Refrain a stone giant guards the moor bones of offerings scattered at its door ghost stories whisper around empty rooms haunting melodies drift through unseeing eyes a standing ovation from the hairs on the back of my neck About Postcard Poems Postcard Poems is a project combining my imagery of the North Pennines with short poems I’ve written. If you missed it, here are previous Postcard Poems: Uncharted (also a bit more about the background to the project) Burnished Gold ..read more

Something happens in September. The season stretches and eases its grip on the light, bathing everything in soft gold. The air changes. The sun, still warm on your skin but now with cool air to fill your lungs. Mist and fog creep into mornings and evenings, hanging like spider webs over the dew damp fields and rivers. At night, muting the streetlights to a gentle glow; throwing a soft blanket over sounds. Smells of wet pine and wood fires filter their way to you through the drizzle. There is a pulse-quickening sense of new beginnings; potential. But also loss, an ache for what’s passed, height ..read more

Warning: this blog is about breasts and cancer. It is, thankfully, a happy ending. Check your boobs It had been a stressful couple of months so when another lump appeared in my right breast it was more of an inconvenience than a worry: ‘I don’t have time for this.’ Thanks to my best friend Lisa, who had cancer several years ago, I’m a regular checker of my boobs – as should everyone be. The first time I found a lump in my right breast during my usual monthly check in the shower, I thought, ‘bloody hell, that’s big.’ ‘Can you feel this?’ I said to my partner, putting his hand over it. ‘Hmm, not ..read more

First, a tiny bit of housekeeping. It would seem that the majority of my website was offline for a month… that’s annoying isn’t it. It’s fixed now, clearly, but apologies if during that time you tried to get in touch – I usually get a few emails via the website per month so if you visited and everything was dead then I can only apologise and say I wasn’t best pleased about it either. Right, enough of that. Iceland then. Skógafoss Deciding to go to Iceland was a product of the self-dubbed tagline of the year, ‘fuck it, why not’. It hasn’t been a pleasant couple of years, aside from the pandemic ..read more

I was supposed to be blogging at least once a month, and it’s not even like I forgot about it or was too busy – though things are busy – I’m just running on empty a bit at the minute. On a personal level there are lots of nice things to look forward to and work is going well, but it’s hard to focus on that with all of the terrible things happening in the world at the moment, not least of which is the awful invasion of Ukraine. This isn’t a blog about that, but that said, if you have a few pounds to spare you could do worse than donating it to the Ukraine Crisis Appeal by the British Red Cross ..read more

I’m usually fizzing with blog ideas but this has been a tough month to say the least, so I find I’m a bit empty and knackered when it comes to ideas. That said, I have still been taking pictures, so I thought I’d post some of those here so you can see what I’ve been up to. Shildon Engine House This is Shildon Engine House – very quick history: It dates back to the early 19th century and housed a (Cornish) pumping engine to keep the lead mines dry. When it fell out of use it was flats for a bit, used by mining families. It’s in the very pretty Blanchland (not Shildon, as the name might suggest ..read more

I like a lot of weird things but ‘oof look at that petrol station’ probably gets the biggest laugh-snort from my other half. There’s just something about them. When I was younger, I liked the idea of the 24-hour petrol station down the road. Someone was always there, watching over the world while I slept. As lights went out, the reassuring blue and red glow from the Mobil would continue to be a beacon of reassurance. Later, it was one of the first places my best-friend-neighbour and I were allowed to go on our own. Holding a handful of change from his mam or my gran, we’d spend ages making ca ..read more

Decorating / Image: Pexels I hate magnolia. When we lived in a decently-sized-but-falling-apart rented flat, every wall was painted that colour; an inoffensive neutral. When you rent, you never really relax or settle into the feeling that it’s your home, you know that even if you’ll be there for years, it’s temporary. Is it worth painting the walls? Only if you can be bothered to put it all back to magnolia should you move out, losing your deposit being the alternative. You put up pictures and shelves but in the back of your mind you’re working out if you’ll be able to fill the holes well enou ..read more

After a conversation last week about Tunisia, I decided to revisit some of my photos and give them a fresh edit so they look more like a set. It’s hard to know what to write about these really as it was so long ago now and they were taken in a range of places, though from a Sousse base – train travel around the country was an interesting experience! At the time of visiting, the country was just really starting to get back on its feet tourism-wise, after some terrorism incidents in recent years brought about mostly by an uprising that unseated the long-term president. That tension was nev ..read more

A ..read more