#keynsham

The leaves are coming out:)

Spring is now well underway and yesterday (19.4) walking through the park and looking up at the leaves coming out on the trees, I could really feel it:)

On a recent episode of the 2Legs podcast, guest Dino Viscera pointed out something odd about the album artwork for Paul’s ‘Driving Rain’ album. It shows a postcard addressed to ‘Paul McCartney, ‘Driving Rain’, Keynsham, Essex, UK’.

It’s odd because Keynsham isn’t in Essex, it’s near Bristol.

This could just be a bit of Beatlesesque randomness. Macca weirdness. Or could there be anything else to it?

First of all, what’s the deal with Keynsham? Well, the town secured its place in the popular culture in UK in the early 60s courtesy of Horace Batchelor, who advertised his services on pop radio as a football pools predictor. When giving his contact address, he would spell out the letters of Keynsham.

This in turn inspired the title track of The Bonzo Dog Band’s 1969 album ‘Keynsham’. Paul, of course, had produced their 1968 single ‘The Urban Spaceman’. There’s that connection, then. But why associate it with ‘Driving Rain’?

Well…Channel 5 in UK recently showed a programme called ‘The Great Flood of 1968’, about flooding that occurred on the night of 10 July 1968 in the Bristol area and heavily featured Keynsham. The flooding was so bad that Keynsham was officially declared a disaster area. Ok, Keynsham…driving rain…

The Bristol area was well known to Paul back in the mid 60s. Jane was resident there for long spells with the Bristol Old Vic Repertory Company. Paul often visited her there, famously getting the Rigby name from the Rigby & Evens wine and spirits shippers shop/office in King Street.

Back to 10 July 1968. What else was going on that evening? Well, back in London, the Jane Asher starring play ‘Summer’ opened at The Fortune Theatre. Gyles Brandreth, a British broadcaster and writer, wrote in his memoir and in his published diaries that he was there that night as a friend of Jane’s. He said that Paul was also there and was unaware that it was already over with Jane. Jane, he says, was with the play’s director, Robert Kidd. So, a significant event in P&J’s break-up.

As mentioned, the Keynsham address on the ‘Driving Rain’ postcard could be completely random. Or it could be a conscious or unconscious memory prompted by the heavy rain lyrical concept of the title track. ‘Essex’ could be there as part of the randomness or could be there as a distraction, avoiding the specific geographical detail of Keynsham, Somerset. Or, perhaps it’s there as a deliberate mistake to draw attention to it for those who are interested?

Maybe, as the Bonzos say in ‘Keynsham’, “there are no coincidences but, sometimes, the pattern is more obvious”.

Driving Rain

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Pylons across the Hams - 13.6.26

Documenting the impact of pylons on the landscape was something I used to do a lot of when I was living back in Essex. That's because the part of Essex I lived in had a lot of pylons. So you can imagine my delight when shortly after moving down to Keynsham in 2022, I discovered these pylons striding across the landscape:)

Dusk, then the darkness

The last glimpse of the light before the dark of a late afternoon in November descended upon us. Also, pushing my camera to the limit with low light photography!

Looking back in sepia vision…

This is me looking back at the photos I've shot so far this month to see which ones would work cropped square and sepia toned. The aim being to convey a sense of nostalgia and also, an uneasy feeling of impending loss…