This is my notebook. Stuff I’m doing, stuff I’m thinking about, stuff I’ve seen online and feel is worth sharing.
Found a link to my site on a local photography group’s website (I gave a talk there a decade or so ago) which, if I was in the market for testimonials, I would definitely use.
“Pete Ashton. Difficult to explain, easier to just visit.”
A great photographer is one where even when you know how great they are and are familiar with their main body of work, one of their photos can still take your fucking breath away. This one just floored me.
Draining a bath with a power drill pump.
After a dry spring in the UK (and a broken water industry) we’re looking forward to water shortages this summer. I was wondering how we might transport our grey water, specifically from the bath, to the top of the garden, up a slight incline. This £8 pump seemed viable, and it works! Sadly the battery on the drill ran out after 15 minutes so we will either need a corded drill or ideally something a bit more efficient.
Patch, the hedgehog we’ve named Patch because he has a white patch on his rear, at least under the UV light, has decided our hedgehog feeding station is THE PLACE TO BE and spent a good three hours repeatedly checking for food.
Trailer for Nina Conti’s Sunlight.
A feature film from the master puppeteer sees Monkey on a road trip. This looks amazing.
Andor wuz gud. It satisfied my desire for a chewy analysis of counter-authoritarian revolutions and rebellions while thrilling my inner 5 year old and making me want a Kleya action figure (Elizabeth Dulau was amazing). Pete happy.
Great interview with Robert Crumb and Dan Nadel marking the publication of Nadal’s biography Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life. At 81 Crumb is as sharp as ever.
Currently getting a lot of pleasure from the 2020 Boris / Merzbow album 2R0I2P0. Perfect sunny afternoon listening.
from Black Lodge Press.
I definitely live on an “island of strangers”. The vast majority of people living in the UK are fucking incomprehensible to me and I feel like I’ve spent the last 50 years filtering out the few that make any sense. (Oddly (not oddly) most of them are on some spectrum or other.)
Due to my chronic fatigue my minimum viable hot lunch is a fried egg on toast. This has become totemic of my condition so I’ve been photographing them and publishing them as grids, Becher typologies style. Here’s 36 eggs. Coming next, 48.
A couple of people had mentioned “birding”, meaning photographing fowl, was a calming thing to do, so I thought I’d give it a go in the garden today. The closest bird was this one and when I cropped in I see it’s just showing me it’s arse.
Onwards, ever onwards.
Part of Soviet-era spacecraft to crash to Earth. Notable for me because I was launched in 1972, the year of my birth, and there’s a slim chance it could land near my home in Birmingham, 52 degrees north.
More info from the ESA with graphs and updates, and here’s a live-tracker.
Am annoyingly furious that the University Challenge final has been delayed for a week due to some sport nonsense.
Due to my chronic fatigue my minimum viable hot lunch is a fried egg on toast. This has become totemic of my condition so I’ve been photographing them and publishing them as grids, Becher typologies style. Here’s 25 eggs. Coming next, 36.
Shockheaded Peter by David Thomas and Two Pale Boys
Recordings from the 2002 London run of the junk opera with Thomas &co reinterpreting the Tiger Lillies original score. I was there and it was life changing.
RIP David Thomas. Fond memories of seeing him at Shockheaded Peter and then deep diving into the Pere Ubu / Two Pale Boys back catalogues. Morbid Sky is a personal fave.
As someone who has been employed as a janitor I’m always struck by how the handwringing over the sanctity of gendered toilets never seems to consider the men who clean women’s loos and women who clean men’s loos. I suspect because cleaners are not considered real people.
I built a hedgehog cafe in our garden for the hedgehogs and not for the cats or foxes.
Hedgehog trailcam for the start of April
Unfurl is “a new publication by #autistic writers on their special interests and hyperfixations.” I know nothing more but was gently amused that their word-count limit will be 3,000 words. For autistics writing about their hyperfixations. Under 3,000 words. Good luck!
I’m still processing the news of my old comrade Nick Booth’s untimely death this week. He knew a disconcerting number of people and if his name came up I’d joke we’d fought together on the Birmingham front of the social media wars. Our side lost, of course, and our lives took us in different directions, but when our paths inevitably crossed it was always a joy. He had the best smile and gave the best hugs.
I have two photos of Nick from that heady time. The first is of him listening to someone else talk, taken in a pub in early 2009.
The second from 2008 when Jon Bounds and I discovered he was ignorant of Goatse, the shock site you should never google, and decided that if he was going to be taken seriously in this game he had to be blooded. He was game so Jon showed him and I caught the reaction.
I have surprisingly few other photos of him, probably because whenever we were together we were talking, talking, endlessly talking.
He was a good friend.
16 Fried Eggs of varying levels of perfection. Next grid at 25.
(A fried egg on toast is my minimum viable hot meal with chronic fatigue, so I’m photographing them.)
Hedgehog Trailcam is back, because hedgehogs are back in our garden! One so far. Gonna do compilations each month.
Carole Cadwalladr went back into the TED lair and delivered a barnstormer. Real canary in the coal mine stuff, except the canary survived. Well worth 20 minutes of your time.