Chilling (Out of Signal)

It seemed like such a good idea at the time – to meet up for a family Christmas at a midway point. No-one could remember the last time we all spent Christmas together as a family. Someone was always needed elsewhere.

Saint Abbs, ten miles North of the Scottish border, seemed to be the perfect location. More or less three hundred miles equidistant for those who lived furthest apart, North and South.

It suddenly seemed far less attractive a proposition a few days before we were due to arrive as the weather closed in. Everyone would need to make their journey in some of the most difficult driving conditions that the British weather can throw at you.

For me, a mere two hundred and fifty mile drive straight up the Great North Road (A1) is always something special. It has its own particular, slightly epic, quality with so much history and a magical landscape lining the road on either side.

New Experiments

It's been a very busy second half to the Autumn Term. First Year National Diploma students keen to experiment with lots of unfamiliar techniques. They used an old Jessops Powerflash motordrive head (MD400) to strobe with their camera shutters open on B. There were the inevitable problems of overexposure sometimes when the subject didn't move far enough between flashes. I showed them how to produce a similar effect by using a motordrive to take a rapid sequence of single frames which could be layered in Photoshop and selectively blended to create a strobe-like composite image. The shot above was the first attempt. With care, I'm sure some really nice sequences could be made.



A few of the students were curious to know about HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, though none knew what it was. I decided to demonstrate in class, using as an example two of the students who were taking a break near the window. It was fairly late on a very dull November day and the room lights were on. With the digital camera steady on a tripod, I asked the girls to remain very still while I took two shots, one metered for them, the other metered for the scene outside. The two images are shown at the top, with burnt-out highlights coloured red and textureless shadows coloured blue.

Again, I layered them in Photoshop with the indoor shot uppermost. I then carefully erased the window in this layer to expose the background scene of the lower layer. The hair was the trickiest part and there was a slight mis-registering between the layers to cope with. So, it's not perfect but I'm quite pleased with it as my own first attempt to have a go at this technique.



Another technique I've been trying to get students interested in, is pushing photograms beyond the familiar arrangements of keys and coins and other everyday items. Charity shops always have shelves of ornamental items such as the glass bowls I used for these images. Scanning the photogram and manipulating it in Photoshop, I was able create some psychedelically coloured animated .gifs.


The enlarger I used to make these photograms was in a pretty filthy condition, as I found out when I took the prints out into the daylight. The black background was covered in thousands of tiny dust specks. In this photogram, though, they looked like a myriad tiny stars, blinking away behind a baleful planet hanging there in a vast space. It seemed a logical step to colourise the scan to enhance this illusion and to add some random coloured shaped to create an imaginary perspective.


Lots of other creative ideas are developing. Having just repaired our UV exposure unit, I'm ready to roll again on cyanotypes and salt prints (always a favourite with students). Parts for an infra-red and a sound flash trigger are sitting on my workbench. And then there's stop motion animation and stereoscopic photography . . .

Built to Boogie

I couldn't resist her. She's a beauty in stainless steel, a simple and elegant combination of form and function. She's a Peter Lynn ST kite buggy that I bought secondhand from a lad in Stamford who's upgrading to something more seriously acrobatic. I hadn't realised there was such a huge but largely invisible kite buggy-ing fraternity in this part of the world. (Perhaps that's the way they like it.) I thought I would struggle to find a buggy, but via the online power-kiting forum, Kitecrowd, I found a found a community of buggiers only too happy to help each other out. I should have realised that Lincolnshire, with its old airfields and vast East Coast beaches, was built for buggies.

Days and Moments to Remember

Florence and Mum, February 2007

Today has a particular significance as it would have been Mum's 93rd birthday. The poignancy of the date was brought home an hour or so ago, when I had a telephone call from an 83-year old acquaintance of hers, calling to wish her a happy birthday. How much I wished I could have brought her to the phone, but she now only speaks to me in the dead hours of night.

