It's all Context

It's the 12th November 2011 and it's only my second blog of the month - not good enough. Mind you it has been been busy and I had to take time off in the middle of the week because I wasn't well but all is back on track. So much to tell so I'll try to do it chronological order.

After my arrival back from my Mediumship course on Saturday last week, I went to the pictures on Sunday night to see Paranormal Activity 3, the prequel to the first two films. I'm not going to do a review because unless you've seen the films or are interested in the genre, it would be fairly meaningless, but if you have, it's worth seeing.

I don't like first day back at work on Monday after time off - I never have although rather surprisingly I only had 50 e-mails which is good and no surprises which is also good.  I had a memory flashback on Tuesday at work. Although I was starting to feel the first inklings of unwellness, sore throat, spinning head and can't concentrate on anything, like a martyr, I stayed at work. I made a cup of tea for my colleague Ellie and I and I opened a fresh tinfoil pack of tea bags and the smell that came out of them immediately reminded me of opening quarter pound (100g) packs of loose Brook Bond PG Tips tea at home when I was a kid looking for the collectors cards that sat within them. Great memories.

Wednesday came the crunch do I go to work or not? I guess it was all decided when I couldn't get out of bed because my head was spinning like a top. I took a day off. This was not what I am used to. My sickness record is excellent but when it comes to not being able to physically sit up - there's no choice. Anyway, my sickness record is intact because I took a day's leave instead which is ridiculous, but there you go. I cancelled my dental appointment for Thursday because I couldn't face having my loose crown stuck back, not because it's painful, because there isn't any pain, but the keeping open of the mouth with a rasping sore throat and a cough wasn't something I thought I could cope with.

Finally, my son John and I have a photographic exhibition at the Hull History Centre entitled - Kingston-upon-Hull: History in Context

This exhibition presents a series of photographs which combine original black and white photographs from Hull’s past and modern digital images taken from the same vantage point as the original photographer. This was one of the most challenging and enjoyable aspects to this project in finding the original location upon which the photographers of yesteryear stood in order to make it possible for the photographs to be combined.

The photographs taken in 2011 by me were manipulated by John using Photoshop to show elements of what remains of the old city of Hull and combined them with today’s more familiar images. It looks really good and today there are a couple of examples which, if you click on them, will expand for a better view.


It lasts all of November and if you are around Hull - pop in and have a look.


Chat soon

Ta-ra.

Now and Then...

A better day today, with wall to wall sun, little breeze to talk of and spent all of it indoors! Today was an auragraph course - learning to see people's aura and then creating a visual representation on paper (I could already see them, but had never created an auragraph before). More on what an auragraph is in a later blog.

I had seen an interesting photo set on the BBC website where old pictures of towns were superimposed on modern day pictures to represent of how it looks now and how it looked then on one photograph. So we (my son John and I) thought we would try to reproduce this effect and here are the results:

This is the original photograph taken just after 1900 of Queens Victoria's Square in Hull , so named because a statue of Her Majesty sits in the square - just to the left of the picture.

This is the modern day photograph, taken by me from, as far as we can tell from the various angles and positions of the buildings, the exact spot from where the original was taken. The difficulty is finding the right focal length of the original lens setting.

This is the fascinating result of putting the two pictures together showing John's skill using Adobe Photoshop CS4.


As you can see in comparing the pictures, there's very little left of that part of the city other than the buildings to the far right and Queen Victoria's statue to the left although the original building lines were retained. The change came not because of modern development, but because of the persistent and unremitting bombing of the city in World War ll by the Luftwaffe; 'that North Eastern town,' as the broadcasts and newspapers reported when the nation was told of the bombing, and so called to protect the identity of the strategic importance of the docks to the nation's survival.

My Grandfather was an auxiliary fireman in Hull during the war and he had some tales to tell, both harrowing and darkly funny. But that's for another day.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend

Chat soon

Ta-ra