They've found a landing site.

This is just 3 in the last few weeks, i find so many -  some come tagless, i imagine, lost let go of by accident catching a breeze and taking flight to get popped by thorns, caught in trees and snared on fences somewhere on the farm. A silver one i met once, one winters day had a small amount of helium left and was slowly beautifully floating, ribbon in tow, across the top of ploughing. Occasionally they come with messages - "if found please return to ? and perhaps we will win the competition." I never hear so i presume we never do.

The latest, was the red one below. Found burst at the rivers edge, when i was looking for sheep. I went to photo it, as i do them all, and only then noticed it had a fine felt tipped message drawn over it. I could only make out one side - A smiley face and then a post code - WA8 7XG. I thought Warwickshire, not that far really from me, mostly they never come far, the ones with messages at least, who knows about the others? But when i turned it over to look for more it was

shot through. At home Mum and I searched the postcode, but it was a whole street, we needed a precise address. We got the sellotape out and stuck it all gently back together. Finally we revealed the message  -  I'm Leah Ella + Ruby if you find plz send us back. Then no more. We looked at Google maps, we did a Street View, we searched for the nearest school or community building, we wondered who might know that   Leah, Ella and Ruby were missing. Nothing was obvious.

WA8 7XG is in Widnes near Liverpool. I am in South Lincolnshire, a 133 miles apart by car - its made a huge trip this little balloon, the furthest of any i've ever found. But where do i send them, will the postman know, will the man at 34 know his neighbours and will he be like us - keen to get the news of their find announced.... i dont know what to do, should i call the paper, the police, can facebook help?

 
So why is this my off the beaten track - because of what I said to Mum as we tried hard to see a clue  - who'd have thought we'd be looking at a strange street in Widnes this afternoon because of a balloon.

Returning to the blog

It's strange returning here to write. Old blogs act as dairies found in the cupboards, aid memoirs to a vague set of sedimented truths, filling in the gaps where imagination and conjecture have been allowed to grow. What strikes me here is the change in technology - all the photographs were taken on a phone, the Nokia K70. This was Nokia's top camera phone but it wasn't a devise, I could not do decent video I could not be distracted by spam email or one of my children"s posts on Facebook from Indonesia. An app was not really a thing, the mobile phones primary use was to talk to people.

 Off the beaten track in the cemetery walking my dog I consider what would be a change of my behavior, I always look and listen, I take a breath from the list of things I have to do, I ring my mum in a moment of quiet regret for not visiting her more. Perhaps I talk to Kate about our days of work, keeping the pragmatic at bay so we can enact something interesting. The walking of our dogs in the respective spaces of our lives connecting through a device, like a form of distance viewing, connecting both digitally and through a state of mind engendered by habit and our aging dogs need for exercise.

 I also think about writing, that careful process of meaning making that is so difficult, that flow of disconnection that allows us to say something, different things to different people. The rain on the leaves captured on the phone, the pausing, the noticing, the desire to go and get my better camera, the shotgun mike that would cut out the children"s voices from the distant adventure playground. The moving of the phone far enough away from my face so the microphone cannot pick up the sound of my breathing, the desire for a tripod to create the "Lock off shot" the symbol of the art film- the attempt to signify art in the method not in the thing.

Three years ago I would have attempted a Haiku :-

 summer rain,dry leaves
clearing the graves of weeds
 rain beats it's rhyme.

 The turning away from my normal route, the search for difference here was not so much a physical journey but a recognition that my phone was like a blog, a collection of clips and images that would fill the gaps of imagination and conjecture, The sound of new rain on dry leaves, like the creaking of the ice flow on the reservoir becomes a short clip of video on my phone, not a Haiku or a sedimented memory, not a story or a trace, not a feeling or a desire- perhaps it is all these and none of them. On a recent trip to Florence stood in front of the birth of Venus I am pleased to capture an image of an image of an image, I am pleased, the painting is dirty the images vibrant.