TOODLE-OO!!



Folks! Obviously I don't have enough time to keep my blog going, so it is time for me to say farewell for now, as I am busy playing elsewhere. I may be back in some shape or form at some point, but I am concentrating much more on the photography now. I feel a bit rough abandoning those of you that are still out there! I will try to catch up with you as much as I can. Maybe shoot me your emails if you want to keep in touch. The blogosphere has been so valuable and encouraging, and I am ever grateful. I really have met some top folk that I know I will always be friends with. Be creative people!

Feel the love

Pod

xx

THINGS THAT MAKE ME LOVE HIM MORE



Bye Bye Blackbird (May 2009)



Compost (May 2009)



Windfall (May 2009)

THE TWELFTH OF NEVER




I woke up this morning in the dark and quiet, feeling that I was the only person awake in the whole of the land. I thought about how many times I had said 'I love you', and I wondered were you watching me lying there from somewhere up above, and if so, were you gazing down at me as you did when I was born? All the hundreds of thousands of times I must have told you 'I love you'. At night we used to shout to each other from our bedrooms

'nighty nighty to you!'
'nighty nighty to you too!'
'see you in the morns!'
'see you in the morns!'
'i love you'
'i love you'
'to the twelfth of never'
'twelfth of never'

And sometimes all we would have to say was 'twelfth of never' and hug and smile and feel that everything was OK.

And lying there I realised that it was exactly seven years to the day when I last would have whispered 'twelfth of never.'

I HAVE BEEN MAINLY



Working hard



And being lazy in the sunshine

ONE NIGHT



He was just sitting quietly reading in his study, when suddenly they came. Voices. Layer upon layer. They said 'go downstairs, to the cellar.' 'Hurry!' they whispered urgently, 'and pull up the rug and the floor boards underneath.' Hundreds of soft feathery voices urging him on. 'Find the box, take out the leaf , then run into the woods.' Scrambling down the stairs, into the cellar he went. Up came the rug and the boards. A small wooden box with a coppery green clasp he found, and inside a small red leaf. 'Run, run'. Their words pressing gently onto his ears like hundreds of tiny cushions. 'Put the leaf into your mouth and run to the woods.' He ran. 'They are waiting for you, they are waiting.'

He was never found.

MAKE IT BIG



Wherever you may be, whatever you are doing, whoever you are doing it with, have fun, make it count, be merry. I wish I could share a festive drink with you all I do!!

Much love and a big warm hug for those of you that aren't sweating like me........

PEEK-A-BOO



I'm back
And relaxed
And wondering why more people don't smile.........?
(Not you)

POOF!



And as if by magic, Pod disappeared to Thailand with his new 5d for three weeks.......

If you're in Sydney, please go and see the brilliantly intricate work of Jane Gillings

SECRETS OF THE KITCHEN TABLE



What felt like all of a sudden, he found himself racing down a country lane in a smaller car than his usual. Although high hedges blocked his view across the fields on either side, he sensed he was driving home. A couple of spitfires buzzed overhead, and for a split second he felt a wave of terror, but thankfully remembered quite quickly, that that was all over now.

(Sometime later, the planes landed in a nearby school field to the ecstatic cheers of twenty-nine 9 year olds, four clapping and nodding teachers, and the faraway look of one little boy who hadn’t a clue what was going on).

Whizzing around a corner he saw the driveway and swung a left. The farmhouse sprang in to view. As he climbed out of the car his right hand caught a bramble that was taking over the hedge, and a small bead of blood formed on his little finger and dropped silently onto the car. He noticed then that the car was sort of torpedo shaped, and made of tightly woven wicker. As he watched his blood slip between the weaves, he frowned, trying to convince himself that the car must have always looked this way.

In the kitchen, the rest of the family were sat at the table. Father was talking rather quietly and anxiously about the future of the farm. There were heavy thuds from upstairs. Aside from Father, who continued to ramble on, they all looked up to the ceiling, following with their eyes the thuds from one side of the room to the other, down the wall to the stair door. The sound of the latch, and then grandma appeared, for the first time in three weeks, in her nightdress. She shuffled over to the head of the table and sat in the vacant chair there. Father stopped speaking.

"Ninety years I have sat at this table," she said, slowly lowering her head to place the left side of her face on the dark wood.

"The things I have seen and heard. All the secrets this table holds, all the things you will never know."

She stretched out her right hand across the table and stroked it gently back and forth, gazing off into the distance, looking through the wall to the stirring ocean outside.

The sound of waves.

Closing her eyes she continued,

"And now, as the tide turns, so do I."



(I dreamt this)

THE UNEXPECTED COMFORT OF TACKY ORNAMENTS



Dad's House May 2008

STEALTH



I have been feeling a little like this of late. A bit stuck. Perhaps a little stuffed (no comments please Gary). Or maybe full is a better word. Frustrated. I have been working rather hard and consequently have had little time to even think about being creative, let alone picking up the camera and making some pictures. Recently, I have felt that work is defining me. I go through phases like this, and know that balance will return once I have realised that it has been lost.

I was looking down at my hands today and thinking about a change of career. I think a penny dropped and a few other things then fell in to place. You know when you've been choosing not to observe yourself for a while, and then all of a sudden you see it all quite clearly. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror looking a little too much like the stuffed weasel that we see here. A little bit stuck and sneery. Only a little, but we don't want that do we?

So, some thinking to do.

And I also keep putting off getting a Canon 5D.

And I also want to read forever.

And
And
And

TREE SWALLOW ME



Last night I dreamt that I was sitting beneath an autumnal tree in the park behind my childhood house. I was making something out of leaves and wood, and there blew a gently odd wind, of the kind that stirs when magic is about to happen. A branch of the tree reached down to me in the shape of a pointing finger, and then it spread out its fingery branches so that they surrounded me under its palm. I sat inside and felt very safe and protected.

This morning, at breakfast, I am positive that the strawberry jam plumped up and rose a little to meet my spoon.

Just a little bit.....

ON THE MOON AND MOONING




The heat has returned. It is meant to be spring, yet we have had some days this week above 30 degrees, which has meant balmy days and warm scented nights. Gone are chilly morning fuelled quick steps to the bathroom. Gone is the need to linger under the hot shower. Gone is Paul Newman (farewell you wonderful man.....but I won't miss be missing your salad dressings I'm afraid).

Welcome nude breakfasts and nudey sunbaking in the back garden (despite being pelted with seeds by the myna birds!). Welcome sleeping with only a sheet, and welcome being able to poke one's bottom out of the sheets without fear of waking with frostbitey. However, and herein lies the danger, when one doesn't expose one's bottom on these hot nights, one is liable to overheat and dream that the moon is in fact inhabitated, and then one is subjected to witness the earthly chaos that ensues.....

All in all though, summer is coming

Now all I need is you

And you

Oh, and you!!

I'M JUST A RABBIT

I DO WANT WHAT I HAVEN'T GOT