(Nearly) Being twenty five

I'm sitting here, thinking about you and your being 25 tomorrow.  It's inconceivable - the velocity of it all - the blurring of hours, days, months, lifetimes.  A quarter of a century. How long, yet fleeting.  I marvel at all you are, all you've become, the beauty of you, the beauty in you. I think of how grateful I am to all the people that created the space which you've grown into.  I hope that the year ahead is rich and fantastic; an agar of life and joy and love and friendship.

At 121 in 2003, building a robot - always the engineer, fabulous focus - great great great Grandfather watching from the wall
 (and smiling in his beard :-)

Sunday night dinner portraits

Allie, Daisy and Courtney

Classic Hong Kong chocolate milk

After a long haul on the pitch this morning, some GranRose matters to deal with this afternoon, the Frees, Courtney and Daisy came round for supper.  Victims for the lights baby.  I will post the others tomorrow as black and whites - sorry that I didn't reach you for a chat today - will ping you on your way to work tomorrow.  

Sportless Sat - oh such a perfect day

There is such delight in a mundane and achievementless Saturday - I could just walk around looking.  Oh such a perfect day (click on that in the event that you feel like a smile - the delightful, varied voices :-)  There was however one mission, had to go to Mong Kok to pick up a lens - and it was like the whole planet had the same idea (with the exception of the inhabitants of 89, who weren't even drawn into a debate about going.

Aiden and Leony putting together some noodles for breakfast (which suggests that the boys are indeed really Asian).

The shop that I had to go to to pick up the lens was essentially an office with a counter, full of people,
with some barely civil types dealing with it all.  But then again, a camera can delight.

Back outside, soaking up Fa Yeun Street's market on the way out of the maelstrom.
I think I was in a better mood than anyone else there.

It's winter - so logically a stall with gloves and yarns - incognito assistant.

Only the alley-ways weren't heaving with people; rats the size of Dorniers.

In the lead-up to Chinese New Year, the flower market was ferociously coloured.

I had to walk miles to get out, heading through mo-town off Cheung Sha Wan road - Nice Kasuki

Dinner at home, Aiden and Ange into the Aussie open, Ev, ever ebullient, in the background busting some dance moves.

Daisy's wounds + betadine

Saturday morning ... bed hair, gritty air and dog-bites

I planned to climb high junk peak this morning to take a picture of the bay - something that I last did a decade ago - alarmingly.  Sadly the air is terrible, northerly wind bringing down guff from China, blanketing the coast.  So I passed on that one and aimed the camera at just-awoken boys.  Courtney came round to get some betadine spray for Daisy who was bitten four times by some antisocial dog on the beach.  Bloody hell.  She seems fine though, a couple of holes, and still in good spirits (celebrated her wounded so-I'm-allowed-inside status by dashing upstairs to gobble down Holly's food).

David Goldblatt - heavenly being

I have to go to Sydney in early March.  Sadly, not early enough.  Discovered yesterday that there is a major David Goldblatt exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art which closes on the 3rd of March.  In tears.  This is the thing that I have wanted to see for the last 20 years, at least.  He died last year. He took 70 years of photographs.  We lost something as a nation, as a species.  His photographs are searing in their beauty and meaning for me, the capture it all, somehow.  No-one came close.  All that we are as a people - all the hopes and failures and darkness and light and searing beauty along the way.  Life in the intersteces of consciousness.  Click here and scroll down this link to the big black video box - 30seconds long.

NG Kerk, in the town of Op-die-Berg, KoueBokkeveld, 1966 - just before Geordie was born. You can find it on Google maps. 
Though of course I want to go there by bicycle.

1972, pretty much my whole life ago, brands that we know as home today still, beauty in a time of darkness.

Randfontein, 1962.  How does a Jewish photographer from Joburg get to take a photo like this? 
How is he in this room with its naked emotions?

Margaret Singana, Soweto 1970; how did a rough wall and room get to look so extrodinary?

A clerical worker from Tsumeb in Namibia, on holiday in Hillbrow, 1973; how does he end up in this room?

Zimbabwean refugees taking shelter in the Methodist Church in Hillbrow in 2009, during the time of Xenephobic violence.

Into the Hong Kong weekend

Heading off to Sai Kung for Thai fire food ... Ev and Max ... 26 degrees in mid winter.

Waiting for Ange, who'd gone to pick up Courtney

Old HK Police Station cells - was there on Friday night - great light, grim place.

Waiting for trains in North Point - Friday morning

Mo-orchid Ali

The Pickle

Aiden and Evan desaturated portraits, January 2019

Came back after a while and added these two - I love them - desaturated high contrast.

The feel of South African houses

Took these pics of Gran's spare room while I was staying in it.  It's such a South African feeling room to me, the colours and light and furniture.  I can feel a holiday and a school night all rolled into one.