chimneys – derrickjknight

Black And White

Bright sunshine lifted the lingering morning mist as we set off for a short forest drive today.

Shafts and shadows streaked across Jordan’s Lane, where

our path was soon blocked by a driverless tractor, the cab of which was

soon occupied by a man who drove it on its way, complete with trailer.

Distant tree lines alongside Shotts Lane remained somewhat hazy.

The colourful Georgian terrace of Southampton Road with its clusters of

towering chimneys at its point of departure from Lymington has often attracted me, but it is not a place to stop the Modus.

Today I regretted not making an exception, so Jackie drove around the block and parked in a side road while I walked back.

You may be able to spot the gentleman approaching me on the left hand pavement.

He proved to be another man who, in the days of film, had turned his kitchen into a darkroom in order to print black and white images with trays of chemicals and an enlarger poised on the daytime work surfaces while black sheets covered available windows.

We had an enjoyable reminiscing session, in which he explained that he had a large collection of black and white photographs that he really ought to “move [his] butt” to print. I informed him that the only real editing I carried out with my digital photography was cropping and converting to black and white.

I hope I had inspired him to take up his printing once more as he inspired me to produce these converted images.

The uncropped version of this 1982 portrait of Becky first published in 2014 has not yet been recovered from WordPress, but I include this header picture of her eyes from a later post as an example of a print of such a size that I needed to project the enlarger onto the floor to produce it.

Late this afternoon, having collected Dillon from Heathrow, our daughter delivered him and his young family back home and returned to her own in Southbourne.

We dined on tender roast pork, crisp Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes, crunchy carrots, firm cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, and meaty gravy, followed by a spicy pumpkin pie which Jackie had baked in honour of Dillon’s return. She drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Gran Selone.

Reflecting On Centuries Of Building

Jackie drove me to and from New Milton for me to travel to The Tas Turkish restaurant in The Cut to lunch with Carol.

For a little variety I walked from Waterloo Station through the early Victorian terraced streets to the East of Waterloo Road.

Typical is Roupell Street which has Valentino Hairdressers on one corner and Konditor and Cook’s attractive bakers on the other. Typical of the mid-nineteenth century, these dwellings have no front gardens and a narrow hall leading to the rooms inside. These two bedroomed properties can be found on the market for more than £1,000,000. I can assure those readers across The Pond that the correct number of noughts is shown here. The street lamps are probably reproductions.

Modern glass fronted blocks tower above the London stock brickwork and terra cotta chimneys of their older neighbours. Since London is a smoke free zone the chimneys are probably retained for cosmetic purposes.

Telephone cables and television aerials add touches of two further centuries to the original buildings.

These side streets are lined with railway arches over which lines run into the terminal railway station. This proximity renders the tranquil nature of the historic little streets, off the bottlenecked The Cut, quite surprising.

In Cornwall Road a shorter wall of glass reflects the terraces opposite,

and in Webber Street, alongside The Old Vic, a more lofty block carries the images of others on the opposite side.

The flats in The Cut, reflected in a puddle on which float recently fallen autumn leaves, were built in the period between the new and the old. The soggy dog end spilling tobacco into the bottom left of the picture is a common sight, now that smoking is prohibited in workplaces or public buildings.

A working crane, like this one beyond the end of Short Street, is not an uncommon sight.

Carol and I enjoyed an excellent meal with our usual pleasurable conversation. Although we chose different starters, we both savoured the tasty chicken casserole, and moist baklavas, with a glass each of the house wines.

Frith’s Postcards

It is quite a pleasant stage we have reached in the garden project. We are able to tackle tasks in tandem, rather than each being occupied at different ones. Thus, we did some planting together, notably the agapanthuses purchased a day or two ago. This involved digging through what felt like ironstone, moving other plants to make room for it, and transporting better soil from elsewhere.

Similarly, to enable me to border the shady path with granite sets, a couple of clumps of trespassing geraniums were dug out and offered alternative accommodation. The sets were required because the line of edge tiles petered out near the decking. There is no one material used throughout the garden, so it is quite fun to make a patchwork quilt with what is available.

We fine-tuned the end of the head gardener’s path as it winds around the fir tree, and, bit by bit, as the day progressed set the slabs firmly in their bed of stony soil. There then ensued a search around the garden for stones with which to fill the fissures that create the curves winding through the inchoate shrubbery. It must be sod’s law that when you are digging a bed you find loads of them, but when you want some they are hard to come by.

