The Eye

Why the sudden rash of photographs from England? Well, quite simply I was going through all my photographs, and I found a few that I might be of interest to you, dear readers, who come from all over the world, in any case.

Also, I guess I wanted to show that the good ‘ole US of A doesn’t have the biggest of quite everything!

There’s been a pier at Southend since 1830, when the local Aldermen decided that one was needed as many boats bring Londoners down river couldn’t call there due to the mudflats, particularly at low tide.

The original wooden pier was replaced by an iron structure in the 1870’s.

The pier has an interesting history, having suffered a number of major fires; a threat of closure in the 1980’s, and requisition by the Royal Navy during World War 2. There is now an RNLI lifeboat station at the pier head, which was built in 2000.

Southend Council are currently promoting the pier as part of its tourism drive, and for the time-being at least its future looks safe.

Oh, the length of the pier? It’s 1.341 miles long. For the metric heads, that’s 2,158 meters. It’s about a 25 minute walk.

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It’s quite an imposing building, and it’s tied to one of my all-time favorite breweries, Fuller, Smith and Turner of nearby Chiswick, but alas, it’s a dire place to drink, particularly at night.

About the only good thing you can say is that it seems to keep the rabble out of the much nicer, and smaller, and less imposing North Star on the other side of the street (behind and to the right of where I took this photograph.

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Almost thirty years ago, when I was knee high to a grasshopper, I made the decision to mostly use transparency film instead of negatives.

They would take up less space, and there would be no negatives to lose or get damaged, and there would be less of a storage problem with boxes of slides than there would be with shelves full of albums.

Also I was left my Grandparents collection of color slides taken in Singapore in the mid 1960’s.

I’m keen to get all these digitized sooner rather than later, as time doesn’t do them any favors.

I’m looking to get a slide scanner to do the job. I am thinking of buying one, perhaps even a good quality used one; doing the job, and then reselling it. I think that might be the most cost effective way to go. I’m not likely to suddenly acquire more slides or negatives so I see no further use for such equipment one the task is complete.

So, does anyone have any recommendations that they care to offer my way; better yet, anyone got a good quailty slide scanner for sale, or even to borrow?

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A Lucian Freud painting of a sleeping naked woman has sold in New York for $33.6m, and sets a new record.

I knew I was doing something wrong. Now, all I have to do is work out how to set up lights when She Who Must Be Obeyed has gone to sleep, so I can paint her. If I remember to turn off the air conditioning first, she might even be in the required attire.

However, dear reader, there is no fear I would post my resulting work here. No Siree, I’ll be heading north up I-95 as fast as I can to see how many millions I can raise in The Big Apple.

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This is a shot of St James’s Church Tower at Cooling, in Kent, England. The Church has long been declared redundant, meaning that regular services of worship are no longer held there, but it’s open to the public daily, and it’s a very nice little church to visit.

In the graveyard next to the church are a number of children’s graves, which prompted Charles Dickens to write about them in his well known novel, Great Expectations

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