The oldest man I know

This is Pepe, the oldest man in my village. How old? I'm not sure as I can never get a straight answer, but he's old.

I'm going to leave you with Pepe while I take a couple of days off. I won't be skiving. I plan to use the time to do some work and take some photographs for this blog.

I'll be back on Monday. Have a good Thanksgiving and a peaceful weekend!

All the best
Tim

Interesting door

I promise I'll return and knock. We deserve to know who's inside.

Chloride Arizona, murals and tumbleweeds

I'm going through a large file of my negatives and slides, the file is marked LA - Phoenix, 2002. It's one of several files I'm wading through at the moment. I'm attempting to do this in an organised way, looking at absolutely everything.

Somewhere amongst the files are a set of panoramic negatives of abandoned gas stations in Arizona, which I think may be saleable now. Sometimes I have to wait a long time before fashions change and a photograph becomes desirable. When I find the negatives I'll put a few here and would welcome your opinions.

Last night I scanned this negative among others. It's from a series of photographs of Chloride, Arizona (an old silver mining town), which is a weird and wonderful place that I recommend you visit when the opportunity arises. The reason for my visit was to have a look at the Roy Purcell murals, which are painted on rocks in the desert a few miles outside the town. After spending time painting in the desert, Roy found fame and fortune designing neon lights for the strip in Las Vegas.

All this rambling to plug a photograph. Anyway, I can tell you that I took the photograph somewhere between the town of Chloride and the murals in the desert, on a bitterly cold day in 2002. It's going on sale today for the first time, check it out here.

All along the watch tower

Andalucia has hundreds of 'atalayas' (ancient watch towers) dating from the 15th century. It's a mystery to me why the people in charge of tourism in Spain don't promote these treasures, but they are almost unknown. So to redress the balance I spent a couple of hours over the weekend snapping watch towers, just for you.

On Saturday I walked for 15 minutes from my front door to my local atalaya, that's the photograph below. It has a commanding view of the south, where invaders would naturally come from. There's a walled garden that, by the look of it, was maintained until fairly recently, it's almond trees are still producing fruits. The ascent to this atalaya has become overgrown though and it's taken me many attempts to conquer it!

The tower below is in Jaen province, a one hour drive north from me, and about 2 hours from the coast.
I cheated here and used a photograph I took in July. This is a tower (in the distance!) on the road to Cordoba.
Finally, yesterday I drove to the town of Moclin, north of Granada. The town is built around the the castle and atalaya. Can you spot it?
So, now we all know what an atalaya is!

The new road

This photograph shows the last piece of road (autovia), being dropped into place that will link the southern coast of Spain dirctly to Madrid and the north. The section is about 20 miles and runs a few miles south of Granada to Motril on the coast. The road opened a few weeks ago and the next phase is to link the entire coast via autovias.

I made the 20 mile journey down to the coast on the new road, but for my return journey I came back on the old road and drove past deserted gas stations and empty cafes. The new road has killed stone dead the business's that flourished up until a few weeks ago.

When I made my little film, Cafe, I asked an owner of one of these cafes how many cups of coffee he made a day. He said 600 cups every weekday morning. When I called back a few days ago there were just 4 other customers drinking coffee.

However, the old road replaced an even older road sometime during the 1950's. This original road was used by traders and seasonal workers to get to the coast where sugar cane was cut, plus herders used the road to move livestock. An elderly neighbour in our village told us once that she went on the 'old' old road with her father when she was a little girl - they went on his mule and the return trip took one week!

To conclude this post I did the same journey on the original old road (the old, old, road). To see how that was affected by the new road in the 1950's. To be honest I didn't complete the entire journey because as beautiful as the scenery was, the road was twisty and unpleasant to drive on resulting in my feeling rather sick!

5 miles down the old, old road and I found this abandoned hotel, home to dozens of cats.

A little further on is this abandoned arab style fort. I couldn't give this photo any scale but this is a big building, the door is a lot wider than my car.

Rugs from south of Granada

About an hour's drive from where I live in Andalucia is a stunning range of mountains, known as the Alpujarras. I was in this region earlier today to buy a handmade rug. They're very versatile and I fancy using one as a throw. Each village in the region has weaving workshops and the designs are unique to the villages. The rugs are made from locally dyed cotton.

