And I think sometimes it’s the same with my photography.

I take photos for a living and, don’t get me wrong, I love it.  I get a great feeling of satisfaction from producing something which brings people joy without them thinking about who I am.  (That’s the same with a lot of the work I’ve done: when I’m doing costume character work I enjoy walking around the place I’ve just been working knowing that none of the people who I’ve been interacting with have a clue who I am, and I enjoy working back stage in theatre, adding to the magic without people giving a second thought to me being there.)  But sometimes I get home, collapse into bed, and wonder why I just put myself through that.

This happens most when I’m out with my camera for fun.  I think this is mainly because a lot of the stuff I do for myself is different to the stuff I do professionally — my professional work is usually rehearsal space, studio or theatre based and generally pretty controlled (with some exceptions, of course, and I’m pleased to do those other things), while the stuff I shoot for myself is often outdoors in unpredictable public environments.  It’s kind of the difference between photography as an art and the thrill of capturing that candid moment.

When I’m out for myself I can spend hours on my feet with my heavy kit bag, sometimes walking for miles.  And today I’m suffering from the weekend.  But I still do it.  I still go out with my cameras when I have free time.  Occasionally I have the moments I just described, wondering why on earth I would put myself through that for no apparent gain, but I do.  And you know what?  I love it.

It’s not especially a secret that I’m a leftie.  I’ve not talked about it much here, but I suspect you could decode it from my posts, and especially via Twitter.  So it won’t come as much of a surprise that in the upcoming general election I’m backing Labour.

As the election looms it’s looking increasingly likely from the opinion polls that the UK will get a hung parliament on Thursday.  Accordingly the Queen would invite Gordon Brown, as the incumbent Prime Minister, to form the next government. It’s likely that Mr Brown would then approach the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in an attempt to form some kind of anti-Tory coalition government.  For a moment I’m going to assume this happens — that the Liberal Democrats would rather form a coalition with the Labour Party than the Conservative party.

It struck me the other day while listening to Andrew Pierce and Kevin Maguire talking about the Labour leadership on the radi0, that there’s still a way the Labour Party can come out of this election (for a definition of “this” see below) with a strong mandate to run the country for another 5 years.  Let me explain.

So Gordon Brown is the Prime Minster by virtue of a hung parliament, but he has no mandate for the long term.  He talks to the Lib Dems and agrees on a coalition where they get a number of cabinet members (arguably more than they ‘deserve’ given their size in Parliamentary terms), and an agreement that there will be electoral reform.  For the next 6 months the government gets to grips with reforming the electoral system, but not much else (it’ll be a pretty lame duck, with challenging policy hard to push through even the lower house).  They also keep the pressure on the Torys on the policy and fiscal front.  Towards the end of the 6 month period Gordon Brown announces he is to step down as leader of the Labour Party, and thus the Prime Minister, in November — he feels he’s made a big difference to the country and that the time has come for him to move on.

Labour elect a new, younger, more media friendly leader — a Milliband brother, perhaps.  And this is key.  The new leader announces an immediate general election.

New leaders always get a bump in the polls, and a lot of people will see anything as better than Gordon Brown.  While the other party leaders have been through the mill in this election (and I see no sign of any of them stepping down — David Cameron will have more seats than any other single party, and Nick Clegg will have lead the Lib Dems to the largest number of seats in the recent history of the party), the new Labour leader will be fresh, with new policies and new ideas.  A quick winter general election later and the country welcomes in another 5 years of Labour Government, with at least a small parliamentary majority.

There are, of course, flaws to this plan.  Obviously it could backfire if the new leader doesn’t get quite the bounce needed, or if something goes wrong in the first 6 months of the coelltion (an early VoNC by the Conservatives, supported by independents and rouge Labour MPs would cause problems, as would a fall out between the Labour leadership and the Liberal Democrats).  It could also backfire if the Conservatives simply won the November election, but at least the government would be able to reasonably gauge if this was likely before committing themselves to another election.  Finally there’s the cost involved — I’ve heard it said that the only people who could afford another election campaign would be the Conservatives, with assistance from their wealthy backers.

It may be a risky strategy, but from where I’m sitting, it’s about the best chance the Labour Party have of getting another fully effective 5 year term of office.