When we moved in here we found on the orange-painted home-made mantelpiece, a welcoming note and a tiny framed black and white photograph. The image measures 11 x 7.5 centimetres. It is picture of our house as it was, we estimate, in the 1960s. Then it was the village shop. One set of chimneys has since been removed, and we have a garage extension. A bay at the front has replaced the shop front. The current view from the rear displays, centrally, our kitchen extension with its skylight. To the left of this was originally a pitched roof. To the right of the modern picture can be seen the more recent roof over our master suite.

We were intrigued to learn what were the signs standing at the front and the legend on the side of the house, but these were indiscernible to the naked eye, and a magnifying glass didn’t help. I removed the picture from its frame, and discovered it was a Frith’s postcard. I then enlarged the image and was able to read:

Notices in the forecourt announced that the shop was open, and sold Players cigarettes and Lyons cakes. The Players Please board was on display in London’s Lime Street in August 1963. The story of the tobacco company was told on November 27th 2013.

Francis Frith was a pioneering mid-to-late-Victorian photographer who founded the postcard company in the 1850s. There is now a massive archive which is a fascinating collection of UK views. Although Frith died in 1898, his company lived on, with the occasional hiatus. The archives were bought from Rothman’s by John Buck in 1977, and continue to function as the Francis Frith Collection.

Interestingly, Frith’s places us in Lymington Road. Local maps, for example the one outside New Milton railway station, vary as to whether we are in Christchurch Road or Lymington Road. The modern Post Office gives our address as Christchurch Road. Where one merges into the other remains a mystery.

This evening we dined on a refreshing salad based on pork pie and pastrami. I drank half a glass of Cotes du Rhone Villages 2012 and Jackie had a few sips of her Hoegaarden. We then drove down to the beach and bagged a few stones to supplement those in the path completed today.

Where Did That Come From?

This morning I delved into the archives of black and white negatives. Firstly, I made three more prints for Norman, of his photographs for the book he is working on. He had not been happy with the first versions of these; two he considered too dark; and in one I had undeniably snipped the stern off the ship. I couldn’t understand why I had unwittingly cropped this picture. After a few more efforts at printing from iPhoto I remembered that this method does have that unfortunate effect. That we had discovered when engaged in our card factory. It took me a while to work it out again, but I did. And wrote it all down. Had I referred back to the Clipped Wings post of last August before I began to wrestle with the problem, I could have saved myself some time.

Having completed the task for my friend, I turned to my own unsorted negatives. Next in line for my attention were some rather atmospheric shots of the banks of the Thames from about 1982. Apart from their displaying scenes that the developments of the next thirty years would change forever, they also show either a remarkably rapid feat of building or a miraculous appearance.
I haven’t studied these pictures in the intervening years, and if I made prints of them they have vanished. Since, however, they are still on the strip of Ilford film, I know the order in which I took the photographs, and have repeated it here. The second image down, provides the mystery. Examine the Booth’s Gin building. Then look at it in the next two.
Or maybe it is just a matter of perspective.

Michael was almost sixteen when, in 1980, the year of Sam’s birth, we moved to Gracedale Road in Streatham from Horse and Dolphin Yard in Soho. In his earlier teens Michael had been Soho’s only newspaper boy. At seventeen, he graduated to becoming the relief manager for the chain of newsagents, Rippon’s, from one of whose shops in Dean Street he had delivered the papers. When he was given the peripatetic job, he had bought himself a Yamaha motorbike for transport between the branches spread London-wide.

As soon as Sam was big enough, probably three years later, he would mount the steed and imagine he was driving it off into the unknown. Here he is in the street outside our house.

The buddleia in the garden is now attracting a variety of butterflies. Here are a pair of peacocks.

Early this evening I walked along Hordle Lane as far as the paddock and back. Horses wear protective masks to keep the flies off, but still have to use their tails as whisks.

The cow parsley in the verges has run to seed and now looks quite sculptural. Kenneth Clark in his study of ‘The Nude’ likens the classical ideal human figure to architectural forms. Perhaps all our creations take inspiration from nature.

The barley in the fields along the way is coming on nicely.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s divine sausage casserole (recipe) with crisp vegetables and smooth mashed potato garnished with our own chives from the garden. I received four bay leaves, this time not a source of embarrassment. Dessert was mixed fruit crumble and custard. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, while I began Villa Blanche 2013, an excellent Pinot Noir given to me for my birthday by Helen and Bill.