Here am I floating round my tin can | Far above the Moon | Planet Earth is blue | And there's nothing I can do

On Wednesday 12 April 1961, ten years before I was born, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first human-being to leave the earth’s atmosphere, travel into space and orbit the earth in his Vostok 3KA-3 spacecraft*. It was a significant milestone in human achievement.

Eight years, three months and eight days later, on Sunday 20 July 1969, the American team of Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr, part of the Apollo 11 spaceflight, landed on the moon. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, indeed.

Some twenty-four or so years later, sometime in the early nineties, I received a processed film back from the chemist. It included this disappointing photograph of… who knows what. Is the blue area my jeans? What is that tremendous source of light in the top-left corner?

I took a scalpel from my dad’s desk (he used them for building models of motorbikes) and etched onto the photograph a small rocket heading back to earth, the blue planet.

It may have signified something at the time, a sense of feeling alienated, or out of control, perhaps. Or perhaps a sense of freedom and possibility. I don’t remember.

I stood outside a few nights back, staring up the sky at the stars. It was the night that we were supposed to be able to see the International Space Station passing overhead. I always feel a sense of perspective when I look up at the stars, knowing that what I’m seeing now is what has been. That I am looking back in time. I feel humbled at the enormity of space, and the simple beauty of tiny specs of light in an otherwise pitch-black sky.

I should do that more often. Except that I live in Scotland and we don’t get to see the sky without significant cloud-cover very often!

I’ve never been to space. But I know someone who wants to. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Space Kate… (@SpaceKate on Twitter).

(* As it happens the current theme of this blog is called Vostok.)

Shhh! She's sleeping.

When I was in primary four at Knowepark Primary School in Selkirk I kept getting moved desks by the teacher, Miss Dickson.

“Stop talking!” she would implore me.

But I kept on chatting to the people to my left and right. And so I kept getting moved, slowly towards the back of the classroom as a punishment.

And the further back I was moved the more I’d talk. Until she finally twigged, “Can you see the blackboard?” I was asked.

“No,” I replied.

“What does it say on the board?” was what I was asking my neighbours.

I got my first pair of spectacles 31 years ago and my eyesight has got slowly worse ever since.

So when I see out-of-focus photos like the one above I don’t think of them so much as rubbish photos so much as a close representation of what I actually see without my glasses on.

Not the northern lights

When we lived in Inverness (1999-2003), moving there only days after we got married, Jane and I were told that if we stood at Chanonry Point between Fortrose and Rosemarkie on the Black Isle we would be able to see dolphins.

We visited Chanonry Point between Fortrose and Rosemarkie on the Black Isle fairly frequently during our three-and-a-half years in Inverness and not once did we see dolphins, there or elsewhere.

Many of our visitors, on our recommendation, also stood at Chanonry Point between Fortrose and Rosemarkie on the Black Isle and returned in the evening with excited tales of how they’d seen dolphins. Lots of them, leaping in and out of the Moray Firth. “You should see them!” they would enjoin us.

“We’ve been trying!” we would tell them, “but they are never there!”

But that would spur us on to once again visit the Black Isle, to stand at Chanonry Point between Fortrose and Rosemarkie. Only to find ourselves once again standing for an hour staring at an empty inlet of the North Sea before disappointedly trudging back across the Kessock Bridge and home again. (Not that you can ‘trudge’ in a car, but it sounds more tragic.)

Another thing I’ve never seen, but have always wanted to, is the Northern Lights (aurora borealis). I bet I never get to see that either. The closest I’m going to get is this rubbish photo. I have no idea what it is, but to me it’s my own, personal aurora borealis.

And if you look really closely you can probably see dolphins there too.

I can’t, of course, but I bet you can!

A woodland adventure playground at dusk

The evening before we received our exam results at the end of sixth year a small group of my friends hiked up to the top of one of the hills above the Bowhill estate just outside Selkirk to spend the night.

We walked along the river, past the fish farm. We explored an old, ruined keep. There was much laughter.

It was a warm summer’s night and so we didn’t bother with tents choosing instead to cosy ourselves up in our sleeping bags and sleep under the stars, next to a rather dilapidated cairn. Having talked well into the night, we feel asleep as the embers were still glowing on our camp fire.

In the light of early morning we cooked sausages and bacon, and boiled water for coffee, on a camping stove, and ate it with a healthy portion of laughter.

On our walk home we passed through the woodland adventure playground at Bowhill House. It was nearing 7.00am and with nobody around we played for about 20 minutes on the zip slide.

As you can see from the photo above we had a great time!

I returned home moments before before my exam results arrived. I’d passed everything! I was going to university!

That night on the hills outside Selkirk remains one of my fondest memories of my childhood and adolescence in Selkirk.

