Martyrdom and carnival puppets

Today, 22nd June, is the feast day of St Alban, the first British Christian martyr who was executed sometime during the 3rd century AD. It is probably to be expected that in the city that bears his name his death is commemorated annually on or around this date. The nature of the commemoration may however be a little surprising.

In-ger-lund

Last year one of my favourite beers (Old Hooky from the wonderful Hook Norton Brewery) started to appear on the supermarket shelves with a St George's Cross on the bottle cap in place of the usual brewery logo. Apparently this had something to do with a football tournament that was happening during the summer of 2010 and was presumably a marketing effort to encourage the drinking of beer whilst cheering on the national team to glory. Oh well, I guess a 50% success rate isn't too bad.

Swans-a-swimming

Sometimes it takes a while for photographs to mature.
Sometimes it takes a while for photographers to mature.
Sometimes it takes a while for technology to mature.

And sometimes, when all three have matured together it's worth revisiting old work.

Happy memories of Killer Whales

I happened to be flicking through the TV channels the other night and found that BBC2 was showing a documentary called "High Seas" as part of their Springwatch season. This programme spent an hour documenting the work of wildlife film-maker Gordon Buchanan as he set out from the Shetland Islands on a commercial fishing trawler on a quest to get some footage of Killer Whales (Orcinus Orca) hunting in the North Sea.

Back from hiatus with a new look

Anyone who visits this site regularly (anyone?) will have noticed a lack of postings in recent months. You may also notice a new design has been put in place. Unsurprisingly these two things are not unrelated. After creating several new looks for the website and then discarding them I've finally settled on a design that I like. For now at least.
So I hope to begin posting on a more regular basis while still tweaking a few aspects of the design as I go along. I'm always interested in feedback so if you have any comments on the redesign, or anything else for that matter, please get in touch using the contact form or @jabey on Twitter