Month: Jan 2020

Monty Python shining a light in North East Essex

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity

The death today of Terry Jones, founder of Monty Python, has produced the most loving of remembrances. Eloquence was his trademark and was sadly the thing that his dementia robbed him of.

Monty Python is credited with being an icon of 1970’s pop culture and the beginning of new wave comedy.

In a quiet corner of rural North East Essex the effect of Python, on me, was profound.

My parents had no fears of its influence on their only child. Friends with less enlightened parents gathered in our house to watch it, teaching me to be more sociable.

Python accompanied me through the awkward early teenage years from 1969- 1974. 45 episodes of surreal comedy not only made me laugh but exposed me to the establishment that they were disrupting with their anti-establishment humour.

Not particularly one of their funniest sketches, this one sticks in my mind because I knew a Michael Ellis.
https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/1530529347579/monty-pythons-flying-circus-michael-ellis

Python learning continues long after those 5 years and 45 episodes.

Michael Palin takes me around the world

Terry Jones The Life of Brian and Mr Creosote, guaranteed laughter. Mediaeval history was also his thing, I dabbled.

Eric Idle, Spamalot a musical for people who don’t like musicals.

Graham Chapman, a medical student at Bart’s before he was a Python.

St Bartholomews Square from KGV building

Reason enough to choose a place to study.

John Cleese so much more than Fawlty Towers but Fawlty Towers changes the way anyone thinks of British seaside holidays.

Terry Gilliam, Time Bandits nothing more to be said.

RIP Terry Jones.

Dead? No excuse for laying off work.

Time Bandits

The River Effra, digressions and a memorial bench.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns

The River Effra plays a big part in my London life. Rising out of the ground near my home in Crystal Palace it has been constrained by engineers and now runs underground nearly all the way to Vauxhall Bridge where it emerges from a culvert to join the Thames.

Effra emerges and looks like a small lake in Belair Park, Dulwich, where Hugo and Lola love to walk. Then she sinks back underground.

I always think of Effra as a woman because Effra is a character name in Ben Arronovitchs series of books The Rivers of London.
Effra, the character, is the daughter of Mama Thames she has a BA in History of Art and is said to be very involved in UK Grime.

Just a little digression there.
Effra gives her name to.all kinds of things .

Effra Parade in Brixton

Effra Parade bus stop on the number 3 bus route.

More digression.

One of the most interesting bus routes in London. During a conversation this weekend someone said I loved riding buses because I’m a socialist. I’m not sure that’s entirely true. I love riding buses because the front seat at the top of a London bus is a joyous calabash of cultures, particularly suited to a nosey person. The front seat on a number 3 is sublime.

Effra Social.A bar and casual dining location with iconic status in Brixton. Previously the Conservative Club.

Effra Farm in the 1790’s roughly where Effra Road is.
The point, however of this blog is the lake in Belair Park where Effra takes in some daylight between underground journeys.
Belair Park has less memorial benches than many London parks but there is one in a very picturesque spot.As usual with memorial benches I’ve used what3words to locate it.Whoever Guy Robinson was his friends and family have chosen a lovely spot to position his bench.It is very close to a picture I took to manipulate into some lacy pictures.The last image is my favourite, it sums up the mystery of an underground river.

Surrealism and a small person Quickie #12

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity

Explaining surrealism was not required on this occasion. This is a fine example of surrealism from Salvador Dali. The added surrealism of a landline phone, surely soon to be obsolete, intrigues me alongside a need for conformity which is illogical.

I’m bothered that it bothers me that the lobster has been put into the receiver by a left handed person. It troubles me more than the fact that it’s a Lobster which doesn’t trouble me at all.


https://colchesteroysterfishery.com/products/small-canadian-lobster

Tobacco Tin

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns1 Comment

This little tin has been in every home I’ve lived. I know it and its content very well and yet I know nothing about the original owner.

This was all my mum had kept of her first fiance.

He was killed in a motor bike accident in the early 1950’s.

She would never talk about him but the nature of his death caused both my parents to be certain that they didn’t want either their only child or their grandchildren to ride motorbikes.

His name was David and he may have lived in or around Braintree in Essex England, but equally he could have been stationed at any East Anglian Air field and be from anywhere.

His surname may have been De’Ath but that could also be wrong.

These are the artifacts from the tin.

Its a sad little collection, on the whole as a family we’ve avoided motorbikes.

Your last time in a darkroom.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity

I was driving over Dartmoor on Wednesday. This programme was on the radio. A fine example of serendipity. The artist featured in this broadcast is based on Dartmoor. I had never heard of Garry Fabian-Miller. Something I need to remedy, but for now his subject matter was what interested me.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d70k

Garry Fabian- Miller creates images with a dark room but not cameras.

His days in the darkroom are numbered as the production of photographic developing chemistry is coming to an end.

He speaks movingly about leaving his darkroom.

Darkrooms are one of the casualties of the digital photography/imaging revolution.

I don’t remember the moment when I left a darkroom for the last time.

It’s madness that such a significant part of my professional life slipped away unnoticed and without a fitting farewell.

