Paul Capewell

It’s September. There’s a chill in the air, but the sun is still shining. Autumn is coming. Which is fine! I’ve had a good summer, with plenty of days out walking, cycling or (sometimes) running, and a good number of nights in rented cottages, AirBnBs or in a tent. But the transition periods between seasons can be great if only because they’re tangible and visceral.

When September hits – and with a partner who teaches, this is a more pronounced sensation – it feels like there should be time to wrap up summer thoughts, as though there’s a sudden overnight flip, new-year-style. And there can be, I suppose, but really it feels like there should suddenly be extra time in the evenings to edit photographs and reflect and maybe write about adventures. But perhaps I’m being premature – maybe I need to wait till the clocks go back (railway tracks!) and do all that stuff then? Memories will have faded some more, but if it means a nice photobook (or magazine?) turns up some time in late autumn or actualy winter, that might be no bad thing. Just as long as it turns up at all.

I’m reading a bit more at the moment – as in books (I generally read articles and tabs I’ve sent to my Kindle, but books less frequently) – and I feel like later this year I might finally tackle the Flying Nun book Roger Shepherd wrote a few years back. I’ve had it for nearly two years now, a much-asked-for Christmas present that I’ve still not started!

I keep thinking autumn/winter is the right time to read the book (and bathe in that music) because often when I listen to NZ music from that era I think of grey, dreary Dunedin/Christchurch streets and drafty flats and cosy student radio station studios and curly hair and wooly jumpers and four track tape recorders and touring in a shit van and all this stuff. And so I end up with this temporal inversion where I associate NZ music with that wintry vibe, and yet I need to experience it when I myself am experiencing winter – which is, of course, when NZ is experiencing its summer.

The change in the seasons is often – or was more often, a few years ago – the time I’d choose to tune into 95bFM (Auckland) or Radio One (Dunedin) to get a sense of life there, such as it’s possible to do so. I’d love, on a grey winter’s evening in the UK, to hear the next morning’s breakfast show where they chat about the decent weather, the surf report, or what bands were touring NZ – the excitement of a big ticket band who only comes to NZ once a decade, or some local heroes doing yet another thirteen-date tour playing basically every town big enough to sustain a venue.

Conversely, I also liked now and then to tune in to a mid-winter broadcast while the sun shines here, as I often associate those wintry times (as above)  with where all the great NZ indie music comes from – the somewhat romantic image of a band or musician holed up against the cold, writing and recording, with some new stuff to debut when the sun finally comes out again.

In the meantime, I’m rattling through Sylvain Tesson’s Consolations of the Forest, which has landed on my Kindle through a happy accident of reading American nature writing with a focus on national parks, fire towers and so on, as well as John Lewis-Stempel’s lovely The Wood.

Tesson’s book is sometimes an amalgamation of those books, and it’s always nice when a book just sort of slots in neatly like that. I guess that’s why I always have about a hundred books I want to read, so that when the mood takes me I can dip into ‘the right one’ and follow the wave a bit further. It’s also written as a sort of diary crossed with a commonplace book (much like Lewis-Stempel’s), which obviously appeals to me.

On a related note, I had the joy of visiting Barter Books in Alnwick this summer. It’s a huge second hand bookshop – possibly the largest in the country? – housed in an old railway station. It also has a very decent cafe and food, and plenty of places to sit amongst the stacks. And model railway trains rolling round some ceiling-mounted tracks.

It’s a treat.

It also has lots and lots of books, and they all tend to be quite nice copies, rather than just stuff shovelled onto the shelves. I looked forward to the prospect of searching through the shelves, which are pretty well sorted by subject, but was pleased – initially – to find they have an online catalogue.

On the one hand this was great as when one has only a short time to visit a shop like this, it’s good to search for a few of those hard-to-find items.

But on the other hand, it removes some of the joy of searching through the stacks. But it’s still worth doing that because you’re bound to discover something you didn’t know you were looking for. So actually I suppose it’s the best of both worlds.

I ended up buying one book which was sort of on the periphery of my American nature writing / national parks reading list.

I thought it was time for a round-up. Now that we’re inexplicably in July, let’s talk about some June highlights.

I didn’t watch any films this month. That troubles me slightly, especially as I got into quite a good habit of watching a few earlier in the year. I think with the longer evenings, I have less ‘time’ where I think ‘ooh I’ll just stick a film on’ and so maybe it’s just not a summer thing. I’m also less inclined to voluntarily choose to sit in a dark room for two hours when the sun is out.

