Category: Photos

Twenty-three: shawl, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I have a large collection of shawls, throws, wraps and scarves, acquired all over the world. They’re my last concession to my hippy lefty roots: I dress pretty boringly otherwise, so I the wraps are sometimes the only colour on display.

This shawl is probably the largest I own, it’s almost too large to be useful. I bought it in Guangzhou, and it wasn’t cheap. I was recently cornered by someone at a conference who insisted it was made in Pakistan, that she imported shawls from Pakistan and she knew it was Pakistani. She was deeply offended that I had bought it in China, and I felt bad for having done so, but there was little I could do about it.

Twenty-one: beetle, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I’m not completely sure where I got this, but it was almost certainly a street vendor in Johannesburg. These little toys made of old tin cans are common in Africa, sold as souvenirs. This one reminds me of my very first car, an orange Volkswagen beetle, which I called the pumpkin. I bought the car before I had a driver’s license, and drove it for at least a year, illegally. We moved to Canada and I sold it to my friend Silla, who I believe had it resprayed and gave it to her sons to drive.

It wasn’t a great car, and it got me into several unpleasant situations, including two separate occasions when I pressed the brake pedal flat and nothing happened, and a trip to the Drakensberg in which it died, leaving us to spend the night in it, on a deserted mountain road. Still, it was my first car, and that counts for something, I suppose.

Nineteen: Fog, originally uploaded by meganknight.

It’s a foggy day. I like fog, it is possibly my favourite weather of all possible weathers.

Preston is pretty foggy, and damp overall, which is why it has all the cotton mills. Cotton’s explosive, so you really want to spin and weave it in as damp a climate as possible. Preston is not only damp, it’s apparently damper than all other places in the region, so even though it’s a bit of a schlep from Liverpool (up the coast to the Ribble Mouth, then up the river to the city and the docks), it made sense to build the cotton mills here. The cotton that was spun here was grown in the Americas, shipped here for spinning and weaving, the completed cloth was taken by ship to West Africa, traded for slaves, who were taken to the Americas and traded for raw cotton, which was brought here for spinning and weaving, and so on. Globalisation is not an entirely new phenomenon.

Eighteen: he’s lost his bottle, originally uploaded by meganknight.

There’s a lot of drinking in Preston. Well, in the UK in general, but also in Preston, and in my neighbourhood. The Lancaster canal seems to be a favourite hangout for [presumably underage] drinkers. It’s pretty secluded, aside from the dogwalkers and people like me walking to work, it has a nice wide towpath, with various benches to sit on, and it provides the inestimable joy of throwing your empties into the water and watching them not bob away, but stay right there, mocking you. Actually, probably not mocking you, unfortunately. I wish they did.

The fact is, the canal would be a much nicer place if it weren’t so filthy, so littered with bottles and cans and cigarette packets and takeaway boxes and used condoms and dog shit. There are no rubbish bins along the canal, for some reason, but there are bins for dog shit, which provide helpful plastic bags as well for walkers. I do see people pick up their dog’s shit, but I can’t help thinking that they must only do it when someone’s watching, how else to explain all the rest of it.

Oh, bottle in English slang is courage, or nerve. Losing one’s bottle is chickening out. I don’t know why the title, I just like the expression.

Seventeen: Moon, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I tried to photograph the moon, but although it is clear and bright to the naked eye, there is clearly a lot of moisture in the air, so this is all I got. On the other hand, I rather like its graphic quality.

Jupiter’s visible in the sky as well, but I would probably have to stay up to 3am to get them both in one shot, so I’m not going to try. I’d love to do more astronomical photography, but the kit is really expensive. I’d like to get a macro lens as well, and try to photograph the insects in the garden.

In the meantime, all one can do is howl. Wooooooooooo!

Eighteen: graffitti, originally uploaded by meganknight.

This is the first picture from my mobile phone. It’s not a great pic, as you can see, but it was early in the morning, and the light was poor.

The picture is of graffiti I spotted on my walk to work today. It says: Adam Bellemy [sic] is a rapist, and then someone (possibly the same person) has added, some time later, in brackets, the word “still”. The script is quite distinctive, and although it’s either fading or someone has tried to scrub it away, it’s large and clear, and along a main road, close to campus. There’s obviously a story here, and I wish I knew what it was.

It reminds me rather of campaigns in Vancouver to name and shame the kinds of criminals we felt the police were unwilling to pursue: rapists, domestic violence perpetrators, gay bashers. For a while there was quite a lot of graffiti in Vancouver that looked like this, but I don’t know that it worked. I hope whoever wrote this gets what she or he is hoping for out of it, but it seems unlikely, given that they have resorted to writing their complaint on the walls.

Fifteen: Risotto, originally uploaded by meganknight.

We cook a fair amount, and I tend to cook on Sundays. Sundays are routinely spent in the kitchen, full-on breakfast, the one day a week I do that, dinner, and often some baking as well.

Today I made coffee cake, and mushroom risotto. We get a weekly delivery of organic veg, and we had mushrooms, so mushroom risotto it was. I’m not that sure about risotto – it’s nice enough, but it doesn’t seem worth all the effort, in the end. This is very dark because the stock was dark, and the mushrooms were brown. It does taste good, though, creamy and VERY mushroomy, thanks to the porcini and the chestnut mushrooms.

The pan it’s cooking in is a new one, another seasonal indulgence, a lovely Le Creuset pan, deep and accomodating. I predict it getting considerable use, especially sice it’s such a pretty colour.