They come in all colors and sizes, and each shop owner displays them outside which decorates the streets in a wonderful way! The prices are amazing. I bought an 8' x 3' turquoise and citrus greens & yellows for 20 euros. They are incredibly heavy and have to be collected in person, so each one bought will always have its own special memories of a few hours spent in beautiful surroundings, while breathing fresh clean air!

Fabulous Amazon reviews

I was tipped off to this amazing Amazon product and thought you deserved to see it.
Sometimes a product is so bad that the reviews take on a life of their own, well this is one such product. The description says "Easily convert your car into your personal automobile office!”

I recommend you visit the page soon before it's pulled. But if you're too late here's one of my favourite reviews:

I received this product from my ex-wife during our attempt at a family reunion Christmas. She knew how much I like to eat while driving (fat guy here ... guilty as charged!) and joked it would help me keep the stains off my pants. Well imagine my surprise when I made a left hand turn and not only spilled my plate of ham, but I now have a nasty red mark on my face from being slapped in the head by the desk which turns along with the steering wheel. I wrote a letter to the company and they did offer me a new ham. The doctors say the black and blue marks will clear up as soon as I dismantle the desk.

Fishing baskets

An 18th century definition of a fisherman is "A stick and a string with a fly at one end and a fool at the other". As a fisherman for most of my life I'd tend to agree. My thoughts today are about fishing and how I miss the streams and rivers of Britain, yet I live within walking distance of a lake heaving with fish, but because they're not the right sort of fish, I ignore them, more fool me.

I've just finished a very good fishing book and I'm on a high, so the next best thing to sitting next to a river, in the rain, not catching fish, is to clean and inspect my fishing tackle. It's all contained in the willow baskets above. The small semi circular basket is a french trout creel, very pretty but useless for fishing. The large basket I've owned for about 20 years and is my current favourite. The small one on the right is probably older than me, I used it for many years from the age of 10, but it's retired now because it's got a wobbly leg.

Anyway, before you fall asleep, the point of this post is: Fishing baskets are great for storage, they're quirky, look good and can hide all sorts of things like dirty linen. There are craftspeople who still make them - look here - but they're expensive. If you keep your eyes open you can pick old ones up cheap. I bought the french creel 3 years ago for 4 euros!

Library of Congress photography collection

You know this photograph don't you!

Florence Owens Thompson and her children. Nipomo, California, 1936

Did you know that this photograph belongs to you and that you can have a print (any size you want), for the price of the paper.

How about a Walker Evans like the one above. This will cost a little more but it's definately affordable?

Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans amongst other great photographers, worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, the images are in the public domain and are available from the LOC, Wahington. These are available to either download to your computer or buy for a small fee, so you can own a true original and genuine masterpiece.

All the scanned files are available in a range of formats, but you really want the "uncompressed archival TIFF" versions which will contain the most data and allow you to make impressively large prints. You can print the photographs at those "do it yourself" machines inside shops - look for Fujicolor Crystal Archival, or Kodak Archival printing, but you will have to convert the TIFF to JPEG (converter here). Personally, I wouldn't bother using an inkjet printer, the ink and the paper aren't really appropriate for photographs of this period.

The problem is, the Library of Congress has millions of photographs and is scanning hundreds more everyday. Last night I intended to spend an hour looking at historic houses but ended the search 3 hours later with a fine portrait of Sitting Bull.

I think it's wonderful that such special historic images are being made available to the people - long may it continue!

Rastro made from doors

Rastro (secondhand shop), Granada, Spain. Built entirely using old doors. Note the roof built around the street lamp! This rastro is run entirely by women, and they re-cycle absolutely everything that is donated to them. This is the place to go when you need just one particular type of wall hook, or a cup to complete your set.

View from inside the shop, looking out.

A few frames that were 2 euros each, yes I bought them.

I won't list everything in stock, (as it's a secret) but I found quite a lot of large, heavy, brass letters, they were 5 euros each. They were a nice serif font, and about 15 inches high. The alphabet was missing a few characters including my initials "T" and "I" but I did get a rather nice "L"................

Olives

I've been avoiding my neighbour all week, sneaking out after he's gone to work in the morning. The reason is - it's the start of the olive picking season, and I'm trying to avoid making excuses for not joining in with the picking.

