Surprise rain! Instead of me running outside to bring laundry and sundries in, I had to step aside as everything in my house - Mary Poppins style - ran outside in excitement.
Toby Miller
@tobytram.bsky.social
Video editor. Nebraskan/East Anglian, so possibly inclined towards flat lands. Once talked about cinema on the radio, but now mainly take photos with prisms and pinholes and polaroids. Being kept for my decorative seed head. A stones throw from Cambridge
Me, waiting for something probably horrible to happen with work. Something horrible happens with work. Lovely Mitten and less lovely (but really still lovely) Cinnamon. Neighbour’s cats, visiting me for a second dinner. Mitten, as ever, carrying the worries of the world
This hour long episode of Mears' TV show, where he builds a canoe, is a hallmark of slow television, and an example of the thing youtube now does so well - letting you sit alongside an expert and a teacher. There's no ticking clock, no invented rush, no talking down to you. youtu.be/ZqmHqrHr8xg?...
Ray Mears' Bushcraft S02E01 - Birchbark Canoe
YouTube video by darkorian
youtu.be
Neon Genesis Ewangelion@ewacat.bsky.social · 2d agowe don't champion Ray Mears enough, as a country
Those of us who have been asleep for at least half a century. (I like that these have eroded in horizontal lines, making them look a little like ghosts of analogue broadcast televsion)
Toby Miller@tobytram.bsky.social · 3d agoThe meeting places of the parched land.
Oh, this huge field of Borage (and two smaller ones nearby) is, I believe, because the farm makes honey. There are beehives lined up like a parade of the Coldstream guards. If you’re a bee this field must be like entering Valhalla, or Berwick Street when it was all record shops.
Toby Miller@tobytram.bsky.social · 4d agoThe giant and the wide Borage Sea.
Our radar as seen through glass. The local airbase radar, via a Polaroid, in low sun, and with extra lenses and glass prisms stuck over the Polaroid lens with BluTac. Some extra technical details in the alt text.
Often on trance-walks I can’t quite retrace my twists and turns going back: my thread could be left or right; everywhere could be The Way. Special one-day offer for #YorkshireDay: 35% off Matthew Clegg's excellent debut collection 'West North East' westnortheast.wordpress.com
"why are you still hungry, Lucia" I ask the cat, while at the same time my eyes alight on the tempting corner of the French loaf in the kitchen.
12 years in this town, and tonight I found a new path, a new fence down, a rattle of field edges to a corner of a wood only ever seen from a distance, and an acre of scrubland that will soon be an acre of blackberries. I also snuck past some caravans with open doors and bright interiors. Great fun.
Toby Miller@tobytram.bsky.social · 6d agoNo rain here, but it came within a field or two. Close enough that we could hear the rain laughing, hear the rain handing out crisp new five pound notes, hear the rain praising home decoration choices of the houses it fell upon.
No rain here, but it came within a field or two. Close enough that we could hear the rain laughing, hear the rain handing out crisp new five pound notes, hear the rain praising home decoration choices of the houses it fell upon.
The dreadful sun leaves a nightclub. As this flower kept moving out of the light, I left the Polaroid flash on. Brilliantly it now resembles a Weegee photo - a Manhattan showgirl caught in the glare of flash bulb as she’s escorted from a 3am crime scene.
Obligatory self-promotion. I recorded this on Sunday (yes, my dress has seagulls screaming on it) #XTCmusic
Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her
YouTube video by Alison Eales
youtube.com
Had to wrap my shirt around my head* to stop the grain triggering my asthma, and then fell over leaping a dry river bed to creep up on this beast, but I am fond of the in and out of the corporeal realm supernatural heft of a harvester at dusk. *of course then my phone won’t recognise me to unlock
Locked the back door as I headed out on my evening walk…but some of the plants look tired and thirsty, so back door open again so I can fill the watering can. Then a cat wanted treats, then a butterfly wanted to be photographed, then I sat down, and now I feel like I may just have a little sleep.
Text update from my parents on life in their Suffolk village.
Evening walk. I pass a tall man with a pinhole camera and, full of the sunshine of the day, I stop to ask him about it. He and his wife (equally tall) are from New Mexico. Soft spoken, like my father, another tall American. “I’m using infrared film. Infrared is perfect for England” he explains.
Windows and doors at the Unitarian Church in Cambridge. Eye caught by the firework of flowers behind the frosted glass, and then the long grass beginning to envelop the door and the bike.
Will be sorry to see our local astronomy radio telescope go at Knockin if Jodrell Bank loses its funding. It’s part of the MERLIN array of telescopes across the UK
You can still watch the recent Sky at Night special on Jodrell Bank, which details the e-Merlin system (and how it incorporates other small telescopes around the UK, including Cambridge), has great archive photos, and shows the diversity of the scientists based there. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
The Sky at Night - Jodrell Bank: Tuning Into the Universe
The team explore the remarkable story of Jodrell Bank Observatory and its towering Lovell Telescope, which scientists have used to listen to the cosmos for almost 70 years.
bbc.co.uk
First alerted to the rain by a sodden cat jumping on the bed at around 5am.
I’ve been standing stock still in this wood for about 10 minutes while I mess about with a photo on my phone. I look up, notice the shape, and slowly crouch down to film This has made me so happy I feel I could cry. It’s as close to magic as I hope to get.
The wood with bees in it. Walking to this wood, which I recall has a tree with bees living in a split in a tree trunk. I’m listening to a recent Radio 3 Late Junction on headphones, and as I near the wood they happen to play a track which begins with a field recording of bees.
Walking a path that brushes a farm. They’re bringing the grain in, and just look at the magic Spielberg light spilling into the barn. Then I heard a tractor so I scarpered.
I've struggled with my Polaroid - it stopped working for a bit; then it started up again, but I can only trigger a photo using the app on my phone. Every photo is a waiting room yellow, which I quite like here - a walled garden with prisms in front of the polaroid's lens. Accidentally atmospheric.
