Problems With Photography

Last month I blogged about our Heritage Lottery funded project to catalogue and research the headstones in our local cemetery. You can read more about it here. Thanks to all those who commented. Some of you asked for updates and so here is my first.

We’ve been photographing headstones - not as easy as it sounds. Some headstones slant. Some are subsiding. This is precarious work! Some cameras run out of battery half way through a session. Some people [ok, so it was only me!] are so out of condition that squatting down to photograph one stone after the next is more painful than a step-aerobics class.

Overgrown shrubbery posed yet more problems. The cemetery is surrounded by a huge old hedge with trees growing through the hedge and, in some places, hanging over the stones. Cameras had to be repeatedly discarded while we removed ivy from stones, lifted tree branches, pinned back bushes, covering ourselves in mud, leaves and unidentified insects. [Shudder!] But the main problem has been the weather.

I knew that the rain would be an issue so when we arrived at the cemetery on a clear, sunny autumn day we thought how perfect it was… until we started to photograph. The sun cast such heavy shadows across the marble headstones that our automatic cameras couldn’t cope, and when it came to photographing the shiny granite headstones, all we got were shots of the photographer reflected off the granite. So if anyone can forecast when the next dry, dull, not-too-cold day will be, I would be very grateful.

The photography is almost completed. I’ve booked two training sessions at the Records Office and we’ll soon be absorbed in researching some of the more obscure names that we’ve photographed. You can be sure there will be problems. It won’t be as easy as they make it look on the TV programme, ‘Who do you think you are’ but I could be wrong so watch this space. I’ll be blogging about it as the project proceeds, warts and all!

Prize Winners v. Food Banks

I have three blog ideas tumbling round my brain at the moment. The more I think about which one to choose, the more I find that the issues are linked and so I shall discuss them all and I wonder if you too will be ashamed of our society when you've had time to think about the disparity.

The Reith Lecture

Yesterday morning I listened to Grayson Perry's Reith Lecture on BBC Radio 4. If you missed it you can read the transcript here, although it loses something by not hearing the man himself with his fascinatingly quirky personality. It was a great example of how someone can 'cock a snoot' at the establishment so much more effectively from within but that isn't the issue I'm picking up on here. It's the fact that Perry's pottery once sold for whatever he could get for it. Now that he's a famous Turner Prize winner his works command vast sums of money.

The Booker Prize

Moving on to last night and the announcement of this year's Booker Prize winner, Eleanor Catton. The youngest ever winner at the age of 28, she was awarded a cheque for £50,000 for her book The Luminaries. I congratulate her but I also question the value and our use of money in today's society because my third issue is...

UK Food Banks

A headline in today's Independent Newspaper states, "Britain's Use of Food Banks Triples". Between April and September of this year the Trussell Trust distributed food to 355,985 people, including nearly 120,000 children. Until last year I knew nothing about Food Banks and was surprised to learn that a friend volunteers at her local Food Bank. She explained that people are given three days' worth of food. These are not society's drop-outs but people who are desperate to feed their families. Many of those who she helped were having money problems through no fault of their own. One had to wait for a payment cheque which had taken longer than usual to arrive. Another explained that his allowances had been changed which meant there was a gap in payments and, although the money would be back-dated, he had no savings to draw on.

The article in The Independent goes on to say that the Red Cross "announced it planned to distribute food aid to the needy in Britain this winter for the first time since the Second World War." What kind of society awards five and six figure sums to people who excel in the arts while vast numbers of people are struggling to feed themselves and their families?

How can we justify giving, with one hand, vast sums to successful individuals in the Arts world and, with the other hand, food parcels containing three days' worth of food to hungry families?

Sur Le Pont: Half a Bridge and Half a Taste of Provence

This time last week we were in Avignon...

on a touring holiday of Provence...

which is a beautiful area of France...

The tour was called A Taste of Provence and that was what we were given.The itinerary covered more kilometres than I cared to count. Unfortunately this meant daily doses of sitting on a coach together with a group of over forty people.

Since Mr A's stem cell transplant this is not the best of environments for him. We opted out of the last two days and, while he sat around the hotel coughing and sneezing and generally feeling grot, I got to see a little more of Avignon than the tour itinerary had allocated.

He managed a slow stroll for Sunday lunch in Avignon's beautiful Place de l'Horloge. We sat in the leafy shade of a street café and watched as the locals closed off the entire length of the main street, turning it into a fabulous bicycle race track.

After lunch children swarmed from all directions with an array of bikes and fancy helmets, followed by proud mothers, fathers, grandparents and babies in pushchairs. Each bike race was accompanied by a brass band ensemble and enthusiastic cheers from the crowd.

