Video editor post - this year’s Gardeners’ World has dropped the music bed, the theme music, even a ‘here’s what to come on the show’ intro, all for a quieter hour of television. and there’s some unusual editing, like this tiny moment, such a surprising note to indulge in. It’s a lovely touch.

Video editor post - this year’s Gardeners’ World has dropped the music bed, the theme music, even a ‘here’s what to come on the show’ intro, all for a quieter hour of television. and there’s some unusual editing, like this tiny moment, such a surprising note to indulge in. It’s a lovely touch.

Always stop and look at this half forgotten allotment plot. Brings me peace. Places of low trees always remind me of the mushroom hunting opening of Spirit of the Beehive. Two apples trees, last year’s windfalls mulching in the wheelbarrow, the wheelbarrow being lost in the tall untended grass.

This evening’s surprise lovely find - this empty wooden sign, with a construction that, by mirroring paragraphs and pull quote sizes, give the impression of still having writing on it. A magazine page worth of text.

Explored the fields of ‘Perhaps it’s an Ostrich?’. No sign of any mysterious bird, but like any quest I was bedevilled by the Gods, the raging sea, a breaking of paths, and monsters.

If NASA had really wanted aliens to contact us they would have put this on the side of the Voyagers.

My path takes me past a fishery. I stop, there are dark shapes just under the surface, like patches of outer space our telescopes can’t read. Enormous fish; I know so little about fish that enormous fish are spooky. Listening to Bill Orcutt, and his pinprick guitar soundtracks this alien landscape.

The cloud above me and the cloud lying in wait.

Macbeth and Banquo visit the witches, and upon hearing their prophecies have a little kip.

Politics is now one of those podcasts where the hosts think because they’re having a good time the listener must also be having a good time.

New photo of the time in the early 1970’s when I briefly a tiny animatronic bear. I am so small here my hand is being held lest I slip through a gap in the fabric of time.

Audley End house, five handheld video layers deep, with varying levels of opacity, and the clean top mask turned off - turns into a Manor House screaming into the sky.

Swallows on the River Cam. Storm in background. This is five looped Live Photos of the swallows, mixed atop each other to try and replicate that frantic swallow energy. Then a mask of the house on top to keep that steady. Then the distorted race cars which open a Merlin Nova track.

typical work focus - struggling to solve the structure for a video edit. Suddenly I see the light, but this desk is too messy for work, so I brush it down, which leads to vacuuming - I may as well do the upstairs as well, and the kitchen, which leads to me taking the oven door off to clean that.

@rosyrockets.bsky.social this is the passage I was thinking of, which isn’t exactly as I remembered it, but still very touching (and threaded with anger). Lucy Boston pays respect to Broomie, her late gardener. This is St James Church. From Lucy Boston’s effortlessly wonderful ‘Memory of a House’

A ‘Stand By Me’ style adventure, only it’s just me alone, heading out into the fields north of here to find this mysterious bird. I’ll be gone until teatime.

Now well into eight straight months of having to put a jumper on.

Reading in the garden. The big tree the other side of the river reminds me of the tree in My Neighbour Totoro - it’s the way the light is hitting it; it looks like painted background art. Then a cloud, almost the same shape sits perfectly above it. It’s probably being moved across frame by frame

Saw a crow peel off from its murderous gang to chase down a cruising red kite. The red kite, twice the size of the crow, had no idea it was being chased. Like a good action scene there were no cuts, just my wide shot of the crow catching up, attacking, saying “take that” in crow, then flying away.

Text from my mother this morning. My father's father was a metrologist in the U.S. airforce so they moved about a lot. But I wasn't aware, and neither it seems was my mother, how much they moved. I had no idea my father could ride a horse. From the mid-west to Stonehenge before college in Kansas.

1/3. I somehow missed news that Kore-eda’s series Asura is on Netflix - and has been lurking there for over a year. In case you've missed it too, wanted to shout out that it’s must-watch TV: predictably rich and quietly compelling, closest, perhaps, to my favourite of his films, Still Walking.

also last night. This is a great episode, all about Jodrell Bank, and the photos from the late 1940’s of fledgling astronomers bedding experimental telescopes into farm land feel suitably Alan Garner. Plus it’s show that has experts talking to experts - always great. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Great big and detailed dream about visiting - with a group - a vast reservoir. We were taken into the towering stentorian rooms. And then somebody began tossing people into a void. I think this is all because the last TV show before bed was Andrew Graham-Dixon talking about Scandinavia art.

As always a wonderful show, and I will always admire a show that adds Robert Wyatt's 'Pigs...(in There)' to their celebration mixtape for Sir David Attenborough. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Thank goodness we’re finally in the season of long grass paths which tempt you around a corner, and that only reveal themselves when the shadows lengthen.

