Ray's Photos

[Rayge]

Part Two

Throng
Portobello Road


Arches
Temple


End
Always fascinated by the sight of interiors that have become exteriors


Apres-Disc


Treasure


Hail to the Sun
It isn't a Nazi salute, honest


Dog Star

Hope to feel better tomorrow

[Rayge]

Part 1 8/82(ish), mostly London, Part two, 2/18, Deep Devon


Badges


Low Tone
Tony was my flatmate at the Mansions in 1982. Currently dividing his time between homes in Teddington, south-west London,
and Slovenia

and now a rarity, four pics from the world of work: I did a ten-month stint as news-editor/secretary at an ad industry mag
called MediaWorld, in offices in Bouverie Street, just off Fleet Street


Space Sales
Kathy Herriman, an American but no relation to the sainted George (I checked)


Media Director
For those who didn't recognize him, that's my old uni pal Mike, aka Conrad, with hair suitably shorn


Workshy Station
Yep, that's where I sat


Thames View
With the IPC tower on the other bank


Home Territory
Never had a camera when I lived in Tottenham. This is Bruce Castle, former home of Rowland Hill and now Tottenham Museum


Going to the Match
Through the late 1970s and all the 1980s, I went to Spurs with two brothers, John (on left) and the 6'5" tall Keith. Keith was at school and Uni with me, and was a friend since infant school of Clive, often featured here in the West Wales pics - he moved there in 1973.
Here we're walking through Bruce Castle Park

[Rayge]

Part Two
More pics of Dog and flowers


In the Jungle


Searching for the Right Stick


Do I Really Need to Say?


World of Possibility


Display


Logistical Problem

more of the similar next time

[Rayge]

Part one today gets sort of sunsetty in February this year: part two is is still in 1982, I think, but fuck knows what's going on, or exactly when. Most of this stuff was originally scanned in, and then dumped into huge unmanageable files, in 2012 or so, around the time of Chip's death and soon after, and I wasn't really very well organized.
Anyways...


Gable


Woolly Hat Dying Light Selfie


Yes, I Still Have Some
Please note; gardening clothes and haven't-been-out-of-house-for-a-while grooming. I may not be one for moddery,
but I do have some standards.
One or two, at least


Oo Ewe Screwing, John?
The sheep round here are hard, well hard


Points West


High Line

The Last of It
Normal and full telephoto on a jet contrail so high that it was catching pink from a sun that had gone down about 15 minutes before

[Rayge]

Part Two
A mystery and a portrait bookend an evening in the life of a couple of tripped-out ne'er-do-wells


High Noon with Buddleia
When, where and why, all mysteries


Repetition
OK, so Bill takes a slide of his girlfriend, Sal, sitting on the western end of the Mendip Hills, apparently balancing the
setting sun on her cupped and outstretched hand. Then we project the slide on to the wall of my Mansion flat (painted
in a silk finish white to make it a good screen substitute), hold a glass geegaw in the beam, then photograph the result
on a slow transparency film using long exposure and tripod.
Mother, was it worth it?


Gavin Goes for It
Another of Bill's slides, copied without shenanigans. Original taken maybe the year before in Stanmer Park, Brighton.


Rose Repose
This is also a Bill original, of a tiny ivory Buddah



Visions of Dooni
Bill's mother's Thai cat, Dooni, walked into the room just as Bill was using his prisms to make a picture of the Oriental rug.
A rather rough copy of the original first, then one given the prism treatment


Sal at the Mansions
She was lovely, sunny person, Sally, and this picture captures that side of her better tan any other I took

tomorrow: the plod continues

[Thang-y]

If I were that sheep, I'd sue his baaarbaah.

As for the red earrings ... red earrings? Moving on.

[Rayge]

Part one is back in 1982 I think, but judging from some shots, autumn's well on its way. Part two has random moments from last month

No idea of the location for any of these, although appparently Chip and I are out on some kind of jolly

On the Turn


Cloister


Hoots Mon / He's Behind You


Here's the Old Boss


Gold Stars


Stripes

Tomorrow, though, unmistakeably in Avebury. The last one here, with Kermit, might be there

[Rayge]

Part Two

Open Invitation


Ivied Stems, Red Dirt


Moss Side


Flow


Window


Bow

back tomorrow, weather permitting, with more capricious snapping.

[Rayge]

Part One today is all about the house and garden at the tail end of last month


There Goes the Neighbourhood


Bit of a Challenge


Kitchen Crocuses


Stiff Note to the Town Planning Department


Blue Splash


Faded Glory


Fuchsias and Roses

[Rayge]

Part Two
An early autumn visit to Avebury Ring, and some family members you haven't met before, from 1982.


Ooooh Mystic Vibrations


Nodding Acquaintances


Eternal Triangle


Edgy


Markers


Brian
Brian was my father's sister's son, and by general consensus, the white sheep of the family. He was a decent amateur
footballer from the Hackney Marshes brigade, playing for a team called Queensbridge Saints. Not long after my father
and his parents died in 1967, the survivors - Aunt Min, Uncle Les (a lifelong gooner, like my boy cousins - oh, the shame!),
their three children and their children's spouses, all moved to Essex, most of them around Tiptree. This is the only time
I visited there, for my Aunt's funeral (she would be 106 if alive today). Brian himself collapsed and died aged just 50,
a few years after this, while running a half-marathon. This was the last time I saw him.


