Work, Life and Balance

That Calvinist streak in me is having a feeding frenzy right now. My twisted psyche demanded a guilt-laden price tag for six weeks of bliss. But despite the last month being about getting up to speed with this new job it’s not all been about work. Taking time off has reminded me how important friends are. A diary of promises and engagements made during my holidays has meant it’s taken time for the work life balance to level itself out. There have been lots of great meetings and greetings with mates and colleagues but what follows is some pictorial evidence of  the importance of friends and family.

Steph, Toni, Linden and John at the Lauriston

At the start of the month I had a night out in Victoria Park that was supposed to be a quiet drink with my brother-in-law, Rob. Instead I ended up meeting so many old friends I felt more than a tad nostalgic. It is nostalgia that leads to a loss of balance, third degree burns to your leg and an inside out head, isn’t it?

Ben, Jen, Ayumi and the best Sushi ever.

As a more civilised antidote to the madness of Vicky Park, Jen and I had a brilliant night out at Ben and Ayumi’s where we had the best sushi we have ever eaten, by far.

Barvas break on the weekend of Malcy's birthday

Highlight of the month has to be flying up to the Hebrides to Malcy’s 60th birthday party. Malcy is one of my oldest pals and fellow founder of An Lanntair art centre where his party was held. Despite the horrendous weather outside, inside I was reminded of how many good friends I have from my time in Lewis.

Sam and Malcy, finding sense in the years.

Be it pain avoidance, wisdom or appreciation of family, I managed to make a relatively sensible exit, which wasn’t in keeping with our past record for long nights. I knew that my grandson Drew and my daughter Laura would harbour no excuses the following day and I was right. Drew jumped on my head from the top bunk at seven in the morning, and I gave thanks at the altar of common sense.

Drew in the wind

From old friends to new friends. Mikael Strandberg is one of the world’s leading explorers and has been on some madcap expeditions in his time. However his latest plan to become the first person on record to walk unaided across the Arabian and Sahara deserts puts all his previous exploits in the shade (pardon the pun).

Mikael Strandberg prepares for his desert crossing

Jen and I saw him talk this week in the library of The Travellers Club on the Pall Mall. Now there’s posh! Surrounded by dusty first editions of  Thackery, Dickens, Thesiger and shelfloads more, Mikael held the slightly worn travellers in thrall. He is an amazing speaker and a very brave man.

The moment in Ludlow in March when Clare, (right) and Marc told us they were expecting

Stop the press, I’ve just heard that Marc and Clare our friends in Brighton have just introduced little Zac Tyler into the world. Fantastic and news, and another new friend.

Clare and Marc on Ludlow bridge seven months ago

Old holidays and new beginnings

It’s been a month since I wrote my last blog. The time has flown by in a giant jumble of family, friends, travel and DIY.  However, all good things must come to an end and in this case they are being replaced a with great new challenge. As of next week I start at Raw TV as an Executive Producer. It’s big job with brilliant people and lots of scope and I’m delighted and daunted in equal measure.

My Dad in customary pose taking pictures in Harris

Despite the precarious nature of being a freelance Series Producer, one of the benefits (especially if you have your next contract lined up) is being able to take long breaks. In all I’ve had six weeks off and it’s been utterly memorable. After returning from France in what Jen and I reckon was one of our best ever holidays, I spent just a day to in London before heading north to the Hebrides with my Dad. The Maynard and Maynard tour of the Highlands is becoming something of an annual event. My father is an astounding ninety years old in February so these are precious journeys. Last year we circumnavigated Scotland but this time we concentrated on family and friends in Lewis and Harris.

Grandson Drew delights at tiddlywinks victory. Great Grandfather Archie is overcome.

I detected a positive vibe to the islands that I hadn’t felt for many years. There are some inspiring examples of young people returning to the islands and getting on with plasterboard and projects. Nickolai and Beka Globe have made a fantastic new space for their pottery and photography at their converted Mission House Studio. And my old friend Ruraidh Beaton continues to build the legend of Am Bothan in his magical bunkhouse in Leverburgh.  The advent of the long overdue Sunday Ferry and the reduction in ferry fares to the Islands through the Scottish Parliament’s revolutionary Road Equivalent Tarrif (RET) initiative have had an enormous impact on tourism. The roads were busier than I’ve ever seen them, lots of cars with surfboards on the roof and ever more dreaded camper vans in their wake. Ah well progress always comes at a price.

Laura surfs at Traigh Mhor

Talking of progress, my last day on the Island was spent at the helm of the Jubilee, sailing out of Loch Stornoway as the new Sunday ferry steamed past…bizarre. The Jubilee is fully restored 80 year old ‘Sgoth’ that I last sailed fifteen years ago. It’s another sign of renaissance in the Islands. The Jubilee, which was one of the island’s last serviceable traditional wooden sailing boats is now one of a fast growing number of this class of boat being built sailed regularly by locals and visitors alike.

