My son-in-law was convinced that timings would go awry and that we would be sitting down for lunch quite late in the day. Quite honestly, I had no track record to disprove his belief. Far from it. This was the first time in living memory that I had taken on this task. And here I was attempting a solo endeavour.

My preparations consisted mainly in binge watching previous episodes of MasterChef. This was not as daft as it sounds. As the contestants went through various rounds you could see who was going to get through and who would fail. There were a few generic reasons that people failed. The key one in my eyes was failing to prepare and plan properly. The objective of most exercises was to deliver a hot plate of food and for all the components to come together at the same time. How hard could it be?

I grabbed my notebook and scribbled down the ingredients and how long it would take to prepare and cook each part. Then I set myself the time that I would be plating up. With each ingredient I then worked back to set the time that I would need to start preparing it. I kicked off first with Mary Berry’s recipe for red cabbage. It needed 4 hours cooking time, with about 15-20 minutes additional preparation time. Each component then got prepared at the appropriate time. It was like a military operation. I even had time to pop along to an early morning communion service at church.

To everyone’s surprise, not least mine, we were sitting down to Christmas lunch on time. The presentation was nowhere near MasterChef standard, but the process worked, and everything was on the plate and at a reasonable temperature. Having said all that, the effort wasn’t really a solo exercise. Jacki’s input was essential. With all the experience she has, she was very involved with the planning and kept a monitoring eye on proceedings. As I was scratching my head trying to figure out how to get everything in the oven, she dropped in the suggestion to use the slow cooker for the red cabbage. She also prepared and served the starter.

Another Christmas present I received (see last week’s blog) was a recipe book of 500 Casserole Dishes. Page 240 had a recipe for leftover turkey casserole. So, guess what we were eating on Boxing Day. It was quick and easy, but tasty.

One of our values as a family is hospitality. Φιλοζενια (Philoxenia) literally means love for strangers. Romans 12 verse 13 says that to live out our Christian faith we should be ‘given to hospitality’. The word he uses is Philoxenia.

My Mum and Dad were very good at this, and we often had many people for Sunday lunch. To be honest, we are not as good as we want to be. But it is an aspiration that we do better. I have had an apron made up with the Greek word emblazoned across the chest, as a reminder of the value. I can recall being on the receiving end of other people’s hospitality and it really is a blessing.

Getting back into routine after the Christmas festivities is hard. I’m not sure that new year resolutions work for me. Its just not how things are achieved. Its good to have dreams and aspirations, but concrete steps are required. I might want to play a musical instrument or speak a foreign language, but if I don’t build a plan to gain the skill and regularly invest time in practising, it’s not going to happen. And that’s where its hard. Establishing the right routines and activities requires commitment and self-discipline.

Involving others is a good way to get motivated. Over the Christmas period I had a couple of times when I met up with my old brass band, to play carols with them. I have now rejoined them for regular weekly practise after a hiatus of 5 or 6 years. There were nine of us this last week, and we had two hours of solid practise. It was great meeting up with both old friends and new players. There were two of us on Eb Bass, two cornets, two euphoniums, a baritone, a tenor horn and a trombone. We played a mixture of hymns and marches followed by a cornet duet called Spanish Fiesta by Donald Phillips, which has been arranged for brass band by Darrol Barry. Black Dyke Band have made a definitive recording of it on YouTube if you are interested. It cracks along at 140-144 beats per minute and our two cornets made a pretty good fist of it. Their close harmony worked well, and the other members of the band applauded their performance at the end. We finished with A Cambrian Suite, which starts with the tune played by the Basses, so no pressure there.

Gratitude is another motivating force. Last year gratitude got me around a half marathon course, and I lost a stone in weight. Jacki’s recovery is ongoing. Gradually her strength and stamina are recovering, and I continue to be grateful and believe that she will see a full recovery. On impulse I entered next October’s Bournemouth half marathon soon after completing last year’s race. I only gave myself 8 week’s preparation time last year and was overweight and unfit when I started training. If I start training in mid-July and keep reasonably fit in the meantime, I should be able to improve on my 2023 time – we’ll see.

Every morning I jot down 3 things in my journal of things I am grateful for. Being able to write this blog is one thing that has regularly featured in my list. I enjoy the writing. It can be a struggle to start writing the next blog having just posted an update on a Monday, but it has been a catalyst for conversations and has clarified my thinking in areas which may have been a little vague.

