The Road to Ullapool

Loch Glascarnoch and the Inverness - Ullapool Road

In Remembrance

Stornoway War Memorial

Automatic for the People

A while ago, my mum sent me up her old Pentax Espio and it's been sitting in a cupboard ever since. It's an automatic camera with auto exposure and focus, a massive zoom and a panoramic function. Today I loaded the last roll of my XP2 stock and went for a lunch time stroll around the castle grounds and snapped the whole 24 frames with some satisfying results.

'Cross' Developing

I had problems loading the developing tank last night, with the film not not sitting on the spool properly, requiring me to make 3 visits up to the darkness of the airing cupboard to retrieve the film from the tank and rewind it back into the canister.

Anyway the saga continues....

I'm standing in the kitchen, accompanied by a little bit of Ozric Tentacles, running a roll of XP2 through a tank full of Aculux, when I suddenly hear the sound of water running down the wall, under the stairs. Unable to stop rotating the film spool, I call Mrs W to take over, then rushed over to turn off the mains supply and investigate. Looking up into the big gap between the kitchen wall and the top of the stairs (where all the pipes disappear) I couldn't see anything, just a big puddle on the floor, a wet wall, but no other signs of water. So I slowly turned the water back on, listening....Nothing........ and went back to the film and carried on with the planned operation.

About 5 minutes later it dawned on me what had happened....

The chimney was swept today, and the first fire of the season was burning merrily away in the other room - the first fire since the new combi boiler had been fitted back in the summer. The fire was heating up the remaining water in the (now redundant and disconnected) back-boiler. Heated to boiling point the water forced it's way out through the end of the open pipe work in the roof coombes, spilling out onto the ceiling and escaping though the hole by the stairs. Water problem solved and film developed - but unfortunately with a lot of marks and scrathes (most probably a result of the loading issue).

A picture of Lews Castle from the developed film.

Jump

My daughter, Beth, having fun on Gallows Hill. A 'happy' shot seeing as it's the weekend and I don't have any on-call duty.

My White Bicycle

Riding all around the street
Four o'clock and they're all asleep
I'm not tired and it's so late
Moving fast everything looks great.
My white bicycle, my white bicycle
See that man, he's all alone
Looks so happy but he's far from home
Ring my bell, smile at him
Better kick over his garbage bin
My white bicycle, my white bicycle
The rain comes down but I don't care
The wind is blowing in my hair
Seagulls flying in the air
My white bicycle

........

My white bicycle and me
My white bicycle, my white bicycle

(Nazareth)

Sunrise Inverness

A little bit of colour. Taken a few weeks back during an early morning walk around Inverness.

1. Footbridge over River Ness

2. Eden Court Art Centre