Their paddling pool

It felt good to be back in the company of Helen, her sons, and her friend Steve P. again, despite the surly weather having accompanied me across the west country. Helen and I met at a Christmas party in the mid 1980s when her boyfriend at the time was a filmmaker of some renown, and who I knew through friends of friends.

I had been helping a South African anti-apartheid activist complete the post-production of a film he shot while in exile in Mozambique, during which he had been targeted and blown up by a car bomb, planted by the South Africans. He lost an arm and his sight in one eye. His South African friends in London rallied around to help him in his recovery, and I was brought in to coordinate the film's completion. A couple of weeks ago I heard Albie Sachs speaking again, being interviewed on Radio Four about those times and his subsequent work as a judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. vHe was appointed to the court by Nelson Mandela in 1994 and retired in October 2009. Being with Helen reminds me of those turbulent times.

Soon after we met, Helen helped me on a music video I was producing and we have been close friends ever since, and I have followed the births and lives of her sons O. and B. ever since. This week O. left school to go to a college to study for A and AS levels. They are all so talented too!

Helen has now reversed roles somewhat and she has offered to kick start me into action, by letting me see how she goes about a new job fro a client, building a web site which may potentially have some video material she has shot. She is a very fine director and now a one-person filmmaker working successfully in the the west of England.

Outside her studio space, where all her work is achieved, is the driveway which was originally cut through an old and large wood-bank adjoining an ancient trackway now called the High Street. The cars are parked inside the old boundary and the gravel has begun to be potholed forming quite a large and deep puddle, which is where on this soggy, drizzly mornings like today, birds are gathering with apparent glee.

On the remaining woodbank are old surviving remnants of hazel and other small woodland species in which there appeared to be a profusion of birds, particularly goldfinches and blackbirds. Having spotted them playing together and then diving into the puddle, I took my camera outside to see if I could photograph them without frightening them away.

These two are juvenile blackbirds who seemed particularly playful and they kept too-ing and fro-ing between the water and the protection of the old remnants of the hedge and its plants. At this point they were standing opposite to one another for minutes on end, trying to outdo each other with their diving and ducking, as they appeared to thrill with the occasion of the abundance of safe water to play in. I liked this shot as it captures both of them disturbing the water's surface, whilst still being able to see the look on one of their faces and to see the beautiful rich colours in its plumage.

It was really good to be with Helen again and to learn a lot in a short time, which I must now go home to put into practice, of sorts! I will be back, hopefully with Helena next time.

ps
In case you are concerned the red colour is the marvellous effect of the local Old Red Sandstone rock that outcrops across much of Somerset and Devon, and even Herefordshire, much further north.