Hope is a powerful motivator. Not wishful thinking, but a certain hope. We live in a messed-up world, full of injustice, suffering and pain. It doesn’t require more than a cursory glance at a newspaper or news website to see examples of how widespread this is. But hope grounded in the character of God, the promises in his word and the historical death and resurrection of Jesus brings transformation.

And finally, getting outdoors is good for one’s mental health. I remember once carrying out a six-month assignment for an insurance company in London. The office was in a basement and there was no external light. It must have been late 2001, because I remember the extraordinary events at round about lunchtime on September 11^th. Much has been said and written on that topic. I don’t wish to add anything, but merely use the event to identify how I know where I was. During the following winter months, it was possible to go from one day to the next without seeing the sun, unless I made a point of popping out for a lunchtime walk.

These last few weeks I haven’t got out as much as I would like. Pippin needs his walks, so we had to pop out for that but otherwise the rain and cold have made it particularly uninviting prospect. I was absolutely delighted this week when writing this blog when I noticed a movement in the bush just outside the window next to me. I grabbed my camera, which fortunately was close by and had the telephoto lens attached. I had seen robins and blackbirds earlier, but this was smaller. Possibly a blue tit? No, smaller still. A goldcrest flitting from one branch to another. I got just one or two shots through the grubby window, before it flew off, leaving me with a photo and a smile on my face.

Jigsaw and Archive Project

One of my favourite Christmas presents was a 500-piece jigsaw. The picture was a colourful scene of a Devon town in the mid-1960s. There are various vehicles from that era in the foreground and centre: a red e-type Jaguar, a 2-tone blue Ford consul, a green Austin A35, a white and blue Hillman Minx, a black Morris 1100. I had hours of fun putting it together. The focus and concentration required was quite therapeutic. I was given it by family and so they were happy to leave me to work on it, occasionally coming to check on my progress. It was obvious where some pieces went, for example the vibrant red had to be part of the e-type. Other pieces were more challenging. The road had shadows but other than that was a uniform light grey and there was a lot of it. The only way I was able to figure out where each piece went was by their shape. It was so absorbing. After putting the boys to bed, I would return to the puzzle and keep at it until 1 o’clock in the morning, by which time I had broken the back of it. The following morning, I resumed my task and felt a huge sense of achievement when I put final piece in place. I took a photo and then after admiring my handiwork for about 20 minutes, I broke it up and put it back in its box, ready to be put together again at some point in the future.

I have taken on a slightly larger project. Dad has passed me all his old photos and slides. Some of the earliest ones must date back to the 1880s. There are two large albums and two boxes of slides. The project is to scan the photos into a digital format, repair the scratches and creases using a clone tool in my photography software and then add tags to each image, effectively recording all the handwritten notes written on the back of the photos.

I have taken the slides to a local photography shop that specialises in scanning and repairing old slides, but I have chosen to scan the photographs with my own printer/scanner. I have set the resolution to 1,200 dpi, which is the maximum my printer works at and not far off the 1,400 dpi resolution that the photography shop will be using for the slides. Most of the early photos are black and white, with colour becoming more prevalent for images from the 1960s and onwards.

There are some handwritten notes to aid identification. I also have a family tree going back about five or six generations. There are some names which recur from generation to generation. My great, great grandparents were William and Frances. These names occur several times. There appears to be some family links to Australia. My great grandmother returned to England from Australia with two sone in the 1880s. Much later in the late 1950s my other grandmother travelled to Australia on the Arcadia to visit family in Sydney. There are a couple of photos of her entering a fancy dress competition on board as a glamourous granny.

Beyond the family links, I am enjoying the clothes and vehicles featured in the different ages. There are photos of very smart people wearing 3-piece suits for the men and elegant dresses for the women on what appear to be day trips to the beach. One distant great aunt appears riding on a four-wheel penny farthing, next to her husband, identified only as ‘the minister’. He has short hair, a long white beard, and is wearing a three-piece suit as he is about to climb onto his penny farthing. Even as late as the 1960s, there are photos of people doing menial tasks such as mowing the lawn in suits and ties. There is one photo of me on holiday in Devon wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a bow tie on steps next to the beach.