Hand on the helm of the jubilee

Returning to London, I concentrated on getting the new kitchen installed interspersed with lots of catching up with friends in London. Amongst the highlights was the launch of Phil Stebbing’s massively ambitious ‘Lifeline’ project in Hyde Park. Phil is trying raise funds to send three teams of people around the world. Their mission is to meet others who are trying to live sustainably and build a Digital Ark filled with the secrets of sustainability. I did say it was ambitious.

The lifeline launch in Hyde Park

Another memorable event was going to the one day England V Australia cricket match. Even to a relative newcomer to the game it was pretty obvious that it wasn’t a brilliant match, and England got soundly beaten. But nonetheless, great company, good weather and enough beer to last a lifetime more than compensated for the poor performance.

Cricket at Lords

So that’s it. The holidays are over and the work begins. Bring it on.

Confessions of a Photographer

Lifting my head and looking around me, the buzz of work has gone and I see art on every wall. Whether it’s tagging on the village streets, Picasso’s and Cezanne’s paintings or photo exhibitions galore, I’m electrified and inspired by how others see the world.

Tagging in Aix-en-Provence

This year is the 40th anniversary of the Recontres de la Photographie d’Arles – a major photographic event by any reckoning. Many great photographers have shown their pictures here. We braved the 40°C heat long enough to view just a few of the 60 exhibitions, but three bodies of work really struck me.

Recontres de la Photographie d’Arles

Without Sanctuary is a shamefully banal series of postcards taken and published by Southern photographers of lynched African Americans. The collection is from the Centre for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta and shows just what an incredible leap forward has been made with the election of Barak Obama.

A waiting wall

Eugene Richards‘ haunting images of deserted houses in America’s Mid West were shot just before ‘the crash’ and remind me of McCarthy’s ‘The Road’. Willy Ronis, is one of France’s great humanist photographers. He’s nearly a hundred years old and his work glows with life, wisdom and dignity.

Willy Ronis exhibition, Arles

Since starting my blog, I’ve been forced to reassess why I continue to take pictures and publish them. It’s years since I earned my living as a photographer, so why bother?

Seeing these walls around me, I’m inspired by insight and commitment. Looking at my blog afresh I realise I am enthralled. Photography is still my first language and my love. For better or for worse I have an passion for people, a desire for them to understand the world the way I see it, and the need for a wall to hang my pictures on.

Lazy, lazy man

Sun Tree, Arles

I’m not going to write much as I’m getting to be a lazy, lazy man in the French sun but here are a few Provençal impressions from the last week or so.

Templars' tower

Van Gogh country

MacDonald's country

Everything and Nothing

A Eurostar of Americans

It seemed it would never come. For the last two weeks of July, I was working the maddest hours of my last nine months at Raw TV on ‘Locked Up Abroad‘ for National Geographic Channel.

The amazing Mas Dagan

Wrapping the edit up at the wonderful Envy after nine months and leaving everything shipshape was harder than I imagined. But in the end I was really pleased with the series. It’s been doing well in the US and is going to go out soon in the UK on five. The upshot of this final push was that I left the show more than a tad tired after some very late nights.

Provence light on our window

And then there was the actual last night itself when I should have done what any mature and sensible man would do and that is go home and fall into the arms of his neglected wife. But not Sammy, no, instead after a couple of pints at the Toucan we headed to Zoe Brewer’s 40th party.

Garden light on leaves at dusk

Now anyone who knows the Brewers knows that a night there, never mind a night as big as a fortieth, is going to be (how should I put it?) an occasion for celebration. Consequently we lived up to our joint expectations, did our very merry duty by Colin and Zoe and returned home a little after 6am. Again, most sensible people would have spent the day in bed but I had to clean the flat before my grandaughter and her mum arrived off the train from Scotland for a week’s entertainment in London.

Dusk on our first night at Mas Dagan

We had a brilliant time but the days were busy and the nights were late as we saw the sights and talked the talk into the wee sma hours. When Jen and I finally boarded the Eurostar for two weeks in the South of France the omens weren’t good either.  The carriage suddenly filled with many uniformed red Americans ‘doing Europe’. They were all very excited about going under the English Channel and getting a good seat, (to view the darkness I presume).

