betwixt and between

A landscape of interminable undulations

2011-09-16T12:43:00.000+01:00

“…all this had caused him most unpleasant dreams; waking at very early dawn… he had found himself comparing this ghastly journey with his own life, which had first moved over smiling level ground, then clambered up rocky mountains, slid over threatening passes, to emerge eventually into a landscape of interminable undulations, all the same colour, all bare as despair. These early morning fantasies were the very worst that could happen to a man of middle age; and although the Prince knew that they would vanish with the day’s activities he suffered them acutely all the same, as he was used enough to them by now to realise that deep inside him they left a sediment of sorrow which, accumulating day by day, would in the end be the real cause of his death.”

From "The Leopard" by Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampedusa

Trial By Jury

2011-08-29T11:24:00.004+01:00

I spent the last 2 weeks on jury service; it left me with real doubts about the fairness of our famed English justice. This is an attempt to get my thoughts in order before possibly following up elsewhere. [Updated 13:30 30th August 2011].

Remember the description of planet Earth in Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”? Mostly harmless. Trial by jury is a bit like that – mostly fair and effective. But not entirely so; it may be good but it isn’t perfect. Even after all these years, flaws remain. Any business manager worth his salt will tell you that system design should be open to continuous improvement, uncovering the flaws and refining them out of the system, but one senses that the English judicial system has become too inflexible to allow adaptation. While there’s no obvious case for revolution, the principle of continuous improvement means there is always a case for evolution, yet the system seems too rigid to permit even the contemplation of the minor tweaks that could address the flaws. Flaws that in some cases result in justice so crude it verges on being arbitrary.

The adversarial system – a theatrical and sometimes barely civilised battle between opposing counsels for prosecution and defence – inevitably tends to create two interpretations of the circumstances of an alleged crime that are polar opposites. Prosecution paints the defendant as blacker-than-black, pulling out every shred of evidence that can be used to bring out his or her guilt. The defence, always on the back foot since the prosecution necessarily goes first, attempts to create an opposing view, re-interpreting events to put the defendant in the most positive and sympathetic light that the evidence allows. Perhaps if a simple verdict of guilty or not guilty is all that the jury is required to decide, this approach is good enough. No nuanced judgement is required, there are no shades of grey, just a simple verdict of did or didn’t the defendant commit the act of which they stand accused.

If our case had been that simple in its structure, there would have been no problem. But it wasn’t that simple.

Although there was only one incident – a stabbing – there were two charges, one an alternative to the other; unlawful and malicious wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, or a lesser charge of simply unlawful and malicious wounding, without any statement of intent. The difference between the two charges has very little to do with the cause of wounding, but is about the intent behind the action. The jury is asked to determine, on the basis of the evidence, not only what actually happened, but what was in the mind of the defendant at the time. It is important to recognise that both charges are of malicious wounding – wounding that was deliberate as opposed to accidental – but the more serious of these charges concerns the intention behind the act of wounding. Did the defendant intend “merely” to hurt the victim, or did he intend to cause really serious harm?

This makes the task of the jury more complicated on two counts, compared to a simple “did he or didn’t he” verdict.

Firstly, they are asked to evaluate not only facts, but what was going on in the mind of the defendant, which they can only infer from the details of the circumstances surrounding the actions. Secondly, they have to make a fine value judgement, placing that intent somewhere on a continuum between accident (“I only meant to scare him”) at one end of the scale and attempted murder at the other. Furthermore, having placed the perceived intent on that continuum, they have to determine whether it sits on one side or the other of a dividing line called “intent to cause grievous bodily harm”. And as if that wasn’t enough, they have to figure out for themselves exactly where that dividing line itself sits on the continuum. This is a whole different ball game to the simple “did he or didn’t he” form of verdict.

Answering “did he or didn’t he” commit the act fits comfortably within the black and white framework constructed by the adversarial approach of prosecution and defence. But that approach gives very little substance with which the jury can work in that uncertain middle ground where they have to try and unpick the hyperbole and establish exact shades of grey where the only colours presented to them have been black and white. The whole thrust of the prosecution is that the defendant is guilty of the more severe charge; the defence’s line is that the defendant didn’t even carry out the act so how they be guilty of either charge? At no point in the court proceedings does anyone - neither defence or prosecution counsel nor the judge - address the evidence in a way which might shed any light on the possibility that the defendant is only guilty of the lesser charge.

To reach a fair verdict in these circumstances, the jury needs knowledge in three areas, none of which was adequately addressed:

An appreciation of the continuum of intent (from scaring off, to murder)
An appreciation of the continuum of harm (from a scratch, to life threatening injury)
Sufficient evidence to be able to determine the position of the defendant’s mind on the former continuum, and his intended result on the latter continuum – i.e. what injury did he intend to inflict (which may not be the same thing as the injury actually inflicted) and did that intended injury cross the boundary into GBH? Note that there seems to be no legal definition of what constitutes GBH – the only guidance we were given is that it is “really serious harm”.

Based on the debate which took place in the jury room, I don’t believe the majority of members of the jury had either of those two appreciations; unless these could be established, any review of evidence has no frame of reference within which to make a judgement. It was clear from what was said that, in the minds of most jurors, the act of stabbing necessarily indicates an intent to cause GBH. But if that were the case, why would there be the lesser charge? The implication of the very existence of the two charges is that the law makes provision for the possibility that wounding may be malicious without necessarily being intended to cause GBH. Yet that provision was lost on the majority of the jury. It has to be said, too, that the adversarial approach tends to reinforce that viewpoint, by seeing everything from points of view which are polar opposites with no exploration of the middle ground. That exploration is left up to the jury, if they ever even realise that there is a middle ground to be explored.

Although the judge gives a certain amount of explanation to the jury before they retire to consider their verdict, that explanation still tends to reinforce the black and white view of things, with no attempt to describe the continuum either of intent or of harm. The question remains stated in simple terms which mask the complexities which underlie it - did the defendant intend to cause really serious harm? Yes or no? To the layman, who has already determined that the defendant carried out the stabbing, what other interpretation can there be but that he intended to cause GBH?

The jury, with no legal background and only cursory guidance, are being asked to make a fine judgement with enormous implications for the life of the defendant. A conviction for the more serious charge is likely to carry a sentence three times as long as for the lesser charge – 6 years as against 2. With actual time served likely to be half of those figures, and taking into account the 5 months already served in custody in this case, the effective difference is even more apparent – 31 months against 7. You would think that after 5 days of trial, the court ought to take sufficient steps to ensure that the jury has a thorough understanding of the task at hand and the parameters it has to consider when reaching a fair verdict.

