Just checking in with PooterGeek to update you on my real life. In the day job, have moved offices in Tamworth from Tame Valley Industrial Estate in Wilnecote to space above designer wool and crafting outlet Tolsons Mill Yarns in Fazeley. In the evening job, I am now the lead singer of Midlands Stevie Wonder […]
Read MoreJust as TED talks are becoming the subject of well-deserved parody1, via Business Insider, I find an old one (2010) with useful things to say. Here, Jason Fried suggests ways the office can become a more productive place. I’m not entirely convinced by all of his solutions, but he doesn’t claim they are solutions. By the way, my answer […]
Read MoreIf you’re in the area this weekend, “Partly Covered”, the cut-down version of Sussex soul and pop band Covered will be playing at The Red Lion in the pretty West Sussex town of Arundel. And I’ll be the lead singer.
Read MoreChuka Umunna in The Voice on the question of a UK government apology for slave trade: African slavery and colonialism are not simply remnants of the past – they helped lay the foundations for the successful modern Britain of today. The effects of slavery are still felt in our communities – many cite the matriarchal […]
Read MoreThe Paperless Office, like The Flying Car, is one of those technological icons of the future whose ascendancy, no matter how much time passes, seems stuck in the future; but I reckon offices without paper are going to become more common more quickly than cars that fly. Indeed, we do seem to be printing fewer […]
Read MoreActually, it does hurt. It does hurt to ask the wrong way, to ask without preparation, to ask without permission. It hurts because you never get another chance to ask right. If you run into Elton John at the diner and say, “Hey Elton, will you sing at my daughter’s wedding?” it hurts any chance […]
Read MoreBack in the 80s, I used to be in a band with a guy called Martyn Hope—indeed, we went to school together. Back in the 90s, having read that, surreally, Elvis revivalist Shakin’ Stevens was a closet Red1, I went searching online to find out if he was a member of a late 70s cohort […]
Read MoreWhenever someone implies that anti-Semitism isn’t racism, I point out that it’s one of the few examples of discrimination that really is racism (unlike, for example, the invented thoughtcrime “Islamophobia”1 ) because the Ashkenazi Jewish population is as close as you can get scientifically to the common (and deeply flawed) notion of what a “race” […]
Read More[UPDATE: For the hordes arriving here after searching for the comedy catchphrase “Jumpers for goalposts”, you’d probably be better off reading this.] Yesterday afternoon, I interrupted some desk-bound consulting work that, even if I weren’t prevented by an NDA from doing so, would put you to sleep instantly if I told you about it, to […]
Read MoreAnd now, like a page from Where’s Wally / Where’s Waldo?, see if you can spot the wedding photographer in this [large!] image. He’s cunningly camouflaged by being the same colour as the furniture. (The camera to my left has a 50mm f/1.4 lens on it and the one in my hands a 100mm f/2.8. […]
Read MoreFurther to my last post about this, Russell Brand makes a proper apology to camera here. I can think of several politicians (amongst others) who could learn from it. He doesn’t mess about with words like “inappropriate”, which these days is used to describe everything from ironically referencing a passage in the Koran to trying […]
Read MoreRemember that very “English” black-and-white print I made of a café in Hove? This supersaturated colour medium-format slide film shot of another corner café, taken in Argentina, is a nice counterpoint to it; even the angles of the shadows are similar. As the photographer says, the stock it was taken with came out of the […]
Read More[BY TELEPHONE] CLIENT-I-WON’T-MISS: [giggling] …and I saw the pictures of that gay wedding on your Website. POOTERGEEK: I shoot Gays, Catholics, Protestants, Humanists, Blacks, Whites, Jews… CLIENT-I-WON’T-MISS: Well, I suppose you have to be prepared to work for anyone when you’re starting out.
Read MoreBoth of these photos are from the same wedding, at the most excellent Barn at Bury Court. I took the first on one side of the venue (with my camera in a transparent shower cap to protect it from the rain) and the second, later, on the other side, when the rain had stopped. Boys […]
Read MoreIt was quiet here last week because I had a lot of things on—to the extent that I had to stop off at the 24-hour Tesco superstore in the small hours of Saturday on the way back from singing at a gig to do my week’s shopping. I’ve read some extreme tales about the goings […]
Read MoreA fortnight ago, I shot the Brighton School of Samba at Brighton’s Second revived carnival. Congratulations to them. They went on to win the prize for best band.