View from my Window, Lincoln College

Time seems in very short supply now that I have returned to work. I'm grateful that my three fairly arduous days a week in Stamford are ameliorated a little by a fourth day day in the congenial surroundings of Lincoln's Cathedral Quarter, working in the top floor studio and darkroom of the old School of Art. In my own student days, the studio was the base room for an architectural technicians' course, run by Edward Albarn, a grand old architect who taught us unruly painters the more refined skills of perspective. He once lost a bet to me when, while drawing a two-point perspective drawing of a church with tower as a class exercise, I thought I could see how you would plot and project the conical spire and its details. He bet me a substantial sum of money that I couldn't do it without being shown, but I could see that the solution was fairly logical and was very embarrassed to prove him wrong. I hate to be made to look like a smart-arse, then as well as now, and refused to claim my winnings though they were offered. They were funny old times and the building still remains chock-full of so many happy memories.

Kite Aerial Photography: An Experiment

Looking back (as you do) I'm struck by how many of my ideas started out as thumbnail sketches on the backs of envelopes. This Summer's main project was no exception ...
It represented a convergence of need and interest in a very satisfying way. The background is my wish to have a better understanding of the topographical contexts of abandoned structures and archaeological sites in the Hebridean Islands. Simple rectilinear aerial photographs could provide a useful addition to measured surveys, such as those I made on Scarp, off the West coast of Harris. Anyway, doing kite stuff is fun! I've still got fond memories of the home-made kites the kids and I used to fly off the side of Pendle Hill in our Lancashire days.

The catalyst that set the project in motion was an unplanned encounter with a kite festival at Calke Abbey, Derbyshire back in April. Beneath a rainbow-decorated sky the irresistable lure of The Highwaymen stand drew me in and resulted in me going home with spools of kite line and a very temptacious price list.

There is a seemingly infinite amount of information on kite-based photography (generally called KAP by its practitioners) on the Web, much of which is anecdotal, like this blog post.

The best-known and probably most comprehensive website on the subject is Cris Benton's KAP site. As well as this, there's an inspirational video of him on Vimeo or Make:Magazine's mind-boggling Make:television channel (Episode 2). It's a good showcase for the creative potential of KAP.

Other names crop up repeatedly when researching KAP online, such as Brooks Leffler (maker of Brooxes rigs) and James Gentles (maker of gentLED electronic triggers, etc.). The KAP Shop, in the Netherlands, seems to be the main European supplier of KAP-related bits and pieces.

Typical of other useful sites are KAP, How to do it, and KAP. There are also academic sites and papers related to the subject, such as the University of Vienna's Aerial Archive and a pdf'd conference paper on unmanned small-format aerial photography.

My own ambitions at this stage are fairly modest. To hang a camera from the sky and take pictures of any sort would count for me as an achievement.

The simplest way to take vertical shots seemed to be to pack the kit in a small box that I could hang from a kite line. I had worked out that a box about 3" deep (75mm) and 6" square (150mm) internally would hold most cameras and other components.

I considered doing away with the Picavet cross suspension system and screwing the suspension rings directly into the box itself. However, I realised that a cross would allow me to rotate the box relative to both the direction of the kite line and the main axes of objects on the ground below. To construct the box, I used basswood comb-jointed at the corners for its combination of lightness and strength. Full-size pattern drawings were made to ensure that the pieces would all fit together.

There are more pictures showing
the building of the rig on Flickr.

For the radio-control components, Phils Models in Sleaford provided everything I needed along with plenty of free advice.

At this stage in this project, to have gone out and bought a new digital camera would have been a reckless extravagance. Cousin Rex's expeditions to car-boot sales provided me with three obsolete but serviceable digital cameras (of about two-megapixel resolution) that could, if necessary, be tested to destruction.


The rig, finally finished, painted and varnished went with me on my second visit of the Summer to North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides. I'm pleased to say that in spite of the battering it took, it came back in good condition. A selection of images from my trip are in my Flickr photostream. Needless to say, there were lots of steeply-learned lessons for me to work on in time for a much more productive visit in 2010.

