Saturday, 9 November 2013

9th November 2013

Another good day. Very little angina, enabling me to walk briskly into town with D, do a little shopping, have coffee and walk home again. All in all about two miles of walking. Two days ago I could hardly walk to the the bus stop, and had to take the bus both ways. Crazy, and I never know, until I get up, whether I'm in for a good day or a bad day.
All this worries me, and I hope that my cardiac consultant can shed some light on this condition when I see him at the end of the month and offer a solution. I've had my three score and ten, but I was still hoping for another decade or so. But then I think of people like John Thaw, one of my favourite actors, gone way before his time at sixty-three, and my brother-in-law who dropped dead at sixty-seven. I'm lucky, and blessed.
This morning was wet and dreary, but I like to get my photographic fix each day. It might be anything that attracts me visually, although often I have to search for it. You often hear people say they have to get into the 'zone' before things happen, and it's like that with photography. Often, at first glance, there seems to be nothing worth photographing but, if you're not distracted, you can sometimes get into the zone. Suddenly you're seeing pictures everywhere. This morning was like that, grey, dripping wet and dreary low light all around, and then I started to see photographically, and here is one of the pictures I then took. Alright, it's not Henri Cartier-Bresson, but it'll do. 

A few drops of rainwater on a kale leaf. Nature is beautiful if we just take the time to look. And that's the secret, isn't it? As W. H. Davies wrote,
"What is life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?"
Every artist and photographer knows this, but we can all benefit from it. There's just too much hurry out of habit in today's world. Take it easy.

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