But it’s the cars from the 1960s and 1970s that I really love. There is one picture of me and two of my sisters, Jane and Linda, in August 1963. We are in the lower foreground of the photo, slightly out of focus, but posing and smiling at the camera. Behind us in almost perfect focus is our neighbour’s Ford Classic Capri. It is a beautiful car. The photo is black and white, but I remember the car. It was a stunning vivid red. I think if I had been taking the photo, I would have framed the composition in exactly the same way. Many years later my first car was a Ford Consul Classic, the four-door version of the Classic Capri. It was a wreck, but I loved it.

My own early transport features in the photos. In August 1963 I am seen in a black and white photo riding my tricycle. It had a boot/trunk a brake and a bell. I remember being able to take corners at speed whilst balancing the tricycle on two wheels and holding it there with just the slightest adjustment of the handlebars. A couple of years later I appear in a colour photoshoot following a trip to the local bike shop. I had graduated to two wheels: a gold and green Elswick Hopper with white grips on the handlebars and a white saddlebag. Jane had a slightly bigger blue bike; Linda had a slightly smaller blue and pink bike and Doug had a pedal car in the style of an American jeep.

We all tried to squeeze into the pedal car. We were pleased with our own bikes, but there was something cool and attractive about the jeep. Linda memorably took her blue and pink bike to the top of Caesar Road one Sunday afternoon to enjoy the sensation of speed as she descended the hill. Unfortunately, she hadn’t mastered the braking system. She picked up speed uncontrollably and could be heard screaming and calling for help as she approached the house. All down the hill men leapt out of their front gardens, dropping their gardening implements, attempting to reach Linda as she sped past them. I think Dad was the only one who made it and even he struggled to help her bring the bike under control before she reached the T junction with Fishponds Road. We have no photos of the event, but I do have a little cine reel in my head which is still quite vivid.

Once we got over the jeopardy of what might have been, the story became a treasured part of our shared family history, which we loved to retell. With each retelling, the hill got higher, the bike got faster, the number of men leaping from their gardens increased and Linda’s screams got louder.

These photos were all taken at 33 Caesar Road, Kenilworth. Over the following 10 years we moved from the Midlands to the South Coast and the bikes came with us. Eventually my Elswick Hopper was modified, losing first the chainguard and then the mudguards. I think it would have kept going forever, but I outgrew it. I am looking through the photos for my next bicycle, a Carlton International, but I can’t find one yet. It was a full-size racing bike, with drop handlebars and 5-gears. It was predominantly white, with green, fluorescent mudguards. It was a lovely bike and I used it regularly on my 8-mile school commute, even in rain when I would wear a yellow cape and sou’wester hat.

The archiving project is destined to take a few months as it needs to fit in around other activities. Scanning the photos one by one is slow, and then adding ‘tags’ to each image is quite painstaking. Not all the photos need repair, but some of the older ones need some cloning to remove dust spots and other imperfections caused by the passage of time. Some favourite photos have been handled quite a bit and so the cloning tool is needed to remove creases and scratches. Then there are the stories that emerge and the discussions that need to take place. There are finite boundaries to the immediate project, but I can imagine future activities of tracking down long-lost relatives in Australia. That is not for me, but if I complete this exercise, it will give others the opportunity to investigate further, if they wish to.

Getting Ready

As I write our Christmas preparations are running behind a little. We haven’t yet got the decorations up and are beginning to feel the pressure from neighbours who have had their houses covered with Christmas lights for a couple of weeks now. The Christmas season is enthusiastically embraced in our neighbourhood and many houses look like they belong on the film set of ‘Home Alone’. We braved the floods last Friday and headed out to a farm to buy our Christmas tree. The heavy rainfall has caused some roads to be impassable. The fire service has cautioned drivers not to risk driving through flooded roads, but quite honestly with time running short and my desire for a bargain, I did push through two or three flooded sections of road. I was fortunate. Others not so much. One driver had abandoned his car mid flood and will presumably return to recover his car once the water has subsided. The tree is now sitting on the back deck, waiting until I can get round to putting it in position. Alan Titchmarsh has advised his listeners on Classic FM that they need to saw a little off the bottom of the tree before putting it up, so I have added that little step to my growing list of outstanding jobs.