Events on the main stage in Trafalgar Square were due to kick off at 12noon, so I headed into London in the morning. I had spoken to Miss T the day before and she’d talked about meeting up in the afternoon – she was babysitting for her sister the night before, and so would be passing through London.  I’d agreed to lend her and Mr S one of my old cameras, so this was an ideal chance to hand it over – so I wanted to get plenty of time in before I met her. When I arrived at the square, at about quarter to 12, there were already a lot of people waiting and so I went to find myself good vantage point at the top of the stairs leading up to the National Gallery where I settled down for things to get going.

12 o’clock came and went.  As did half past, as did 1pm.  And still we stood waiting.  Finally, about quarter past 1 our two hosts appeared on stage.  They were two young ladies (Not young young I don’t suppose.  Not what I might have referred to as young before, but from the view of my advancing age, young enough.) dressed in traditional Chinese outfits. It took me a little by surprise when they introduced themselves as Yvonne and [something equally non-Chinese].  Anyhow, they proceeded to introduce a whole load of dignitaries ranging from someone from the Chinese embassy who couldn’t speak English, through to some senior policeman, via Boris Johnson who couldn’t be bothered to turn up but sent us a video message (which we ended up seeing twice, apparently because of technical problems), all of whom made speeches about how great the occasion was and how proud they were to be associated with it.  After around 45 minutes, the painting of the dragons’ eyes and a photo call on the stage, the entertainment started.

The first, and by far the best, act was a dragon dance.  We were told that it was telling the story of a dragon who was sent into the mountains to collect some kind of special tea.  He had to overcome a whole load of problems on his journey and, apparently, was scared for a long period around the middle.  The dance was impressive.  The dragon was made up of two people and the whole dance took place on top of a set of 7 and 8 foot poles.  There were lots of acrobatic jumps from pole to pole accompanied by traditional Chinese drums and thing which no one but the front row of the crowd right by them could hear because it wasn’t amplified.  Following that there was some singing and something else (probably: I can’t actually remember, it made such an impression).

By this time I was losing interest and wanted to wander up to Chinatown, but was a little bit trapped.  Even when they moved the barriers back to make more room on the ground the steps were pretty crowded and I was struggling to escape.  I found my way down the side of the steps in the end, knocking out as few people as possible on the way down. I took some general shots around Trafalgar Square and then my phone rang. It was Miss T.  She was just setting off from her sister’s house and, after a little discussion, we arranged to meet outside of Leicester Square tube.  This was on the right line for her, and was a good reason for me to head that way.

So I did.  I walked up around Trafalgar Square stopping to take some shots of the stalls and people around the edge (as well as taking a picture for some foreign visitors. It seems if you have professional kit on your shoulders people expect you to be able to take good photos on their little instant digital cameras.  This is, of course, the opposite of the truth.), and headed up the (closed) road to Leicester Square.  There was more going on there, and I spent some time taking pictures around there.  The plan was to then go into Chinatown itself, but a little exploration revealed that wasn’t going to work because of the crowds and time.  So I just went to meet Miss T.

Once she arrived we headed off for a break at a lovely little cafe in Covent Garden.  On the way there we spotted a whole load of TV OB trucks parked outside the Royal Opera House so went to investigate. Of course neither of us had realised it was the night of the BAFTA awards; why would we? It’s not like we both work in the entertainment industry or anything. We sat for an hour or so in the cafe, Miss T had soup while I had a very large slice of Chocolate Bombe and surprisingly nice Apple juice.  We chatted and I got to take the weight off my feet for a while.

One thing Miss T wanted to do was get photographs of some graffiti which had appeared on some building site hoardings near London Bridge.  We decided we should head there before the light faded too far.  With those photos in the bag, we walked back along the south bank of the river toward Waterloo, snapping away as we went.

As a theatre and events photographer it’s been a long time since I took landscape pictures so it was a bit of a change for me, but still remarkably enjoyable.  It’s also been a long time since I went on a shoot with another photographer, and it’s always very interesting to see what they spot that you missed, especially when out of the confines of a performance space.

Miss T and I parted company once we reached Waterloo station.  It was pretty late by this stage and we both needed to get off home.  We sorted out who was taking what camera kit (I was still carrying some of the things she wanted to borrow in my kit bag), said our goodbyes, she headed off underground and I went and got my train.

On the train home I sat opposite a photographer who had clearly been on the BAFTAs red carpet.  He was editing and tagging his photos with the help of a celebrity cheat sheet issued by BAFTA.  It crossed my mind that it would be very helpful if something like that could be provided by producers when I’m working with particularly large casts.

