Contrary to Herr Wignall’s opinion at Harrogate, though, found Chur to be an ugly mass of traffic wrapped in industrial estates surrounding a small, unwelcoming old town, especially unpleasant in temperatures high enough to melt lead. That trip also consigned us to a strange night in a stranger hotel by the Wallansee and me to two hours wandering around a non-town in the dark with a grumpy little man attached to my back.

Ne’er mind. All good fun!

Oh, and got back to find Maxim has proven himself to be a man of impeccable taste by wanting my EXPLETIVE DELETED story for the next BEST BRITISH MYSTERIES. Score!

Now back to work.

Was shitting myself as the Balloon Game kicked off, but once the initial ‘justify yourself’ part was over (and I’d been punted out almost unanimously as a pantomime villain-standard-of-evil Spillane), had great fun. Never thought I’d get to use the phrase “we can’t have darkies running around the English countryside” in front of 200 people. And even that didn’t top Stuart’s sock puppet raven and overall performance, which had me close to collapsing with hysterics.

Good stuff.

My first stab at HDR/exposure-combining (for those amongst you with no idea what I mean, that’s one exposure for the sky, which would otherwise be much brighter and with blown highlights, and one for the church, which would otherwise be too dark and lose all its shadow detail, combined in one pic).

It’s perhaps more obvious in the colour version.

(Shot with his mum’s old f1.4 max aperture lens on my camera.)

Keep an eye out for developments content-wise - that ?downloads? link at the top will eventually lead somewhere and you might find it interesting.

That?s if it?s not all terribly broken, of course.

Three hours a day.

Help.

One thing that it looks like I will be trying is a side project - not two books at once, but one purely as a couple of hundred words a day kinda hobby - currently in my notebook as GODSLAYER.

My mum would be so proud.

John’s basement lighting in moody self portrait shock.