Doppelganger
The elder of Brian's two sons, widely supposed to be identical to me as a teen, as he is here


Origins
This is the house (well, the top floor) off Green Lanes Harringay that my parents rented from soon after they were
married in 1943 until moving back to ma's mother's home in south Tottenham, when I was not quite two. The green
wooden gate my father made for the top of the stairs is my earliest datable memory

Tomorrow, back to the usual scuzzy bunch plucking beauty from chaos

[Rayge]

In part one, autumn 1982 probably. All those places and people I knew and cared for and tried to pin down. And they are all gone: dead, dispersed, forgotten or aged, but definitely gone. Wisdom has taught me that there's no future in hanging on to the past, and yet I continue to rummage around in it, looking for beauty, meaning, some stimulation of my memory/imagination that recreates a scene, perhaps a moment, a laugh, a look. It's only very rarely, though, that I recall anything before or after the memorialized moments, or that I recapture a feeling, so now I'm mainly looking, when I edit these scanned-in photos (maybe a third or a half of all that are worth the attention, if only for a few seconds), not for the past I thought I was capturing, the story-telling or mythologizing, the arresting of time: I'm looking instead with my old, tired eyes for something that resonates with the now, that touches something present, even if it is the well-worn sorrowful point of loss.
Then I spend a long time cleaning the gunk off it (the memory, the sensation, the picture) and adjusting the scan and the shot to the way it should have been, in the same way that memory smooths, elides and constructs a story out of the chaos. Because of this, and my neurotic commitment to posting pictures here until I drop (out), I tend to spend a small, but significant, part of every day with my past. The things I do for my public.



Junior Service


Butterfly


Unrestrained


Aries


Smells Like Flying Fairy
Case in point. Just looking at this, and seeing the boxes of Flying Fairy incense in the background, I could smell it,
sweet and rosey. And yes, as it happens, I am burning a dhoop stick as I type, but I'm definitely scenting FF


The Seven Sages of Bill


I'm and Academic, You Know. I Read Proper Books


It's Raining Quids

[Rayge]

And in Part Two, coming to the end of February this year; it's getting chilly, and the oldsters have come out to play


Frost Ferns


Cool Colours, Bro’


Serving Seniors


The Happy Crew
Sandford Millennium Green Volunteers, there to cut willow and clear brambles


There's More of Them
None looking significantly under 50 though, you notice


Triple Threat


Charlie

next time, the Sun sets on February

[Rayge]

Right then, Let's get February out of the way, then.


Why the Sun is Crap at Hide and Seek


Graffiti


Lighting-Up Time


Ember Glow


Morning Moves


Remembering


High Seas


The Way Out


Perruque

Next time, March. And snow

[Rayge]

Part Two

It's Autumn 1982, and Billy and I are enjoying a trip in Brighton: but first, herself and her clothes


Shot


On the Hove Side
Mike/Conrad had moved from London to a flat on the top floor of a Deco block on the sea front in Hove, to be with Kate,
who had just started a degree course in Art History at Sussex. This is the view looking back east towards Brighton piers.

And three pics of Billy pissing about on the beach at twilight that don't really need any more explanation or caption than that







The Two of Us
Taken using shutter delay: I may be wrong, but as far as I know this is the only picture I have of Billy and Me, although
we both took loads of each other


Go Moan for Man
Mooning at the West Pier

May give tomorrow a miss, but back soon with more from the druggy fools

[Rayge]

Sorry about the gap.
Anyway, today I am here, with more inconsequentialities from the early 1980s, and in part two, a snowy start to March this year


Low Point
The Lea at Ware


Boy About Town


On Call


The Lonely Surfer


Ready for War
Pic by Billy


Scruff Scoffs Shama


Stretch


Watch

[Rayge]

Part Two
It's March and the White Hell is here!

Dusting


A Fall at the Falls


Wrapped


The Things I Do for Homeostasis


Gung Ho!
An afternoon walk


Still Coming Down


Unfazed

More white-outs on the way

[Thang-y]

Unfazed? He loved it.

[Rayge]

Unfazed? He loved it.

Ooh, spoilers

[Rayge]

Part One today sees more from the white hell of the first days of March


The Night Watch


Morning Side


Lawn


Ponds


No Swinging Today


Cold Sun


Starling

Tomorrow, out and about

[Rayge]

Part Two is in London and Brighton in the last months of 1982. Probably


Mystery
I genuinely have no idea what is going on in this photo of Matt and Holly


Rock & Roll Monster


Muddied Oaf
Pic by Bill. The little beardy guy is Bill's neighbour, Tony


Incoming
Under the West Pier


Scope
Naturally, once Bill acquired a microscope, we used it to look at dope


Armour
At this time, Bill was very much into Kendo

Tomorrow, Bournemouth! be sure to book a seat