Or so sang a morose Mancunian a few years back. And after apparently weeks of fine sunny weather, the bank holiday comes round and the rain clouds come and from the heavens the rain does pour. Well, for today at least. And maybe for tomorrow too, although not as much, so the rumour goes.
The last two days of the week passed with me getting more of a handle on the job. I made one mistake, but will put that right come next week. everyone seems fine with the work I have done, and with what I have put in so far. Putting the information in a way that I can access it and understand it. It requires some fine tuning for now, but I get a little better each day.
Thursday night was the quarterly picture competition at the camera club, and the judge was harsh to say the least. Which is better, really, better than everyone getting nearly top marks. He marked down my shots for having too much going on in them, I know that photography is subjective and as long as I like what I snap that's what counts. So, on the whole I'm not bitter about it; I did laugh out loud towards the end after he waxed lyrical about a shot only to mark it down when push came to shove. Oh well. Some members were taking it all too seriously to be honest, but there you go.
Yesterday, even though the weather forecast was not promising, we thought we would go out anyway and take what we could get, because Sunday and Monday were/are to be wet and windy.
Sissinghurst Castle is over an hour away, near the border with East Sussex, and is a medieval manor house with fine walled gardens. Being spring, the flowers should have been a riot, which they were.
It was a fine drive, once off the motorway and driving through the rolling fields and woods. The sun came out and cast a golden light on the scene. We arrived at the castle at the time the website said it was due to open, only for it to have been open for an hour already; so my plans to have people free shots seemed ill starred.
It was mid morning, and we decided to have lunch first; Jools had something called doused herring with a wholewheat roll and a bottle of organic cider, whilst I had coronation chicken salad, a wholewheat roll and a pint of real ale. We sat outside and ate, feeding the finches with scraps of bread; even the light drizzle did not stop us enjoying ourselves.
We walked to the entrance and through the archway in the house, and before us was an ornamental tower set behind a bowling green of a lawn. There were few people so I started snapping away. We walked to the tower and sup the wooden spiral staircase, and were rewarded with views down to the lawn below, and on the other side grand views over the orchards, moat and walled gardens.
Even though the car park had been full, the gardens were big enough so not to seem crowded, and we both made play with our cameras and snapped tulips and a multitude of other spring flowers all a riot of colour.
I won't go on describing the colours, variety, etc, but just to let you know it was very fine indeed, even if I did spend the whole time with my eye looking through a viewfinder.
Back in the car we got the atlas out and wondered where to go next. My eye came to rest of Bexhill-on-Sea; home to an art deco masterpiece called the De Warr Pavilion. I thought that my wide angle lens would just eat the curves up on the spiral staircase that wound up the glazed tower. I would be proved right in that!
On the way down to the coast we stopped and picked up three hitch-hikers, on their way to a folk festival in Hastings; we decided to drop them off on the seafront on the way. They were fine people, living what could be described as an alternative lifestyle, at least at the weekends; sleeping on beaches, meeting musicians and mummers and Morris Dancer all over the south-east each weekend.
So, after dropping the off on Hastings seafront, we drive a few miles west to Bexhill and find the last parking space along the prom, walk along the path through the bright spring flower beds and along to the pavilion.
Words really don't do justice to the classic lines and shapes of an art deco building, all graceful lines, with fine views over the stony beach to the sea beyond. There were few people around, so I grab shot after shot, moving up the the first and then the second floor, the shots getting better and better.
We go into an Italian cafe to have a coffee and a slice of cheesecake before heading off back home, with the radio on burbling out news of the penultimate Saturday of the football season. My team are already promoted and champions, and so I can listen with detached amusement at the trials of others.
And then we were home, with stinky French cheese and crusty bread for dinner, and then we settle down to watch the second Harry Potter film, as we try to catch up on the story arc of the series.
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