When I first arrived in Spain, over 7 years ago I used to volunteer a few hours of my time to help the locals pick fruit during the season. That first year I helped pick oranges and it was a great fun day out that included a memorable 3 hour lunch. The following year I volunteered for a spot of olive picking which I can only describe as purgotory, it gave me more aches and pains than anything I'd ever done before. It also gave me an insight into the value of olives.

Spain produces more olives than any other country in the world. It has so many olives that it exports the raw olives to other countries around the mediterranean, where they're pressed and re-exported as native olive oil. This is something to think about when you buy Italian olive oil!

Most olives are produced by modern trees that are bushy and grow about 10 feet tall. These are easy to manage and the olives are harvested by machines that shake the trunk and catch the olives in a net. But where I live the trees are old, some as old as 2000 (yes, two thousand!) years, and very big, so harvesting means climbing the trees and first shaking the branches then finally knocking the stubborn ones off with a stick.


But that's not the end of it, oh no!
My neighbour's nets are not big enough to catch all the olives which fall amongs the cabbages growing in the soil below, so we crawl on our hands and knees picking individual olives off out of the soil. After a short while the boredom and repetition becomes hypnotic, I can imagine it's similar to practising a Gurdjieff lesson.

One old olive tree takes two people 2 - 3 days to harvest. It's hard on the back, neck/shoulders, legs, knees, and finger tips, which get stained purple. I have so much respect for the elderly men and women in this village who tackle this annual task without complaint.

So it's no to olives but I'm still happy to pick a few oranges.

Abandoned houses

I have no idea how many empty houses there are in the white villages of southern Spain.

Some houses appear to be abandoned, but then in the Summer they come alive with city dwellers visiting the cooler mountain regions.

In my own village there must be about 2% of buildings which truly are abandoned, but in other villages I visit there are whole streets of empty houses, which probably accounts for 10% of the village. The village below is one such place where houses with occupants are the exception.

I was shown around this casa by one of the residents. He said it belonged to his uncle who died 20 years ago. He now uses it to house his mule and store potatoes.

To some, a second home would be a liability, but this is just convenient (and rather quirky) storage space!

Strictly Come Dancing

The Tower Ballroom, Blackpool

There's a lot in the news about a TV programme called "Strictly Come Dancing". I saw the programme last time I was in the UK but I must be one of the few that didn't become addicted. I can tell the programme is a success because I read something about it (on the Internet), every day. It made me wonder how many of the 8.9 million (which must be more than 10% of UK population) viewers actually dance.

I've spent plenty of days and evenings photographing ballrooms and I can tell you, the photograph above is very typical, four couples and an organist!

My Desert Island Discs - Number 3 John Cooper Clarke - Chickentown

I'd need something on my desert island to remind me of the north west of England where I grew up. If I could remember the almost continuous rain and grey skies I used to live under, then my desert island might not seem such a bad place.

In truth and despite the weather, I love the north of England and my desert island disc is a poem by the great performance poet John Cooper Clarke, with an atmospheric video of a train pulling out of a station in Manchester (I'm not sure which station, Manchester used to have seven).

While I was looking for this poem I found a version used to end an episode of the Sopranos. I didn't get the connection but it works well.

Styl Mag

I'm delighted to be associated with Styl magazine who have used a bunch of my photographs for their launch edition. Styl magazine discuss indie fashion, culture, and living. It's an intelligent read, published in Europe and available worldwide via subscription.

It's always such an honour to be featured in a new venture - I'm thrilled.
I wish Styl magazine every success for the future!

Public art

Public art at the mirador in the Lecrin Valley, Andalucia. The dog is mine!

Naughty French Postcards

Until quite recently you could buy old French postcards (of a naughty variety) in France, but in recent years they've become scarce and expensive.

Due to my ongoing clear out of junk, I've recently sold my small collection of French postcards, but I scanned a few favourites to share with you. I found all of these cards in Africa, from Kenya to Tunisia, almost every second hand goods shop, flea market or store has a shoe box of postcards and if you're lucky you'll find something exotic at a good price.

I tended to collect the more absurd postcards which were created to get around the obscenity laws of the time. These cards were produced between 1870 and 1900 in Paris. During the late 19th century a nude image would be highly illegal in most European countries, unless the nude was of educational value, as these cards most definitely are.

The titles are from the reverse of the actual postcards.

Women wrestlers - How to execute a headlock

The correct way to fall when ice skating


The left hook

Riding a tandem


My personal favourite - How to drink beer