A mish-mash of photos I took in early 2002.

First, some shots from a day I spent walking across London in March. I'd recently read Alan Moore's excellent From Hell, one chapter of which sees Jack The Ripper on an odyssey across the city, visiting various sites of theological importance to him - mainly churches, cemeteries, and monuments. Several sites involved the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, who I've been vaguely interested in since reading Peter Ackroyd's disturbing historical fiction, Hawksmoor.

I was in London on a bit of a loose end, so I decided to visit some of these places and check that they really existed. I started at Victoria Station, and crossed the city on foot, visiting various sites, and getting as far as Whitechapel before sore feet and a slightly dodgy samosa forced me onto the tube and back to St Paul's Cathedral, my final stop. As someone who'd previously got around London using only the tube, it was a real eye-opener: these places actually are connected on the surface, and the distances aren't as great as you'd think. :-)

I took less photos than I'd thought. There are none of the several small churches I visited (St George's, Bloomsbury - Hawksmoor's last church; one near Bunhill whose name escapes me; and most especially Christ Church, Spitalfields), probably because I didn't have a wide-angle lens, and they're all being renovated (the one near Bunhill was, in fact, completely invisible under scaffolding and plastic), and no interiors since I didn't have a flash. But I'm fairly pleased with some of these, nonetheless...

After that, I've got a few photos from a day spent in Bath, a couple of my friends Dave, Jay, and Alice, some from my Dad's retirement, and a few from a party at Hay-on-wye. But I haven't uploaded them all yet.

Cleopatra's Needle, on the north bank of the Thames in London.

I have more information on the needle's history somewhere - I'll dig it out and put it here. What I can remember: it's genuinely ancient Egyptian, I think from Heliopolis, it was lost in the sands near Alexandria for a couple of thousand years, it was brought to England in the early 1800s, six people died getting it here, and it has a twin in Central Park, New York.

This was taken at about 10:45 AM in, I believe, the Victoria Embankment Gardens, just northeast of Cleopatra's Needle.

I just couldn't resist, and he didn't wake up, so no harm done. Well, OK, obviously my camera consumed a small portion of his soul in order to produce this image, but apart from that small work of evil, no harm done. :-)

Bunhill Cemetery in London is unusual in that it is on unconsecrated ground. For this reason it was popular with the religious dissidents of its day, in particular Quakers, atheists, and agnostics. I'd recommend it as a nice quiet spot to visit, if you're in the vicinity.

This is what mainly drew me to Bunhill: William Blake's gravestone. Most of the graves are in fenced off areas which you can't (legitimately) get to, and for a while I feared I might not find this, but gladly it (and Defoe's & Bunyan's) are thoughtfully outside the exclusion zones.

The flowers are bluebells, in a jam jar - sweet, huh? I wonder who left them there... I fiddled around with colouring them in using The Gimp but the results weren't great so I left it.

Here are some of Blake's paintings.

Memorial to Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe and A Journal of the Plague Year, at Bunhill Cemetery, London. Actually I'm not sure if this an actual grave or just a memorial. If I find out, I'll let you know. ;-)

See my photo of William Blake's grave for more info about Bunhill.

John Bunyan's grave, Bunhill Cemetery, London. Bunyan is best known as the author of The Pilgrim's Progress, which is alluded to by the chappie on the side of the memorial.

See my photo of William Blake's grave for more info about Bunhill.

My final destination on my trek was the rather magnificent St Paul's Cathedral. I had a good nose around in the crypt, and then checked out the Whispering Gallery (it actually works!), and then conquered some old childhood daemons by climbing to the Golden Gallery, the highest point normally open to the public. The Gallery's a great place to visit - fantastic views of the city, if a little cramped and windy!

This is the view west up the Thames. The London Eye (big wheel) is easy to pick out, and I think that's the Palace of Westminster) behind it to the left (but on the opposite bank - bendy river!). There's probably plenty more to pick out, to be honest, but I don't know the city well enough to be able to. Ah well. :-)

I really like this. The view, I think north, from the Golden Gallery. Possible poster material?

Looking south across the Thames from the Golden Gallery. From left to right, we've got the Globe theatre, the Millenium Bridge, and the Tate Modern gallery. None of which I've been to. :-)

Looking East from the Golden Gallery, towards City skycrapers, Whitechapel, and Spitalfields. Christ Church, Spitalfields, my number one destination for my day in London, is visible on the left, and Canary Wharf, somewhat more distant, is just visible on the right.

This chappie was on a stall in a market in Bath - not for sale, I believe. I've no idea who he is, but he looks somewhat Imperial to me. Must be the moustache.

Some random people on benches outside Bath Abbey. This is a fairly tight crop from the original photo, which included some stained-glass windows above them. The thing with stained-glass, however, is that it doesn't look so good from the outside, and it doesn't look so good in black and white. :-)

From left to right: Alice, Dave, and Jay in their front garden in Callington. Here's Alice on her own.

Alice Dickinson, Dave and Jay's lovely firstborn. This was taken at the start of April, this year. Bet she's grown a bit since then. :-) Here's the whole family.

My parents, upon the occasion of their retirement and the closure of the family business after some seventy years and three generations. 'Twas a happy-sad weekend, but mainly happy because now they get to sit back and enjoy. :-)

I dig this: a gravestone in the a cemetery in Callington where my grandfather is buried. This was taken in April, while I was in Cornwall for my parents' retirement.

Now this is slightly weird... This is a self-timer/tripod shot of me and Julie in a cemetery in Cornwall, which I guess I didn't set up very well, since my head's got the chop.

I have no idea why we're surrounded by an aura of light. My first thought was that the sun was behind us. But nope: look at the shadows. Spooky...

Taken at Dave's birthday party in Hay-on-wye in April, this is (fairly obviously) a long-exposure taken using a tripod. I took several, but this is really the only one that came out interesting: Alison, Ash's girlfriend, looking somewhat spectral and more than a little spooky.

Lord help our National Parks, that's all I'll say...

The original Curmudgeon himself, Birthday Boy, Mr David Wyatt - sitting outside a cafe on a gorgeous sunny day in April. To be fair to Dave, he is nursing a hangover the size of Bognor. To be fair to the rest of us, he always looks like this. :-)

You never knew I had such brooding malevolence lurking within, did you? Well, that's what happens when someone steals my cake. Grrrr!

(Photographer: Malc).