This is where the flaws in the system start to become apparent, opening up the way for improvements to the process. Given that the jury can be assumed to start with no actual legal knowledge, but instead many preconceived ideas concerning all manner of legal matters and terminology, there has to be some communication to impart the necessary level of understanding. Now, communication is a 2-way process. If A wishes to communicate something to B, it is incumbent on him to verify that B has not only heard the message but has understood it. Yet in the case of a jury, the communication is 1-way only. The judge makes many statements in court but the jury must remain silent at all times. The only communication allowed back to the judge is by way of a written question, which is taken to the judge who may answer it by calling the jury back into court – where, again, they must remain silent as they receive his answer.

People reach mutual understanding by a process of dialogue – a 2-way exchange. Yet the legal proceedings are structured in such a way as to make that impossible. So we’re left with a jury whose knowledge of the parameters by which they are supposed to be determining guilt or innocence is at best both sketchy and varied, and at worst plain wrong. To this day, in spite of mulling over the verdict we reached almost every waking hour for the last three days (and I suspect for many of the sleeping hours as well) I have absolutely no idea whether the verdict we reached was fair and just, or not.

Somehow, in a case like this where the jury is judging not black and white but shades of grey, a means has to be found by which the jury is furnished with the understanding necessary to complete its task according to some clear predetermined principles. If conventional 2-way dialogue cannot be accommodated within the processes of the court, then some other means – a form of jury education – must be found to enable the jury to make a sufficiently nuanced determination. The impact is potentially huge – in this case it could have knocked several years off a prison sentence. If anyone who sits on the right side of law cares, that is. I gained the distinct impression that most did not.

Bass Guitar transcriptions

2011-08-13T22:15:00.000+01:00

I spend a lot of my spare time, when I get the opportunity, playing bass guitar for shows put on by a number of local amateur dramatic groups, including Meme Productions, FFBOS and Completely Productions. For full shows, the scores are usually provided, but sometimes we do extracts or an evening of "songs from the shows", which usually means working from a piano part and and an MP3 or Youtube clips. Having spent several hours transcribing bass parts, using the superb (and free) Musescore software, I figured I might as well make these available, on the unlikely chance that someone, somewhere, might by trying to do just the same thing.

They can be found via the main menu bar above on the Music Transcriptions page

A Tale of Authentic Africa

2011-06-26T15:39:00.004+01:00

Two years ago today, we’d just returned from a once-in-lifetime trip to Zambia, visiting our son, who was teaching in Lusaka, and his wife. I’d intended to document the trip, but for one reason or another I lost the energy for writing. I kept a few notes in my journal though, particularly of one eventful day...

It had been a near perfect trip so far – upgrades at all three safari camps we’d visited, plenty of wildlife photos; even the couple of thousand kilometres travelled by 4 x 4 had given a fascinating insight into life in rural Zambia. Admittedly though, we were experiencing Africa mostly from a distance, viewed through the car window or from the safety of a safari vehicle or camp. We were getting used to it, accustomed to it – a warm and friendly place, it seemed. There had been a little edginess in Chipata, perhaps – in an exclusively black town with not a European face in sight we felt very much the outsiders; the kids outside the supermarket were more aggressively acquisitive than any we’d encountered elsewhere, demanding anything they could see through the car windows, departing with a casual “fuck you” when we ignored them. All the same, elsewhere, the sight of schoolkids immaculately turned out, besuited men on bicycles, huge numbers of churches, made Africa seem a friendly and welcoming place. Although in the south of the country, in the villages towards the Zambezi, we’d seen kids standing by the dirt road with arms outstretched, palms upwards and sullen faces - a gesture of demand, not of begging – those occasions were easily outnumbered by images of children smiling and waving. But the edginess is there all the same; mostly harmless as Douglas Adams put it in “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”, but not completely so.

Our Africa experience became a little more authentic on the way back from Livingstone to Lusaka. When travelling these roads, forewarned is forearmed – it’s best to leave time for “eventualities” and set out before dawn, arriving in the early afternoon - better to arrive early and kick your heels for 3 hours at the far end, than have an incident and still be travelling after dark. Suppose an overturned lorry blocked the entire road – cliff on one side, ravine on the other? It could easily happen; it nearly did on our way down. The road was unusually wide at that point; had it been narrower, there would have been no way round, and we’d simply have had to wait until it could be cleared. Fortune smiled on us on that occasion, but it might not next time.

So ideally you build in several hours contingency, and if events eat into that contingency, the risk and the sense of unease start to build. Plan A was to spend 2 nights in Livingstone, enjoying a touch of luxury; tasting, for a moment, life as the other half live. We’d arrive at mid-day, go for a sunset cruise on the Zambezi, then on the following morning visit Victoria falls and the craft market for souvenir shopping, take tea at the Royal Livingstone Hotel in the afternoon, and return the following day. Still under canvas, mind – a touch of luxury, yes, but only a touch all the same.

We didn’t get our now-customary upgrade this time; perhaps we should have taken that as an indication that our fortunes were changing. Just a standard safari-style tent with typical campsite communal washing facilities. Then, on the cruise, Rachel almost passed out, and spent a sizeable part of the time on her back on the floor, head on a cushion, feet propped up in classic recovering-from-fainting pose. Thankfully she soon recovered, but she was ill again during the night, and that same night my wife also succumbed to the African equivalent of Delhi-belly, on this one occasion when our safari tent didn’t come with en-suite facilities. (Yes, there is such a thing as a tent with en-suite facilities!) An already unpleasant situation wasn’t helped by the need to take multiple trips to the shared ablution facilities on a very cold night. Cream teas and mountains of cake seemed a risky indulgence for two dodgy tummies, so we decided to cut our losses and return to Lusaka after an early (and very cold) visit to the falls. Still, we should get back to Lusaka by sunset, all being well.

All being well; but we’d already used up every minute of our contingency time. We were doing fine until just outside Mazabuka, having covered 350 of the 480km total distance. I’d been taking a turn at the wheel; we stopped for Paul to take over and he immediately noticed something amiss with the brakes – far too much travel in the brake pedal. Not being used to the vehicle, and not needing the brakes much anyway, I hadn’t noticed. We checked the brake fluid – the reservoir was almost empty. Lying on the road and peering under the car, the first wheel I looked at showed the problem all too clearly – brake fluid sprayed all over the front suspension and inside face of the tyre. I got Paul to press the brake pedal – a tiny jet of fluid shot out from a pinprick hole in the flexible rubber pipe. Bad new; very bad news. Still 2 hours driving to go, not long until it became dark, and no brakes to speak of. Paul was adamant there was no chance of getting it fixed in Mazabuka “This is Africa; everything takes three times as long. They’ll say they can fix it, then find they can’t and they wont be able to do anything until tomorrow. “But we can pay them plenty of dollars”, I say, naively thinking the prospect of dollars would magically open doors. “You don’t understand, that’s not how it works here; this is Africa”.

