The Tog Blog

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The Northeast of England, famous for its heavy industry, mining, steel making, and furnaces. 

Portrayed time and again in the media as a bleak and barren landscape, made up of pit heaps, back-to-back houses, and poverty laden streets.  Our scenery captured in movies such as Get Carter and I Daniel Blake, which were set, decades apart, yet the basic scenery had not altered in the eyes of the producers who still envisaged the desolate and dreary north.

There is no denying any of the above, I grew up in Ashington in Northumberland, a town famed for its Footballing families and its ability to produce vast quantities of coal and aluminium. When you mention Ashington to people, many will respond with mumblings about it being a Pit Town where Jackie and Bobby Charlton come from. Classic memories of England’s world cup victory way back in 1966.  A nod or two will be given to the image of Flat Cap and Whippet, the working man with his trusty dog who was bred to catch rabbits for tea, keep the kids warm in bed and possibly win them a pound or two at the racing track.  Some will even mention the pigeon men, those who spent every spare minute building sheds on allotments and waiting tirelessly for their beloved birds to return having been loaded into baskets on the back of a bike, and travelled for miles before being let fly, many making it home before their owners did. 

What no one ever mentions or talks about is the wonderful, vibrant, colourful life that co-habited with all the above. 

Of course, today, we no longer have the heavy industry, the clean air act means that there is no longer a layer of soot over everything. Yet, growing up, so many of the birds appeared to be the same colour, so covered in dirt and pollution were they.  I learned to tell them apart by shape and size, with only a few standing out, the milk stealing Blue Tits were always easy to spot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will never cease to be in awe of the birds who inhabit our garden, memories of my first multi coloured starling come flooding back whenever I see one.  It is difficult to imagine that these rainbow birds, appeared to be brown with speckles, for many years that is all I recognised. Blackbirds were just that, black birds, I was oblivious that the females are so many shades of brown with delightful speckles, the only difference I knew was the brilliant yellow beaks of the males, standing out like lamps in the dark.

I was given my first camera way back in 1982, a trusty Kodak Instamatic, a “grown up” point and shoot for a 12-year-old girl, I remember using my first 24 exposure film on Christmas morning, in minutes, then being bored waiting for the week to collect the images from the local chemist.  The images were dire, out of focus, blurred and with seriously suspect subject matter.  However I was hooked, I joined the camera club at school, where we shot with old black and white cameras, and developed our own prints,  exciting stuff!  Yet, our subjects were all technical, the crushed Pepsi can, the fruit bowl, the landscape of our school playing field. No one thought of taking photographs of our natural world. Yet the ability to capture the moment and recreate in as an image on paper was a continued addiction.

 

  The clean air act and the revelation of multi coloured birds came about just as I was beginning my first job.  I was a hairdresser, colour and tone were a huge part of my existence, and now here I was surrounded by our UK bird life in glorious technicolour. 

 

This is one of the many reasons I continue to capture our daily visitors, the riotous celebration of colours and feathers which have shared our world for millennia, yet even today, are buried under the blanket of black in the eyes of the world. 

This love and celebration of colour does not just stop at birds, there is colour everywhere.

We need go no further than our own back garden to appreciate it.

Never lose sight of what we have in our hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                        

                                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                             

 

 

 

 

 

 

‹ Back

The Northeast of England, famous for its heavy industry, mining, steel making, and furnaces. 

Portrayed time and again in the media as a bleak and barren landscape, made up of pit heaps, back-to-back houses, and poverty laden streets.  Our scenery captured in movies such as Get Carter and I Daniel Blake, which were set, decades apart, yet the basic scenery had not altered in the eyes of the producers who still envisaged the desolate and dreary north.

There is no denying any of the above, I grew up in Ashington in Northumberland, a town famed for its Footballing families and its ability to produce vast quantities of coal and aluminium. When you mention Ashington to people, many will respond with mumblings about it being a Pit Town where Jackie and Bobby Charlton come from. Classic memories of England’s world cup victory way back in 1966.  A nod or two will be given to the image of Flat Cap and Whippet, the working man with his trusty dog who was bred to catch rabbits for tea, keep the kids warm in bed and possibly win them a pound or two at the racing track.  Some will even mention the pigeon men, those who spent every spare minute building sheds on allotments and waiting tirelessly for their beloved birds to return having been loaded into baskets on the back of a bike, and travelled for miles before being let fly, many making it home before their owners did. 

What no one ever mentions or talks about is the wonderful, vibrant, colourful life that co-habited with all the above. 

Of course, today, we no longer have the heavy industry, the clean air act means that there is no longer a layer of soot over everything. Yet, growing up, so many of the birds appeared to be the same colour, so covered in dirt and pollution were they.  I learned to tell them apart by shape and size, with only a few standing out, the milk stealing Blue Tits were always easy to spot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will never cease to be in awe of the birds who inhabit our garden, memories of my first multi coloured starling come flooding back whenever I see one.  It is difficult to imagine that these rainbow birds, appeared to be brown with speckles, for many years that is all I recognised. Blackbirds were just that, black birds, I was oblivious that the females are so many shades of brown with delightful speckles, the only difference I knew was the brilliant yellow beaks of the males, standing out like lamps in the dark.

I was given my first camera way back in 1982, a trusty Kodak Instamatic, a “grown up” point and shoot for a 12-year-old girl, I remember using my first 24 exposure film on Christmas morning, in minutes, then being bored waiting for the week to collect the images from the local chemist.  The images were dire, out of focus, blurred and with seriously suspect subject matter.  However I was hooked, I joined the camera club at school, where we shot with old black and white cameras, and developed our own prints,  exciting stuff!  Yet, our subjects were all technical, the crushed Pepsi can, the fruit bowl, the landscape of our school playing field. No one thought of taking photographs of our natural world. Yet the ability to capture the moment and recreate in as an image on paper was a continued addiction.

 

  The clean air act and the revelation of multi coloured birds came about just as I was beginning my first job.  I was a hairdresser, colour and tone were a huge part of my existence, and now here I was surrounded by our UK bird life in glorious technicolour. 

 

This is one of the many reasons I continue to capture our daily visitors, the riotous celebration of colours and feathers which have shared our world for millennia, yet even today, are buried under the blanket of black in the eyes of the world. 

This love and celebration of colour does not just stop at birds, there is colour everywhere.

We need go no further than our own back garden to appreciate it.

Never lose sight of what we have in our hands.