Read MoreI had to replace my mobile phone recently, so I deliberately downgraded. After perfunctory Internet research, I got a Nokia 6300. If you are not one of the Young People and you use your phone for business then it is a most excellent tool. If you want to blog or surf the Net from your […]
Read MoreDo you remember Wei? Well, Wei… …wed… …Bobby… …in Edinburgh earlier this month, and I was hired to shoot the event. It wasn’t my first tri-lingual wedding, but it was my first Cantonese/Mandarin/Scottish one. And it was the first one from which the happy couple excused me in the small hours because the tea ceremony […]
Read MoreThis is simply wrong: Harriet Harman has defended plans to make it legal for firms to discriminate in favour of female and ethnic minorities job candidates. The equalities minister said firms should be able to choose a woman over a man of equal ability if they want to.
Read MoreAnother “shocking state of our universities today” story has appeared on the BBC news Website. A report from the Quality Assurance Agency says the degree classification system is broken. I smiled when I read this bit: The reports from the QAA raise some worries about the effectiveness of the external examiner system, in which examiners […]
Read MoreMy last post prompted a reader to send me photos of her tortoiseshell cats. [Thank you!] Such a flow of cat pics is of course unconventional in cat blogging, but it gives me an opportunity to point out that it’s only some of the much rarer male tortoiseshells that are the true chimeras, mixtures from […]
Read More[UPDATE: Edited to use the version of the body text that actually makes some sense with the originally posted title.] I’m not that old, so I’m often puzzled by people who make historical pronouncements in ignorance of recent, relevant history, sometimes history that happened within their lifetimes but not mine. Of course, as Catholic dogma […]
Read MoreFor a long time, PooterGeek’s homepage has been decorated with a school photo of me shot in, I think, 1979. I’ve taken the sensible advice of one of my readers and moved it. It’s still here, but on the “About” page where it doesn’t unbalance the new site design. The original print from which the […]
Read MoreLike me, Clive Davis is a product of one of those godless unions of black and white, but, because I am an expert on the conspiracy of sinister media Jews, when I took his byline photo I offered to make him look more Jewish in order to help his career. Now see what’s happened. I […]
Read MoreThe “pictures” included a front-page one of the torturer dressed in a pink nurse’s outfit that stopped just above the tops of her black stockings For those of you not up to date with the PooterGeek soap opera, having been made redundant from my first permanent job in science (when the Medical Research Council closed […]
Read MoreLast week I travelled oop North to Wigan—TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY ONE OF OUR POUNDS STERLING for a Standard Open Return on a smart, modern, and nausea-inducing Virgin Pendolino. There, I had to give (as I admitted to the audience) the hardest kind of talk: one where you stand in for someone who really knows […]
Read MoreThe last time I made an offer like this here it was very useful for me so I’m going to do it again. Before the wedding season starts in earnest, I’d like to experiment a bit with some new techniques on non-paying jobs (and burn up a few rolls of out-of-date and unusual film). If […]
Read More[photo by Vic] Yeah, hop in; course I’m going to the reception: I’m the photographer. You with the Japanese bride or the Swiss groom? Oh, you must be one of the Swiss then. Phew. You looked a bit British at first glance. No offence, right, but you Caucasians are a bit difficult to tell apart—‘cept […]
Read MoreThanks in part to you lot, I have for some time been the top hit on Google for “film photographer“, which doesn’t do my business any harm. Anyone familiar with my style of photography will understand why I am disturbed by the news story on the BBC Website that’s currently in the number three position: […]
Read MoreOne of the reasons I’ve been quiet these past few days is that I’ve been working on a new Website for the journal Index on Censorship which went live over the weekend. The purpose of this post is to send some of my Google karma to their new URL: “indexoncensorship.org“. If you believe in free […]
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