My Weekend Movie

OK so I have not managed many posts about my life in the USA for a while, but I have made a movie.

This was my weekend - Friday 14th December to Sunday 16th December.

Made on a JVC Eviro video camera, a Sony Ericsson camera phone and (mainly) a Leica d Lux 3 compact camera.

Edited on a Macbook Pro using iMovie 08.

I am suffering from being another year older

But we had a good party.

Almost Invsible

These are Alan and Ian's new songs. They used to form part of the Cylinders (pictured above in 2003), Ian on guitar and Alan on vocals. Ian, way back in the 1980's, played with me in our teenage garage band and has been working with me on various half baked musical ideas ever since.

I'm not on these tracks, which is probably a good thing, as they are jolly good. Alan's sister is on the first track and is duetting on the second.

Ian said they took years to get these songs together, so nice to hear these finished.

You can click on the links below to play the tracks. I believe a right click, or control click on a decent computer, will show a menu item "save link as" and you can save the file locally.

Almost Invisible - Profit

Almost Invisible - Invisible

Almost Invisible - Echo

Join our Club

Its funny the things you suddenly miss from the UK. Having had my evening meal, I was suddenly craving a Jacobs Club.


Having consulted this deeply wonderful website http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com, I have remembered that my love of the Jacobs Club is mainly nostalgia, they did indeed get a bit crap in more recent days.



This looks great too. http://www.wisechoiceuk.com - selling all things British to the American market, even Dolly Mixtures!

Bubbles the Launderette

Just a funny little film taken to:

a. Pass the time at the local Launderette.

b. Test out my little Leica camera's video capabilities.

c. Learn how the new iMovie works.

d. Test out my capabilities as a film editor.

This was taken in our local launderette in San Francisco's Mission district.

My Latest Film

I've been having more fun with Youtube, but this time I've also been combining uploading the videos with editing them together with the latest iMovie on the Mac.

My little Sony Ericsson Cybershot mobile phone also takes video, as well as being a phone, 3 MP camera, radio and MP3 player. Previously these videos were normally pretty useless, as there was no easy way to edit them. So the new iMovie allows you you to import these little clips and edit them together.

The possibilities of this technology is pretty amazing. I always have a phone in my pocket, therefore I always have a video camera in my pocket too. Lots of potential to make little movies.

So the little film below was cut together from around 12 individual files, taken on Saturday night. This was Moe's 30th birthday party, he wanted people to come with wigs. I managed not to bother bringing a wig, but much to my regret, some people had spare ones and I ended up looking like a Scottish Jimi Hendrix! Some people went a lot further and came dressed up to match the wigs.

I decided not to spend a huge amount of time editing this movie together, as the resolution on the camera phone video is pretty low, so this will always be a bit of a throw away. But it's a funny little reminder of last Saturday night. My little Leica takes much better video, but Moe lives in a particularly rough part of Oakland, so I didn't fancy having $700 worth of camera in my pocket walking through that area.

You can see Craig taking the above pic of me in my film, as I had my camera phone phone pointed at him when he was taking it.

Who can spot Lara in her different wigs? They were borrowed too.

Coming next, Bay Area Friends of Europe - The Movie. Taken on the little Leica.

Technical note (for anyone who may be interested): the ".3gp) video format that the camera phone uses needs converted to something more regular, like a ".mp4" file format before you can import that to iMovie, but there are loads of good converters around that'll do that.

Where were you on the day of Live Aid, 1985?

Well, the answer in our case was here! Steve Ellis's party July 13 1985 Ramsay Road Kirkcaldy.

This was my friend Steve Ellis's parents party. Of course, the true significance of Live Aid can only be judged with over 20 years hindsight - it was a big thing on the day, but I'm sure it's significance got bigger over the years.

I remember watching the afternoon stuff live, I loved Queen so much, I even made a donation! I remember catching live Bob Geldoff's classic - "fuck the address, there are people dying now, so get on the bloody phone" - funny how that didn't make the DVD! Some people I know taped the whole thing, it'd be fun to get a copy to see all the continuity etc. The DVDs miss a whole lot of the fun.

So whilst Madonna was gyrating around, we were at this party. Most of my friends from my year at school were there - Ian Grayson, Steve Ellis, Steve McIntosh and Steve Bruce.

I was fascinated with video cameras at the time, but owning one was a distant, far off dream. Steve Ellis's Dad always has so much cool stuff though, and he is behind the camera here.