But we had to try. Now, if you’re going to break down, a couple of km outside the second largest town in Zambia is about the best place to do it, although the timing wasn’t ideal – after 4pm, and everything shuts at 5. We limped into town, keeping a long way back from any vehicles in front and keeping a wary eye out for street traders with their barrows who seemed oblivious to the traffic, darting from side to side as though it was they who clearly had the right of way, not us. Maybe according to local custom they had. I don’t suppose Zambia has a Highway Code, and even if it does, I can’t imagine anyone reads it. There’s certainly no-one in evidence to enforce it.

We passed a run-down looking shack with “brakes and clutches” painted in black on its once-white walls. Buildings in Zambia seem to receive one coat of paint in their lifetime; as the building ages, so does the paint. Most of it is chipped, peeling, faded and dirty, giving the town a well-worn, seen-better-days look. Outside, a group of men were fitting tyres that looked almost-but-not-quite completely bald onto rusty looking truck wheels, working by hand with hammers and tyre levers. Probably just as well the proprietor couldn’t help us – I don’t think I’d want to drive a vehicle whose brakes had been on the receiving end of their style of mechanical attention. He directed us across town to Autoworld.

They had no spare brake pipe, but we bought a couple of bottles of brake fluid, optimistic that we’d somehow get to the point where we could use it. Next door to Autoworld was a very up-market looking (for Mazabuka) workshop. Very new, with pristine paintwork, fitted with several ramps and modern tyre fitting gear – it wouldn’t have looked out of place back home; indeed, it would have put many such UK enterprises to shame. We spoke to the mechanic working under a car raised up on ramps. He called over a colleague, a young, burly cheerful looking Zambian; we explained our predicament, he took a look, saw the problem and wheeled over a trolley jack to take a closer look. Easy to see the problem; harder to fix. Not only had they no spare pipe, but after half an hour of struggle he couldn’t get the old pipe off. At least if he could have done that, he could plug the end and we could drive with brakes on 3 out of 4 wheels. Illegal in the UK of course, and maybe here too, but with no spares in town, what else can you do? Anyway, this is Africa...

But as I say, he couldn’t get the old pipe off. 5 o’clock, and everywhere around was shutting down; shutters coming down, people packing up and walking home, and the sun edging ever closer to the horizon. An unexpected overnight stay was looking more and more likely. So this is the real Africa - a fatalistic, shoulder-shrugging approach to life. Shit happens, and you just have to deal with it. Vehicle breakdowns, no spare part – what choice is there but to wait as long as it takes until a bodged repair can be effected? Broken down buses and lorries by the roadside had been a standard feature of our travels; several times we’d passed a bus - the ubiquitous sky-blue Toyota HiAce - at the roadside, passengers disembarked and wandering around or sitting on a pile of luggage whilst the driver had his head under the bonnet or was jacking up a wheel. Goodness knows how they manage to make repairs, but evidently they do, otherwise the roadsides would be littered with abandoned buses.

This is in the centre of Lusaka – the only photo I have of these buses.

My mind wandered over the possibilities as the mechanic struggled to undo the recalcitrant nut. (To his credit, he obviously knew that to round off the flats on the pipe fixing nut would be disastrous and must be avoided at all costs). The best outcome – a full repair – was already off the table. Next best would be successfully to plug the end of the pipe and proceed with 3 brakes – but would it be better to travel to Lusaka in the dark, or to find lodgings overnight and wait until morning? Then there was the worst case scenario – “Sorry, I can’t do anything” – and we’d be stranded. No RAC, no friend to call, or none less than 2 hours drive away, a vehicle that couldn’t even be moved, and a big question mark over the forthcoming trip through Namibia to the coast for Paul, Rachel and two friends who were due to arrive on the plane we’d be flying out in.

The sun dropped, the mechanic struggled, and I fretted. So, this is the real Africa. I joked to Paul that his African adventure wouldn’t be complete without this, but he wasn’t amused. At that moment we’d both happily have swapped African adventure for European security and predictability.

But perseverance paid off – the offending nut finally gave in to dogged attempts to release it and now the way was clear to patching us up enough to limp back to Lusaka. The mechanic called over an older, wiry looking African in grease-stained jacket and trousers rather than overalls, who I took to be the boss. He paid little attention to us, but sat on the ground, one leg either side of the wheel hub as he devised a way of inserting a plug inside the junction between the fixed and flexible parts of the brake pipe. For all the fact that the repair was clearly a bodge, he gave the impression of having many years of successful bodging behind him, with an intuitive understanding of how to keep old vehicles functioning, if not exactly roadworthy. I trusted him; but after all, we had little choice.

I wasn’t altogether convinced though at this point that continuing our journey was the wisest choice; wouldn’t it have been safer to stop overnight – the Brandt guide identified a lodge with en suite facilities just a few hundred yards away – and finish the journey in daylight? But the prospect of another night in a strange bed and with unknown sanitary arrangements was distinctly unappealing to my wife, whose tummy was still feeling distinctly fragile, so we settled up - K100,000, about £12 for well over an hour’s work - and set out.

Paul gingerly tested the brakes, not too sure what to expect. Not so hard as to be too severe a test for the temporary repair, but hard enough to be sure that they worked. Of course, with only one front wheel having a working brake, the car pulled strongly to one side under braking, and the heavier the braking, the more violent the pull. The trouble was, it was the left hand brake that wasn’t working, which meant that an emergency stop would send us veering violently over to the right – straight into the path of any oncoming traffic. It was manageable to a degree, by remembering to steer hard left when braking, but when you’re tired and driving by instinct, who’s to say you’ll remember and react in time? We set a speed of a steady 60kph. Half what we might do in daylight and with four good brakes, but anything faster seemed pushing our already stretched luck too far.

The reason most Europeans avoid driving at night in Zambia soon became apparent. Most of the traffic at night is juggernauts travelling to and from South Africa and few bother to dip their headlights as they approach. Night driving becomes a game of Russian roulette; all you can see ahead is two blinding lights surrounded by darkness; all you can do is steer, hopefully, to the left of the lights, praying that there is indeed vacant tarmac in the blackness ahead of your wheels; praying that the driver is actually awake and on his own side of the road. The roads are unlit, there are no white lines or cats-eyes at the centre or the verges, just a strip of grey tarmac with indistinct edges merging into the bush. The Nissan Patrol, for all its strengths, has abysmal lights that barely seem better than a pocket torch. Not only do you hope there are no vehicles hidden by the glare of oncoming lights, there could be travellers on foot or bicycle who have chosen the tarmac for their bed. The nights are chilly, and tarmac stays warm from the sun’s daytime heat long after night has fallen.

