It was early December, 1995, a Saturday evening, and my parents had gone away on holiday, leaving me the sole occupier of the family home for a week. As a burgeoning rebellious teenager that meant only one thing: inviting the lads from sixth form round for a Saturday-night session of beers, smoke and music, specifically the stuff we’d recently been getting into: The Beatles, The Kinks, anything that had influenced the Britpop movement which had crested that summer with the Blur .v. Oasis chart showdown.

We weren’t fully aware that there was another British artist who’d had a major influence on both those indie heavyweights: Oasis were to cover Heroes as a B-side two years later while Blur faced legal intervention the same year after their single M.O.R was found to bear more than a striking resemblance to Boys Keep Swinging (Eno & David later received a joint songwriting credit for the track).

Back in my hazy living room that evening we were all well aware of Bowie, although he hadn’t quite made it onto our session A-list. Only two years previously I’d bought my first single of his – Jump They Say – enamoured by its funked-up Nile Rodgers vibes, chorus guitar wail and jazzy trumpet solo, all contrasting the morbid lyrical content. As my teenage ears were more attuned to modern production values it was tracks like this, rather than Changes, Space Oddity etc, that floated my boat. Appreciation of the older stuff would surely follow, but for now it would all be kept in the back seat even longer by what we experienced that evening.

​To escape one of our worst early summers of recent years I visited Seville and Cadiz in Andalusia for the first time last month, just in time for the weather in southern Spain to hit the other extreme, of often unbearable 40+ degree heat – the Spanish version of a heatwave.

However my week there was made a whole lot cooler by two random animal-themed incidents on the first and last day which perfectly captured the vibe of the place.
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THE PEACOCK

Without going into too much detail about the city, Seville’s biggest cultural draw is its 14th-century Moorish palace called The Alcázar, where the mrs and I decided to visit on our first morning before the afternoon heat took hold. Unfortunately that’s what hundreds of other tourists had opted to do too, so in we bundled with the queuing hordes to wander the ancient halls and courtyards.

After an hour of having to muscle in on photo vantage points I decided to escape the herds, grab a coffee and stroll solo around the quiet shaded area of the outdoor gardens while Jen continued inside, as she wanted to find the spots where Game of Thrones had been filmed. It turned out to be one of the better holiday decisions I've ever made.

​Charity shops have generally been a happy hunting ground for me over the years. At least half of my book and record collection, and a fair few wardrobe items, can trace their lineage to Marie Curies and Faras across the land.

​In this post-recession retail landscape they've proliferated more than ever, often occupying empty high street spaces no sooner have they been vacated, attracted as ever by heavily discounted business rates. 

​Whenever I’m on a weekend away or assignment in another part of the country I’ll always duck into one if there’s time to kill, in pursuit of another random find, be it a pair of vintage flares or an old Beano annual.

Celebrity fatalities generally leave me cold and unresponsive but, as with the demises of Kurt Cobain and Freddie Mercury  22 and 25 years ago, David Bowie's death last week was one of the few that did impart a slight wrenching effect, in a breakfast radio switch-on moment that'll now be ingrained in my memory until my own end.
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It was the abrupt nature of the news, following the unmentioned cancer, and because he was so enduring - I'd actually predicted he would headline Glastonbury this year following the new album release which turned out to be his final words, and was cursing my luck even more at being abroad and missing the tickets boat again.

However while last Monday began grimmer than most January weeks ever could, it actually became rosier as the day continued, with wall-to-wall Bowie tracks on BBC6, a monsoon of memories and commemoration online, and just going through all my albums, photos and video clips, all work plans shelved.

By the end of the week, however, I'd consumed so many similarly worded tribute pieces as to have reached saturation point, a feeling nailed by David Baddiel who tweeted on Friday:

​After last month's day with the police dealing with some of London's more unsavoury characters, this month I spent six days on a press trip to Israel with someone who was in many ways a lot worse, to the point that the Israeli guards' guns (pictured) looked increasingly attractive as the week drew on. (*To clarify, I don't have the full data on Britain's bullshitters but he's indisputably the biggest I've ever met.)

The background to this is that you often have to spend press trips with other journalists, and as many PR people will tell you: “There’s always one in every group...(making) the trip less enjoyable for everyone else".  Step forward - 'Stan', which is as close to his real name without fully revealing it.