I beat Miss T back home for once, although unusually we did start off from my main station rather than hers.

I was glad of a few days with nothing planned this weekend.  The last few weeks have been a bit non-stop.  Early in the year I bought a whole new load of camera kit but hadn’t had much chance to take it out for fun and play with it through January so, on Valentine’s day, I packed up my backpack and headed off to shoot the silent disco in The Scoop at More London.  I was expecting it to be a reasonably busy event with plenty going on to photograph.  Unfortunatly that wasn’t the case.

My trains arrive into London Waterloo which is just a few minutes walk away from the London Eye and South Bank.  Once on the South Bank you can walk along the Thames path right down to Greenwich (in fact the path runs 184 miles from near the river’s source, according to the National Trail website).  So I decided to walk from the station to City Hall, quite a nice walk I’ve done plenty of times before with a full kit bag.  What I failed to factor into my journey was how much heavier my new kit is when compared to my old kit, and how out of practice I am at walking with it after winter (in fact quite probably how out of practice I am at walking at all since I started using my bike for local journeys just under a year ago).

Once I reached The Scoop I was disapointed that there weren’t many people there, and it wasn’t much of a sight.  I couldn’t even easily get close to the edge of The Scoop because they had security barriers around it.  There were pretty friendly looking staff around (one of the young ladies gave me quite a smile as I walked past, actually) and I’m sure, had I asked, they would have been quite accomodating, but I wasn’t really in the mood having walked all that way, so I just stomped past, around the other side of City Hall and flopped onto the stone seating / steps for a rest and to decide what to do. For some reason I chose to walk a bit further.

I wandered across Tower Bridge, in front of the Tower of London and along some of the roads in the City. I didn’t take any pictures.  I had half an idea to walk to St Paul’s, but didn’t make it that far.  I came back down to the north side of the Thames by St Magnus the Martyr (who were ringing their bells at the time) and walked back up to Tower Bridge.  By this time I was starting to hurt; my feet and legs were the worst. I crossed back over the river with the intention of seeing if things had hotted up at the disco, but they hadn’t so I decided to head home.

By this time my shoes were feeling really quite uncomfortable and I was limping slightly.  It felt like my sock had shifted slightly aroud in my shoe and the feeling of it moving against my foot was starting to annoy me, so I stopped to sort it out.  Unfortunatly it wasn’t my sock, it was the skin on the ball of my foot which had blistered very badly.  I hobbled on to London Bridge tube and back to Waterloo where, thankfully, it wasn’t much of a wait for the train.

I continued to suffer for it the next few days.  While my feet felt a little better after a good night’s sleep my legs decided to start aching more.  I think perhaps I was a bit ambitious (albeit not intentionally) on my first outing of the summer, but at least I know now how much practice I need to get in before we really hit the summer events season…

We talked about this in the restaurant and it started off a very interesting conversation between Miss D and I.  At the time I thought about wanting to write it down – it revealed a lot about both of us, including confirming a few things I thought about her relationship with Mr T.  Unfortunately I didn’t then write it down.  And now thinking back to it I’m struggling to remember what exactly was said.

We talked about how, in a relationship, both parties have to get about the same amount in return for what they put in.  This lead to me trying to dig around to find out what she thought she got from being with Mr T.  Although she didn’t say directly (I don’t suppose that’s much of a surprise), it did re-affirm my theory that it was more his family which she got the most out of.  She’s a long way from home and her family, and having a family home she can go to at the weekends seems to be important to her, even if she doesn’t realise it.

Miss D’s always hard to get information out of when it comes to talking about her feelings.  She just doesn’t want to talk about it.  While I appreciate that’s her choice, and perhaps I am being a bit nosy, sometimes it’s not so good.  There have been times she’s been upset and I’ve tried to find out why but she just wont say. That makes it very difficult for anyone else to do anything about it. Perhaps in these situations it’s because it’s something to do with Mr T and she knows I don’t like him. Perhaps she thinks I wouldn’t be much help, but I’d much rather know – and I can do sensitive when needs be – because there might just be something I can do to make her feel better. You never know until you try.

So my birthday passed off relatively uneventfully. The important people remembered and, even though Mr P did end up forgetting, his memory was jogged by something later on meaning he did manage to send me a message before the end of the day. I rang my parents to say thank you for the card, and although my dad didn’t realise what day it was, he’d not forgotten. It reminded him to de-flea the cat.

