Category: Coronovirus / Covid-19

A POSTCARD FROM “BC”

by adamhalevi, posted in Air Travel, Australia, Coronovirus / Covid-19, Long-haul air travel, Uncategorized

AND WHEN LONG-HAUL FLYING WAS ALMOST FUN

Not wishing to bore anyone with all the tedious whys and wherefores (which will be pretty obvious to many), suffice to say here, that long-haul travel – even when “turning left” onto a brand new 787c Dreamliner is something we will not do again until normal/normal returns – which probably means never.

Our recent flights, to and from the United States, to scatter my mother-in-law’s ashes, among many other essential tasks related to her passing 13 months ago would have been a sombre experience in any event, but with the added maelstrom of Covid-19 related dos and don’ts, a sad business was transformed into a sinister taste of dystopia.

But never mind all of that; these posts were never intended as platforms for my views on anything more serious than daubs of paint, poor grammar and the correct way to render chicken fat. Although, over the past two years I have hinted at my opinion on Covid, and our various governments attempts at dealing with it, I realised by the first April of the crisis, that my views were at odds with the consensus, and thus I risked being regarded as a hopeless heretic – at best! So, not wishing to alienate or offend many of the readers of these pages, I have thus far kept my feelings more or less to myself, and this post will be no different.

One of the things many of us can agree upon, is what a miracle of modern life long haul air travel used to be BC, especially if one was fortunate enough to travel at the front of the aircraft, when the getting to wherever, could be almost as much fun as the destinations themselves. However, nothing epitomises for me what we are missing from our lives more starkly now – from a UK perspective at least – than the current inaccessibility of the extraordinary lands of the Antipodes. Hence this offering of a series of my favourite scenes of Australia (Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia, to be precise), which either offer longing for a return to a normal future, or images of a golden past, lost forever…who knows?

BRIDGES AND FREEDOM “BC”

by adamhalevi, posted in Black and White Photography, bridges, Coronovirus / Covid-19, Dusseldorf, Melancholia, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Padua, Prague, Quarantine

And when melancholia was a pleasurable indulgence not a permanent state of mind…

So far as its visual content is concerned, this post follows on from a piece I did a few years back, and as with that one, I will allow the photographs to do the most of the talking. During our current dystopian circumstances, I find these images of bridges have taken on added poignancy as symbols of freedom, and most pertinently, of travel. While I yearn for signs of a return of some basic common sense from both those who govern us, and most of those they govern, these low-key “BC” photos of bridges from a dream-like past help me retain a degree of sanity if not much hope…

From top to bottom: Amsterdam, Newcastle Upon-Tyne, Prague, Padua and Dusseldorf.

Cameras used, Nikon FE (using Agfachrome), Nikon D80 and Canon EOS 5

“PARADISE REGAINED…”

by adamhalevi, posted in Adam Green, Andalusia, Axarquia, Coronovirus / Covid-19, Finca Carmel, gouache, Gouache Postcards, impasto

postcards from our past for the present

It took us about six years to fall in love with our Spanish home and to begin to appreciate its full value to us as both somewhere to escape, and to recharge our intellectual and emotional batteries…

Arriving at this point we had survived the physical and mental exhaustion of the eight-month build itself…

Followed by the despair of being virtually penniless and then learning we had no professional future in Spain…

Then the seedy drudgery of our sojourn in Boulogne-sur-Mer…

Followed by the reestablishing our lives in London (via-Tunbridge Wells) and getting ourselves back on our feet financially…

Until eventually, the resentment we had felt toward our distant Spanish home, for being the ruination of our lives, very gradually transformed into yearning, as we came to understand the sanctuary it offered us from our daily grind…

And so, in 1999, I felt the need to celebrate with this set of colourful, impasto gouache sketches, done as postcards; intended to express our sense of freedom and joy at the regaining of our lost paradise. But never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined, even in that seminal year of 1999, just quite how fortunate we really were…

Not until experiencing the madness of three months of semi-house arrest in a small Oxford apartment (I refuse to dignify the “L” word by using it), followed by the oddly, even more disturbing new “normality”, did we truly grasp how blessed we are to have our little, private, mask-less, socially intimate, sanctuary of peace and sanity.

(I should add, that I still have the entire original set of 10 postcards, signed, titled and dated, and in near-mint condition, and far brighter and more charming in real life. I had originally intended to send them to select friends and family, but for some reason never got around to it. So now, I would be happy to sell them as a set for £200 – or other currency equivalent – plus postage. If anyone is interested please contact me through the “Purchasing artwork” link at the top of this page.)

WHERE THE GRASS IS (nearly) ALWAYS BROWNER…

by adamhalevi, posted in Adam and Dido, Almond Blossom, Andalusia, Axarquia, Coronovirus / Covid-19, Finca Carmel, Oxford, Sierra Tajeda, Southern Spain

…BUT WHERE THE ALMOND blossom is ALWAYS WHITER

I nearly titled this as a third straight “yearning” post, in the sense that after three months lock-down here in Oxford we are desperate to get back to our finca in southern Spain. But seeing as we are actually returning there tomorrow I decided on a catchier and hopefully more optimistic heading.

In fairness, when we’ve been in Spain for as long as we’ve now been in England there’s plenty I miss about our other lives in London and Oxford, but the longing is rarely as intense as what we are experiencing right now for our Andalusian home.

And perhaps there’s the clue; the fact that our little farm in the foothills of the Sierra Tajeda is the nearest thing Dido and I have ever had to a settled home. We’ve certainly owned it for more than three times as long as any of our previous homes (separately or together), and then there’s all the sweat and blood we’ve dripped into the building of our house and the rocky soil upon which it stands.

But perhaps, more than all of that, it’s simply the way the setting of our finca has ingrained itself into the fabric of our being through the sheer power of its ridiculous beauty.

So, although we missed wonders like the almond blossom display this year, thanks to about thirty years of memories, and images like the ones on show here, we can never truly miss them – they live inside of us, rendering us unusually fortunate.

DREAM-IN’SPIRE-ATION

by adamhalevi, posted in City Parks, Coronovirus / Covid-19, Cotswold Hills, Cotswold Stone, Daily Exercise, Dreaming Spires, Oxford, Oxford University, South Park, Oxford, Uncategorized

OXFORD VIEWED from my IPHONE

One of the silver linings to our current regime of semi-internment is our daily walk around our local park, and our subsequent reacquaintance with one of world’s genuinely iconic (a much overused and abused term) urban views. Fortunately for us, our local green space is South Park (no relation to its animated Colorado namesake) and the view it offers is over the venerable and elegant city of Oxford and its famous “dreaming spires”*.

*…And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty’s heightening…
From the poem Thyrsis, by Mathew Arnold, 1865

From the highest point in the park, just before sunset; the steeply sloping greensward foreground, leading gently yet intently to the gleaming city and shimmering spires and towers of the middle-distance; with the hazy cobalt-tinted Cotswold hills rising in the west; the visual effect has a kind of confidant and – in these anxious times – reassuring drama about it.

It is almost as if, this most famous of university cities, with all its generations of accumulated human wisdom, represents a salutary counterpoint to the current narrative of our apparent ephemeral humanity.

Whether or not these rather flat iPhone generated images can give even the slightest impression of this heartening scene is another matter altogether, but I do hope so.