Also making it onto the list and elbowing its way almost to the top of both the ‘important’ and ‘urgent’ categories is to fix the washing machine, which decided to breakdown yesterday, just as we stripped all the beds for their weekly launder. We use our washing machine daily to clean the grubby garments of our two boys. Early teens and pre-teen boys. I don’t need to say more.

Ahead of the Christmas preparations and the washing machine emergency, one job was considered paramount by the management. Drilling four holes to enable four pictures to be hung in our lounge. Jacki has nearly finished redecorating the room and we are now into finishing touches. This job made it to the top of my to-do list because of who was asking. Personally, I feel it could have waited, but we celebrated our 43^rd anniversary this week and I would like to celebrate a 44^th next year.

The job was made trickier as although I could locate my drill, the drill bits have disappeared off the face of the earth. Can’t find them anywhere: toolbox, shed, hall cupboards, where I last used them. The urgency of the task required an immediate solution, so I popped out to the local hardware store. I hadn’t driven more than a few hundred yards when I was confronted by another flooded road. Yet again I ignored the fire service advice and pressed on.

I am happy to report that all four pictures are up! I am waiting for Jacki to return, from a friend with a washing machine, to get the seal of approval, but I think we are there.

I was delighted to meet up with a few members of my old brass band on Sunday morning outside a local garden centre. There were 5 of us and we spent a couple of hours entertaining shoppers with carols and festive songs. Over the past year I have been getting used to playing the different parts using a metronome playing through earphones and then mixing the recordings together. This was the first time for quite a while that I had played live music to an audience as part of a brass ensemble. No chance for a retake.

It was great fun and well received. People would stop and listen. Kids made requests for their favourite tunes. People made a point of coming to thank us for playing in such atrocious weather. Did I mention the rain? We were under a covered porch, which kept off the worst of the rain, but there were no walls or protection from the sides. The temperature was mild, but after two hours I was happy to head home and to warm up with a Sunday roast lunch. I have one more playing commitment to fulfil this coming Sunday and then I can pack away the Christmas music for another year.

We watched our first Christmas movie of the season, Elf. By the end we were captured by its charm, and I feel that we may have been able to register on the ‘Spirit Clausometer’ and at least got Santa’s sleigh a couple of feet off the ground. My twelve-year-old son, the one with the attitude and tough exterior, joined in with the singing in Central Park. That for me marked the start of the Christmas season. We will probably blitz through a few more Christmas movies, particularly after school breaks up later this week. Is ‘Die Hard’ a Christmas movie?

I have refreshed our stock of board games. I haven’t played RISK since playing it in the lounge at Batheaston as a teenager with my cousins. The games were always very competitive and the quest for world domination was compelling. My boys struggle with the competitiveness of LUDO and on more than one occasion we have had the board and counters hurled across the room. They may quite possibly get triggered, but then again, they may end up having as much fun as I remember having. CLUEDO is another favourite that I haven’t played for quite a few years. A little more sedate than RISK as I recall. I might need to take a poll of family members to see if this has broader appeal.

I’m not doing very well on the present buying front. But I’m not panicking. It was my wedding anniversary this week and I only got around to buying a card and gift at 8.00pm on the preceding evening. I’m not going to wait until Christmas Eve to get the Christmas presents though. As I write there is still over a week to go to the big day. Plenty of time yet.

I try and reread the nativity story during Advent. This year I seem to be stuck. I’ve only read the first half of chapter 1 of Luke’s gospel. It hasn’t yet got to the birth of Jesus. We are focussed on the parents of John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth. It has just struck me that they weren’t youngsters. One of Zechariah’s responses when told by an angel that Elizabeth was going to conceive was ‘we’re too old’. That response was met by a period of muteness, which ended only after John was born. As someone who is getting on a bit, I was encouraged by that little detail.

The reason I have slowed down my reading is because I am attempting to do the readings in French and Spanish, without cheating too much and reverting to English. Sometimes I can get it, but there have been occasions when I have tapped one or two sentences into Google translate. So I have been able to combine my language learning goals with Christmas preparations.

The food shopping is progressing. We have placed an order at the local butcher and with Tescos who will deliver their goods next week. We are having turkey this year and I have volunteered to do the cooking, insisted on it, in fact. This will be a first and we will have 11 for Christmas dinner. We have a few folks with dietary restrictions, so I will need to make sure their needs are properly catered for. To be honest, I am a little nervous mainly about timings. Everything needs to be ready at the same time. And then I will need to have the dessert ready to go. My main measure of success will be how often Jacki needs to put down her sherry to dig me out of a hole.

