Godchildren

Caroline and I have between us collected quite a gaggle of Godchildren. It's nice when we have visits from them. Last week, Caroline's Godson and his newish wife came to stay: yesterday, my violinist Goddaughter arrived for the night, our reason for booking tickets for the concert I mentioned. She's been at another this morning, before joining us for lunch in the garden afterwards.

A great pleasure, but I was sad to reflect on how small a part I had had in her musical flowering: yesterday was the first time I had ever taken her along to a concert.

Dropping off at the Pump Room, I saw Festival Director Meurig Bowen, who handed me a copy of his 70th Anniversary Festival book: it's a beautifully put together assembly of all the programme covers over the years - plus a few photographs at the end (two by me).

Portraiture

Our local art gallery is hosting the National Portrait Gallery's photography show entries at present. I went along this morning, and marveled at many of the entries, which make my portraits look feeble in the extreme.

The exhibits are on two floors: when you reach the top one, you find a list of the prizewinners; but why can't the portraits awarded prizes be identified, so you can see which they are when you look round?

Somehow, we managed to miss the Open West show this year, but the above photograph shows part of one of the entries, still left in situ outside the rear of 51 Clarence Street: an untitled viscose yarn installation by Londoner Stella Whalley.

Photographers

Two of them have been showing work at the Gardens Gallery here all for a week. I went along to admire their work on Friday night, by when there was already a healthy rash of red dots scattered amongst the exhibits.

"An August Bank Holiday Lark"

A line from a Larkin poem is taken as the title for Northern Broadsides' Great War centenary tribute. The production reached us here in Cheltenham this evening, where the Everyman hosts it all week - well worth catching a performance, as it's excellent.

For the Tobacco Factory's Shakespeare a fortnight ago, there was acres of empty seats: tonight was different - down to the imaginative pricing, I guess (all tickets £10). We certainly had money's worth. The storyline was predictable - an idyllic pre-War world shattered by the arrival of War Office telegrams - but treated in a way that moved me far more than War Horse. The company's Director, Barrie Rutter led the cast of 12 multi-talented performers - actors, singers, dancers and musicians all.

Sitting up in the Balcony, with - I thought - nobody to annoy alongside or behind me, I took some photographs during the big scene just before the interval. "Not allowed!" I was quickly told by the usher. "Please delete." Oh dear! They were rather good ones. I have inserted instead a picture of a university friend: I heard from our companions at the play that he had died recently.

Even back in the early 'Sixties, Roger Taylor, a tall man, affected the image of someone older, with Meerschaum pipe, deer-stalker and silver-topped cane. I last saw him in September 2012 at our College reunion. He was living in a caravan: once, his home was Lowndes Square, Belgravia. Now, I gather, he is dead. "Never such innocence again."

Presentation

Today is the feast of the presentation of Jesus at the Temple of Jerusalem. It used to be called Candlemas. At dinner last night, we were talking about the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela: our host has completed it twice. He was quizzed by another guest. "What does a Jew do when he reaches Santiago?" The response, of course, was "Present himself at the tomb of the Apostle James, himself a Jew in boyhood."

It was an evening full of insights: the use of Seville oranges in a soufflé for one; but particularly into the mind of "South Africa's foremost documentary photographer" (the description is  Lesley Lawson's), photographed here with his elder son. He presents his work conceptually, ostensibly eschewing lyricism.

But does he really? I asked (knowing his work via the monograph in Phaidon's 55 series). Perhaps with the lapse of time, David Goldblatt admits, we can now view some of those stark images of South Africa in the Apartheid era as indeed lyrical.

Party time

On the strength of the photographs I took at the recent tree planting at Well Close, I was asked to bring my camera along to Phoenix, 86-90 Winchcombe Street in our town centre for the St George's and St Vincent's Christmas party this afternoon.

Here were 80 or so people of all ages and all sorts of impaired ability: hardly any of them could talk, and most were unable to feed themselves. But they were given a great time, and clearly enjoyed themselves without inhibition. To be there felt like a privilege.

I was a little daunted by the commission, not having been to Phoenix before - and not knowing the range of people who would be present. So I was relieved to hear from the Manager after I had sent her the photographs, that "just looking at these is so moving: you have captured the essence of our work and the personalities of the people in the pictures."

Eamonn McCabe

I would love to be a witty photographer like Eamonn McCabe, former photo editor of the Guardian. He showed some examples of his art in the Pittville Pump Room this evening, the annual "big" talk put on by the Camera Club. "Alas poor Yorick!" was the Guardian's caption for a shot of a bald-headed goalkeeper cradling the ball.

A good raconteur, McCabe spoke with enthusiasm and wasn't too techy. So he went down well with me, if not with the nerdy fraternity. Great images of course, charting his development from gigs groupie to sports photographer to portraitist. "There's something about loners," he said. "What makes them work?" Solving that question seems very much the key to McCabe's success.

Bristol Family Arts Festival

Half term is big business for Bristol's many and varied palaces of culture. Nine organisations have clubbed together to make a trail through the City Centre: we followed part of it with the boys today, being based on Edmund's boat, visible in the centre of the photograph. This I took from the M Shed balcony, which gives a great 180 degree view over the Avon and Northwards.