All I know about Stan is he used to work for a red-top tabloid before losing his job, not long after somehow being shortlisted for 'Reporter of the Year' - something he mentioned at least four times during the week. His most immediately prominent physical attribute though was his grating, unintelligible northern accent: a nasal babble somewhere between a sped-up Liam Gallagher and that Lancashire girl off The Apprentice a few years back.   

​Last week I had a much more exciting day than the usual shift at my writing desk, after being permitted to shadow a Metropolitan Police response unit for an afternoon and evening in central London, as part of the police ride-along scheme.
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After meeting my sergeant contact at Paddington Green Station I went through a series of checks and disclaimers – understandably a fair bit of bureaucracy involved due to the potential dangers – then was fitted with a bulletproof vest and invited into the daily group briefing before officers’ shifts begin.

Ride-alongs have generally been more widespread a scheme in the United States, however UK police forces have recently become keener to implement the practice here, perhaps due to lapses of public trust in law enforcement.
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It presents an unobstructed view of a police shift – dealing with offenders and victims, statement taking, arrests, even the form-filling back at the station if you’re that interested. As a fan of police procedural TV shows – BBC’s The Met by chance the most recent – the opportunity of being a solo spectator in a live and unedited episode was never going to be refused.

After sifting through and compiling the better photos I'd taken in the last 10 years it became clear that my favourite of the lot of them had all been taken in the last 12 months, which was gratifying to realise because it means I'm - as I imagine are most photographers or any artist - still improving with each year that passes, which bodes well for sitting down one afternoon a decade from now for the same purpose.

So I thought I'd post this final few in a discrete post, with a bit more space to play with for image size and explanatory notes.

​The news is out: Lionel Richie smashed it at Glastonbury, aced it, won it, and various other victorious verbs. I have to say that the whole spectacle though - both the performance and the reaction - has left me scratching my head a bit.

It seems that all the Sunday afternoon heritage act has to do to 'win' Glastonbury is deliver their 70s/80s standards with enthusiasm, and as long as the sun comes out and people know the words then that's that - they win.

To my eyes and ears though, no crowd numbers or singalongs can detract from the fact that Richie's music is and has always been middle-of-the-road wedding reception cheese, the kind I'd dance along to with the aunts for a few minutes before quietly slipping away.

Maybe it's my predilection for thrash metal or 50s rock 'n' roll but Richie's placid soul-pop croonings just drift straight over me, and the novelty factor quickly dissipated. I was there for the whole of Stevie Wonder in 2010 though, who had a bit more spunk and funk in his armoury to deploy - however because Twitter hadn't taken off by then there wasn't the same Richie-factor reaction.

As I watched Lionel repeatedly hollering "Thank you Glaston-Berry!" amid All Night Long and his solo We Are the World - the crowd straining to remember the verses - it all reminded me of an anodyne Heart/MagicFM family roadshow, and that familiar Sunday comedown feeling, trying to rouse yourself for whichever codger is wheelchaired onto the stage that year.

There's always hyperbole afterwards - from Eavis iterating each year "the best one yet" to similar media gushing over Jay-Z 'conquering' Glasto in 2008, completely at odds with the sight of thousands drifting away in apathy after the first track.

I can't help but think that if Kanye West, whose headline designation drew the wraith of thousands of petitioning rockists, had not flopped so badly the night before would Lionel have been elevated to music Messiah status the following day?

"Richie Proves He's The Biggest Rock Star" ran one headline. A sad day for music if revolutionary call-to-arms anthems now include Hello and Three Times a Lady.

So, to all the Richie-lovers out there, tell me how to win your heart, cos I haven't got a clue...



See also: When Joni Mitchell wore blackface for Halloween (BBC)

​As I've not blogged for a while I thought I'd curate some of my favourite pictures taken over the past 10 years since first becoming interested in amateur photography, something compelled initially by working in journalism as to take your own decent-standard pics and not rely on stock images is always an asset. 

Even without the professional compulsion though I'd still have been drawn to the artform having been worn down over the years by the deluge of badly-composed snaps forming the bulk of Facebook/Instagram landfill, often seeing galleries of 100 samey shots of a single weekend away or, in extreme cases, a night out. It progressively pushed me down the quality not quantity route, always whittling pics down to the best ones, hoping others will too.

