Hipstamatic | Oxford, Don McCullin and Blackheath Farmers Market
I’ve been using the Hipstamatic iphone application for a couple of months now and it’s a fun touristy way of remembering where I’ve been. This week, I’ve had several meetings in Dulwich, where I met George the five-year-old basset hound in Romeo Jones delicatessen and loved the Easter-themed window display of Hope and Greenwood.
Don McCullin, a photographer known for his war images and more recently for landscapes, talked about these two aspects at Christ College, Oxford, as part of the Sunday Times Literary Festival, which finishes today. He seems a very resourceful character who, at 75, lives with his ‘shadows of memories’ (hundreds of negatives and prints) at his home in Somerset and wishes he had done something else with his photography. He showed many images from his book Southern Frontiers: A Journey Across the Roman Empire, with text by Barnaby Rogerson because McCullin said “my photographs don’t speak enough”. There may have been some people disagreeing with his view, but the delightful Mr Rogerson added historical context to the presentation. Funnily enough, Mr Rogerson and I had been on the same train from Reading to Oxford; he’d been feeding bits of his chocolate croissant to a bird on the station platform while waiting. It’s a very small world.
This morning, I felt like rhubarb (in the cooking it to have with cream and toasted flaked almonds kind of way), so headed for Blackheath Farmers Market. When walking across the heath, All Saints parishioners were walking the other way with palm leaves to mark Palm Sunday. By the way, these mushrooms really were purple.