So, a big thank you to those regular readers of this blog. I have really enjoyed writing these slightly longer posts. I have settled for a Monday morning main post, with a slightly shorter mid-week update on Thursday mornings; I will resume this pattern in January. I hope your Christmas preparations are going well.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

(PS. I am pleased to report that the washing machine is now back up and running and the Christmas tree is finally in position and decorated)

A yard is hard, but an inch is a cinch

Helen Rollason’s book “Life’s too short” contains some positive advice and her winning mentality shines through. She quotes a mantra from a sports coach from the 80s and 90s: “A yard is hard, but an inch is a cinch.” I have used that this week to encourage my boys with their homework. They groan at me, but the message is getting through. I am encouraging them to break down their weekly targets into bite sized chunks and open their chromebooks.

This is the time of year when we review the past year and set ourselves objectives for the future. These could be financial, health & fitness, mental health, writing and journalling, career, music, languages, or photography. We need to dream big, but then breakdown those dreams into short term targets. These need to be SMART objectives:

S – Specific

M – Measurable

A – Achievable

R – Realistic

T – Timebound

Get these right and we’ll be taking steps in the right direction to make positive change our lives. One step in the right direction is much more effective than ten steps in the wrong direction. In spiritual terms a change in direction is known as repentance.

Where do you want to be in one year’s time, five years? I am challenging myself with these questions as much as anyone else.

One final point is accountability. There is an old saying, which goes something like: “if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” An accountability partner can make all the difference between success or failure.

Next Monday will be my final ‘long’ blog post for 2023, before taking a break over Christmas and New Year.

Faith Journey

One Saturday evening in the mid-1960s I was taken to Holy Trinity church in Coventry. Billy Graham was running a Mission to London campaign, which extended to some of the major UK cities. Dad was an usher, and he took Jane, my sister, and me along with him. The place was packed. But it was only a secondary location to the main event in Coventry Cathedral. We had a TV link to the Cathedral and could see well-known personalities of the day telling us why they were there. The only names I remember now are Andrew Cruikshank (from Dr. Findley’s Casebook) and Cliff Richard. There was great excitement in Holy Trinity Church when one of the main speakers would appear in real life to speak to us directly. At the end of the evening there was a call for those who wanted to accept Christ to go forward. I went forward.

From that point forward I considered myself a Christian. Later I went through steps to affirm my faith. I was baptised in the sea in Mevagissey in Cornwall when I was 13 and followed that with a more formal confirmation service when I was 14 for which my parents bought me my first suit. I was taught that “baptism is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”, as defined by St Augustine.

In the Spring of 1981, I had been married for a few months. We were living in a flat in Tower Hamlets in London’s East End and had started attending a new church plant based at Tower Hamlets Mission in Whitechapel. The church was dynamic, growing and well organised. A weekend retreat had been organised in High Wycombe and we were keen to go.

On the Saturday night there was a talk followed by an altar call. Something within me compelled me to go forward and I made my way to the front and knelt. I think I may have been the only one. As I was prayed for, I felt such a release and began to weep and sob. It was as if a great weight was lifted off my shoulders. I went forward because I had a hunger for God, but I also knew that I was a sinner. I was flooded with forgiveness, acceptance, love, peace, and grace. God met me in that moment, although I could not articulate it. I had been trying to be a good Christian ever since Coventry and striving for God’s acceptance. In this moment my striving ceased. This moment was significant. My career, church, family all grew from this moment. Where I had known failure and defeat, I began to see fruitfulness and growth. A long period of fruitful service stemmed from that response to God’s prompting.

But my Christian life hasn’t been one long happy, fruitful experience. There are daily temptations to overcome. There have been periods of depression, confusion and grieving following unexpected changes and loss. For example, the loss of friends, with whom I had felt close, but then our lives went in different directions. I struggle with some of my church’s teaching, where it diverges from my understanding of scripture and apostolic teaching. The local church that I attend aligns closely with my beliefs. I enjoy being on the rota to make teas and coffees each month at the end of a service. It is my way of offering something to my community, albeit quite small and insignificant in the wider scheme of things.

