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first frost
These are leaves coated in the first frost of autumn. Every year I’m struck by the fact that frost and/or ice can transform the ordinary into something beautiful while also causing us bother. At least it contains the potential for joy, even if it makes us curse.
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Huguenot memories
Yesterday I posted images to my Flickr photo stream of my recent trip in Dublin. All of them were taken with the camera in my mobile phone (a Sony Xperia X10 mini – an Android smartphone). Looking through them I thought about my time living in Dublin, and the photographs I took using my first digital camera. Back then, I was using a Fuji FinePix 2.4 megapixel camera, which I referred to as Pixie. I could take images at several resolutions, but in those days (a mere 9 years ago) if you were posting photos on the web the image quality was not expected to be high, so I often…
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getting up
I woke up this morning out of unpleasant dreams with a headache. The house was chilly as the heating had only kicked on. I didn’t feel well, and the bed was warm. I lingered a little longer than usual under the cosy covers until Minnie the dog starting shuffling about nosily in her “where’s my walk?” routine. Eventually, I got myself up and out to the woods. My mood was sliding toward glum, partly because of how I was feeling, the overcast sky and damp, cold air. The light was not great for photographs, especially compared to yesterday. Then, I looked up at the clouds and noticed it wasn’t uniform.…
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back in the woods
This morning we had the first frost of autumn. My car was a icicle (or a carcicle as I call it), and my dog Minnie waited impatiently for me to defrost the windows before we drove to the woods. It was blindingly sunny. The azure skies were scrubbed of clouds. A low mist clung to the undergrowth, and ice sparkled on fading flowers and dying leaves. My favourite autumnal weather. Even though I’ve only been away from the woods for a few days it’s remarkable how quickly change takes place at this time of the year. Holly berries have appeared in great scarlet clusters. Most of the trees are sporting…
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Übermensch
If you would like to watch ‘Übermensch’, which won the Golden Blaster for Best Short Film at Octocon, here it is: https://dailymotion.com/video/xdm0p6?width=480&iframe=1&additionalInfos=0&autoPlay=0&hideInfos=0 ÜbermenschScreenplay by Daniel Poole, adapted from a short story by Kim Newman; Director: Simon Temple. For those who were at Octocon you can now watch the closing title sequence in full, which I recommend.
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Octocon 2010
This weekend I’ll be a guest at the 2010 Octocon convention in the Camden Court Hotel, Dublin. The Guest of Honour is George R.R. Martin, best known as the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels. The first novel in the series, Game of Thrones, is currently being filmed in Northern Ireland as a HBO mini-series. Its tone has been described as ‘Sopranos with Swords’, and since HBO rarely does anything badly, this could be the fantasy television series of a generation. It’s a considerable coup for an Irish convention to have such an established author as a guest, and I hope there will be a…
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avoidance
Today I’m finishing my dreaded task of the year: sorting out my tax returns. It’s a vicious cycle: because I loathe doing this job I avoid doing it. That means, despite the promptings of my accountant, I tend to leave it until rather late. Each year I get stressed about it and once it’s done I swear I will never leave it this late again… until the following year rolls round. One of my favourite observations about this particular form of task avoidance is from the first episode of Black Books, called ‘Cooking the Books‘ (written by Dylan Moran and Graham Linehan). First, is the conversation between Bernard Black, with…
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old school
A common topic of discussion about writing is whether one writes longhand or favours a computer. In my case it’s a combination of both. I took this picture this morning. In my hand I’m holding my current favourite pen of choice, the Mitsubishi Uniball Jetstream. The pen writes smoothly, the ink dries quickly and there are no clumps. It’s also an easy pen to find. I have several of them in my house at any one point. The biggest problem I think is that they run out quickly, but that might be because I’m writing longhand a lot more at the moment. Currently I’m writing several pages of longhand –…
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two nobles
There are a lot of Holly trees my local woods. Not that you’d notice during the summer, when the other trees flounce about in their finery. Lately, I’ve noticed Holly’s re-emergence as one of the dominant personalities of the woodlands as we spin further into autumn. The above photograph is of a Holly tree growing under an Oak which I took yesterday. In Irish lore there were four classifications of trees, the highest being Airig Fedo, or Nobles of the Wood. There were seven trees in that caste, including Oak and Holly. As I considered the mythology of trees, as well as this image of the two nobles standing beside…
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animal companion
That’s a picture of me and my dog Minnie on our daily morning walk – well, our shadows anyway. I’ve often pondered the strangeness of sharing your home with a creature from another species, with whom you have limited communication and a vastly different set of behaviours. Yet, the bond that develops is deep and steadfast – at least for me. I’m never under any illusions that Minnie is anything but a dog. She doesn’t think the way I do and has a simple system of priorities: Food Walks Play Sleep These are all perfectly reasonable demands in the Minnie universe, and she gets quite perplexed if they don’t occur…