Imagine this scene at night, blinded by the undipped lights of the oncoming truck;

imagine the reason for those wavy skid-marks.

We nearly came a cropper once when we encountered a small truck, full beam blazing, parked facing us on our side of the road. Had we steered to the left of that one, we’d have ploughed into the group of passengers who were milling around at the side of the road. Just as well there was nothing coming as we swerved over to the other side of the road to avoid them.

Bus breakdowns are no respecters of daylight hours either. We passed a group sitting around a fire they’d lit beside their immobile bus; just another feature of everyday life in Africa. Presumably they’d be spending the night there. Fears of the night started to creep in. Suppose the worst wasn’t yet over? Suppose the bodge failed and we were left without brakes altogether? Suppose we were marooned in the middle of the bush, at night, with no source of aid, limited water supplies and no means to carry out repairs; suppose we misjudged one of those gambles with the blinding headlights? It wasn’t a comfortable journey; I counted down the minutes – we’d be maintaining this level of stress for another 3 hours yet.

Amazingly, in spite of the woeful inadequacy of the Nissan’s lights, we managed to avoid the pot-holes which litter these roads. Now another problem loomed – fuel was running low. Normally we’d be carrying a couple of large jerrycans, but the trip from Lusaka to Livingstone can be made on one tankful, and in any case garages are more frequent on this stretch of road than most – it is the main route in from South Africa. Frequency is relative though – in this case, it means three or four petrol stations over the 500km of the trip – an average of 100km between each. We should have had enough, but we’d been using the aircon during the day since one of the window winders had broken and the window couldn’t be wound down, plus the 60kph crawl was in 4^th gear, not 5^th, increasing our fuel consumption. Running out of fuel would not be good.

Our experience of Zambian people had been good thus far – friendly people, smiling faces, smartly dressed eager schoolchildren. But now we saw another face. Perhaps it was just the ancient fear of the night, the strain of the journey, our tiredness. The petrol station forecourt now seemed a threatening place, at least to our eyes. Small groups milled around, their purpose unknown. Those children who looked so appealing in daylight now crowded round, surrounding the car, knocking on windows, trying to sell us nuts or smoked fish. Their faces were no longer smiling. Older people hovered behind them in the shadows. Just as you’d choose to keep a safe distance from the youths who congregate at night in places like bus stations in the UK, so we felt a similar sense of threat from these who chose to spend their evening on this forecourt, for reasons unknown.

In reality of course we probably had nothing to fear; those same faces in daylight would have carried no menace, just a minor annoyance. All the same, we were mightily relieved to have filled up and be on our way. Just 95km to go now.

We’d taken the opportunity to have the windscreen cleaned too, and the scatter of light from the oncoming headlights wasn’t as bad as before. The remainder of the journey passed without incident; the closer we got to Lusaka, the safer we felt. Only when familiar sights came in view did we feel we could finally relax. We unloaded the car whilst Paul went straight for the whisky, poured himself a very large – and well-deserved - glass, and collapsed, eyes glazed, into a chair.

I started by saying that our fortunes had seemed to take a turn for the worse, but in hindsight good fortune had still followed us. The problem with the brakes had revealed itself without scaring us shitless in a moment of hard braking panic; we’d driven straight up to a place capable of giving us a temporary fix on the spot, they’d even been prepared to stay an hour later than usual in order to do so; the seized nut had unseized at just the right vital moment; a fuel station was open just when we needed it. So maybe our luck did hold out after all. Or maybe those prayers I had no right to offer, but did so anyway, were answered.

And we did have a truly authentic African experience.

More photos from the trip can be seen here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyborrows/collections/72157622052354657/

New London photoblog

2011-03-25T21:51:00.000Z

Having a compact go-anywhere camera that stays with me almost everywhere I go is transforming how I think about photography. Every lunch hour turns into an exploration of possibilities; some work better than others, but it's all learning. The results are at my new photoblog here.

What to photograph on a grey day when the light is flat?

2011-03-11T10:54:00.000Z

Light and Shade

2011-03-08T10:50:00.002Z

Covent Garden on a sunny day in early spring; a gift for photographers, with so many opportunities to play with contrasting light and shade. Beams of light striking through rows of pillars and railings; a mosaic of light and dark as the sun - still relatively low in the sky, even at mid-day - strikes deep into the heart of the open structure of the old market.

A hasty lunchtime stroll didn't really allow time for my head to get into gear, to adapt from corporate drone to observer of light. But one scene took my eye for five minutes.

It was the light shining through the samples hung above this stall at edge of the market, at the boundary of light and shade, of inside and outside, that first caught my eye.

To begin with, the stallholder was sitting slumped in a chair next to the artwork she was selling.

If I'd been able to get close enough (the reach of the zoom on the LX5 is not great) it might have made a nice shot; she had a rather weather-beaten market trader's face, full of character.

Maybe she caught sight of the camera, maybe she was just cold; she moved out into the sun, and that composition was lost.

I so rarely take photographs of people, and so dislike having my own photo taken, that I'm reticent about obviously making strangers the subject of the shot. But however good the light, an empty market stall looks incomplete.

Markets are about people.

At least using the LX5 is relatively discrete - I just look like another tourist taking snapshots, not a DSLR-touting wannabe photo-artist.

Potential customers come and go; once in a while, someone must buy something, although no-one did in the few minutes I was there.

The stallholder didn't look bothered - tourist prices probably mean there's a hefty mark-up.

And it's a nice spot to watch the world go by.

The connection with the above may be tenuous - this isn't about light and shade, nor is it in Covent Garden, merely outside a restaurant in Drury Lane, en route back to work - but it makes a nice end-piece.

Before and After

2011-02-27T20:33:00.000Z

Before:

Smallford Pit: out-of-camera jpeg. 1/640 sec ~ f/4.0 ~ ISO 80

and after:

Smallford Pit: Post-processing in Lightroom 3

Amazing the difference a bit of treatment in Lightroom 3 can make. An almost HDR-like affect, purely by a couple of graduated exposure adjustments.

Taken on a cycle ride along the Alban Way.

Alley

2011-02-25T19:42:00.003Z

1/60 sec ~ f/2.6 ~ ISO 400

Sometimes, high-ISO noise can work to your advantage. This is a crop from the centre of a much larger original. The camera chose an exposure of 1/60 sec at ISO 400; if I'd been paying attention I'd have used a slower shutter speed as the LX5 has excellent image stabilisation, and dropped the ISO for a cleaner result. But then I'd have missed the opportunity to take advantage of that noise by sharpening it to give the film grain effect which seems to suit the subject so well.