This time last year my wife was treated for cancer. This was followed by a course of radiography in the early part of this year. Following the radiography, she caught a virus. We went away for a few days to a hotel in the New Forest, but something was wrong. She didn’t have any energy and couldn’t walk far without needing to stop and rest. When we got home, we went to the doctor who was concerned with her high heartrate. They suggested rest, but a week later she had deteriorated further. We took her back to the doctor. Her heartrate was through the roof, and they referred her immediately to the cardiac unit in Bournemouth Hospital. They admitted her. We later discovered that she had heart failure, and her heart efficiency was down to 10-15%, despite a heartrate of 163 bpm.

She was in hospital over the Easter break. My youngest son and I popped in to visit and take her a few things from home to make her a little more comfortable. We delivered the goodies and stayed and chatted for a while, still trying to figure out what the problem was and what had caused it. It was time to leave, and we walked back to the car. We both prayed that Jacki/Mum would be healed and recover fully. It was a very informal prayer as though God was sitting in the back seat. As those who read this blog regularly will know, gradually over the next few months Jacki has improved with a cocktail of medication. She has also had a cardioversion, a reboot of the heart to knock it back into a regular routine. We are still believing for a full recovery, but we have seen such a transformation that I felt it would be appropriate to express thanks to God. I ran the Bournemouth half marathon in October primarily to give thanks to God for Jacki’s recovery and many people gave generously to sponsor me.

I have read Helen Rollason’s autobiography this week. Helen was a ground-breaking and award-winning TV and sports presenter with the BBC in the 1980s and 1990s. She was extremely driven and successful with boundless energy, even after she was diagnosed with cancer. Her official full name was Dr Helen Rollason MBE. She was also Uncle Joe’s daughter and my second cousin, who I wrote about in last Monday’s post.

I am ashamed to say that her book has sat on my bookshelf for years and I just hadn’t got round to reading it. But my recollections from last week piqued my interest. Part of me wondered whether any of our childhood visits were mentioned, but unsurprisingly they weren’t. The Ford Zephyr that Uncle Joe bought from Dad did make it into the book, though. Apparently, it broke down on them as they were heading off on their summer holidays. I also recognised her description of the house at Batheaston.

I remember hearing the news that Helen had contracted cancer and followed the story in the press. I couldn’t quite bring myself to contact her. She was facing tragic circumstances and wouldn’t want to have been bothered by a long-lost relative using her illness as an excuse to claim the attention of such a high-profile celebrity. Reading her book and hearing how she so appreciated the letters she received made me realise how wrong I was. I did pray for her, but with the benefit of hindsight I can see that we both missed out because of my timidity and false humility.

I highly recommend her book, “Life’s too Short” (Hodder & Stoughton), to anyone facing cancer. It is honest, well written and informative about how she faced up to the struggle she faced. She wrote it particularly for anyone in the early stages of cancer.

In the context of this post, I was particularly interested in her faith in God. At the early stages of the cancer, she says she did believe in God and recounts several experiences that I recognise as being encounters with God. She describes being alone in the hospital when the cancer diagnosis was first identified. She was lonely and frightened. Then she felt some strong arms around her, comforting her and calming her fears. There wasn’t anyone visible, but she felt a tangible, comforting presence. By the end of the book, she says that she didn’t believe in God, but she did believe in a force of some kind. I am sure I will meet her in heaven when it’s my time to go. And I think it will have surprised her when she did peacefully die in her sleep to be welcomed by Jesus; her reaction would have been something like, “oh, it was you all the time.”

I have just come off a 5-day fast. I undertook the fast for spiritual reasons and to pray for national and international concerns, e.g. the Israel – Gaza conflict. Physically it’s been a bit of a reset, and I am being a bit more intentional with my diet as I reintroduce food and drink. Green tea is really nice, who knew? And banana smoothies for breakfast and mid-morning snacks really give me an energy boost. Over the past 3 months I have lost nearly 2 stone, and I am fitter and healthier than I have been for a while. Mentally I’m sharper and more aware of what’s going on around me and quicker to respond. On Wednesday my son was feeling overwhelmed by school issues and returned to bed after breakfast. It was all he could do to get up and get ready for school on time. I drove him to school and before he went in, we prayed. Then after he’d gone in, I went into the school office to speak to his teacher to let them know how he was feeling. The school responded immediately and dealt with the issue. On Thursday my son was singing in the car on the way to school and on Friday he came home with a Head Teacher Award in recognition of his hard work. The situation has been transformed.

