Some green and pleasant photos to capture the UK’s cold and clammy summer. These were taken at noon, August 8th 2012. Low light, temp 18 degrees, humidity 85%. Who loves Temperate? It’s hard to imagine that the UK’s highest temperate of 39 degrees was recorded on this day back in 2003.
High noon, looking into the sun.
The Christmas tree is suffering
Wet, wet, wet
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Radishes – An ordinary subject, but they did look good in the sun.
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RHS Tatton Flower Show 2012, Young Designer of the Year Tristen Knight’s winning garden, Brownfield Beauty, inspired by brownfield land. Zen sharp edges, rusty iron, pebbles and brick.
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Here’s a minimalist colour scene. It’s fun stopping down, although it doesn’t seem to be termed ‘stopping down’ any more. A lot of photography jargon seems to have gone, and this picture was achieved by speeding up which seems perverse for still photography.
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The Long Jumper. Another photo from RHS Flower Show Tatton 2012, this time it’s the National Flower Bed Competition. The Long Jumper is Darlington Borough Council’s entry.
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Another photo from a show garden in the RHS Flower Show Tatton Park 2012. This was in Metamorphosis, HMP Styal in Partnership with The Manchester College 
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Just back from RHS Flower Show Tatton Park 2012 (just like Chelsea Flower Show but smaller and it’s easier to access the show gardens). A highlight was World Without Torture, a show garden designed by son and mother team, Howard and Dori Miller for Q-CAT Quaker Concern for the Abolition of Torture.
Howard and Dori say “We want visitors to enjoy the garden and enter into a deeper awareness of the need to end torture”. It certainly worked for me. The Wirral and Chester Quaker’s newsletter from February 2012 stated “The design for ‘World without Torture’ seeks to raise understanding and awareness of Q-CAT’s concern in the following ways:
This photo from the outside looking in shows the high security fencing with dove lacing. From the newsletter: “High security fencing, prison gates and a cell, to give visitors some of the feelings associated with imprisonment and torture. The same concrete posts are then used as hard landscaping, so that they are trodden underfoot. This implies Q-CAT’s desire that torture can be overcome. The sculpture is of a dove in the process of being released. The theme is developed by further doves, depicted on the chain link fence in wire embroidery, the whole to symbolise Q-CAT’s role in helping to bring about freedom from torture.”
Photo taken from within the show garden showing the sculpture and the planting, or “ecological succession”. From the newsletter: “Ecological succession – this is the natural plant colonisation of land devastated by bombing. Bombing and torture have the same end in mind – to deliberately damage and destroy. The ecological succession gives a hopeful message, that in time, land will heal itself. The use of white varieties of plants to emphasise the peace and purity of a world without torture.”
The sculpture is of a figure releasing a dove. Judy Greaves is the sculptor. From the RHS media centre: “Quakers
The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) originated in England during the Commonwealth years (1649 – 1660). They were persecuted and often imprisoned by both Cromwell and Charles II but responded by organising the first parliamentary lobbies calling for toleration, respect for trial by jury and better prison conditions.”
When I first saw the garden, I thought it was an electricity sub-station, but the brutal wire and concrete ‘prison’ became more obvious, and I wanted to take the journey back out. Somehow, I already felt imprisoned. It’s hard to capture the effect here. There were many people around queuing to enter, and I had to hurry my snaps. It was impossible to capture the recordings played within the ‘cell’ and to show the effect they had. From the World Without Torture leaflet:
“Here is a Land Destroyed …
But land can heal.
The tortured mind can heal.”
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Popped into the village of Tolpuddle on the way home from Dorset where Caroline took this photo outside the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ museum.
It’s a statue of George Loveless, one of the Tolpuddle Martyrs by Thompson Dagnall.
From the website “His (Dagnall’s] design marks the time when George Loveless is in Dorchester Prison but is so ill his warders fear for his life if he is transported. So he is held behind for a few weeks to recover whilst his five fellow Martyrs are put aboard the hulks before being shipped to Australia.”
“As the sun rose on 24th February 1834, Dorset farm labourer George Loveless set off to work, saying goodbye to his wife Betsy and their three children. They were not to meet alone again for three years, for as he left his cottage in the rural village of Tolpuddle, the 37-year-old was served with a warrant for his arrest.”
“Loveless and five fellow workers – his brother James, James Hammett, James Brine, Thomas Standfield and Thomas’s son John – were charged with having taken an illegal oath. But their real crime in the eyes of the establishment was to have formed a trade union to protest about their meagre pay of six shillings a week – the equivalent of 30p in today’s money and the third wage cut in as many years.” – Tolpuddle Martyrs’ website.
Just a little bit about the continuing history of cuts, austerity and the trade union movement.
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This is a photo of Peak Street in Manchester taken with my old mobile phone before it packed up. I like the Hopperesque absence of people.
Going off the beaten path in any former industrial city in the UK can be like stepping into a dystopian world. This area, by Bridgewater Canal in Ancoats isn’t far from Piccadilly Gardens, and was once heavily populated.
New flats have been built to attract people back to the city centre.
Here’s the result of some of those efforts. Ducie Street Apartments.
And here’s a snap of a shop front in Dale Street that always makes me smile because of the … well
You get the picture. 
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