Inspiration...

... I don't have any.

I look at my Flickr photostream and apart from some photos recording the introduction of my new kitten into the household, and a couple of photos from a gig I went to back in August, I don't seem to have taken photos for pleasure for quite some time.

Maybe it's becoming single again recently, perhaps it's the British weather. I was down in Manchester recently, camera with me, waiting for something to want to be photographed, but I couldn't find anything. Nothing inspired me; the weather was bleak, the people boring and well, I was boring too.

Maybe I should take part in the weekly assignments over at the Digital Photography School forums. I've never really picked up my camera and forced myself to take a photo though - it's always just come to me. I carry my camera everywhere, waiting for those incidental moments that I love to capture.

I'm just despairing that I haven't seen any of those moments for quite some time...

Presences

This I would say: love life

for what is always beyond you,

the perfume of a girl who has gone

just as you entered the room,

the ripple on the bright pool

of the fish already steadily swimming

elsewhere, the cat’s foot-fall

on the purring carpet, the smile

on the face that is turned ever so slightly

away from you, no insult intended,

so that you are never quite sure

whether what you saw

ever really happened

(girl, fish, cat, smile)

until the very last

when you know

and the pencil falls

blunted

Bruce Dawe

First Corinthians at the Crossroads

When I was a blonde I 

walked as a blonde I 

talked as a blonde; 

but now that I have become 

a brunette I have put away my 

blonding lotion, farewell Kim Novak 

and the statuesque Nordic 

me: a touching scene truly… 

We lingered like old lovers 

who cannot quite believe 

the evidence of their eyes. 

‘It is all over, honey-bun, alas,’ said disconsolate 

eyebrows being terribly 

brave.

‘Toujours, tourjours,’ sang lips that had 

tasted their last Tango, while 

onward onward into an everlasting 

brunette dusk we moved to confront, 

with the new dawn’s rising 

over a wasteland of depilatory and 

Beauty-Mask, O 

brave new world…

Bruce Dawe

Relief at last...

Well, the waiting is finally over. Yesterday I got a call from the Home Office. They'd received my fax where I was asking for a speedy processing of my visa application so I could get my passport back in time for a trip aboard. The guy says to me "I've got your fax here, but we processed and sent your passports yesterday." I didn't know whether to be excited by the passports being sent back, or to ask him "have you seen the date on the fax you idiot?" but I composed myself and thanked him.

Strangely, it was almost an afterthought (or perhaps subconsciously I was frightened) to ask whether the visa had actually been granted or not. And so, after coming to and from the UK for nearly nine years, I got the answer I'd been waiting for: I now have Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in the UK.

Next step: British citizenship, think it's either two or three years from now.

What a relief.

New country to visit, but...

I should be excited - I have a new country to visit in September. It's a secret as the person I'm taking doesn't know the itinerary yet, so I won't reveal it here. It's somewhere I've always wanted to go, and the trip should be great; planes, trains, all sorts. The trip is for two weeks, it's going to be the first real break I've had since completing the Rickshaw Run in January.

However, I'm currently without my passport. I sent it off to the UK Border Agency nearly four weeks ago. Ack! I need it back, I've already had to cancel a weekend trip to Norway a couple of weeks ago. It's with them to get my settlement visa (now that's been a long time coming), I never expected to have to send the passport away, I had thought I could walk into their Glasgow office and walk back out again, but alas no.

They say that 70% of the applications are back within 20 working days - today is 17 working days. I'm supposed to fly out after 34 working days - halfway there. Will it be back? Who knows?!

The other thing I'm trying not to think about, is that when my passport comes back I might not even be granted the visa. That's a prospect too scary to even begin to imagine...