Hitching a Ride

Hitching a Ride
Originally uploaded by Joneau

Our week of testing kites and KAP rig over, Sol and I had fun on the ferry back to Skye by humming sea tunes (Rico's Ska version of SeaCruise being the most tuneful) and doing comparative testing of the ship's food and facilities. The observation lounge scored best all round - the Navmaster GPS screen being the clincher.

Beaten by a Man in a Bathtub

Hawaiian outrigger racing canoe technology ruled once again at the 2009 North Queensferry Raft Race, part of the annual Gala festivity. Ginger-wigged defending champion Olivier saw off once again his over-designed opposition.

First to launch, he had time to relax by sitting on a nearby inflatable while his rivals took to the water.

I had (misplaced) confidence in this three-man-power double outrigger raft. Sleek and stylish, it looked invincable.

The two-man luxury model, complete with catering facilities on the quarter-deck, was clearly hampered by its parasol on this breezy day. Out of shot, the bathtub was being bailed out following ungentlemanly action by the crew of the double outrigger.

Having deposited its crew and catering facilities in the river, the luxury raft needed some hasty modifications before the race could get underway.

Once the race started, there was no stopping the bathtub. Light and fast, it skittered out to the old jetty and back again, leaving its rivals plodding, despite their superior manpower.

PS: Thank goodness for mobile phones. Never a proper camera around when you most need it.

Crossing the Firth of Forth

Crossing the Forth Brdge, South to North
(2min 23sec)

Although I've done it numerous times, I still get a thrill each time I take a train across the Forth Bridge. It is indeed a thing of wonder and an object of functional, if brutalist, beauty. Like the Waverley Steps, it also has its place in my family history as something talked about by Dad in his pre-war adventures.

The Forth Bridge also figures in the notebook he used to record his wartime experiences as Sapper CT Pearson of the Royal Engineers. His Company were being moved to Comrie Camp in Perthshire and having boarded their troop train at 7pm on November 2nd, 1942, they travelled through the night and crossed the Firth of Forth the following morning. This is what he says:

"Outside Edinboro we crossed the Forth Bridge and quite a few men carried out the old custom of throwing coins over the Bridge into the Firth of Forth far below. I remember one party who were playing cards at the time and someone threw the whole of their 'kitty' overboard which I understood amounted to over £1. It may have brought them luck."

From Comrie, his Company boarded the ill-fated liner SS Strathallan for their journey to Algiers in North Africa.

The Forth Bridge
from North Queensferry Station

One other piece of railway-related memorabilia came to light the other day when I rediscovered Dad's old wartime wallet. In it, alongside his army pay book and various newspaper cuttings, was this photograph:

On the back of the photograph is written: "Top of Ben Nevis 4400 ft". Fort William was another place Dad had visited on a free pass in pre-war days. I wonder who his pals were? Dad himself is second from the right (with the top of his head torn off).

A Sunny Day in Edinburgh

Although my Dad (Cyril) was never a great storyteller, I do have some fragmentary childhood memories of him telling me about his trips around Britain when he was young. When he left school, he followed family tradition and joined LNER (The London and North Eastern Railway). LNER's main route joined the two great capitals, London and Edinburgh.

As a railway worker, free rail passes opened up all sorts of opportunities for travel. It's hard today to recapture the sense of adventure there was in simply moving from one place to another. Fragments of tales he told me are brought back by a variety of inconsequential things. Whenever I'm in Edinburgh and am walking out of Waverley Station, Dad is always beside me in spirit as I walk up Waverley Steps. I remember him telling me of the great winds that would almost sweep you off your feet. These winds are a matter of legend.

Even on a balmy day in June there is a noticeable breeze.

It seems that where ever you are in the city centre, there is always the sound of bagpipes in the background. Even in the tranquillity of Princes Street Gardens, the birds compete with (or are perhaps encouraged by) buskers.