A funny little snapshot of 22 years ago.

Later at the party, I remember having a few beers and trying to play the Genesis rarity (from around the time of their first album) "One Eyed Hound", and no one really understanding what it was meant to be. Glad that never made it onto video.

I've got one of my trademark black shirts on here and a "I've got it made in Hong Kong" T shirt, I think they were British Airways promotional T Shirts my Mum won.

Steel Magnolias in Santa Clara

We went to see the wonderful Santa Clara Players last night doing Steel Magnolias.

Our friend Daphne Nayar was outstanding as M'lynn, the Mother character. It was amazing to see someone I know well acting like they were someone else.

In the theatrical tradition, we bought Daphne some flowers. The lady on the far left was in the play too. she played Ouiser.

Daphne has has some wonderful reviews, here is one -

****1/2 "Poignant..."
Review posted by: Marj Moehrke from San Jose CA, Oct 28, 2007
I attended the 2pm show on Saturday. The theatre was almost full. I was
impressed by how the play was able to tell the story from one set. I
had seen the movie and knew what to expect next. I couldn't imagine how
they would tell the story from one set only but they did it to
perfection. The timing between the actresses was flawless. I especially thought
that the character who portrayed the mother was fantastic. The
character who portayed Clairee had such an authentic southern accent, I almost
thought she had been raised in the south! My 15 year old was laughing
out loud so many times. And he also admitted to crying too. Thanks for
putting on such a poignant show. We were still wiping away tears as we
left the theatre.

"Excellent performances"
Comment posted by: Wal Oliver from Watsonville, Oct 29, 2007
I enjoyed the play as much as I enjoyed the movie.

The players website is here - http://www.scplayers.org

Well Scary

We had a 5.2 magnitude earthquake nearby this evening. It was pretty scary, the whole building shook and wobbled a lot. Some of my CDs and DVDs fell over. This was the largest tremor I've experienced in two and a half years of living in an earthquake zone.


Hapilly it seems that not much damage or disruption has been caused. One of the local TV channels is asking people to e-mail photos of damage to them. Although I think captioning this one "Bathroom Mayhem" may imply they are struggling for dramatic pictures. Hope we will always be this lucky.

Retirement at 16, why were we so earnest?

For my further education after school, I did a course called "HND Communication Studies" at Kirkcaldy College of Technology. I didn't really have the faintest idea what I wanted to do with my life at the age of 17 when I had to make some key decisions about my future. But this course appealed to me, as it was about a subject I was interested in; the media, journalism, television and marketing. Going for an HND course instead of going to University also meant an easier life in my 6th year at high school as I got most of the grades required to make this course in my 5th year at school.


One of the more exciting things we got to do at college was to practice a potential career in television, both behind and in front of the cameras. I can recall this practice was in two parts. The first was just reading a piece to camera to see how you came over. I think I read a piece about Star Trek - arrgh, I was only 17 I suppose! I remember the lecturer said I may have a problem getting a career as a TV presenter as I had the kind of face that was "naturally vague". This comment caused enduring hilarity among my fellow potential TV stars.

The second exercise was much more ambitions, we were supposed to make our own TV programme. This course requirement caused us much angst in advance as I remember. The class split up into about 4 different teams and the team of people I did this with were just the people I chose to sit around on day one of the course.


Our team was - Lorraine Rennie (main presenter), me and Mark Deas (first interview), Ewan Croal and Susan Neilson (second interview), Barbara Penman and Dave Radford (third interview).

I remember doing endless preparation for this exercise. We split our little team into sub groups who would interview each other for the programme. Mark would become a good mate in the coming months, but I don't remember him being at college much around this time and he dropped out in year 2. I think this video was made towards the latter half of year one and Mark's enthusiasm for the course was really fading.

Our group had a few sessions to get the programme ready, but I don't remember Mark being there much. So our section is pretty scripted, you can see the piece of paper pretty obviously on my lap. It was so scripted, that I think I wrote the questions and the answers for our piece. Mark's one great contribution was the title - "Retirement at 16", we all loved that.

Mark was a big socialist at the time, I first met him at a meeting of the Militant Tendency (of all places), so the parts of the piece where he is talking about the final end of capitalism is the only bit I didn't script. I think he is improvising here.