You could spend a whole day in the M Shed itself, but we also packed in the best part of an hour at the Architecture Centre (model building making) and lit a candle or two in Bristol Cathedral, where we admired some weird fragments of mediaeval glass in the Cloister: finally, we visited the Library to choose a DVD. (We only just remembered to get it unlocked - something Cheltenham hasn't yet begun to require us to do.)

And the boys and I marvelled - each in our own way - at Michael Dean's "The Introduction of Muscle" exhibition at the Arnolfini. This occupies two rooms - one huge, one smaller. But "occupies" them with a total of five modestly-sized sculptures. "It's all about texture," the helpful gallery guide told us, encouraging us to feel the amorphous, coloured concrete objects. One was recognisable as a cabbage. Others resembled a tongue, a pair of arms, possibly someone's back. No "labels" are supplied. The black flooring and the (white?) lighting form part of the "show".

The boys enjoyed being able to run round: to put it another way, they took the fact that this was "art" in their stride. I had more of a problem: the acronym Grayson Perry gave us in his "Nice rebellion, Welcome In!" Reith lecture yesterday morning was MAYA, "most advanced yet acceptable". But is it?

Photography came under the microscope in the previous lecture. ("It rains on us like sewage from above.")  His advice to photographers seemed to be, make all your editions limited: "if something is endless, it's giving away part of its qualification as art." You can easily tell, Perry said, if a portrait photograph is art or not. "Are they smiling? If they are - probably not art."

"A community of Women"

I haven't been to Meantime for a while, but was glad to be able to pay a visit this morning. Vicky Hodgson, a Worcestershire photographer, has mounted an exhibition of images of women who work in the somewhat run down area immediately surrounding the workshop/gallery, tucked in near to Cheltenham's High Street.

This is a woman's view of women. There's no glamour angle. The subjects are posed, after discussion and with agreement, their clothes carefully chosen, their look directed at the lens. It's a cooperative venture, in other words, one perfectly underlining the usefulness of Meantime's role as a reflection on, of and for its neighbourhood.

The end-of-residency discussion last night drew in some of the "models": Herefordshire artist, Anna Falcini, who has written interestingly about Vicky's residency, also attended. I was sorry to miss it. (We were supposed to be at the RNT relay of Othello, but I made a right muddle over our tickets: red faces when an email arrived from Cineworld this morning, hoping we had enjoyed it.)

Church crawling

Jenkins to hand, Caroline and I set off inland today on a wet morning to look at two churches with seven stars between them. Even looking at lesser churches in Cornwall gives me great pleasure, if only for their churchyards' old slate tombstones: they last long enough to reveal much fine lettering still.

Getting to Blisland was itself a delightful journey of discovery, passing garden-gate produce stalls, ancient signposts and through a maze of narrow lanes. The church is almost worth visiting for its name alone: the only one dedicated to the brothers Protus and Hyacinth, whose feast was yesterday. John Betjeman raved about the Victorian screen, which runs gaudily across the entire width of the church. I especially liked looking up to the giddy-making wagon roof of the nave.

Blisland has a newish community building to boast of also: a vast shed, housing shop, post office, café with internet and large screen, doctor's surgery... all run, it's said, on as little energy as possible. There's a sign pointing out the cost of a drive to the nearest supermarket: "Shop here and save yourself a fiver."

St Neot's church is more celebrated even than Blisland's - "the cathedral of the Moor" - on account of its mediaeval stained glass. But it seemed less welcoming to me, possibly because of the sign forbidding unauthorised use of the photographs we visitors take. It's not as if there's a decent choice amongst the church's own photographic postcards. And anyway, dissemination of religious images is all part of spreading the Gospel surely! Why alienate visitors in this way?

Yes, the glass is interesting, especially the Old Testament scenes (Eden and Noah in particular). But give me Fairford any day.

During our stay, we met the owner of a remote Cornish home, who was moaning about a proposed wind turbine. "Only 450 yards away, and it will take £100,000 off my house," she had complained. We happened to pass by the property on our way to Blisland: it's sunk in a deepish, very wooded valley. Even if she's right about the loss in value - surely doubtful - you have to ask how many people in less fortunate circs. would give their eye teeth to be able to arrest an unwanted "development" within 450 yards of where they live; and to question whether one individual should be able to elevate her property rights above the needs of the world for more renewable energy. This, along with the extreme "whiteness" of the retired and holidaying community down here in Cornwall.

"A window on Romania"

Last week, I received my latest Blurb effort, containing images mostly not included in my earlier Romania book. It might - Caroline's suggestion - be the beginning of a series, as I always seem to have windows on my mind when I go on holiday. There could even be A window on Gloucestershire in the pipeline. Who knows? Ah well, it keeps me busy.

"Even the rain"

It's our youngest grandson's fifth birthday today, and Laurie's effort at photographing the photographer (in April this year) came to mind this evening as I watched the Film Society's latest offering: it's a film about filming an historical epic in Bolivia; and one of the few female characters videos the filming.

Pirandello would have admired this layering effect, and more so the echoes between the historical exploitation (being filmed), the location's "current" (1999-2000) water wars and the exploitation of the film extras.

Not a bunch of laughs, but a very brave film, and a tribute to the difference a film can make.