While it is a little late to say Happy New Year, I’ll say it anyway ” Happy New Year” folks.

It’s been very quiet on the terrestrial photography front. My last proper outing was in July with a Pola trundle in Manchester, followed by a well deserved break in wild wet and windy Scotland.

The reason for the lack of any output has been primarily the completion of work on the ‘Weekend Country’ retreat. The two and a half year project on the interior culminated with the hanging of some of my own framed pictures and an area to display some of the camera collection.

Things outside have not gone too well though. The heating oil tank split and dumped 2500 litres of oil into the ground around the driveway. We how have two one metre deep holes full of water and oil and a bill for £2000 for the environmental cleanup – which is still ongoing. Thankfully those very nice people at the insurance company are picking up the tab.

Well this weekend was the second in a row, where the sun shone for a few hours and two cameras have been taken for a walk. The film from both outing is currently being dev’d, so hope to have something to stick up later in the week.

So what’s the picture above all about then? Well one of the cameras I took out was my Zero 2000 pinhole.

The last time this got a trundle was taken out was a year ago – three days from now – and this is one of the images taken then. Certainly nothing to write home about I know, but I like the clutter.

The other bit of progress is the tidying up of my workspace which has liberated all manner of crap from the adjacent darkroom. I can get in there, so maybe now is the time to put it back into use. Most of the chemicals on the shelf are well past their sell-by dates, so a little shopping at my favourite supplier Silverprint will get me back up and running again.