Owing to Mark and I being a little under prepared, our piece ran short by mistake, so we asked Ewan and Susie to pad their piece out a bit. This didn't seem an issue for them. Ewan was the guy I sat next to in the whole of my second year of college and he was a real nice guy, never short of a word or two.

There are some great little period touches in this piece. Ewan's references to "Bentleys" and a "Nick Kershaw haircut" are priceless. I remember Susie came from a particularly rough part of Fife that I didn't know well and some of her experiences may have helped her talk so knowledgeably about heroin abuse and alcoholism. Most of us, except Mark and I, tried to make an effort to look smart for this show. Susie used to call this her "social worker look". I think Mark and I's look make us look more like genuine socialists though.


Ewan looks a bit uncomfortable in his tie too. With 22 years hindsight, one of the things that shocks me about this video are the number of technical mistakes. The programme was made by a guy called Don who was the college's resident technician, but I don't think he could have been taking this too seriously. There's obviously a problem with Susie's mic that didn't get corrected and the crackles are left in. You can actually hear Don coughing behind the camera. I remember all the equipment looked ancient to me, even in 1985. The video system was a huge clunky Umatic system. I remember the Umatic tapes seemed enormous.

Barbara the body builder is wonderful here. She was always so softly spoken that I struggled with the thought of her being a body builder. Dave was the oldest of our little group, he was an ancient 23 or 24 at the time and that seemed a large age gap. As he was the oldest, he tended to take control of our little group. He looks nervous as hell in this piece too.


All of Dave's "taking charge" meant that we got voted the best programme by our classmates in other groups. We sat through all the programmes in class one day, and I got the impression that other groups didn't manage to take the exercise as seriously as we did. The only major errors on ours were technical, other teams seemed to be taking the piss a bit. The lecturer felt I transcended my "vague look" from the earlier video and Lorraine got special praise as our anchor woman.

What really amazes me now is the sheer earnestness of the programme. I suppose these were grim time in Fife, the miners strike was still on and unemployment was around 3 million. But I have such wonderful memories of my life around this time, the earnestness of the programme seems to conflict with this memory. I think the truth is we were all a bit nervous and Dave was being pretty bossy throughout the preparation and making of this.


The letteraset titles took bloody ages to do and it still looks crap. We got this final one the wrong shape too and Don the technician / cameraman had to pan around it to make it work. Our backdrops don't really work either, they are too small in relation to the rest of the "set". Mark and I's is particularly poor.

The beginning music was my idea, it's a Song called "Leisure" from XTC's "English Settlement" album. It seemed to fit Mark's "Retirement at 16" title perfectly. "My Generation" at the end was Dave's idea. I played the music from my sister's portable cassette player into the studio mic while Don filmed the leteraset.

I happened to know a guy who had just started at the college as a junior technician, working for Don. He was in the year below me at High School and was a really nice guy called John Wishart. I persuaded him to strike a copy of our programme. I think he took this straight from Umatic to Betamax, which was the format of the video recorder we had at home. Betamax was a much better format than VHS at the time, shame it didn't catch on, the picture quality was a lot better.

I rented a VHS machine when I moved just behind the college tho 2 Sang Place Kirkcaldy a few months later. I remember this cost 11 pounds a month and this seemed an incredible expense as my whole income was only 70 pounds a month. I quickly transfered some of my favorite Beta tapes to VHS in the Summer of 1985 and this was one of them.

This survived on the same VHS tape from 1985 to 2005, when it was transfered to DVD. The faint white lines that scroll up and down the screen are a result of decay on the original VHS tape, it seems I was able to digitise this at just the right time before the VHS became unplayable. The Beta tape still exists, but I'm not sure if I will ever get my hands on a beta machine to play it.

As far as I know, this is the only one of the programmes from our year of HND Communication Studies that got copied. Certainly, I'd be very surprised if any other programmes survived this long, copied or not. It's really funny think that, thanks to 21st century technology, this little student programme may now be seen by more people than anyone ever intended.

Due to the 10 minute per video restriction on Youtube, this is split into two parts.





We did go on to make some more impressive videos in our second year.


This time we had a more professional set up in the college assembly rooms. The college had asked for volunteers from our course to make some educational videos for the council. Our part was the technical side - production, direction, sound, camera, floor manager, etc. I was the sound engineer, you can see me poised over the 4 track porta studio that doubled as a mixer. The Drama Studies course provided the people in front of camera this time.

