Highgate Road with Lens Flare

When the light is bright and the air is clear, almost anything is photogenic. 

Well, maybe not the entrance to Archway station. Some things can't be made to look pretty.

I took this in the approved style, by holding the camera at arm's length with one hand, framing in the viewer. Came out nice.

Hampstead Heath North Side

Until the other day I had never walked on the part of Hampstead Heath that is across Spaniards Lane from the main part of the Heath. Neither are really '"heaths", more like "untended forests" with paths that can turn I've-just-got-a-load-of-mud-on-my-shoes within a couple of steps. The sky was brilliant blue, the sun was brilliant yellow, and it was b****y cold.

I have joined the band of proper grown-up camera-owners, by trading in the 35mm lens I originally bought for the hard-to-obtain 27mm pancake lens that makes the X-E4 almost a pocket camera. It's 40mm-equivalent, which gives just a slightly wider field of view than the 35mm (53mm equivalent) but does not go all fish-eye.

Cuba Street, Isle of Dogs

Cuba Street is a narrow road that runs from the old West India Pier into the Isle of Dogs. This is that view.

It did not look like that when I was using the RiverBus to get there more than thirty years ago. It was all pretty derelict. The cream building on the corner was there then, but it was an old-school pub and I think scruffier. Go to the river end of Cuba Street, and look up what is known in the trade as the Limehouse Reach, and that view has not changed for almost forty years. Which is probably why I find it so restful(!). 

Autumn in Regent's Park

No further comment needed.

Canary Wharf - Security

I think the area within the North and South Colonnades, which has the the Underground station in the middle, is patrolled by security officers and may well be owned by the Canary Wharf people, and therefore private land. I was approached by a friendly security officer, who explained that their concern was people taking photographs of entrances to buildings, security camera locations and the like. We parted with a handshake and I carried on.

He meant an entrance like this...

Outside that are I didn't see any security at all. I suspect the use of a tripod within that area requires permission from the Estate management.

Canary Wharf Towers

I went to Canary Wharf the other week. The first developer in there was a Canadian firm called Olympia and York. In Canada, it's so darn cold and the snow is so darn deep that the shopping centres of many larger towns are actually built underground. Not all of them, but certainly Toronto, where O&Y came from. The O&Y buildings have their shops below ground, and may other developers have followed this lead of doing nothing at street level. 

Another way of saying this is that there is no "street" at street level in Canary Wharf. "Street" should mean shops, cafes, restaurants, cars, taxis, buses, signs, lights, fly-posted adverts, and so on. At ground level. Flats, offices and light industrial ateliers from the first floor up. There are a few coffee and food trucks and some buses, but that's about it. 

The City of London is an industrial estate, but it has a variety of architectural styles and various eateries and drinkeries at street level - while Cheapside and Princes Street / Moorgate have actual recognisable retail outlets. But Canary Wharf is just a collection of high towers with some "architectural" gimmicks that only ever looked decorative in the architect's sketches. Metal-and-glass is metal-and-glass no matter how you angle it - it does not have the texture of stone or brick.

The Second Guitar

Telecasters are for professionals. Julian Lage plays one. Everyone in Nashville plays one and has another as a backup. Show up with a Tele and people will assume you can play anything from chicken' picken' to Jimmy Page licks.

This is not me. Also, the neck is half a baseball bat, and I can't get on with it.

Jazzmasters are for indie guitarists, and I'm just a little too old to fall into that demographic. By a few decades. Also, a real Jazzmaster has the rhythm circuit control on the upper section of the body, and quite a few of the Fender models don't now. The Squires do, and the Fender Vintera's. I played a Vintera a few months ago, and it needed to be better finished for the £1,000 price tag. Sounded nice. Then there's all that stuff about how the bridge is not the best design, and the neck needs re-setting to make it better. Maybe not.

But still, and all, never say never. And also, I need a single-coil guitar with Fender wiring. The McCarty is double-humbuckers with Gibson wiring.

I was browsing the Regent Sounds website, which goes under "day-dreaming", and came across something only a guitar nerd could love. A mash-up of a Jazzmaster (body, neck, headstock and neck pickup) with a Telecaster (bridge pickup and ashtray, selector switch and controls).

You know when you see the girl across the room and know you have to talk to her?

That feeling. Well, nearly.

Except about a guitar.

(Musicians are not normal people. Amy Winehouse even wrote a song about a new guitar.)

So the next time I was in town, I wandered down Denmark Street, like I had any right to, and into Regent Sounds. They set me up with a Fender Blues Junior, and I noodled around for a while. Yes, it balanced on my knee. No, it did not weigh 9lbs or so. It sounded good. I knew I was going to buy it.

So I did.

And eventually, UPS delivered it.

It sounds and plays real good.

Here it is...