The Plashing Vole

I used to have a flat right in the city centre: I could see my office from the bedroom window, and go from comatose to lecturing in 2 and a ...

I bought my first SLR in 2009 - a dinky little Nikon D40 which took lovely pictures but wasn't very flexible in terms of user control. ...

Bird's funfair is an integral feature of Puck Fair - it's been coming for about 75 years, setting up a couple of days before the o...

One of my favourite things about English is the ease with which puns can be made, and one of my favourite things about Britain is its people...

Today's photos are from the middle day of my first visit to Ireland's Puck Fair in 2010, during which a wild mountain goat is enth...

I'm from a big, rural family. We've had a succession of semi-feral animals - rabbits, guinea pigs, cats and eventually chickens. The...

A couple of carvings today, from the famous Kilpeck church which we visited in Spring 2009. I'm lucky to have several friends who'r...

A couple today, seeing as it's a holiday, and they're both taken in the forbidden Outside. This rural scene is a variation on a th...

There's nothing special about this photo at all. It's a hastily-taken and unposed snap which happens to date back to 2009 and a frie...

Today's shots are a couple from my first trip to Poland in 2009, and my first gig as a team manager for the England Tomorrow's Achie...

This one was taken on Carnedd Llywelyn in February 2009 . Out with some friends escaping the industrial midlands and our lives for a day, we...

While we're under house arrest (and I'm away from my camera), I'll post a photo every so often from my collection . No particula...

How are you all getting on? The gilded cage that is Vole Towers has not yet descended into the Ballardian anarchy of High-Rise or his under-...

Looking around me, this seems to be the order of the day - here's Johann Schütz's version of the popular classical theme: I...

I'm still in the office, though the atmosphere is increasingly weird. I'm actually used to the solitude – I tend to come in during t...

Animals, as you might expect from an account calling itself The Plashing Vole, are complex cultural creations. Beyond the physical reality o...

So last week I said that I'd read and enjoyed Richmal Crompton's Family Roundabout , one of the novels for adults that she felt was ...