The Poet Dreams of the Mountain

2011-02-25T12:49:00.000Z

Sometimes I grow weary of the days with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old grey mountain, slowly, taking
the rest of my life to do it, resting often, sleeping
under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
that we have smothered for years now, forgiving it all,
and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Hat tip to Panhala

Just fabulous...

2011-01-28T23:08:00.000Z

London as she is rarely seen

2010-12-05T19:02:00.001Z

Lincoln's Inn

Mecklenburgh Square

More here - best viewed as a slideshow

Long winter evenings

2010-11-11T19:28:00.000Z

Eilean Donan Castle ~ August 2007

Now that at last I have Lightroom 3 and a decent monitor, I can get down to some photo work. Good for the long winter evenings...

Autumn

2010-11-01T20:50:00.003Z

Slow Shutter - Art or Gimmick?

2010-10-31T12:35:00.081Z

With the web giving access to such a huge wealth of material of all kinds, I guess anyone who is likely to be reading this will have come across pictures where moving water has been photographed at slow shutter speeds to give a misty, dream-like effect. The first time you see it, you might think “Wow, that’s really neat” but after seeing a few dozen similar shots, familiarity breeds contempt and you’re more likely to think “good grief, another talentless amateur thinking they can turn an ordinary snapshot into a masterpiece just by applying a bit of gimmickry”.

So I'm kinda hesitant to offer such a shot here. If you want to call me a talentless amateur, just keep it to yourself, okay?

Aira Beck, Cumbria, October 2010 - 1/8 sec, f9.0, ISO 100

Just for comparison, here’s a more conventional version. Unfortunately, at the time I wasn’t thinking about doing a side-by-side slow shutter versus freeze-action shot, so this was only shot at 1/60 sec – not fast enough to freeze fast-flowing water, but the effect is probably closer to what the eye/brain normally perceives.

Aira Beck, Cumbria, October 2010 - 1/60 sec, f3.5, ISO 100

So what's the verdict? Is it art or is it a gimmick?

These were taken just above Aira Force waterfall, in the English Lake District. By way of contrast, here’s a situation where slow shutter definitely doesn’t work, looking down on the falls from above. First a shot of he falls themselves, for context:

This is looking down from the bridge in the photo above. Freezing the action with a shutter speed of 1/500sec (the fastest available at ISO 1600) manages to capture something of the rush, the turbulence – the violence even – of the falls...

...whereas a slow shutter shot communicates very little. There's no form or structure to the flow, just a meaningless blur.

Here though is a photo where, to my mind at any rate, use of this effect is 100% justified. One of my favourites from our trip to Zambia last year.

Victoria Falls, Zambia, July 2009 - 1/8 sec, f13.0, ISO 100

Musical Magic

2010-10-21T22:29:00.000+01:00

You only ever get to hear an artist for the first time once; the impact will never be quite the same second time round. I heard solo bass guitarist Michael Manring for the first time at ‘Round Midnight jazz and blues bar yesterday; I’m still coming to terms with the hugely expanded boundaries of what a bass guitar can do.

Arthur C.Clarke famously said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It seems the same principle applies to bass guitar playing. I don’t think I’ve ever been in the presence of such complete mastery of an instrument as I experienced last night; playing that was like nothing I’ve ever heard before. I could see his fingers move, hear the sounds coming through the PA, but scarcely believe that the one resulted in the other.

Actually, I don’t really like that word “mastery”, in the same way that I don’t like the word “conquered” applied to mountains. Conquering implies that the climber has somehow subjugated the mountain, beating it into submission. Mastery implies a relationship of overlord to servant, one imposing their will on the other against an intransigent resistance.

What I saw and heard last night completely transcended that master-servant form of relationship. I know that without the context of the music, any words of mine are going to sound artificial, phrases drawn from a repertoire of praise-giving clichés. But at risk of sounding fanciful, and as anthropomorphic as those verbs I so dislike, this was more like a symbiotic relationship – as though the instrument needs the player in order to give of itself, just as the player needs the instrument; as though both are coming together to give expression to their very being. Fanciful maybe. But yes, it really was that good, and I don’t know how else to express that.

Perhaps another quote would help. Or it might, if only I could remember it. It was from one famous jazz pianist, I think, on hearing another. It was something like “When I heard [X] play, I went home and cried and didn’t play again for a month”. If I played bass well enough, I’d probably feel that way after last night. So it’s just as well that Manring’s playing is in such an utterly different league than mine could ever be, that I need never torture myself by even stepping onto the path of wishing to play that way. If I were to judge my playing by that standard I’d surely never play another note. But then he has been said to be the best solo bass player in the world today.

It’s all just so perfect – articulation so clear and precise, notes so perfectly formed, timbre so rich, I honestly didn’t think it was possible when playing such densely complex passages on a bass. Yet this wasn’t about mere technical wizardry (yes, it’s those magic metaphors creeping in again). Manring quipped that this was “stream of consciousness” playing, and whether or not what he played was rehearsed note-for-note, it came across as a spontaneous development of musical ideas flowing from each other, but coming from a musician so at one with his instrument that he barely had to do more than think the sounds, and they would miraculously flow from his fingers. This is a terrible analogy, but rather like Clint Eastwood flying the Russian jet by thought alone in “Firefox”.

I’m feeling guilty that I’ve not mentioned Steve Lawson so far, even though he shared the billing 50/50 with Manring. But something Steve said when I was chatting briefly afterwards might go some way to excusing that. I was saying how Manring’s playing reminded me of that Arthur C. Clarke quote, and Steve responded that, when Michael played new stuff, he tended to feel that way too, but the aura of magic was less when he was playing material with which Steve was familiar.

I guess that the same principle applies. Steve’s music has become more familiar to me now, and I smile with recognition when I hear his unique style. A style which, whilst equally skilful and articulate, is both pensive and playful, and, perhaps because of that, seems less jaw-droppingly like a piece of magic, at least in the sense of the quote. Magical, yes, but perhaps not magic in such an obviously “how on earth did he do that?” kind of way.

[Did I dig myself out of the hole I dug?]

In any case, stunning as Manring’s solo playing was, the highlight of the evening was undoubtedly their final improvised duet. Hearing the musical ideas developed and passed between them was... ummm... quite magical. A fitting way to end their performance.

Seething

2010-10-21T10:23:00.000+01:00

I'm left speechless, gobsmacked by the brazen lies, cronyism and sheer callousness of our government.

