slow shutter light pictures

[devi]

IMGP6252
Originally uploaded by bluedevi

I grew up with fireworks and a bonfire on Halloween, not Guy Fawkes' Night. And we were often the only family in the neighbourhood to have fireworks, because my dad worked in Immigration at Dublin Airport. In the run up to Halloween he and his colleagues confiscated armloads of fireworks which people were attempting to bring in through customs without declaring them (ah, strange innocent time when you could take fireworks on a plane...). Then they'd divvy them up and bring them home for their kids. Sometimes we'd have a dry night, a roaring bonfire and an awesome fireworks display. More often, it seems, it'd be pouring with rain. Ivan and I would dash outside anyway in the witch and ghost masks we recycled every year. I remember the clingy feeling and slightly musty smell of a damp sheet from the years when I was the ghost. I remember Dad swearing at the damp wicks. But when it worked it was wonderful.

So this year on Halloween the original plan was to watch Nightmare On Elm Street at Dan's, though I had a niggling feeling that I didn't want to be indoors. Then I had a brainstorm walking past the row of fireworks special offer signboards outside Boswell's. Shortly after that I texted him to come to mine instead, and to wear shoes, not trainers. When he came round, after dark, we set out across the ring road and into Shotover woods - which were very, very dark, lit only by a murky puddle of light from our torch. As we tried to find our way along the paths by memory, hoping we wouldn't take a wrong turn, we went from trying not to think about The Blair Witch Project to holding the torch under our chins and quavering "I'm sorry, I'm sorry to everyone" within the space of about two minutes. When we got to the field I'd had in mind, spooky tendrils of mist were rising off it. It was laughably perfect.

We set off five big rockets which, in a reversal of how these things usually work, were higher and brighter and more loudly banging than the ones of my childhood. Dashing back out of range, breathless and laughing, after lighting the fuses. At one point, thinking we heard a large beast moving in the woods behind us. (Great Cthulhu! He has arisen!) After the last rocket, a squiggly blue screamer, we took photos of each other attempting to make pictures with sparklers. I like the almost-pentagram.

(But this lot outdid us).

Then back through the woods and home to fresh-baked bread and cheese and beer.

***

Now that was doing winter properly. Since then I've lost the thread of it a bit. I am theoretically cheating at NaNoWriMo (working on two half-done books, not one new one), and have got to nearly 10k but am increasingly realising I don't write that way any more. Work is currently all about the petty little struggles with other tutors who think they can turf me out of my timetabled slots that I've been in for weeks (they're wrong), with students who won't do their homework, and with another new student who can't.

She's a middle-aged housewife who's doing a Foundation of Computer Systems course at Brookes. On the phone it sounded as if she wanted to catch up on some A-level stuff. I got to her house and it turned out that, firstly, she doesn't know what any of these things are: software, hardware, devices, input, output, the CPU, binary numbers, memory... Secondly, she has a project designing a circuit to display a range of different letters on a digital display, using Boolean algebra and Karnaugh maps, for Monday. "You explain me?" she asked eagerly, notebook and pencil at the ready for me to give her the answer. "I want to pass." I was crap at this stuff at university and I certainly can't do it now. I said as much to her when I saw her yesterday. I don't know if she understood.

Bleh. But! I am going to Planet Angel this weekend. This should probably be the last trip to London for a while, as I am spectacularly skint. But I have to go to Gosh! Comics first, to pick up a few quid from Epiphanies sales (yay!). I am left with a bit of a gulf between business hours and club o'clock. braisedbywolves was making vague noises about pub...

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

"...she has a project designing a circuit to display a range of different letters on a digital display, using Boolean algebra and Karnaugh maps, for Monday. 'You explain me?' she asked eagerly, notebook and pencil at the ready for me to give her the answer. 'I want to pass.' "

Sounds like it is time to crack open M. Morris Mano's 'Digital Design'! <sigh/> Halcyon days...

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

My cpio detector is going off!

If only I still had access to books like Mano. My techie library has dwindled to the llama book and Computer Networks by Tanenbaum...

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of a Karnaugh map, but I had to investigate them to find out what sort of terra paene incognita it would be possible for a brave explorer to navigate using one. I'm fairly much none the wiser except that I'm told they help you avoid "race hazards". So they're useful if you're an ethnic minority in a BNP-voting zone, or something?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Or for helping you avoid doing PE at school.

[specialknives.livejournal.com]

I would be very interested to hear what you think of Planet Angel - have you been before? I was asked to perform at it about two years ago but never got around to going and checking it out to see what I could do. I have heard some bad things about since, such as that they ask under 25s to queue in different places for entry, and that overall it is mostly populated with the very young.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Hmm, neither of those things reflect my experience. There's certainly only one queue, and last time I was standing in it I was between a bunch of little neon-legwarmered nu-rave kids and a bunch of thirtysomething techies. In fact it's probably got a much higher average age than, say, Bangface, which is full of said nu-rave kids.

I like it - though you do have to leave your sense of ironic detachment at the door.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Oh, and - what did they want you to do there?

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

If that's a Saturday and you do go to the pub, I wouldn't mind popping along to say hello to you! If you like. Otherwise, hello.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I am a fool. And typed this post in a great hurry. It's a Friday :/

Hello!

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, I can never do Friday pub (except in school holidays), so I am destined not to see you for, like, two years or something!

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I could be about for a pint or two, pre-club, possibly? I have not any solid tomorrow-plans yet, and I haven't seen you for a bit.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

That'd be great - it has indeed been ages. But hmm, where to pub? There's one just off Trafalgar Square where I met mzdt recently, which was pleasantly uncrammed on a Friday night and had Nice Beers. The Silver Cross, I think.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I'd be more inclined to hang on South(er) of the river, but I am being mostly lazy. Where's Planet Angel happening?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

It's in Vauxhall, which is pretty handy for that pub (I am being lazy too, and erring on the side of central because I don't know which direction Andrew's coming from). But I am flexible, and I suspect he is too.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I am a rubbish and will almost certainly not be out. I am testing feline cures for my rotten cold. (Right now Moon Unit is sitting on me to squish it from me.)

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Oh dearie me, no, you don't want to risk being on Shotover Common after dark. There are live roleplayers out there. And the ghosts of ones that died up there, many of them in the campaigns I wrote.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

But meeting the ghosts of fictional characters would have made my night!

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

You must have scared them away with your infernal boomsticks!

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Speaking of slow shutter light - check out this beauty: http://shop.lomography.com/shop/main.php?cat=&pro=dsg. I have to buy one of these for someone for Christmas, I reckon...