Medical darkrooms could be massive spaces serving many x-ray rooms with automatic processors or tiny cupboards with smelly tanks of developer and fixer for hand processing. Darkrooms have a strange life of 24 hours of darkness illuminated only with red lights. The similarity to nightclubs doesn’t stop there. Darkrooms are not unused to illicit liasons, or it has to be said, cockroaches. Either way it was always wise to clatter about a bit before entering a dark room, particularly at night or weekends. I rather wish I had taken the time to say goodbye.
Half an hours listening to the programme in the link is worthwhile even if darkroom nostalgia or art are not your thing. This is a gentle conversation about more than those two subjects.

Vivid

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Travels

Vivid is my word of choice on a dull, wet January day. Vivid brightens the world. Vivid people enrich the world. Vivid is never dull. I searched my files for a picture or two to illustrate vivid. My vivid file is rather full and I’m unable to just pick one so join me on a vivid journey for January. The route will be erratic.

Vivid Hugo in January 7 years ago. An 8 week old puppy. As I write this he still loves a vivid backdrop. Today he is sleeping on a Chartreuse coloured pillow.

One last Hugo centric image comes from Brighton Pavillion Winter Ice skating rink possibly 6 years ago. I love the accidental or serendipitous heart shape of the illuminated portion of the image.

Taking my next link as architecture Brighton Pavillion we to Neal’s Yard just North of Covent Garden Tube Station.

I’m completely lost as to where these beach huts are. Pink and orange takes us to the seaside, either Suffolk or Sussex.

This wall is in Marrakech, dropping the orange we go pink. A pink wall in Majorelle Gardens famed for their blue. There is a tiny triangle of the eponymous blue if you look hard enough.

Pink Marrakech walls guide me gently towards the next new direction, which will be sartorial with a nod to a traditionally dressed market porter. What is intangible from this picture is the vivid smell eminating from the tannery area. A rare example of vivid not being a good thing.

Sartorially vivid takes us to South Korea. A chance photograph of a proper dapper chap.

Another chance photograph. Not so dapper but definately a chap taken at Whitstable Carnival.

Body habitas gives me the next cue for a change of direction. Statues by Mauro Perruchetti. Jelly Baby Family at Marble Arch.

Jelly baby sculptures neatly swerve me to foodstuffs. Next up Dolly Mixtures at a baptismal party.

The glitter and twinkly confetti party table takes us effortlessly to a live Christmas Karaoke party in Peckham.

Then on to yet more twinkle. This time for Chinese New Year in Hong Kong.

Peckham to Hong Kong, quite a journey but as we’ve arrived there is more Hong Kong to reveal.

Close up of a lantern , quickly followed by a photographic error but vivid and thus valuable to this blog.

As luck would have it I have a Chinese New Year textile link.

My packing for Chinese New Year.

That was a lucky turn as textiles are awkward to weave into a story. The craft tent at The Royal Cornwall Show tempted Psychedelic crochet out of the closet.

Port Eliot Festival, also in Cornwall ties up trees as gifts.

Which brings me gratefully to Vivid Nature.

February tulips in Saltash

Artichokes in June.

Which briefly return us to Hong Kong for spiky plants.

Rambutans at Tuen Mun market in the New Territories. Fruit directs me to some of my paintings. Starting with Fig, Blackberry and Cob but.

Then on to an invented abstract fruit.

Which bears a little resemblance to a real flower,

at the Chelsea Flower Show, which of course returns us to London.

This is a very expensive monitor in a hospital in Marylebone. This intriguing pattern was caused by an unexpectedly vigorous movement of an x-ray machine, known as a C-arm it orbits around the patient. Swinging us neatly to the actual Orbit at The Olympic Park. Sculpture by Anish Kapoor.

Red neon effect and East London track me back to The City.

A favourite bar and coffee shop opposite Smithfield Market and close to St Bartholomew’s Hospital . Ask For Janice is a refuge from the realities of work. It is also the location for celebrations and socializing with work friends. Often before more physical challenges , which bowls us along nicely.

Posh bowling in Bloomsbury with the boys.

Buoys on the Norfolk coast.

And finally some vivid music and more spheres.

Congratulations on completing a vivid journey. Have a chocolate.

Greyscale

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Medical imaging, Paintings, Photographs, Serendipity

Diagnostic imaging was my trade for many years. The majority of modalities in imaging produce pictures in black and white or more correctly in Grey scale. As an artist grey scale has always been my guide when judging my coloured work. A black and white photograph always lets me know if a painting has the balance I am hoping to achieve.

Cookworthy Knapp © theoldmortuary

In photography I often search out a monotone image in the real world.

Petersham Nurseries
https://petershamnurseries.com/

Hugo and Lola have been known to pose in locations that lend themselves to Black and White.

In this case at Dungeness, Britain’s only desert on the Kent coast.

The unusual environment lends itself to greyscale.

All round the coast of Britain, black and white somehow brings peace and silence to an image that could, with colour be garish or over ripe.

Wells-next-the-sea

Gigs at Saltash, Cornwall

Another monotone shot in real life colour.

Retaining walls at Samphire Hoe Country Park. An artificial land mass built from the extracted materials created by the tunneling for the Chanel Tunnel. A Nature Preserve.
http://www.samphirehoe.com/uk/visit-us/

And finally back to Radiography.

A cardiac angiogram of the left coronary artery, the basis of the pattern that heads this blog.

Left coronary artery