Before Summer Ends (10 pics from '25)

Here's my ninth photograph to mark 2025. Summers are all too brief in this country at the best of times, but after the year I've had I really could've done with a bit more of it; of all the summers I wanted to go on longer, 2025 was definitely the one. But it wasn't to be. I can't complain though. My friend J is really struggling at the moment. In fact she may not have many summers left, bless her. These are the trees just up the road from where she lives. I photographed them just before the end of summer. They were around long before we were and they'll still be around long after we're gone. I'm no philosopher (except maybe when I've got a pint in my hand), but I do find myself ruminating more than is probably good for me. I read a quote the other day and it's found its way into my psyche: 'A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.' I've never planted a tree before. I think I may have just found my New Year's resolution.

★

 Keith Mansfield - Before Summer Ends (1976)

 

 

Love Deluxe (10 pics from '25)

Here's my fifth photograph to mark 2025. I'm not sure if it's been the same where you live but we've had some absolutely stunning sunrises and sunsets over the last few days; huge balls of fire in the sky doing their coming up/going down thing. And the beautiful pink backdrops they leave behind are equally mesmerising. It was one of those skies I happened upon on Friday evening. My friend Neil and I were between bars when I looked up and saw an ordinary sign looking anything but. 

  ★ 

Another track from the KPM stable. And another from Keith Mansfield. For those of you who follow such things, Mansfield's riddims have been sampled over the years by, among others, Danger Mouse, Gnarls Barkley and Fatboy Slim. 

 Keith Mansfield - Love Deluxe (1976)

Man With a Mission (10 pics from '25)

Here's my second photograph to mark 2025. Back in those lazy, hazy, crazy days of Summer, my good friend Ernesto and I decided to pay a visit to a mannequin graveyard; fifteen thousand mannequins in the middle of nowhere Lincolnshire. Someone in my writing class had given me the steer: 'It's made for you,' she said. Turns out she was right. I took scores of photos that day so editing to down to one was nigh on impossible. But I guess if you have Superman powers then nothing's impossible; here's that one photograph.

★

I'm currently obsessed with Library Music and the KPM label. Here's another exponent of the art; where easy listening soundtracks meet loungecore meets jazz and funk.

Keith Mansfield - Man With a Mission (1974)

Library Shares · Keith Mansfield - Man with a Mission - (KPM 1136) - 1974