Behind the Royal Scottish Academy, an historically kitted-out boy band appeared to be getting ready to strut their stuff. Desultory drum-taps and much moving of kit backwards and forwards seemed to be designed to attract a crowd. As a Man On A Mission that day I got bored and left after ten minutes waiting for them to actually play something. They reminded me, perhaps unfairly but irresistably, of Life of Brian's Popular Front of Judea. (Much posturing but little or no action.) They were probably good when they got started, but here's thirty seconds' worth of my fruitless wait:

Ye Jacobites by name
Let your schemes alone
(from Burns)

Postscript: Time and the Aftermath of War

A noticeable side-effect of growing older is the way one's sense of time collapses inwards. Events that seem to have happened relatively recently become talked about by a younger generation as if they were ancient history.

The upcoming 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings may start a trickle of TV documentaries on World War 2. All will doubtless claim to offer new insights, which Saturday's 'Bloody Omaha' on BBC2 certainly did. It followed a standard pattern of running for a hour whether the material needed it or not, and was padded out with the usual narrative repetition, familiar-looking old newsreel footage and colourful comments from two or three photogenic veterans.

It is the current fashion for programmes like this to be fronted by popular celebrities rather than knowledgeable experts. Richard Hammond, clown and professional semi-yob, bless him, hardly brought gravitas to this sombre subject. Instead, it was slightly surreal to hear him discussing the war with a youthful academic for whom the war seemed to be a matter of records and statistics to be interpreted whichever way one chose.

Although I'm not old enough to have experienced WW2 itself, I was born in the aftermath and grew up in a world in which its scars and consequences were all around us. Not just the physical scars of bombsites and material deprivation, but the psychological scars on the adult survivors. So it created a strange kind of deja-vu to hear the war being talked about in a way that seemed so detached from the physical reality itself. It illustrates, maybe, how the prism of historical analysis can rob events of life and context, turning them into neutral abstractions to be manipulated to suit any convenient theory.


The spur to say these things was the email I blogged about yesterday, in which I noted the enthusiastic support of corporal punishment in the schools of my childhood. Perhaps the key to understanding this is to remember the proximity of war. As I suggested at the beginning of this post, a decade or so to an adult is only a short span. Not enough time perhaps to heal hidden signs of trauma. Some of the men who taught me had seen active service and may have slaughtered other men or at least lived in daily fear of being slaughtered themselves. In their own warped thinking, it perhaps seemed right that us boys should learn that life was hard and that they should be the ones to teach us that lesson. Having survived the war, there was perhaps some faith in the Nietzschean apophthegm, "what does not kill me makes me stronger". Hmmm...

The Happiest Days of Whose Life?

In quick succession, I have received another invitation to consider the past. The PTA at my old secondary school wanting to collect memories for a projected book. I'm not the one to ask, I reckon. Anyway, it made me collect my thoughts on the matter, so here's what I wrote in reply:


Thank you for inviting me to contribute to your History of King's School project. Unfortunately, I am not the best person to ask as my memories of King's are largely memories of five years of misery. Excuse me if I explain why.

The boys who were my fellow pupils were all full of ideas, energy and enthusiasm. The late 50s and early 60s were a time when we were all drunk with the idea that we could build a new world for ourselves. Not only were we discovering the attractions of the opposite sex, we would spend our free time walking and talking about new and radical thinking. It was through swapping and trading stuff in the quad that I got hold of my first copies of Ginsberg and Kerouac, that I learned about Angry Young Men such as Pinter and Osborne, that I got second-hand 45s by obscure American bands. It was only the sharing of ideas by so many like-minded spirits that made school anything more than a repressive grind.

To be fair, there were clubs and societies that were worth joining, a Chess Club, Music Society, Boxing. The CCF allowed us to don ex-WW2 uniforms and re-enact in our heads our fathers' wartime experiences. We let ourselves be bullied by NCOs in the name of discipline and spent field-days crawling around in the undergrowth of Sherwood Forest or Belton Park.

