A while ago I bought these things so that I could use the films inside the camera to make photographs. How clever I thought I was, buying cheap chinese film to experiment with to save money not using expensive stuff like Ilford film.

Christmas day rolled along and I thought I’d document it using film like some sort of artistic genius – a couple of weeks later I pop to the local film processing place and ask them to develop it. “What type of film is that” asks the man. Um….. “It must be C-41″ says I thinking at the same time “how could I possibly be wrong?”

Wrong I was – the processed film looks like this:

Believe it or not, although it looks blank there is actually something on these negatives. Trouble is you can’t pick it up with a scanner without it looking like a real mess – witness:

These look like something taken in 1820 with the first ever camera – and are rubbish. So now I’m left with 9 more rolls of this stuff and no bleeding idea what to do with it. Suddenly I find myself contemplating buying a home development kit and setting up a dark room…

Only a scant four months have passed since we went to Kenya and had a lovely holiday. At the time I shot a single roll of film through my Holga which is unusual for me because I was expecting to have used about 96 films.

Anyway, on to the point – I got the photos back this week. First up, this really hurts – partly because I have no memory of the camera coming open at any time, but mainly because I’m now utterly convinced that the photo in the middle would have been the best photo ever taken by anyone ever.

The ones either side don’t look that special, but I’m not letting that deter me from my belief. Moving swiftly on from my apparently never ending ability to make ridiculous mistakes with what is basically a very very simple camera, I did manage to get one or two that I liked. First up, hanging the camera out of the window of the safari truck I just did a hopeful shot to see what would come out.

I think this was taken on the first day, and was our first experience of what a lot of the roads in Kenya are like – red – and horribly uncomfortable. Next up, a random street scene in Kenya – like nothing I’ve ever experienced before or since.

This is a local shop – and is fairly consistent with all the other local shops you see when you aren’t in a city. Finally – out on the safari trail, a couple of shots that I feel OK about sharing:

I simply can’t understand why I didn’t take more pictures with the Holga whilst I was there – I guess I was too busy having a good time to think about it, most unlike me!

On the news it said that the whole world is now covered in snow and it’s colder than it has ever been ever.

Unless you’ve been living on the moon you probably already know this. Apparently it’s hot in this place called hotstralia but that seems quite unlikely because on the BBC it said it was snowing everywhere.

Anyway I made this, just because I can, on my garden wall. I call them John Snow and his family.

The only problem is Wilf the Dog seemed to think a family of cats had come to sit on the wall and not move at all for several hours, so as soon as we opened the back door he went mad and tried to attack them. Silly Wilf.

Finally got my Kenya Holga photos back this week – I’ll share them soon, so DON’T PANIC!

Remember when the met office said 2007 was going to be the hottest year on record – and then it was cooler than the previous year?

Remember when the met office said we would have a “barbeque summer” in 2009 – and July was the wettest since records began?

Remember when the met office said (as recently as December 20th) that this winter was going to be a mild one?

Yeah. Go met office. Nice to see our tax pounds being spent wisely. Now get this, John Hirst, chief goon at the met office has received performance related bonuses the last two years.

Ooh get me being all political and that. Anyway I wish they’d hurry up and bring on all this global warming we’re supposed to be having, it’s freezing here and my toes hurt.

Merry New Year and all that jazz. x