Which leads back to the opening quote: from the thousands of photos taken on the only two digital cameras I've owned since 2004 - a £70 Kodak compact & a Canon EOS - only a handful are truly good, frameable images. I've never been on a course nor read any books, just took tips on the basics from a couple of friends who had done and a few jobbing snappers met in the line of the duty: rule of thirds, depth of field, patterns & lines, etc. And in constantly beholding pros' work, whether in articles or exhibitions, it all eventually becomes clear.

It was fun to look in hindsight at my earliest snaps, taken with no aforethought of exposure or aperture values, often using those £5 disposables from Boots - most were immediately binned but a fair few still passed muster sheerly through unwittingly decent composition and often luck with light sources. Spontaneity always good too; no rules-ruminating.

I think the essence of Cartier-Bresson's quote isn't its literal meaning but that, as in most pursuits, you will always improve. I've hardly ever used Photoshop, not on the below images anyway, which were edited only with the software that came with the cameras, to tweak levels and sometimes sharpness. Only the kit lens used with the Canon, no filters and all hand-held - don't think I'll ever make it to the tripod stage.     



KODAK COMPACT, 2004-2011

​Since the turn of the year I’ve noticed the increasing presence of a company called Grammarly in my social media feeds, from friends thumbs-upping the service on FB to retweets of its stock language memes on Twitter. 

For anyone unaware of it, Grammarly’s basically a proofreading and grammar-checking website that, while appearing to be just a fancier version of Microsoft Word’s built-in document reviewer, actually bills itself “the world’s most accurate grammar checker”, helping “more than 3 million writers...perfect their written English” (monthly fee $29.95).

That’s an impressive claim. It may well be the world's best grammar checker, but that's not necessarily saying much because it turns out the platform isn't that accurate – reviews have shown that Grammarly regularly misses clear mistakes in checked documents, while flagging errors that don't exist.
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That was never going to bother me as I'd never use it anyway, and wasn't going to pay to give it a go out of curiosity, so I was happy to see it recently publish and publicise an infographic of its application of grammatical rules, entitled ‘Fifty Shades of Grammar’ to tie in with the release of the eponymous movie. 

I recently interviewed Premier League pundit and retired striker Jason Roberts at his Foundation headquarters in hometown Stonebridge, for an article in The Independent on the fall and rise of the west London high school we both attended. With the initial education-related questions answered we were free to discuss all things football for the remainder of our one-hour meet, during which he opened up about his career highs and lows encompassing his eventful tenures at Wigan and Reading, scoring a winner at Highbury and almost signing for QPR. Faithfully transcribed below:


What would you say was the best goal you ever scored, or that you’re most proud of?

(Pause) A header for Reading against Southampton. (Clocks quizzical reaction) Exactly - a header, you think ‘really?’. If I scored more than five headers in my career that was a lot – it wasn’t the kind of goal I scored traditionally, and this one was purely on instinct. There was just something about the ball hitting you in the head or face that I never felt comfortable with.

There’s not that many of your goals on YouTube that aren’t jerky footage from the stands. Have you never thought of uploading some yourself or getting someone to?

I never have but now that you mention it! There are a couple on my official website. But I’m proud of my goalscoring record, to have scored at every level. And when you’re the lone striker in a 4-5-1 for a Premier League side who’s relatively, you know - survival is the priority? If you score double figures you’ve done incredibly well. Many times I sacrificed my goalscoring record for the team.

​I remember once at a Metallica gig at O2 Arena in 2008: frontman James Hetfield pausing to tell everyone in the immediate crowd to “put your fuckin’ cameras and phones away, and just enjoy the show ok?”. (Kate Bush was yesterday the latest artist to make the same request, in much politer words).

James was of course addressing the usuals focused on the tiny screens of their devices, impeding the live experience for the sake of some jerky low-res footage. (To be fair, I’ve done the same but years ago and only a couple of times, for never-played-before tracks).

If I were a member of the Google Glass advertising team I might suggest something like this live bollocking as a decent ad opener, then while the offenders sheepishly lower their phones (as they did in real life) we pan sideways to a smiling metalhead casually recording it all unnoticed through the small prism fixed over his eyeball, his hands free to throw a devil’s horn or lift aloft his plastic beer receptacle as the next number roars into life.