I did go to the sort-of cinema though, to the Science Museum’s IMAX screen to see an exclusive cut of the Smithsonian Channel’s APOLLO’S MOON SHOT with a live soundtrack from Teeth of the Sea. It was phenomenal. The footage looked great on the huge screen, and the sound was majestic – the band’s mix of post-rock with some psychedelia and bleeps and bloops worked perfectly and sounded gigantic over the IMAX sound system.

I finished watching FLEABAG after a few month between blocks of episodes. I enjoyed it, and have really enjoyed the occasionally very on-the-nose insights into the inner monologue of a protagonist I think a lot of us can relate to. After not seeing the ending around the time it aired, and being aware of the hot takes about the hot priest, but not the details, I think I expected something more…unsavoury? Instead it was just a believable storyline that fit with my expectations within the universe.

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Having said I tend to watch less films in summer, I now realise I’ve spent probably most of the time I could have been watching films playing THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD. I’ve clocked up more than forty hours in the game now, and recently conquered my first Divine Beast.  The game is so full of small and huge milestones that you always feel like you’ve achieved something, but that milestone was the biggest yet. I am still enjoying almost every aspect of this game, particularly knowing I have a lot left to enjoy.

I wish I knew how long I’d put into JUST CAUSE 2 a few years ago. That’s the nearest comparison I have to BotW in terms of a big openworld game that I played and tried to ‘finish’. There’ve been others like FAR CRY 3 and BIOSHOCK INFINITE that were more linear, but I feel like I spent a long time finishing JUST CAUSE 2 in a different way, and one which I really enjoyed. I’ve also played a bit of JUST CAUSE 3, but it hasn’t grabbed me in the same way. Similarly, I stopped trying to care about SKYRIM and haven’t thought about once since.

M has been playing LEGO CITY UNDERCOVER, which has been enjoyable for me not just because it’s a fun game to watch while doing something else, but also because she seems to be having a great time playing it. It occasionally has a stage she can’t seem to crack, and I’ve realised it’s partly because some stages rely on pre-learned l33t gaming skillz which not all plays of the game will have. Mostly driving skills and sometimes weird 3D game world movement. But I’m very impressed at the overall polish the game has, particularly in the open world setting.

I’ve also played a bit of STEAMWORLD DIG on my 2DS, which is a game I love the vibe of. I just forget about it from time to time and need to re-learn its flow each time I pick it up. But when I do, I really like it.

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We’ve been watching more and more of the ladies’ World Cup football. I’ve really enjoyed the lack of arrogance but no less passion of these women’s teams. It’s the same game but played a bit differently, and most games we’ve watched recently have had heart and drama and skills which have kept us both hooked. The new rules and use of VAR is at times very clunky.

We’ve been cycling a bit more lately*, after we attended a bike maintenance class recently which was laid on for free by the local council.

* I say we; M rides her bike to and from work almost every day rain or shine – it’s definitely me who’s the sometimes/fair-weather cyclist.

The course was really well done – pitched just right for a group of ten with a range of levels of expertise, and the right size for everyone to get periods of one to one help, and the opportunity to get way more hands on than I’d expected. The instructors were so friendly and knowledgeable and had a lot of patience for us all. We were even given a free multi-tool. Our local one has a bit of a waiting list but I’d thoroughly recommend it if your local council offers something similar. I learned a lot about my own bike and some of the bits I’ll need to change soon.

And perhaps sooner than I’d realised, too, as M and I will be going to France for a week soon, taking the ferry to one port, then spending five days cycling up the coast to another. I can’t wait. But I do need to make sure my bike and I are in the best shape we can be before we go.

Earlier this month I ran my first proper half marathon in St Albans, which was a really enjoyable experience. I had great company, good weather, and the course was interesting and at times very pretty. I hadn’t done masses of training, but spent the week or two leading up to it at least giving it some though. I was really pleased with my first official time – by far a PB, especially given it was the first uninterrupted course I’d run over that distance.

I don’t think I want to run a full marathon. I am aware of the areas where my body starts to creak between 10-20km. And although I get into quite a zen state over those distances, I just can’t yet see any personal benefits in doubling that challenge. I would like to run another half because it’s enough of a distance to be a challenge to me, but one I might be able to refine in terms of pace and strategy. And it definitely hasn’t put me off running – even a 5k is enjoyable for me, and can often be a huge mental health booster at a time when I need it.

I also went bouldering/climbing a couple of times this month. M and I have been really enjoying watching the World Cup. And it’s been great climbing with David as he is a) pretty bloody good but b) is patient and offers helpful advice whether I’m eager to go tearing up something I’m not quite warmed up for, or pushes me to try a technique I hadn’t spotted or considered possible. I want to do more climbing more often, I just need to work it into my schedule. Maybe once the French cycling trip is out of the way.