"...one of the richest corporations in Britain, Vodafone, had an outstanding tax bill of £6bn – but Osborne simply cancelled it this year. If he had made them pay, he could have prevented nearly all the cuts to all the welfare recipients in Britain. You try refusing to pay your taxes next time, and see if George Osborne shows the same generosity to you as he does to the super-rich."

Extract from here; details of the Vodafone story here.

Greater Spotted Woodpecker

2010-10-10T20:36:00.001+01:00

Since this is supposed to be one-third photo blog, I figured it was time I posted a photo. My camera hasn't seen a lot of use lately, other than for photos of shows I've played for. Most of those really need some work doing before they're fit for publication though, and time for that has been in short supply.

Yesterday though I spotted this woodpecker in the garden. They visit often enough not to be an out-and-out rarity, but not so often that we get used to seeing them. I've been meaning to do some tests with the 45 - 200mm lens on the Panasonic G1, and this seemed like a good opportunity.

Whilst the 14 - 45mm standard lens for the G1 is an absolute cracker, the long telephoto unfortunately isn't quite in the same class. It's good, but not outstanding. In particular, contrast seems reduced at widest apertures and furthest reach - exactly the conditions here. Plus of course to get the shutter speed up to minimise the effect of camera shake at those long focal lengths (even with image stabilisation), you need to compromise on ISO setting. Worst case conditions all round, yet exactly the conditions likely to be encountered when trying to pick out distant detail like this.

Enter Adobe Lightroom 3. Just a relatively light touch, to restore that lost contrast and counter the ISO 1000 noise, but enough to banish the disappointment in the lens' performance.

And for comparison, here's the out-of-the camera original. Click on both and compare - the noise reduction in particular manages to lessen the graininess of the ISO1000 speed without smearing the details in the feathers.

The Rain Song

2010-10-05T22:57:00.000+01:00

A strong contender for being my favourite Led Zep track, in a masterful arrangement.

Hat tip to @AtmosTrio for the link, via Twitter. Check out their equally awesome version here.

Parallel lines

2010-10-03T20:54:00.000+01:00

I just put a bit of history into the Bio tab above. Feel free to explore or ignore as the fancy takes you!

Resonance

2010-09-30T21:11:00.003+01:00

Once in a while, you come across an artist whose work, in whatever field that happens to be, resonates in a way that goes beyond simple liking. So it was for me recently, when I came across Icelandic jazz pianist Sunna Gunnlaugs. But although music – or any art - can have a profound effect on us, attempting to rationalise why we respond to certain music in the way that we do probably isn’t a particularly useful thing to do. Even if we get to an answer, it’s unlikely to be ‘true’ in any meaningful way – just a made-up theoretical rationalisation - and anyway, even if I do manage to come up with an explanation, so what?

Nevertheless, the question still bugs me. The penalty, I suppose, of having once been a scientist, of having a mind that habitually looks under the surface for explanations of things. Plus this particular response is rather special. More than just liking – this music seems to speak a language I naturally understand. It’s the kind of music I’d like to think I’d create, if only I were that good. Which obviously I’m not.

It was Steve Lawson who introduced me to Sunna’s music, via Twitter. Steve is a tireless ambassador for other people’s music; by his own admission this publicising almost certainly leads to more sales of others’ music than of his own. I’ve learned to trust Steve’s recommendations - they’re always worth listening to. (Which isn’t to say I’d always rush out and buy them. But even the weird stuff - of which, if judged by conventional attitudes, there is plenty - is good weird stuff!) So without knowing what to expect, except that it would be interesting, I clicked the link in Steve’s tweet.

Half way through listening to the title track of ‘The Dream’ for the first time, I knew I was going to buy the album. No question. Even at that very first hearing, it made sense.

That might seem an odd thing to say about a piece of music. What stood out wasn’t that I liked the tune or the motifs (which I did), or admired the musicians (which I also did) or enjoyed the soundscape (yep, that as well), but that it made sense. The musical ideas develop and flow in a way that just seems ‘right’ and therefore deeply satisfying. The harmonic movement, the way the instrumental lines weave together, the pace, all feel natural – there’s plenty going on, yet I don’t have to struggle to keep up. The multi-layered patterns in the music seem in some way to match patterns in my brain.

Overall, the effect on me – and this is of course a very personal response – is invariably energising, buoyant; this is music to listen to when I need a lift. It’s not that it’s superficially happy, but it seems to have a deep optimism. I’d like to think that’s Sunna’s personality showing through. In some mystical, magical way I come away feeling a boost in confidence. In a word, I feel more centred, as though part of me is finding self-expression simply through listening. Curiously, the only other piece of music I can think of which has quite this effect in such a personal way is one which has a lot in common with Sunna’s music. That’s ‘Little People’, from Gwilym Simcock’s ‘Blues Vignette’ album.

The scientist in me would love to know what’s going on in my head as I listen. It’s a very active form of listening; this music messes with my brain – in a good way. I wonder if it is making neural connections that somehow mirror the neural patterns of those positive feelings?

In the end though, all the rationalising in the world dissolves into nothing once the music takes flight. Never mind the whys and wherefores – I’m simply grateful that Sunna’s music is. And I have a strong sense that so far we’ve only had an introduction, an aperitif. There’s a whole banquet yet to come.

Especially resonant tracks for me:
The Dream
A Garden Someday
Mindful

Chance

2010-09-17T14:09:00.001+01:00

How do any of us get to be where we are now? Meticulous planning? Driving ambition? Blown by the wind?

I never planned to play bass guitar. As a teenager, when you might have thought I’d have been sitting in my bedroom picking out the bass line of tunes playing on pirate radio stations, I was barely even aware of bass guitar. (Yep, I’m old enough to remember pirate radio… maybe it’s because you don’t get a lot of bass on the 2 inch speaker of a tiny/tinny portable transistor radio that I never noticed it). My musical interests at the time were largely centred around classical music; I even played the violin, as leader of the school orchestra. Odd choice, as I was never all that fond of the violin as a solo instrument. If I’d chosen cello, I might still be playing it now. But that’s another story.

It was chance that started me playing bass. My son happened to have one, as well as his other guitars. With his classical guitar, he was a member of the Hertfordshire Guitar Orchestra, and so when I had to drive him to fortnightly rehearsals I figured that, rather than sit and twiddle my thumbs for 2 hours, I could take the bass along. After all, I could read bass clef since I also played piano; I’d messed around with guitar, like most teenagers – how hard could it be to follow a simple bass line?

