Regularly, memories wash over me. It’s consuming when it happens. Like someone has emptied a bucket of my own recollections over my head. For a second of time, those memories – piercingly clear but so fleeting it’s impossible to trace them fully – overwhelm the present.

It occurred to me recently that I’ve lived in Denmark long enough now for me to be nostalgic about my first few years here. The course of that time is dimming in my mind – the memories are increasingly apocryphal and I’m beginning to imbue them with impressionistic associations. I feel the memories, in other words, rather than remember them. My narrative of the last seven years is a positive one of self-discovery and economic upward mobility. It’s little wonder that my earliest memories of my time here tend towards the wistful.

#instagram

Two months flew by. Cold but bright. We’re not doing a great deal these days so small things take on greater significance – a coffee in a nice cafe, a meal with friends, a walk through the neighbourhood. Taking a nice picture on Instagram gives a welcome feeling of accomplishment.

A few of the better pics from the latest roll of film. I’m not thrilled with these. I was in Amsterdam when I bought the film, some kind of Fuji, and I think it lacks something, maybe a bit of grain. The finish is quite metallic. I still love shooting film though, even if it costs me an arm and a leg to digitise.

There are a few more shots on Flickr.

#canon ftb #film #flickr #fuji #photography

Wakin on a pretty day.

Cold, snowy days. Christmas in Norway. Skiing dredged up memories of New Zealand, and of a school trip to France as a 17-year-old where I had some kind of epiphany, alone on a chairlift, heading up to a piste beneath the bluest sky. For a few moments I remember feeling an absolute peace. Nothingness really. Just upward motion, breathing, and the dim creak of snow.

A holding pattern kind of month. Some lovely skies and late-afternoon light, just before the snows came.

It’s Sunday, the day when for whatever reason my thoughts most often turn to home. For some years, I spent my Sundays managing a clothes shop in my home town. Lonely days. I remember standing in front of the shop during quiet periods. Watching the Sunday families go by, and the cars, and occasional lunatics and drunks, bored mostly, worrying about whether we’d sold enough so that when the owner rang at the end of the day I could give him good news instead of bad.

When I got home I’d watch Time Team. Earlier this month, when my parents were visiting us here in Copenhagen, my mum and I were cooking dinner and I told her that it was funny the things you miss, things like Time Team, and the smell of fireworks drifting over the lake on Guy Fawkes Night.

I’m writing this while watching a show on DRK about Scandinavian decorative style. It feels a little self-congratulatory but then again what’s more self-congratulatory than pictorial round-ups on one’s own blog?

(azbateman on Instagram if you’re interested.)

#instagram #september

A long goodbye to summer. Lots of lovely moments, especially during a road-trip careering round the country visiting friends and family. The wind whipped up today and it’s been raining on and off throughout. From where I’m sitting I can see a tarpaulin blowing listlessly against the side of a scaffold.

These are rarefied days.

My mother and I are coming to terms. It used to be that I thought her garden too untended and unruly. Now it seems verdant, and brimming with life. She understands texturing. She knows what will grow where. Years ago, she took up the lawn and installed elaborate water features. I thought she was mad, now I greatly admire her sense of conviction.

The day we were there, our first trip to England with Gerda, the sun was bright and warm but mum’s garden has more than enough shaded vantage points. We sat and talked and drank tea and I took these shots.