a shameless borrowing of the idea behind Caught By The River’s Antidotes To Indifference series

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.

3. Turner and the Sea at the Maritime Museum in Greenwich

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.

4. [View the story “Somerset Levels flooding – Jan 2013” on Storify]

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.