Next to me is Kim Marr who was the vision mixer and nearest the camera is Madeline Fyfe who was the producer (she was always a bossy sort!). Don didn't get too involved this time, although I'm pretty sure I remember him taking this picture.


Looking back on it, this was just a way for the council to get educational videos for free, although we had good fun doing this and the college was very grateful. Left to right above is Donna Hodgkinson and Lynn Williamson on camera, Andy Gyle the floor manager and Neil Renton also on camera. There are two drama students who's names I have long forgotten in front of camera. I love the way the cameras have "KCT TV Colour" written on them.


I didn't get a copy of these videos, I think my enthusiasm was less this time as we were not in front of camera. Also our final exams were looming, so I guess I had other things on my mind.

Shame, as the drama students had someone that year who went on to become a genuine star. Sharon Small, who is now one of the two stars of The "Inspector Linley Mysteries" (a favorite here on US Public TV) was the anchor woman for all the videos. I remember her being professional, but of course no one realised she'd go on to have a genuine career in film and TV. One of the highlights of my whole college experience was getting to pin a contact mic on her blouse. Well I was the sound engineer after all.

Having watched "Retirement at 16", if there are any NBC, CBS, BBC executives out there watching Blogger or Youtube for potential television stars, just let me know. You'd only be 22 years late.

Bay Area Friends of Europe - The Movie

This is Geoff Lewis's, who is the man behind the Bay Area Friends of Europe, little video about the group. I think it is rather cool, although there is no interview with me as I wans't there that day. My friend Daphne is, from memory, the second interview - she is the one taking about what she misses most about the UK is British sarcasm.

The Andrew Crescent Recording Sessions Summer 2006

In the summer of 2006 I had one of those magical holidays back in Scotland that I'll remember forever.

I managed to do so many things. Camping in the Highlands (the first time I'd camped since 1978!).

The world cup was on, so I was able to watch some of that in the pub and Travel Inn.

I was down my favourite pub, Robertsons in Rose Street in Edinburgh.

And I got to record some music with my old friends.

This was in Ian's house in Leith. He's sold his one now and is moving to a new flat next month.

I always thought I was so lucky to have friends who are such great musicians. For many years they have been able to amplify whatever microscopic musical talent I have and have been able to make sense of whatever odd, half-formed musical idea I happen to have in my head.

We managed two different sessions this holiday. Apart from the picture at the very top of this post, all these still pictures were taken at a session where we recorded a song I'm going to call "That's Why I Hate the Blues". I had the idea for the lyric around 20 years ago, in 1986.

At that time my Friend Ritchie put me up temporarily in his flat in York Place in Edinburgh, where he was staying at that time. It was my first real experience of staying in that exciting city across the water from Fife. The city I used to see every night from my bedroom in Fife. It's twinkly lights always seemed to alluring when I closed by bedroom curtains at night.

Ritchie was a huge blues fan, he later played harmonica with a number of them. The bar over the road at the top of Broughton Street, that later became "The Basement" at that time had just opened as "The Blues Basement" and live blues bands used to play there. We also used to go and see blues bands at those other long defunct Edinburgh venues, the Preservation Hall and the Jailhouse.

Never having been a huge blues fan (it all seemed to formulaic to me), but finding Ritchie's enthusiasm difficult to fight against, I began to imagine a song about a guy getting the blues about the blues. You know, having been forced to listen to so much blues music, he got the blues about the blues, real bad.

So the first session was an attempt to record the music for this song I had formulated in my head 20 years previously.

The other song that we did at the second session was called " I wish I could", which was a shorter punkier song. Darren couldn't make it to the second session, which is a shame as I love his bas playing. He always manages to play just the right thing, not too much, not to little, he has a great bass sound too.

However, Andy was on hand to do the bass too - he had a nice punky style on this song.



These video clips are great fun, they are all from the second session. We recorded "I Wish I Could" at this second session as well as changing some of "That's Why I Hate the Blues".

I wish we had the technology years ago. It would have been nice to have video of us recording our early material. I think it's really interesting to see us playing some of the material that ended up in the songs. Some of these clips are us just trying out bits and pieces for sound levels or just messing about. Other clips are first takes of pieces that didn't end up in the songs. Other clips are the actual takes that we used in the songs. The above clip is Ian trying out an idea that didn't get used for "That's Why I Hate The Blues".