I’m not calling on anyone to engage in a 5-day fast, but I would encourage anyone reading this who feels prompted to stop right now and ask God to make himself known. And when you feel prompted, act. I did that in Coventry as an 8-year-old child, then in High Wycombe in 1981 and this week when prompted to fast. God is love and he sent Jesus to die on the cross for my sin and yours, so that we could have peace with God. I pray that you will know Immanuel, God with us, this Christmas.

Christmas Greetings

I had fun creating these recordings of Christmas Carols and have added a few recent photos. I had hoped to include some snowy scenes, but we have only one brief snow flurry, which failed to settle. The carols are:

O Come all ye faithful
Coventry Carol
As with gladness
Silent Night
Hark the herald angels sing

I have to thank my old band, Christchurch and Highcliffe Brass Band, for the long term loan of my old Eb Bass which I used in the recordings. I will be joining with them for a couple of carolling sessions over the next two weeks.

Thank you for taking the time to read and listen. Do follow this blog. I am enjoying writing it and particularly writing the longer Monday blog posts. I will be posting again this coming Monday, but in the meantime, as we enter Advent may I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

A flatcap, porridge and Sweet Molly Malone

We used to visit my grandparents who lived in a cottage in Wellington, a village 7 ½ miles north of Hereford. Hill Cottage was well off the beaten track. We would park the car, a two-tone blue Ford Zephyr 6 estate, at the end of a gravel track and transfer all our baggage into a trailer powered by a rotavator engine. Two of us kids would need to sit in a wooden box which fitted on to the front of the engine. It was incredibly noisy when Dad pulled on the starter cord, and we would put our hands over our ears as the engine burst into life. It was also quite hot and smelly. The other two would sit in the trailer on top of the bags with Mum, while Dad drove the machine across two fields, up through an apple orchard and we would arrive at Hill Cottage. Several visits have blurred together in my memory, but one visit must have been spring in the early 1960s. The woodland behind Hill Cottage was full of bluebells and primroses.

The garden was well maintained with a manicured lawn and beautiful flower borders. The cottage was small, so we put up a 6-man tent in an adjacent field next to an old stone barn and slept in that. There wasn’t any running water but there was a well with a hand pump and every now and then we would have to go and fill up a container with water. I remember a paddling pool in the garden in the summer and walking to and from the pump with heavy buckets of water. And I remember a plastic seal called “Sammy”. In the evening I washed outside the tent using a metal bowl and a bar of soap that gradually disintegrated as the water became more and more opaque.

We must have visited in colder weather. We called my grandmother “Ada”, pronounced Adder. She made the most wonderful porridge. It tasted different from Mum’s. Ada’s secret ingredient was a small quantity of salt. When I discovered this, I tried adding salt to Mum’s porridge, but it didn’t taste the same. I couldn’t get the quantity right and if you use too much it spoils it. Also, it was difficult to get it evenly mixed. It was patchy with some spoonfuls being saltier than others. I have now perfected my own recipe, which I enjoy through the winter months. Three parts of water to one part of oats, a ¼ teaspoon of salt and a spoonful of honey. Bring to the boil stirring constantly and simmer for 4 minutes. Slow-release energy and delicious.

I used to enjoy the return journey from Hill Cottage, as we waited for Mum and Dad to finish packing the trailer. It was one of the rare moments I remember having quality time with Granddad. He would wait at the trailer with us kids. And he would sing folk songs to us. I still remember the sad lyrics of “Molly Malone” and shouting “begin again” at the end of “There was a man called Michael Finegan” after “his whiskers had blown in again”. Later at school I remember being introduced to the song “Molly Malone” in a music class and excitedly telling the teacher, “I know this song!”

At some point Mum and Dad decided to upgrade the trailer and bought an old, short wheelbase Land Rover. I don’t recollect getting much use from it though. Both my grandparents died in the mid to late 1960s.

I have subsequently revisited Hill Cottage but it’s not the same. The pristine garden was no longer as well maintained. The old barn had been converted into a pottery workshop and different people lived there, people who had no memory of my grandparents. Access to the property has improved and it is now possible to drive all the way up to the cottage, without having to transfer to a noisy, old rotavator and trailer. I believe they now have running water; flushing toilets and the old well is disused. My only remaining link to Hereford now is my birth certificate, which tells me I was born there.