Then I started playing in church. Again, by chance, the MD also directed occasional shows for a local amateur dramatic group, so I got invited to take part – 42nd Street was that first show. One thing led to another, names get passed around MDs, and ten years later I’m losing count of the number of shows I’ve played for. Six so far this year; that must be something like a hundred songs learned. (And forgotten – I’ve never mastered the art of memorising; always have to have dots in front of me).

I’ll be honest; it wasn’t the music that drew me in to playing for shows. Although once in a while something special comes along – like Rent, or Spring Awakening, or The Last Five Years –some shows are frankly nothing special musically. But it doesn’t really matter – what I get from these shows is something else. It’s the joy of making music as part of an ensemble – team spirit, if you like - where the whole is so much more than the sum of the parts; it’s being part of a wider creative enterprise; it’s giving pleasure to the audience; it's getting to hang with some amazing, talented, wonderful people. And it’s about learning and growing as a musician – learning to listen to what the others are playing and to what those on stage are singing; watching the MD for those cues that that tie the music to the action; incrementally improving technique; oh, and buying more gear ;)

Chance plays its part. But it’s how we respond to the opportunities that chance brings that shapes the course we take. Sometimes you have to grab an opportunity with both hands as it flies past, not quite knowing why, not knowing where it will lead, just because it holds possibility – even though you don’t at the time know what that possibility is, just that something new and unknown beckons. A piece of unwritten future waiting for you to join with chance and help shape it.

Fifteen years ago I’d never touched a bass guitar. Now it threatens to take over my life. All down to chance, and recognising and being ready to grab hold of that possibility.

Purpose

2010-09-11T22:34:00.001+01:00

Why is this so hard?

It seems I’ve got out of the habit of communicating. Oh sure, I talk to people, though maybe not as much as I’d like to. Most days it’s just routine stuff – I’m hardly conscious of it. Someone says something, my mouth opens and words come out, but it’s little more than a basic stimulus-response reaction. What they say triggers a memory of a related experience, or a repeated opinion; or sometimes the flip-side - sometimes it triggers a learned what-not-to-say. But all of it could almost be programmed – standard patterns, forever repeating. I’m not sure I’m even present whilst it goes on.

Even my thoughts, such as they are, follow familiar pathways. Nothing new, nothing original, nothing controversial – just the same old circles, worn into a comfortable track.

Maybe it’s the path of least resistance. Or maybe it has to do with purpose, or lack thereof. Not enough reason to stir these torpid grey cells out of their stupor.

That’s actually a bit scary. If all I ever do is to give an autonomic response to stimuli, then take away the stimuli and I become a vegetable.

This, you see, is why I said I wasn’t ready. With nothing else to write about, I figured I’d try writing about why I have nothing to write about. And end up going round these well-worn circles. It was largely because I had nothing new to say that I drifted away from my old blog. (I had to correct that last sentence; I originally typed the old blog – unconsciously disowning it in the very words with which I describe it).

Clearly I must have thought something had changed – else why would I have gone to all the trouble of creating a new blog?

The act of creation was part of the reason – simple though the design may be, it was fun playing with the new Blogger template design tool. But that can only be a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Take a look down the sidebar. The blogroll is still there, with those friends I read for who they are, not for what they write about. (I confess though that I don’t visit their blogs so often these days. I got into bad habits of reading in Google Reader, but that can be too impersonal, putting one at arm’s length from the writer). But above that are some other links – mostly also to blogs, but this time themed. Music, photography, hills and mountains, and what I’ve called worldview. The first three of these have been my primary loves ever since childhood; I figured that if I’ve stuck with these for so long, they must mean something to me, and that must be a source of inspiration for writing, mustn’t it?

Ah, yes. That was what prompted me to start blogging again. Took a while to remember, but I got there eventually.

Not yet

2010-09-07T19:50:00.000+01:00

I was mistaken. I'm not ready for this yet. Oh, well... Another time, perhaps.

Genesis MkII

2010-08-24T21:31:00.001+01:00

I guess that, now I’ve put a couple of links to this blog out there in the wild, and traffic is just beginning to drift by, I ought to give a bit of background as to what it’s all about.

I began blogging over seven years ago, and for the early part of that time I really thought I’d found a new direction in life. I’d always enjoyed language and appreciated good writing – but hey, I was an engineer, not a writer, and it took a while before I grudgingly accepted that I had a need for the kind of self-expression and dialogue best satisfied through the more measured pace of the written word. And I was totally taken by surprise by the positive reception my words got.

It wasn’t long before I had an active blog, lots of blogging friends and found the kind of relationships that bypass all that up front trivial stuff and plunge straight to the heart of the matter. And, rather to my own disbelief, I felt I was actually progressing as a writer. Hardly anyone in the UK had even heard of blogs, let alone actually had one, so although I blogged under my own name, I was as good as anonymous. It was like moving to a new town where nobody knows you; you’re still the same person, but freed of all those pre-existing perceptions which others have about you, you no longer have to fit into the mould of the person they think you are and can grow in all sorts of unlikely directions. Hence that first blog started out in life titled by a quote from the psychologist Carl Rogers – "Older and Growing”.

What happened next is still a mystery to me. You know how you can be having a dream, in a quite specific context, and somehow the dream morphs into somewhere completely different, yet you weren’t aware – at least in your dream-state perception – of any break? It was something like that with me, albeit that it didn’t happen overnight. It was as though I woke up one day and realised that all of that hope and promise had dissipated, as the path I thought I was on had morphed into something different.

Wind the clock forward a few years, almost to the present. That old blog is as good as dead; the friends and the once mutually supportive relationships now (to my shame) mostly abandoned, albeit for a few friendships still active on Facebook; and writing of any kind is almost non-existent – bar that which can be reduced to the 140 characters of a Tweet.

But now the metaphorical dream has morphed once again, and, as unexpectedly as it left, I find the energy for writing - so long departed - seems to be returning. Yet not as a resuscitation of what had gone before, not merely a few breaths attempting to give life to something that was already dead; I tried that before, and it manifestly didn't work. So this is a fresh start, deserving of a fresh look - and here it is.

Extra large photo test

2010-08-23T18:56:00.003+01:00

View from Bowfell summit, December 2008

Yup, that rather knocks the idea of two sidebars fairly and squarely on the head...

Getting ready for opening night

2010-08-18T22:10:00.008+01:00

Spring Awakening - without doubt the best show for which I've yet played. More dress rehearsal shots here and band shots here.

Whither Art?

2010-05-22T13:46:00.008+01:00

It’s not that I actively enjoy suburban railway journeys – certainly not when encumbered by a heavy and unwieldy bass guitar – but I do appreciate the few minutes of guilt-free idleness. Absolutely no reason to do anything other than gaze out of the railway carriage window, following or abandoning whatever thought-paths are opened up by the ever-changing view. Today’s journey was a crossing from one side of London to the other for a bass guitar lesson with Steve Lawson.