Bonus rubbish photos

Children only, maximum 3

Similar to the playground that Bilbo and the dwarves enjoyed playing in at the new Mirkwood adventure playground

From left to right: Rory, me, Kevin... obviously!

Dim photograph of a farm in New Zealand.

There’s an excitement about New Zealand right now with the Rugby World Cup 2011 being staged there, and Peter Jackson filming The Hobbit. If my photo was anything to go by, however, you’d think: New Zealand… not that exciting!

It was 1992 I was part of a 140-strong National Youth Choir of Great Britain embarking on our first world tour: an eight-and-a-half week journey that would take us from London to California, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. We’d been on the road for about two weeks having exchanged the sunburn of Hawaii for the frostbite of New Zealand and Dunedin was our second stop.

Throughout the tour we were mostly accommodated in ‘home-stays’ thanks to the kind generosities of local people. The odd night was in an hotel. Actually, just one night now I think of it, and that hotel was the Sydney Marriott!

Anyway, in Dunedin my best friend Danny and I were located about a 30 minutes drive outside the city.

On a farm.

With sheep and everything.

Everything being a big shed with freezers covered in splatters of blood as the farmer—who was also a teacher—used to butcher his own animals.

To eat them.

The house had guns in it.

And axes.

And nice thick towels. To muffle the sound.

I’ve never been so scared in all my life. And I left my pants there!

Two people walking across a zebra crossing. In London. In the mid-1990s.

This is another photograph from the summer of 1996 (as sung about in the dyslexic* Bryan Adams song) featuring my then-flatmate Jonny and my school friend Kenny (whose birthday and wedding anniversary is today) who was visiting me in London. This photograph is taken somewhere in deepest, darkest Belgravia, between Eccleston Square and Sloan Square.

When the Beatles were famously photographed for the cover of their 1969 album Abbey Road they didn’t make the same fundamental mistakes that I did in this photograph:

1. They took the photograph during the day. At least you could see George, Paul,Ringo and John!
2. They positioned their camera in the middle of the road, rather than from the relative safety of the opposite pavement.
3. The camera was closer to the subjects, making sure that they filled at least one-third of the photograph.
4. They didn’t include the camera strap in the photograph.
5. They actually took the photograph on Abbey Road. (Although what that’s not strictly a problem with the photograph itself in any technical manner that we were trying to recreate the Abbey Road photograph in London and didn’t actually do it on Abbey Road was sheer laziness on our part.)

That said, despite this being a rubbish photograph we at least didn’t make the same mistake that The Beatles made all those years ago: we at least, sensibly, all wore shoes.

(* While there doesn’t appear to be a number-lexia, a numbers equivalent of dyslexia, I have frequently and consistently always mixed up or transposed 6 and 8. You’d think it would be 6 and 9 but no! For me it’s been 6 and 8. I’d now like to apologise to Safeway plc for any cheese that was under-priced in the Selkirk branch on Saturday mornings in the late 1980s, and apologise to any customers who bought over-priced cheddar around the same time.)

Door and legs

You know, while I do recognise those trainers in the background … I can’t remember to whom they belonged.  Or the legs.  My sister, perhaps?

The door, however, I know that: that’s my old bedroom door.

Richard

While I was between years at theological college institute I stayed for a few weeks in a flat owned by a doctor friend of mine.  During these few weeks another friend came to visit.

Richard had been in the same home group as me at St James the Less, Westminster; the church we had attended in London. It was really lovely to see him again.  We went for long walks, chatted, laughed and prayed together.

I’m pretty certain that this rubbish photo is of the top of Richard’s head, a tree and a large amount of sky above the City of Edinburgh sometime during the summer of 1998.

Base of a Celtic cross

During the summer of 1998 I spent a couple of weeks in the Argyll town of Lochgilphead, on the west coast of Scotland.

As part of a tour of the area I was taken to an old church, out in the middle of nowhere, where they’d preserved all these ancient standing stones and Celtic crosses.

This is a rubbish photo showing almost no detail of a beautifully carved cross.

Ian

This is my brother’s good friend Ian.  He’s a musician — you could probably tell that already just by looking at his flowing locks and too-close-to-the-flash pastey white face.  A very good musician too.  He plays … well, just about everything: guitar, bass, drums, vocals, tuba … everything!

When my brother worked as a youth worker he used to put together a house band for various events. Ian and I were usually a part of the band.  We also played together at the Powerpoint Edinburgh events for a while.

This photo was probably taken at one of those events, because it’s definitely taken within St Thomas’s Episcopal Church on Glasgow Road, Edinburgh.  Which is also, incidentally, where Jane and I were married. Ian played in our band too at the reception.

Great memories … rubbish photo!