So now I’m 25. Next year is the last time I can renew my young person’s railcard (16-25 Railcard is the official name now, apparently). Maybe I should learn to drive before then.

So prepare yourself for the next few entries.  They will take you through October, November and December up to date.

I do wish advertising agencies would get these things right!

One of the things I’ve been doing which has been getting in the way of writing this is re-vamping a website for my brother.  He’s part of a group which run a large Blood Bowl league and last year I made a site which they used to manage the league tables and match reports.  They’ve grown a lot in the last season and now need the site to manage a lot more complicated things than it did previously.  This involves doing quite a bit of rebuilding of the output and processing side of things although at least I can reuse a lot of the back-end code.  I got the brief and some design documents a good few weeks ago and the deadline is the end of September.  In my mind that’s quite a while away, so I haven’t been too bothered about rushing with it (in fact it’s probably fair to say I did nothing for a long time, to be honest).  Occasionally my brother would give me a nudge about it, and I’d say something like “yeah, it should be ok” or “I did some last night, I’ll have something to show you soon”.  After a while I started to run out of excuses and had to do some work.  I worked late on the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night and then emailed him with a basic version of the site.  This seems to have worked — he did say something about being worried about the deadline in his reply — but at least it’s put his mind at rest that I actually am doing something.  I suppose I should do some more soon.  Maybe tomorrow and Thursday.

I can’t do any on Friday because I’m off to build a set with Miss T.  She rang me while I was out with Mr P and Miss C last night and we had a long chat.  I’m glad she rang — I’d been worried following a short conversation on Friday night.  I’ll write about that more soon, but Sunday’s conversation ended up with me offering to help her build the set for the upcoming Sedos production of One Flew Over The Cookoo’s Nest.  I think it’ll be quite fun — certainly better being with her than being stuck at home all bank weekend by my self (Miss D will be off at Mr T’s parent’s house) — if a little tiring.  I’m meeting her on Friday night in London and staying at her house so we can get a whole day’s work in on Saturday and Sunday.  I’m not quite sure what I’ve let myself in for, but I’ll let you know how things go.

Talking about art, I’ve been following the events up on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in the last few months.  The One & Other project is a living art installation consisting of a different person occupying the plinth for an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week through until October.  There’s a live web stream so you can watch and listen to the person up there from the comfort of your own home.  It’s been quite interesting.  Some of the people are certainly art while some I’d wonder.  I think, in general, it’s got better as time has gone on with more people being creative than just sitting reading a book.  Having said that it is supposed to be a reflection of the UK at the moment, so I do believe that sitting quietly is a perfectly acceptable thing to do… it’s just not very exciting to watch!  There’s a very interesting collection of photos building up on Flickr of the project.  I’ve also been following the project on Twitter.

Talking of Twitter, I’ve jumped on that band wagon.  All being well you’ll see the latest tweet at the top of the front page of this blog.  I find it’s quite good just to drop random thoughts on to — small thoughts I just want to put out there but don’t necessarily have anyone around to say them to.  I know a lot of people who have Twitter accounts — most of my friends are on there — but having connected it to this anonymous blog I can’t really follow them.  That’s a bit of a shame, I’d certainly be able to have more friends, but it’s a choice I made to carry on being able to write this blog without feeling restricted.  If you’d like to add me then please do — @CarregsBlog.  I might, at some stage, add another account as the real me (although all my normal usernames seem to have been taken, so I’ll have to come up with something else), but I’m not really sure what I’d write on that one!

I think that’ll do for now.  I’ve lots more to write about, but at least that gets some of it out of the way.  Sorry I’ve been so useless.  I’ll try harder from now on, at least for a little while, I promise.

Catch up with the gallery here: http://www.carregs-blog.co.uk/daily-photo/

Now of course I know how the media works — I’ve been involved in one way or another (snogging for example) on and off for years now — and I know they didn’t have much time to find coherent people to talk to them about the event (and I imagine finding coherent people at Glastonbury at that time of night must be tricky), but I do feel a little bit cheated — these weren’t genuine festival goers who were also devoted Jackson fans that the BBC had gone out and found on site, they were journalists who happened to be in the press tent at the same time as the people putting together the item.  And they weren’t going to mention that.