I don’t have any mementos from my Grandparents. I used to have grandad’s retirement watch; it was a half hunter. I wore it on my wedding day, but it was stolen when our flat in East London was broken into. He used to wear a flat cap and I have recently bought one myself. My boys tell me that it makes me look like a grandad, which is fine by me.

I don’t remember spending any Christmases with my grandparents. I don’t think they had a car. We would spend Christmas either at home in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, or with Mum’s cousin and his family in Bath. The Bath trips were always fun. Uncle Joe and Auntie Joey had three children: two adopted and one birth child. They had a huge house in Batheaston in which it was possible to lose ourselves. It had a walled garden that went down from the house to a lawn, past a chicken coop down to the River Avon at the end of the garden.

Uncle Joe was a teacher. He was slightly older than my parents and quite jovial. He never lost his temper, but he had an aura about him that you did not mess with him. Auntie Joey was always in the kitchen wearing a pinny. She was as jovial as Uncle Joe.

I don’t know how they did it, but we wouldn’t see them or our parents from morning till evening except for mealtimes, which were always organised and semi-formal. Meals wouldn’t be served until everyone was seated at the table. The table was huge. It had a waxed tablecloth. And there was room for all eleven of us to be seated with elbow room.

We tried to figure out the formal relationship between the kids from both families. Our best guess was that Uncle Joe was a first cousin once removed and his kids were therefore our second cousins.

Uncle Joe clearly appreciated our Zephyr estate. He bought it from Dad. I was sorry to see it go, but Dad’s next vehicle was a Bedford Dormobile, the one with the sliding front doors. It was a worthy replacement, and the first move away from Ford vehicles. I can’t remember all the different cars we had growing up, but they would all be considered cool classics nowadays. We had a sky-blue Morris 1000 Traveller with the wooden framework, a green Hillman Minx, a Citroen Dyane, a Citroen GS, a Morris 2200.

Dad used to let me drive the cars at off road sites and by the time I was 17, I was ready to take my driving test. I had eight lessons with a driving instructor and passed my test just 4 months after my 17^th birthday.

We had relocated to the South Coast from the Midlands at the beginning of the 1970s. It was an exciting new start. My new school was Ferndown Secondary Modern, which became Ferndown Middle School and Ferndown Upper School. I didn’t do brilliantly at school but did just enough get started with a career in Business. By 1978 my full-time education was complete, and I moved away from home to take up my first full time job as a trainee accountant in London. I hoped that my Grandad would be proud. He had been an accountant.

It was hard work moving away from home and getting established in London. Initially I studied in the evenings, but I also used correspondence courses. I thought I would never make it, but finally in 1985 I qualified. I spent 25 years building a career, a family, and a home in the East End of London. The firm I joined saw tremendous growth in the 1980s and 1990s. The church I was a member of saw tremendous growth and blessing.

The last 25 years have seen more change. We have moved back to the South Coast. My work has been more varied, and I am now retired. Our family has grown, and I am now the father and the grandad.

My bible readings this week have included Psalm 127.

“Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.”

Tim Keller comments as follows:

“Prosperity and security are not ultimately your accomplishments but God’s gift.”

He goes on to offer the following prayer:

“Lord, admitting my accomplishments are your gift is a bittersweet thing to do. It stings at first because it humbles. But then it is so sweet and brings such peace. Its not up to me and it never was…”

It is interesting to look back over the years and consider accomplishments and failures, to see where God has been at work in my life. And it is intriguing to consider the seeds currently being planted with my current work and activity. What fruit will develop and grow? I wonder.

Durdle Door

I hope your week is going well. I took a break today from preparing Monday’s longer blog post and headed down to Durdle Door with Edd. We parked at Lulworth Cove and walked the 1 mile along the Coast Path to Durdle Door. We arrived at midday and the sun was peeping from behind grey cloud cover.

Man-o-war Bay is just to the east of Durdle Door in the direction of Lulworth Cove. The bay is named after the shape of thr rocks in the cove which are said to resemble warships of the 16th to 19th Centuries, known as Man-o-war.

As we were packing up I saw this rock pipit hopping along the path and I couldn’t resist switching lenses to my telephoto.

I hope the remainder of your week goes well and I’ll get back to finalising Monday’s longer blog post.