Ansel Adams Is Spinning In His Grave.

Guildford Cathedral 13/02/05

It's always a shame when you wake up out of a dream which included Katie Price & Scarlet Johansson.

Ahh well.

A quick hello to any new readers that have cared to check out my joint.

Stephan 'Fordinho' Ford... welcome.

Matt 'Batty' Batten... welcome.

Anyone else I left out... (Sarah & Cheryl?) welcome.

Jack, Aye, Dom, Blake, Newman, Collet, Ash, Hob, Scam (?), Gina (?), Jane, Kate, Louise (?)... I also wanna say hi guys. Hope life's treating you well.

Great, now that's sorted I'll continue by speaking of my recent experiences.

I'm sure a lot occurred before yesterday but I'm really struggling to recall what actually happened in last 5 mins (no difference there then), so I'm just going to skip straight to Tuesdays events.

I had a great time yesterday, Collet invited Alywin & myself to her college drama production up in London which is near Warren Street Station (I've forgotten the name of the college).

Now I dunno if I sed this before, but last time I was invited to her play I spent a full hour desperately looking around, trying to find out where her flippin' college was - by which time, I got there only to witness the sights of the spectators cheering and the cast bowing & walking off stage...

Blast.

Agreed, it was inarguably amusing but explicitly frustrating all in one.

This time I was determined not to miss it on pain of death, even though I couldn't actually remember how I finally got there the first place. Thankfully when we got there we were greeted by the friendly (if unbelievably tiny) long-time friend of Collet's, Ruth.

Now I met Ruth once before at a gig of one of Penge's proudest rock acts, Frequency Suspects - may they rest in peace (they all died in a freak gardening accident I heard) - but I never remember her being so tiny.

I'm sure she's heard it all before,

but SHE'S TINY!

I'm starting to doubt whether she actually was sitting down that time and actually just bending her knees slightly.

Anyway.

Since we had a fair, few minutes before the play started. We decided to have a sit down & chat over a couple Subway's. Being new to the delights of how-to-buy-a-sandwich-in-Subway, I ended up having pretty much every choice of salad ingredients they could possibly fit in the blasted bread, then picking half of it out, as I was too 'English' to say no.

But by 'eck it was a good sandwich. Something tells me I will be buying more from there at a later date. I can feel the cravings building already.

4 jalapeno peppers & 2 'Free refills' later, we went to the college and watched '7 Deadly Sins'.

Lest I say, Collet was fantastic, and it really looked like she gave her 'lustful' boyfriend a right old walloping in the chops. Ahh, The magic of theater trickery... you can beat a man to near death and not be pressed charges for it... fantastic.

Amongst many other amusing sketches including the black weather woman and 'Ah' - the revolutionary Caribbean medicine for angry men. Reminded me of the Lenny Henry show!

After that there was a dance performance based on the same theme.

I've never gone to see a dancing performance before, so that was really cool. Needless to say, I was blatantly oggling over all the crazy body-bending stunts, some of the lovely young ladies were performing (Hey, I am a guy after all!).

That was fun.

But the dude who stole the show for me had to be the Afro dude. Usher had nothing on this guy. He was pulling moves like a Daddylong-legs on ice. Backflips, Body Pops, Flaminkoes you name it. Amazing. I wish I could do that.

Coming a definite close second though was the butt-gyrating, crunk-dancing other friend of Collet's - that was hilarious.

Today's start was pretty funny aswell.

Deciding it really was time to do some actual photography, I left my house on the way to college, Pentax K1000 in-hand, with the intent of finding a theme to photograph my Stereotype project. I walked 3 houses until I came up to a Car in a driveway with a Millwall FC Bumper Sticker pronouncing "no-one likes us - we don't care". Well you couldn't get much more Stereocast than that really could you?

Brilliant... I figured that taking pictures of various car features to represent a type of person was as good as any other idea I could do.

Plus taking pictures of Cars... how hard can it be right? Ha Ha Ha.

Wrong.

I set up my shot, took one snap, when all of a sudden the front door opened...

"Err... What You Think You're Doing Mate?"

I tell ya I was fearing for my life. I'm too young to die from an angry Dressing gowned Millwall supporter. In fact it took me so back I nearly dropped my camera in the process.

Feeling like I was back in secondary school, I had to explain to him that I was a Photography student doing a project and that I liked the slogan on his car. As pathetic as that sounded, he bought it, or at least it bought me some extra time before he started throttling me to the ground and spitting Milwallian obscenities to my face at point blank range.

Cowering under him I spoke a thousand apologies and slowly but surely backed away from sight.

Phew, I'm still alive.

Well this left me in a right predicament. If people are gonna be this hostile when I take a snap of their car, I better go stealth.

From then on it was Splinter Cell or nothing; I waited until every passer-by had disappeared from site, then quickly snapped my shot & ranaway into the shadows before the car owners could notice... harder than you would imagine.

I got caught on more than one occasion, this time by a puzzled Mercedes driver.

Agreed... my attempt at shimmying drain pipes & split jumps didn't work out as planned but the results will soon be revealed when I go to get them processed tomorrow.

Hope I haven't babbled onto much.

Just to point out - check out the lovely pick at the top... it's by my matey, The magnificent Dom Christie.

Thought he should get a mention for keeping the ol' camera skills a rollin' (ba, dum, cymbal splash - geddit). Coz I know he wouldn't tell anyone unless he had too, it's his 19th BDay on the 23rd this month, so don't forget...

I'm looking forward to trying to get him well & truly bladdered.

I'll see most of you guys very soon.

(Jane, I'll be in Cheltenham on the 2nd/3rd for a Interview - I'll probs see you then.)

Tarah.