The counter-point to this was the unforgivably harsh culture of corporal punishment, particularly when it was allowed to be administered by senior boys, some of whom clearly took a sadistic delight in administering or observing it. The process went completely unmonitored and ignored by staff. Maybe I was unfortunate in being assigned to Newton House. Experience showed it to be a house that cherished its sporting achievements, something that I lacked the competitive drive to excel in. Had I done so, it would have offset some of the "stars" that some teachers liked to regularly set against my name. Stars meant "lack of effort" and resulted in being summoned to appear equally regularly before the House Prefects to be beaten, or "codded" with a gym shoe.

All this happened, of course, under the headmastership of Mr Huggins, whose memory some people seem to revere. I believe things improved under Mr Goodban, who came in too late to be of any benefit to me. Indeed, I left the school as soon as I could, after gaining my O Levels at sixteen. As someone whose interests were artistic rather than academic or sporting, the school had no more interest in keeping me on than I had in staying. Careers advice consisted of trying to persuade people like me to join the local civil service, that is, become a post office clerk.

Being mechanically minded I drifted into various local garages as a "grease monkey", or apprentice motor mechanic, where I could indulge my passion for fast motorbikes. It was chance discussions with tutors at Grantham College three years later (where I attended engineering classes on day release) that my talent for draughtsmanship was explained to me and I was advised to improve my career prospects through full time study. At least King's had given me the five O Level minimum I needed, so I went to Lincoln Art School to get a couple of A levels and take an Art Foundation Course. From there I went to Sheffield Polytechnic for three years to get my DipAD/BA in Fine Art (Painting) followed by a three year postgraduate scholarship to the Royal College of Art to gain my MA. A circuitous route, perhaps, but at least I got to where I was happiest in the end.

Sorry I can't be more positive about King's but that's how it was for me.

Times Past: Time's Passed

The River Nene at Wadenhoe, Northamptonshire

It was great to hear from an old friend this week, even though he had to tell me the sad news about another friend's death. It got me thinking about things as I put a few words together in reply. It became a sort of statement about my life as it is at the moment. This is what I wrote back to him.

Hi Vince.
Great to hear from you, even if you were the bearer of sad news. Poor Dave, it was no age to go. Was it the big C? I don't know about you, but I've recently become much more aware of how little time our generation has got left - the future no longer stretches into infinity. I often read obituaries of men who I've always thought of as my generation. Blowing away like leaves on a windy day.
I lost my own Mum earlier this year. She lived with me for the past ten years or more since my Dad died, and as she drifted into her nineties became more incapacitated, immobile as well as virtually blind. Because of having to care for her, I shed more and more of my teaching work until this year I've only been teaching two mornings a week. I couldn't bear to give it up completely. If I did, I don't think it it would be long before I joined the two Daves. Quite honestly, teaching and keeping up with what the new generation is doing is the only thing that keeps me focussed on life. (The extra bit of spending money is nice too!)
Anyway, on a more cheerful note, I wonder what did become of Shirley Lee. I find it hard to imagine she's still around. She must be a very old lady if she is. I often think back to those days and often regret that we let life move us on. I often say to people that the years in Lancashire were the happiest years of my life. Perhaps it was because we were fresh from the RCA, green but full of confidence in what life was going to offer us. I often wonder about other people who crossed our path in Preston. I remember Roger Swanborough (who had also been behind us at the RCA), Sylvia Lees whose husband Peter had been at the RCA at the same time as us, and there was a nice girl Linda who taught fashion. I also have fond memories of Stan Hogg, who ran the printing trade courses. He must surely be dead by now. Lots of the students linger in the memory too because their quirky character. I've still got one or two photographs of that time that bring it all back.
It would be nice to make time to renew old friendships. You're clearly much better at it than me. Although I've loved friends dearly, I seem to spend my life with my head down, burrowing away without looking to right or left and abandoning everything I've left behind me. Not really a good trait, but I've learnt to live with it.

Times Past: A Snowy Day

Now that Spring is in full swing, it's easy to forget the snow we had in February. Here's a little reminder of a trip we made to meet up with Will and his family. Though they weren't in, we found them snugly settled in the lounge bar of the village pub. The snow had tempted them into making their own Arctic expedition. With snowfalls like this now so uncommon, even nine-year old Sol had never seen so much!