Night Pool

However my fear of uniformity proved unfounded (I had a tough time in the Scouts); our American cousins were models of decorum. After arriving in Paris, yoga in the Jardin du Luxembourg, a pit-stop in our favourite Cafe Tournon (expensive, non? Charcuterie, fromage, pain and cafe creme – 50 euro/nearly quid – but well worth the experience), a mad dash across the city to Gare de Lyon, a whisk on the TGV and a thirty minute drive we found ourselves at the amazing Mas Dagan. It’s been a complete delight since then and exactly what a holiday should be, nothing and everything.

Ultravox and the Stones

Midge Ure in full flow at the stones

On a cold winter’s night in Stornoway, I waited outside the Caberfeidh Hotel, wondering what to do. I was working for the Stornoway Gazette, the ‘Only Newspaper Printed in the Outer Hebrides‘ according to its masthead, and I was the Island’s soul dedicated newspaper photographer. What’s more I was onto a scoop. I’d had a tip-off from the Manager of the hotel, that a, ‘big band from the south’ was staying with them.

Recording the Video for 'One Small Day

He’d told me the band’s name as if it really should mean something to me. Oh ‘Ultravox‘ I said knowledgeably when he called with his hot scoop, wow. I think I’d heard of them, just, but I around that time I was a little in the musical wilderness. Anyway, I went into the bar to scope the place out and got into conversation with a cool looking leather jacketed Glaswegian. A few pints later, I confided my mission to him and asked if he knew the band?

It was a freezing cold day in the Outer Hebrides

I suppose I’d been expecting someone fairly outlandish and aloof to be the leader of this big band from ‘the south’ but when my new drinking buddy told me he thought I might be looking for him, I was chuffed. This was Midge Ure. I was even even more delighted when Midge asked us on the band’s video shoot the following day.

These pictures were taken at Callanish Stones the day after my meeting with the band. I can’t remember the date exactly but it was mid winter ‘84 and bitterly cold. The band recorded the video for ‘One Small Day’ which was a single released from the album ‘Lament’.

The stones are called Tursachan Chalanais in their Gaelic name and are an ancient Megalithic site built around 3000 years BC. They lie on the west coast of the island of Lewis.

The Secret Garden Party

An ominous start to the weekend

I can’t remember the last time I was at a proper festival. I suppose it must have been the Hebridean Celtic Festival in 2000. Even then it probably doesn’t count as a proper festival experience because I could lay down in my own bed in the wee small hours.

Discovering the joys of the hula-hoop

So when I got offered the chance by Alex to go to the Secret Garden Party and show some films at the explorers’ tent along with other filmmakers like Phil Stebbing with his important and ambitious Lifeline project, it seemed like an offer that couldn’t be refused. Big thanks to Olly for setting this up.  I showed Living with the Mek and got some great feedback.

The final of the Sock Wrestling world championship

Apart from the fact that I got to buy a new tent and go camping, (I Love Camping), we heard great music, met fantastic people, learned to hula-hoop and in general were thoroughly inspired. Top tip, the next sport to sweep the western world will be ‘Sock Wrestling’, you read it here first.

The Saturday night was an epic. It followed a very merry afternoon with Jamie Buchanan Dunlop that nearly put paid to the night’s entertainment, but once the evening really got going there followed a series of bizarre encounters.

Trainee Radiographer and part time knight

By far the most unusual experience was spending the hours before dawn with a knight in shining armour. My first encounter with Forest, the trainee radiographer and Medieval Knight, lead me to think that he may have been a tipsy fancy dress wearer who had succumbed to the weight of booze and armour.

One of these kind of Knights

It turned out that Forrest the Knight was just resting before a historically inaccurate but none-the-less spectacularly titanic clash with Duncan the Viking. Beware, it seems that it is almost obligatory to be a  tipsy fancy dress wearer at the SGP, but not thankfully, to engage in flaming combat.

The best fancy dress of the festival

While at the fireside we also met Kata, the sustainable forestry person from the Eden project and Jason an inspiring ex-city man now hedger from Exmoor. It was that kind of night, or should I say knight.

Dawn breaks on Sunday morning

Go, but don’t tell anyone else because it’s a secret.

Summer sun in London

I’ve been flat out at work finishing the next season of ‘Locked Up Abroad’ or flat out in the park enjoying the summer sun. Here are a few images taken over the last two weekends from my neighbourhood of London.

Chairplanes in Victoria Park during the Paradise Garden festival

Defeated in Paradise Gardens, Victoria Park

Smoking fiddler in Broadway Market

Buskers at Broadway Market

The Mek of Merengman

I’ve been writing this particular blog about my adventures with Mark and Olly for some time now. To see the rest of the blogs in sequence click here. But if you haven’t the time to read the backstory, here is the story so far.  I produced a series of eight one hour documentaries for Travel Channel and Discovery in the remote rain forests of West Papua two  years ago that was great adventure. 