The local museum has devoted a few rooms to a David Attenborough inspired exhibition. A great museum, and the exhibition is very good. I liked the Blue Crowned Pigeon, framed like a private eye trying to gather evidence that the client’s husband is having an affair while on a sea voyage.

Abandoning a cycle because my bike sounds broken. I take a short cut home and there’s the sound of the saxophone man using a quiet lane to practise. He’s just around the corner. I cycle past (saying hello and thank you) and look back. Single notes now. Further back - he’s just audible as a foghorn.

“Everybody in the garden sounded happy” - an audio message my partner just sent me after visiting a fete at a library. I just like the phrase: the work between ‘garden’ and ‘sounded’. We don’t usually talk about audio with gardens. Magical little phrase Grasp the little bits of happiness.

The horse they sent to tell me I had to work the weekend again.

Reading on John Cage. ‘Young John Cage’, in the style of ‘Young Indiana Jones’ would work as a serial: This episode he’s in France, falling in love with a poet, discovering the beauty of silence. Next week he’ll be in Cuba, falling in love with a revolutionary, enraptured by the vibration of bells.

We’ve a rare day off together: I’ve swapped my computer for a book, while she’s left somebody else in charge of the Bank of England.

A black and white linocut I've been working on. In many ways it is just as much of a work-out for the mind as a multi-colour linocut because you can't use colour to differentiate parts of the subject, so you have to think a lot more about shape and texture.

Waking up to more and more cats at the end of the bed.

The top of a concrete footpath sign broken away, revealing four fingers of angry iron. The sign now looks like an invading Norse king, his crown setting the tone for his rule. Then I realised I was thinking of the crown Orson Welles wears as Macbeth.

Gotta Get This Hen In. They left these fellows until last; they are lined up in the back of the truck, stood on one leg, head thrown back in a crow, the other leg kicking to the heavens - and they look like a Parisian chorus line.

The Gallopers (as I’ve been reminded is their real name) being stowed away. Into the dark abyss they go. I think this a specialised crew: matching overalls, good with horses, didn’t mind being photographed; a lady brought them mugs of tea from behind the Ferris Wheel.

Back home, cycling past the funfair as they pack up after their fortnight stay. They’re taking the horses off the merry-go-round! I push my bike up and ask if I can photograph them putting the horses away. “Just get my good side” Lots of photos! am very excited! will post these three to start!

I’ve found and photographed before this little row of football seating left, for mysterious reasons, on the abandoned airfield. But somebody has moved them, and now it looks like everybody has left for the pub after a particularly bleak one-person play.

The village has put a new lock on this gate that stands alone.

Star Wars - just gonna say that the beautiful audio filter on “we’re passing through the magnetic field” is possibly responsible for a lifelong interest in electronic music. The whole trench run, how we cut from clean to distorted pilot chatter, is extraordinary. What a strange brew this film is.

After years of feeding the neighbour’s four cats while she away I’ve only now twigged that, because my neighbour’s surname is Hope, I can feed the final cat with the words “you’re our last hope”.

In the process of trying to sleep: I’ve my phone playing a field recording of an estuary tide, and - because their owner is away - two cats on the bed loudly purring. I realise I’ve crossed over from cosy to absurd; cats and tide together making a Raymond Scott style experimental piece.

Stroll past the church. The last of the sun cuts through the north windows; it is shattered by the pillars lining the nave, but a beam makes it through the body of the church to the glass of the east window… to light this bare foot.

Watching my father, years ago, making a detailed cockpit interior for a model airplane. Paper dials slid into place with tweezers. "It'll never be seen, but I enjoy it" he explains. Me, this afternoon, spending two hours on a single video graphic for a 4 second shot. "nobody will notice..." I sigh

Any gadget Bond hasn’t used by the end of the movie he should have to carry over to the next film. By the 5th film in an actor’s run, Bond will need a rucksack for everything Q has given him. So desperate is he to lighten his load that he starts using gadgets for jobs that don’t require gadgets.

Years ago on Twitter I posted a photo of the underside of clay tiles on a church lychgate - each stamped with the word ‘Rosemary’. A lady from a factory emailed me - Rosemary was a specific style of tile they used to make. Could I go back to the church and take more photos - for their newsletter.

Back from my morning walk - five or so miles before coffee. Feeling pleased with myself. Neighbour returns at the same time, and his wife asks how he is - “fine”, he sighs “I ran 10K, but I was slow”. I treat myself with toast. The neighbour begins a project in his shed.

A long time ago I met some friends working at a Renaissance Fair. They hid us when the fair closed. All the music stopped, the performers left and all the visitors streamed out. And then in the blackness of the darkened lanes, took us to the parties in the secret places behind the stalls and kiosks.

The funfair in the field behind my house is here for a fortnight. It’s a cacophony of rides, bells, announcements, Hollywood theme tunes, cowboys whooping and a Bela Lugosi Dracula laughing. And when it stops for the night, and that sound suddenly drops away, I sink into a hole of depression.