Naughty Fun? My very own barrel of monkeys.

Took in this homeless bunch, who look as though they've been living rough. They don't seem very house-trained and need a good wash and some clean clothes. Plastic surgery in some cases. (Greg the Bunny has some useful advice on cosmetic surgery) Still, they make me laugh and are good fun to have around. I'm sure we'll get along just fine.

A Trip to New Lanark

New Lanark. To someone who doesn't know about it, it's hardly a name to conjure with. Just another name signposted off the busy M74 linking Glasgow to Carlisle and the M6.

Not a bit of it, I knew it would be worth seeing. When I taught the contextual history of early photography, I used to show my students an engraving of New Lanark as it looked in 1816. We would then look at prints of industrial scenes of the mid-nineteenth century, sparking a lively discussion of the changes that took place in that extraordinary time. Changes that continue to resonate through the environmental issues we wrestle with today.

Edinburgh Art (3): Claire Barclay at the Fruitmarket Gallery

A visit to the Fruitmarket Gallery is worth making for the cafe alone, I was told. Award-winning coffee and irresistable home-made cakes. A great little bookshop too, specialising in hard-to-find art books and small-press books and zines. The Gallery's position nicely complements the City Art Centre, which is directly across the road in Market Street.

The current exhibition, running until 12th April, is by Scottish installation artist Claire Barclay. The piece in the photograph, which is called Subject to Habit, is fairly typical of her preoccupations. It mixes ready-made objects with specially designed, machine-made objects that seem oddly familiar but which defy absolute categorisation. For instance, the black gym mats in this piece trigger an association which determines how we read the other objects, which in turn are clearly not the objects our conditioned responses would lead us to think they should be. All the work in the show plays on the ambiguity of forms, carrying contradictory connotations such as malevolence and benevolence in an uneasy balance.

An informative video interview with the artist was looping in an upstairs room and the show was supported by a series of talks and a seminar. Edinburgh is indeed a lucky town.

Edinburgh Art (2): The City Art Centre

It's always a slightly frustrating pleasure to discover a great exhibition just before it closes. No time for a second look or sharing your discovery with friends. Visual Arts Scotland's 2009 Annual Open Exhibition at the City Art Centre was a luxurious warm wallow in the best contemporary art that Scotland has to offer. Sadly, this year's show closed after a six-week run on 19th March. Every 2 and 3-d medium (and style) seemed to be represented in more than 300 artworks displayed over two floors of this beautiful gallery.

I clearly wasn't the only one to fall in love with Kenneth Le Riche's large oil painting, The Conversation. This detail was used as the front cover design of the catalogue. To the left of this cropped image a shadowy male figure stands outside on a balcony, glimpsed through an open doorway. A well-deserved prizewinner.

Two floors down was the show that brought me here, drawn by my curiosity to see Bob Dylan's Drawn Blank series of paintings (also ended on 19th March). As the archetypical hero and spokesman of my generation as it grew into maturity, Dylan can still do no wrong. His 2006 album Modern Times is as hauntingly memorable as any of his earlier work. But with Dylan, there is always the hidden side where man and myth blur - and nothing is quite what it seems.


I have to say I quite like the work. Stylistically, it is fauve, with loose drawing and flat, vibrant colour. Echoes of Matisse or Dufy.The original drawings are said to have been made when Dylan was on the road and show a world in motion, of short stops and sidewalks, casual acquaintances and cafe tables. There is, in his subjects, none of the sensual intimacy of the original Fauves. Dylan's drawn line is much more fragmentary, angular and broken.

Key to interpreting the work, for me, is understanding that it is a composite of scanned drawings and painted modifications made more than a decade later. Like the mystery of the man himself, it is a subtle layering of reality and fiction.