This is Andy trying out a solo for "That's Why I Hate The Blues". Ian is doing his recording engineer bit here as usual. Andy is playing his beloved Gibson SG here, I think he was had it for about 25 years. You can see too in the "Tom's New Shoes" video that's in an earlier blog post here and also on my YouTube page.



This is Andy's main guitar solo for "I Wish I Could". Funny, it shows the benefit of little video clips of the recording, I had forgotten he was playing Ian's Telecaster here. This take is in the finished song.



This is Andy, on his SG again, doing a nice light little solo over my acoustic guitar at the end of "I Wish I Could". This take is in the finished song too.



This is my first attempt at the acoustic guitar for the end of "I Wish I Could". Bloody hopeless actually, the timing is very wayward and I forgot what I was doing half way through. Ian's comment that "I think the other one was a lot better" is curious, as I don't remember doing one before that.



This take is the one that we used in the final song. Only slightly better really, my timing is still pretty out. Ian cheered me up about it at the time though, by calling it "Syd Barrettesque"! It does sound a lot better on the mixed version with Andy's guitar on the top.

I just need to add vocals to these songs now and they will be finished. Hope I can get round it it one day soon. It's a good thing that there are no video clips of my plastic bucket percussion on "That's Why I Hate the Blues"!

The Best Pastries in San Francisco

After lazing around until about about 12 yesterday, we got up early today and headed to this place I had only heard about before. It's at 18th and Guerrero and their pastries are meant to be very special. But, especially on a weekend, the queuing is supposed to be very bad.

We tried to get in early, at 8.30 - but didn't realise that it didn't open until 9!

This was the queue and it was only 8.40, 20 minutes before it even was supposed to open.

This was the queue at 8.55, five minutes before it was supposed to open, we were at the front - hooray.

And there are even some left over to enjoy later. I'm glad we got their early after all.

The Link Ups with the Beatles Kareoke

I just came over these little video files taken with my Leica camera when I just bought it, so I thought I'd share them with You Tube and the world, as they bring back happy memories.

This was a really fun party. For a while Bay Area Link Up (www.bayarealinkup.com) had a number of musical events and people were asked to bring instruments along. This morphed into a band called the "Link Ups".

This was a party we had in San Francisco on the 16th of December 2006 at Fort Mason. I was there with my little Turkish friend, you can see her dancing around near the backing vocals mike in the videos. I had a beer or two and decided that I would sing backing vocals all night.

I remember a particularly dodgy solo version of "House of the Rising Sun", well the beginning of it, before I forgot the words. Hapilly, I can't easily sing and take video at the same time, so my performances are in the dustbin of history where they belong.

In case you are wondering what these songs are meant to be, they are "Happy Christmas, War is Over", well it was Christmas after all, and "Rocky Racoon".

I love Open Work!

Despite some of the frustrations, one of the reasons I stay with Sun Microsystems is the wonderful Openwork policy. As one of my old boss's explained to me once, if you have an internet connection and phone, you can work anywhere.

I like to collect bizarre places I have worked for Sun, this must top them all. I took my laptop along to the garage as they can often do oil changes while you wait. I took the laptop as something to keep me amused and, not unreasonably, to do some work as I think I was still there in what was technically a "work hour". I couldn't figure out where the waiting room was, so ended up sitting in the showroom. I clicked on the iBook's wireless settings, more in hope than expectation that a network would appear, and it did - and also in the name of Falore Nissan, the name of the garage dealership.

So - hooray for Falore Nissan who are actually a nice Nissan dealership (miles better than the shite service I got at San Jose's Capitol Nissan where I bought the car) and hooray for Sun's Openwork policy. My only minor disappointment is that no one approached me and asked me to sell them a car! I have also worked from an Edinburgh Laundrette and a Dutch motorway in the past, but I'm not sure if they count as neither had wireless internet.

Old Father Time is the most unforgiving parent, but he can't take away the golden years

I really love this photo, I've been looking at it a lot in the past day or so. My fondest memories of this amazing family were the time we spent together from my birth, to the mid 1980's. This is my Gran on my mother's side and all her brothers and sisters. I can't remember how I came to have this scan, but this photo is also up on the wall of my cousin's house.