Along with explorers, Mark Anstice and Olly Steeds,  a production crew from Cicada Films and many local ‘Yali’, porters we climbed into the mountains of West Papua in search of the ‘Mek’ people. This elusive tribe have had little contact with the outside world for thousands of years.

Heading towards Mek Territory

The previous year, Mark and Olly had lived in with the Kombai people in the swamps of West Papua. During their three months there, the two explorers became aware that things were changing fast for the native people of Papua. Money, religion, politics, education, logging, military action, disease, metal goods, converse sneakers, tee-shirts, cheap chinese lighters; all these things and many more were flooding into these remote and ancient cultures, altering them irrevocably.

Spurred on by this experience, Mark and Olly decided to go to West Papua again, but this time they were to go high into the montains to make a series of films see with the Mek people. It was a big ask. The territory was ferocious and there was little guarantee the tribe would allow them to stay for the four months the two explorers and our film crew needed to really get under the skin of village life.

The Mek tribe of around two thousand people had been known to the outside world for many years. But there were small villages on the edge of Mek territory that we hoped still stood on the cusp of modernity where we could still learn of the old ways while witnessing how the tribe adapted to the new.

The blog picks up after we’d been four days into the expedition and just spent an uncomfortable night in a village called ‘Tohamak’. Our guide, the ‘Legendary Bob Pelege’ had hoped the villagers might let us stay. But in the end it was a rather disappointing encounter. The villagers were Mek people but they had moved further into modernity than we’d hoped for. This was demonstrated when they asked us for $800 dollars to kill a pig for a feast of welcome. 

Wild boar jawbones on the edge of Merengman territory

Our porters were from the Yali tribe and the Mek are their traditional enemies. The tension in the village was palpable as we tried to sleep in a village where not so long ago we would have been killed and eaten for such a transgression. Come first light we head further into the mountains.  Bob planned to take us to the village of Merengman. It was two days walk away through ever worsening territory but it was there that he believed we’d find what we were looking for. I was sick with nerves by now.  Months and months planning were hanging in the balance. 

Day five’s march was awful with leeches, vertical walls of vegetation, torrential rain and a gnawing uncertainty about whether I was leading the expedition towards disaster. A night camp made in the pitch black under what seemed like a waterfall didn’t help the mood either. But on day six when we encountered a staff of pigs jaws we knew we were nearing what we hoped would be our final destination.  This frightening totem marked the territorial edges of  Meregman. I  felt  exhausted, worried but elated mostly. All the hard work, all the blood sweat and tears had all lead to this point.

Chief Markus gives us a traditional Mek 'welcome'

The following day, after little sleep, we edged  closer to the village. Bob knew that by tradition, no stranger would be allowed to enter the village without a show of strength. Less than two hundred meters from the village a tribesman who turned out to be the chief himself, leapt from behind trees and challenged us to leave his territory. We spoke English, the porters spoke Yali and and Indonesian and a few words of Mek. Between, Bob, Olly, Mark and the porters, we managed to get the Chief, Markus, to allow us to enter the village.

The villagers of Merengman meet their first westerners

It was an amazing sight. The villagers looked on with a mixture of  anxiety and curiosity. Ed Kelly, the camerman and director allayed people’s fears by letting them see and hear what we were recording. We’d decided that if we found somewhere that would let us stay we would share our world with them as we hoped they would do with us. 

We'd decided to let the villagers know from the start what were were doing

Chief Markus called a meeting of the elders and after some debate they decided to let us stay and see what we were made of. Exhausted but elated we started to make camp and prepare ourselves for what we hoped would be the long haul. We were in.

Chief Markus addresses the elders

Don’t Shit in the Green Lane

My lovely birthday bike

I love cycling in london. I hate dog shit.

I swear there’s some SUV driving Pit Bull owner in Grays Inn Road taking revenge on us red-light-running-tin-heads by getting their studded rex to drop his meaty load right in the middle of Ken’s (sorry Boris’) green lanes.

And so it was, on a mad dash from one side of London to the other – there it was. A steaming pile of dog poo or a busted shoulder at best. Splat was the only option, but what a stinking one. Shit everywhere. The bike and my trousers were so splattered that even at top speed I couldn’t out-cycle the stench.

Arriving at the office, I abandoned the bike at the door, rushed two floors, emptied a litter bin and refilled it with warm soapy water. Took four stairs at a time, whipped the bike back onto the street and was cleaning the evidence off my frame in no time.

Two window cleaners from the office below sussed it and laughed. That was bearable. But when a dispatch cyclist pulled up and asked me if I could clean his bike next, that’s when I  lost it.

So here’s the deal. If you own that meaty Pit Bull. Do the squishy warm plastic bag thing and I promise, I’ll sit patiently at every red light between Baker Street and Hackney.