Edinburgh Art (1): Calum Colvin at the Royal Scottish Academy

Natural Magic, on show until 5th April, is Calum Colvin's ideosyncratic tribute to Sir David Brewster, the eminent Victorian scientist/inventor whose researches into light and optics made an important contribution to the development of photography.

It's a fun, interactive show that needs you to press your nose against mirrors or look through coloured spectacles. An aesthetic Fun Factory for grownups. The catalogue is an elegant piece of affordable design, with a white-on-white cover and the handmade look of a brass screw post binding. As a bonus, there is a free stereoscopic viewer inserted in the back cover which is used to view the side-by-side stereoscopic illustrations.

London to Edinburgh by Train

The golden rule is always to sit on the right side of the train facing forwards, preferably in Coach B (the Quiet Coach). There you see most of what this wonderful journey has to offer as you speed through Northumberland and the Scottish Borders: Holy Island/Lindisfarne, the righthand sweep across the viaduct at Berwick-upon-Tweed and the wild romantic views of the North Sea, with its fishing boats and lonely ruins. To see all this and then to arrive at Waverley Station. Train journeys don't get any better than this!

Lindisfarne, seen from a train.

In Memoriam

Jocy Doreen Rita Pearson
(née Edlington)
30th September 1916 – 15th February 2009

How long will it take to come to terms with Mum's absence? Happy memories – here on holiday in 2004 with Florence in Villedieu-les-Poëles, Normandy, France. Happy days indeed.

One Day in Prague

At last I've finished putting together the video clips from our weekend break in Prague. A collage of some of the more memorable sights and sounds. So glad to have had the chance to go back to the city of dreams.

Braving the January Cold

On my day out in London, went to check out the Photographers' Gallery in its new location. It doesn't yet feel right, like a supermarket that's reorganised its layout. Ramillies Street is a drab cul de sac in a particularly sterile corner of Soho. A commercial desert tucked away behind the tacky facade of the retail Hell that is Oxford Street.

Well away from the bookish bustle of the Charing Cross Road and the crowds drifting between Leicester Square and Covent Garden. Well away from the cultural ambience of theatreland and the National Galleries. It takes an effort of will to leg it from familiar territory to somewhere with so few attractions, except perhaps for the HMV store on Oxford Street. The only compensation a chance to ramble through streets I knew so well in my student days, Wardour Street and the Berwick Street market. I might even start to become a customer again of Cowling and Wilcox in Broadwick Street.

I suppose it's character-building to have the comfort zone of your routines shaken up a bit by change, so I hope I will start to find my way to Ramillies Street when I'm in town. It's nice to see the cafe unchanged by the flit, and perhaps the gallery will rediscover its talent for putting on exhibitions of significance – ones that linger in the memory for years.

OK. SELF-TEST: Name some shows from long ago that I still remember.

• Danny Lyon (bikers)
• Koto Bolofo (fashion/portraits)
• Martin Parr (The Cost of Living(?) consumer culture)
• Historical photographs showing the construction of the Forth Rail Bridge

An odd selection, others would spring to mind on a different day.

Of the two shows on at present, I preferred the downstairs show, Soho Nights.
Far too small in scale to do its Brassai-like subject justice, it nevertheless gave a tantalising glimpse of the smoky bohemian glamour of London-noir. Anna Jay says some nice things about the show in her mondo a go-go blog.

The French Pub: Unofficial HQ of the Free French
From: Picture Post, 1941. Photographer: Kurt Hutton

Even in my student days (the seventies), the York Minster (AKA the French Pub) in Dean Street retained its glamour as a thrilling place for a student to go for a drink, carrying as it did the exotic ambience of dangerous and subversive worlds beyond our own provincial shores. And always the odd disreputable celebrity (of the George Melly type) spotted but studiously ignored in the smoky gloom. At least that's how I remember it!

Speaking of remembering, I must find time one of these days to go for a meal again at Jimmy's in Frith Street. Fiona took me there when we were students. She had been there for a meal with Adrian Henri, so it had a kind of kudos. It must be twenty years since I last ate there, but it's still very much alive and kicking according to a great review by NilliJoon.