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I recently replaced my Galaxy S7 with a Motorola G7 Power and haven’t looked back. The S7 had a great camera and screen (and the size was nice), but it was always being let down by poor battery life. Most days were fine, but some days the standby time would be surprisingly poor, where other days the features that I enjoyed like the camera or location-related stuff would work fast and well, but absolutely cane the battery. It became so that I’d barely make it to the end of a day doing normal stuff, and I’d gotten used the battery being dead on my way home from a more active day where I’d inevitably used the phone more while out and about.

Conversely, the G7 Power has a weak camera and screen, though both are perfectly fine, but the battery is a beast, giving more than two full days of real use on a single charge. I’ve managed to get to the early evening of a third day, too. I anticipate that taking the phone on trips away will either a) give a long standby time when, say, camping and not using it much and b) work all day with no signs of low battery with intense use tracking bike rides and using the camera and whatever.

One other feature I liked about the S7 was the stereo mics and I recently got a more into making field recordings using it. But I picked up a second hand digital recorder over the last month and have started getting to grips with that. More on that another day, but suffice to say that it’s like going from a half decent cameraphone to a dSLR in terms of quality (not to mention the headroom to clean up audio afterwards, ala RAW files).

I just need to figure out what I’m trying to achieve with these field recordings. But in the meantime it’s a lot of fun just capturing stuff and seeing what grabs me.

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Finally I led a walking tour last week on the subject of Charles Paget Wade. Three years ago I wrote and self-published a small book on Wade and his early life and work, which received some nice feedback and sold about as well as I’d hoped.

In the intervening years I have done more research on him, and decided to run a new version of the walk again. The first walk was the first I’d ever led, but since then I have led two or three more on other subjects.

This time round was quite enjoyable – I had a small but interested and friendly group, and the weather was perfect. It lasted two hours, and I got through all my notes in the right order, and delivered it – I hope – quite naturally and mostly from memory.

In the run up to the walk I have also been finishing a new second edition of the book. I’ve been able to add a few bits and bobs here and fleshed out the details of other segments where I’ve found more primary evidence. I’ve also just been able to give the whole thing a slight wringing-out in terms of flow and readability, and altering the format/size/cover a little. I hope this new edition will be available fairly soon.

In his latest newsletter, Craig Mod briefly touches upon (in a quote from another writer) that the woods are untouchable in words or pictures because of their complexity. This is why, notes Craig, we more often photograph vistas and openings instead. He does point out though that rain or mist brings woodland into relief, traces the contours and depth of some of those seemingly infinite layers.

I find woods can only be reliably photographed on rainy days, mist abounding, giving shape and depth to the otherwise shapeless and boundless.

This all served to remind me of some of the days Megan and I had when we walked the South Downs Way last year. So much of our route was under a blanket of fog, with visibility at times down to less than 100m or so. It made for some quite excellent and otherworldly views and treks, particularly as we trudged along ancient hollow lanes, as shown above.

Some of my favourite photographs from that work were taken, ironically, on days with poor visibility. This was all in striking contrast to our expectations of views to the coast and beyond, particularly as so much of the walk takes place along a ridge line.

I also read a brief summary by Om yesterday in which he tries to distill his growing love and knowledge of photography. One sentence in particular struck me in which he described that (if I interpreted his point correctly) using film taught him that he doesn’t need photography to be pin sharp as it is only a representation of what we see, and we do not see crystal clear all the time anyway.

And it made me think that unfortunately this is something I sometimes forget and I often see photography as a tool for recording a scene in exactitude – a record of the scene, and one in which I want all lines to be sharp and all colours replicated perfectly. And sometimes this is fine and is a good use of my time. It is nice to look back on a (literally) photorealistic image of a place to help transport me back there.

But increasingly I realise that some of my shots that are (perhaps accidentally) not pin sharp or technically perfect but are nonetheless beautiful as a standalone image, and the ones that stick in the mind.

I think there is room for both types of image in my photography and I will continue to just see where the mood takes me in the moment.

Back to Craig Mod’s point on writing about (and photographing) woodlands – I found it to especially interesting to read this in between sessions of reading John Lewis-Stempel’s THE WOOD, a gloriously lyrical diarised memoir of a year spent tending to Cockshutt Wood.

His writing flits effortlessly between light, delicate snatches of poetic writing and multiple paragraphs teasing out the history of biology of an aspect of woodland life. It’s a very enjoyable read.

Lewis-Stempel manages to cover so many aspects of the woodland in this book that I have to believe that it is possible to adequately describe woodland in writing – it’s just that you probably need a full year and about 300 pages in which to really do it justice.