We moved house two years ago, from a house whose garden was rarely visited by birds, to one that gets a reasonable number of the usual suspects – given our inner London location we can’t expect too much, I guess. Last year saw a brief visit from the goldfinches; this year they’ve pretty much moved in. I look out of the kitchen window before setting off to work and they’re on the feeder; come home from work: still there. The annual nyger seed budget was blown weeks ago.
Photographing them isn’t easy – they fly off at the first sign of human movement, and they’re pretty much in constant motion. Here are my best efforts to date:
1. We went to the Tate Britain on a quiet day in the gap between New Year and the start of the year proper, and it was great. First visit since it’s been re-hung, refreshed, repainted, and so on: they’ve done a great job. Great to see more sculpture on display around the whole gallery than before.
2. Stan Tracey’s Under Milk Wood.
Apart from knowing the name, I’m not sure I really knew who Stan Tracy was before he died last year. This Caught By The River post included a clip of his ‘Starless and Bible Black’, which I found myself listening to on repeat. I had to buy the whole Under Milk Wood album, and it’s made an excellent accompaniment to January commuting in the dark. My knowledge of this kind of jazz is limited, but it seems to me the perfect blend of melody and angularity.
A too-quick look around this exhibition was enough to know I’ll have to go back for a proper look before it closes. The sketchbooks and later works were particularly stunning.
Undoubtedly grim for those affected, but I’ve found myself fascinated by the photos appearing every day on Twitter showing the flooding around the Somerset Levels. A view of a completely different English landscape to any that I’m familiar with. I’ve Storified a few (link above).
5. Photos
An occasional reminder to myself that, amongst the HDR horror, there’s some amazing landscape photography on Flickr. I’ve been enjoying Ragnar Stefanssson’s work a lot recently, and it’s been good to see Ben Jones back on Flickr. I’m always keen to get recommendations of other photographers doing interesting landscape photography.
A Boxing Day trip on the Tanfield Railway, County Durham.
Half shot on the Nikon D7100, half on the iPhone Hipstamatic app; all in challenging, high contrast conditions. It was a lovely day to get out of the house and into the fresh air, though.
A fine antidote to the January gloom: an hour-and-a-bit’s worth of Bill Evans’ trio live on tv in 1965 (thanks to @richard_king for tweeting it).
Imagine music tv like this now…without Jools Holland lolloping on to add his rudimentary boogie-woogie piano, or a subtly snide and knowing commentary from a popular radio presenter. And yet, given we have more channels, and lower production costs, it shouldn’t really be that difficult.
From the top deck of the 53 bus, en route to breakfast at The London Particular in New Cross (highly recommended), and the Paul Klee exhibition at the Tate Modern (also recommended).
NeilClasper 