But this was no 'stroll in the park'. There was a pacemaker, the route was long and hard, with the number of laps increasing as the older children took to the track. No child was allowed to drop out, even those who fell off at the start of races [and there were many who did, especially among the younger groups]. Each child was lifted back onto their bikes and pushed off to rejoin the race. We all cheered really loudly for those peddling like crazy at the back.

You could tell from the atmosphere that everyone was having a thoroughly enjoyable Sunday afternoon but I couldn't help feeling that there was a serious side to it too. These children were being taught to 'stick at it' to 'not drop out' to 'push themselves to their limit' to 'work as a team'. It was a fascinating insight into the French cycle racing psyche and, although we were both disappointed at having to miss the last two days of our Provence tasters, we were pleased to have experienced an afternoon with the locals.

Mr A. is now well on the mend... but my throat feels just a tad... [coughs pathetically]

Lives Behind the Stones

With many thanks to the Heritage Lottery Team 

Several years ago I was fortunate enough to coordinate a Heritage Lottery funded project called Jewish Voices. It involved helping groups of local elderly people from Leicester's Jewish Community to record their memories. The work was fascinating but what made it extra special was that the memories, when gathered together into a book, told a story of demographic and social change in a provincial town during the 1940s and 50s. I hadn't expected the results to be so conclusive and I'm very proud of the book.

I recently submitted an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund [HLF] to run another project, very different but I'm hoping it'll produce just as exciting an outcome. Grant applications are long detailed affairs and I've spent far more hours than I care to count with my Deputy Project Leader, supported by a small but enthusiastic team, filling in forms and working out timetables and costs. It's been a long, nail-biting wait but...

*drum roll* 

Our application has now been approved by the HLF and so for the next year I'll be leading a team of volunteers as we record and catalogue all the headstones in Leicester's Jewish Cemetery. Part of the cemetery dates back to the early 1900s and is in a poor state of repair. We'll be recording all the inscriptions on the stones while they're still legible, creating a website for genealogical research, producing Interpretation Boards for visitors and, most excitingly of all, selecting a cross-section of names and conducting research at the local Records Office into the lives behind those names. This is why I've called the project 'Lives Behind the Stones'.

If you're local and you'd like to volunteer then let me know in the comments and I'll get in touch. Our volunteer list is growing and we're spending the next few weeks recruiting even more people [you can never have too many volunteers!] for one or all of the following:

• digitally photographing headstones
• inputting data onto a database
• researching selected names [There will be a training session run by the Records Office for all those volunteering to do research.]

About the Heritage Lottery Fund  

Using money raised through the National Lottery, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) aims to make a lasting difference for heritage, people and communities across the UK and help build a resilient heritage economy. From museums, parks and historic places to archaeology, natural environment and cultural tradition, we invest in every part of our diverse heritage. HLF has supported almost 35,000 projects with more than £5.3bn across the UK.

Atone (verb) making amends; Atonement (noun)

This week is a special time between the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement. It’s a time for thinking about what we’ve done over the last year, thinking about what we should do over the coming year, thinking about those around us and about ourselves.

This scroll, which has been ‘doing the rounds’ on Facebook, expresses the sentiment so well that I thought I’d post it up here for Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement, the most important day in the Jewish calendar. It is marked with a 25 hour fast and a day of prayers and begins at sunset tonight.

While I'm thanking those who have helped me...

I knew that if I blogged about that ‘Candy-Crush-related’ obsessive behaviour activity it would shame me into moving on and it has. Thanks to all those who commented. I haven’t quite uninstalled it… yet, but I have moved it to an obscure location on my ipad!

Apple and Honey

It's that time of year again. Sunset tonight will be the start of the Jewish New Year. I mentioned in previous years' posts that apple and honey is a traditional food for this time of year as it represents the hope for a sweet and fruitful year ahead. I'm going to add a wish for a healthy as well as sweet and fruitful year for my family, friends and all the lovely people who visit this blog.

And if you've never tried it do slice up an apple as the sun sets this evening, dip it in some honey and you'll wonder why you don't eat it every day of the year. It's delicious. Enjoy!

A natural when it come to matching colours

It's not me who's a natural.  I'm hopeless! It's Mother Nature I'm talking about. You only have to look into my wardrobe to see that I haven't got a clue about colour schemes, and I can never remember what colour any of my clothes are when I'm shopping for new stuff. Even my black clothes don't match each other. Who'd have thought there were so many shades of black? But Mother Nature never has a problem matching her colours. She can even get orange and pink to go together.

She manages it delicately with this double begonia:

She adds a sprinkling of orange discreetly to this pink echinacea:

And she's bold and 'in yer face' with this dahlia:

The only way that I can be sure of wearing matching items is to have them all the same colour but again Mother Nature has out-styled me. How about this for a perfect blend of a single colour?

What colour schemes are hanging up in your wardrobe?

All the above photographs were taken this afternoon in our garden and yes it's still looking amazing thanks to Mr A's hard work!