Much of suburban London – especially those parts seen alongside a railway line – are frankly rather ugly. I was tired on this particular journey, unable for the moment to balance the ugliness with a rational acceptance of its context, and so the ugliness rather got to me. Instead of being immersed in this noise and dirt and decay, this unkempt rubbish-tip of a city whose back yard seems to mount a violent assault on the soul, how much more pleasant to be away from all this to live somewhere surrounded by green, by tranquillity, by space. A nice safe little island of a make-believe reality we create for ourselves, shutting out the nasty bits, the bits we don’t want to see, the bits that upset or disturb us. Islands of leafy suburbia amidst urban blight; islands of national (illusory?) well-being amidst a world heading for the brink – and perhaps art itself is another form of island, created as an escape mechanism from the harsh brutality of reality.

Does it actually matter that we act as if these islands are real? Or do we need the security they provide so that we can deal with the bigger reality that faces us when we go outside?

If we go outside, that is.

I sometimes worry about trying to justify art, since it sometimes seems to belong only to that artificial reality. Or more to the point, I worry about my art. My music. With working hours written off as worthless, shouldn’t I be doing something of some value with the hours that remain? I over-simplify the question, of course. I can present all manner of excellent reasons why art is valuable, essential even to the advancement of civilisation. How art mirrors the depths as well as the heights of human experience. I don’t have a problem with that, either intellectually or, if you like to put it that way, spiritually. And yet I’m still left with a nagging doubt when it comes to my art. It still feels as though art – my art - is a luxury, to be indulged in only when the real work has been done.

And this is why I miss those railway journeys: the idle thoughts and scribblings in my notebook, stimulated by nothing more than the view from the window, led me to this conclusion: the best way to deal with that question – if I accept that the ‘best’ art is not a luxury at all but an essential catalyst to the expansion of the soul – is to make sure that my art can be counted amongst that which can be such a catalyst. A mighty tall order, one that sounds almost arrogant in its presumption, but nonetheless not one to be shied away from.
In other words, to be the best musician I can be.

It sounds a simple enough concept, and one wonders why it should take such a tortuous mental process to reach this point. However, the ramifications are only just beginning to dawn on me. Some of them are rather scary.

I can be a creature of extremes; holding a tremendous, debilitating lack of self-confidence yet at the same time a deep and sure belief in a potential only just beginning to be tapped. I guess that’s not all bad; at least the lack of confidence prevents what self-belief there is from turning into arrogance.

Ye gods; is the old blogger, not seen here for many a year, at last resurrected?

Trial photo

2010-04-03T14:23:00.008+01:00

Staithes March 2010

A test shot to see how Blogger handles photos. I used to display photos by linking to storage hosted by my ISP, but although that gives complete freedom of sizes etc it was always a real PITA to resize photos both for page size and enlarged size. Blogger only gives fixed size options - and this, regrettably, is the largest* - but it makes life a lot easier, and an easier life makes for more blogging. Hopefully...

_______________________
* Not any longer, it would seem :)

A black T-shirt and a crumpled denim overshirt

2010-03-23T22:33:00.002Z

It was when playing in the last show that a realisation clicked into place; a new frame of reference for an old perspective, a self-imposed straightjacket miraculously falling away.

Take a typical amateur dramatic production – the cast spans perhaps 18 to 35, the band may be a bit older, and both groups with just the occasional (relatively) old ‘un. This time round, at 55 I was undoubtedly the oldest one there. I’m usually content to be 55, assuming I don’t really fit in a group that is mostly a generation apart. That doesn’t mean being aloof – or I hope it doesn’t. There’s no feeling of superiority by virtue of age, or anything like that – goodness, most of them, cast and band alike, are way better at what they do than I am at what I do (which if you didn’t know is play bass guitar). And I don’t really mean to emphasise age as much as I have done. The theatre set are, shall we say, quite an extrovert lot, and that also creates something of a gap between us. So this isn’t about where any of us sit on any linear scale, be that of age or ability or anything else; no, this feeling of not-really-fitting stems from an internal assumption that these differences – of age, of generation, of personality – are of necessity a divider. An intrinsic barrier, one that might be peered over from time to time, but never crossed.

I said this minor epiphany was down to the show, yet nearly everything about this latest show was just like every other show that has gone before; a cast drawn from the same pool of north London/ home counties talent, the usual suspects playing in the band. True, ‘Rent’ was an ambitious production for an amateur group, but then this is a group used to working at the top end of the amateur range, with production to professional standards. I’ve been part of similar productions before, yet come away feeling little different to how I started.

This time round, however, there was just one tiny difference. Usually, the band is dressed in black, hidden in the pit, essentially invisible, its presence known only by the sound. But this time, the band was to be an integral part of the show. Originally we were planned to be on stage, but space was limited so we did end up in the orchestra pit – but rather than wearing the usual black, we were to dress the part – a 1990’s New York would-be rock band. Such a trivial difference, yet I felt literally 10 years younger, or more to the point, I felt that division – be it of generation or anything else – narrow to the point almost of vanishing.

Now, just in case your imagination is running away with itself, let me put your mind at rest - I didn’t attempt anything that would embarrass audience or myself by looking as though I was trying too hard. No black leather waistcoat open over a bare chest! In reality my chosen garb was still decidedly conservative, certainly by rock band standards. But that isn’t the point – the important difference was not actual appearance, but the fact that, in a small way, we were playing the part of rock musicians. Hardly acting; the audience wouldn’t have noticed anything different. But it felt different.

The ‘costume’, such as it was, wasn’t so effective at the after-show party, I have to admit. No acting there, it was back to feeling like an old fart amongst a different generation. But in a way that drove the point home, a point that goes something like this:

These years where I now find myself are the between years. Between the fiery certainty of youth and the deep wisdom of old age; between career drive and the release of retirement; between parenthood and grandparenthood. Sometimes, in these between years, you feel as though you belong to neither side, but are wandering lost in a drawn-out transition. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Instead of belonging to neither world you can belong to both, having a foot in both camps. In one moment, enjoy the exuberance of youth, in the next, share the wisdom of the years; one moment be a brother, the next a father-figure.

I wish I didn’t keep quoting years and age. This isn’t only about age and ageing, although they provided the context for this post. No, this is about choices, about realising that there is a much wider spectrum of ways of being available to us, wider by far than the narrow confines of the persona we – or at any rate I – usually assume.

Sometimes all it takes for this penny to drop is a black T-shirt and a crumpled denim overshirt.