I think this photo must have been taken around 1930. My Gran is on the far left, she would have been 19 then. Their lives were so different from ours. I remember my Gran being shocked at how many presents us children got in the 1970's and I remember being shocked to find out that they only got an apple and an orange at Christmas, if they were lucky! This was a very close family by modern standards, I think now maybe the hardships of their lives made them close. The family, in the old cliche, survived two world wars, and the poverty of their own childhoods. We were especially close to, in a word that used to amuse me when I was little because of it's potential double meaning, the "Aunts".

My sister and I came into the world when they were around their mid to late 50's. There weren't many other children our age around then and the Aunts really enjoyed our company, there are a huge number of cinie films of us with the aunts back in the 60's and 70's.

As I think about that period if my life again, I think the Aunts must have thought of the mid 60's to the mid 80's as being a golden period. They all retired around the early 70's, there was never much money around, but they had enough to have a comfortable life and they all had their health. Happily, this period of their lives coincided with my childhood. There seemed to be endless family get togethers, and the summer holidays did seem long, before I turned into that strange creature called a "teenager" and they, as it seemed to me at the time, turned into old people.

They all lived into their mid 80's or early '90's. I sometimes wonder if the difficult environment they grew up in helped give them a long life. I hope I got their genes though, and live as long as they did, despite living a very different Californian, air conditioned life.

But indeed, old father time is the most unforgiving parent of all, and Aunt Susan, the last of the Aunts, died yesterday at the age of 93 and a half. She is second from the left in the 1930 picture above and on the right beside my Gran in the photo below.

I remember a poignant moment around January of 2004. She was in hospital and was beginning to fade, mentally. She had just turned 90, but didn't realize it. My cousin told her she had just turned 90 and she seemed really startled by the news. She said "Oh Ron, what happened to all those years", Ron said "Well Susan, you lived them". Lets hope many of them were happy.

The more contemporary images were taken in the Summer of 1983 with a disc camera (remember them?), can you spot the grainy quality?

Once Again

The wonderful Irish film, Once has now come out in the UK and it's been getting some great reviews. Some bits and pieces have shown up on youtube which I'm sure is not strictly legal, but it if encourages more people to go and see the whole film, then I suppose it's a good thing.

I saw this film and felt good all day after, what better recommendation?

LTL3 and other cameras

Having uploaded all my images, many scanned very laboriously from badly cataloged prints, I've been a little nostalgic for the camera that took many of them.

This was it. A Praktica LTL3, bought second hand in Dixons Kirkcaldy in 1982. I was initially very hesitant about it's completely manual exposure and focus, but soon got used to it. I took soooo many pictures in the mid 80's, just at the time when I was getting a decent amount of pocket money and before I had discovered alcohol in any volume. As I think about it, particularly in 1984 when the photo taking seemed to reach its maximum, this rather bulky camera must have been with me all the time.

I was briefly seduced by the technological marvell that was the disc camera - remember them? My Aunt Nan could never take decent photos and these cameras were meant to be so easy to use that we even suggested she got one, I don't remember if she ever took that up. Disc cameras were meant to have virtually eliminated blur, but they did this by using very fast film, so the photos were always very grainy.

I never really knew how old the Praktica was as I bought it second hand. One of the websites I visited today said that they began production in Praktica's Plant in Dresden in the former East Germany in 1972, but anyway - it gave up on me around 1988 and I was advised that it'd be more money than it was worth to fix it. So I took to borrowing my Dad's Olympus OM10 and it became my favorite camera for many years.

I bought a little plastic Olympus compact in 1995, really just to have something small to put in my pocket for my friend Steve's wedding, that became my main camera before I left it, somewhere in Aberdeen on a rather drunken night in 2001. I then took to using a load of cardboard disposable cameras - well, it wouldn't matter if I lost one of them! The cardboard age lasted (with a brief departure with a very very cheap Boots own brand compact) from 2001 to 2004 when my Dad gave me his old compact digital camera, another Olympus and I was in the digital photography age.

I just realised that the Nikon digital SLR is therefore the first SLR I have bought for 25 years!

I'm really struggling to think what my favorite photo is that was taken with the Praktica, but this is pretty representative of the era. Taken by flatmate Nicci Vernolini, this is me and Inca the dog in the autumn of 1985. The Praktica being augmented by a flashgun, bought at great expense (or so it seemed at the time when I also had to buy Led Zeppelin and 10cc records!) the previous year.

I rather like this photo also taken with the Praktica in the Summer of 1985 of Kirkcaldy band, The Crucified Brains.