Toby Miller

High shot (I’m climbing onto things) of a dull red tractor, its cabin glass long gone, surrounded on all sides by heavy undergrowth. It would be difficult to climb into the black plastic seat.

A wagon / shed - exploded with age and a fire at some point. It’s now a shattering of beams and metal bars, like a small whale burst from within. Again, the whole ruin is embedded in a rough ocean of nettles and thorns

A yellow digger, and then two other tractors, barely visible in a cauldron of undergrowth. The abandoned farm machinery appears to be tilting, like a ship about to sink to the bottom of the earth, to join the archeology and other heavy metals.

Cycled back out to the elephants’ graveyard of farm machinery, where decades of tractors now resemble boats sinking into a tempestuous sea of bracken and thorns. I do like the further back you gaze - there’s another tractor, their cabin just visible, before the next wave of undergrowth sinks it.

High shot (I’m climbing onto things) of a dull red tractor, its cabin glass long gone, surrounded on all sides by heavy undergrowth. It would be difficult to climb into the black plastic seat.

A wagon / shed - exploded with age and a fire at some point. It’s now a shattering of beams and metal bars, like a small whale burst from within. Again, the whole ruin is embedded in a rough ocean of nettles and thorns

A yellow digger, and then two other tractors, barely visible in a cauldron of undergrowth. The abandoned farm machinery appears to be tilting, like a ship about to sink to the bottom of the earth, to join the archeology and other heavy metals.

Cycled back out to the elephants’ graveyard of farm machinery, where decades of tractors now resemble boats sinking into a tempestuous sea of bracken and thorns. I do like the further back you gaze - there’s another tractor, their cabin just visible, before the next wave of undergrowth sinks it.

And she was badly bombed in the war, so she’s all new builds and the wrong type of brick.

She has already asked if she can come along on my next trek out to take photos. I’ll carve her a little SLR camera out of an apple.

A small calico cat resting her whole body on a dirty yellow towelling rag on the corner of my desk. Her eyes are lost in rapture.

Tiffin, a neighbour’s cat, found making herself home on - the rag I use to clean my pinhole camera between exposures. The bottles and chemical syringes are washed and clean, but that rag smells of (eco safe) developer and fixer. I’ve taken the rag away and put it up high. Angry, Tiffin has run away.

It’s also a summer action film with only one gun shot in it, when one of the workers pointlessly fires a machine gun into water after the stolen submersible. That’s always seemed remarkable to me.

And it’s about the only film (avatar 2 is another) with comprehensible under water action.

Oh, that does look like my sort of thing. Thank you. We’ll add it to the list of things to explore next time we pop down on the train.

I counter all the recent idiotic right wing anti-London warnings with the fact that yesterday a young lady in a fashionable part of the city stopped to praise my dress sense, in particular my use of colour. As a man about to hit 55 (and who takes care in how he dresses) that helped make my day.

Bridget and I were enthralled - the world of these tiny station gardens falls into Imagined Landscapes; The science fiction of bonsai cottage gardens; how gardens might look if only men made them - a quiet chaos replaced by flowers as battalions. These photos should be part of folklore classes.

Yesterday we popped into an exhibit (in Fenchurch, in a building earmarked for demolition, all a bit like an abandoned station itself) on London station gardens.

And the photos were remarkable: the near supernatural absence of women, and the imagined landscapes that were once dotted around London.

Fish eye photo looking up from a table top, blue with white clouds, visible in the rectangle of sky between tall homes. Plants. Two people drinking coffee.

In London. @bugshaw.bsky.social and I in our favourite Spitalfields cafe courtyard. We are planning a gentle day of exploring.

Friday night, posting about tractors. Itchy eyes from cycling between fields during harvest. Combine Harvesters fill the lanes wall to wall; You turn a corner and suddenly the opening scene from Star Wars is bearing down on you.

I photographed this abandoned tractor, buried engine deep in thorns, because I liked the font on the badge. Old farm machinery is a surprising disco of glitzy fonts.

Seems Fordson Major was how Ford branded their tractors in the UK up until 1964. So it’s been sitting in the high weeds for decades

A cement mixer abandoned in weeds. It is an industrial yellow, which is aging into a scratchy scholastic yellow.

The red metal wheel of an old plaid, again abandoned in weeds. It’s is a glossy red, a fire engine red. A simple wheel, like a bike wheel made of Duplo.

Remarkable metal flowers in the bracken. The red of that wheel seems to me a very Nicolas Roeg red.

A marmalade cat sat on the corner of my bed - just starting at me.

As ever she wraps up the day looking at me like I’ve some explaining to do.

It’s like she’s the demanding audience of one at an end of the pier magic show.

Stroll past the last street food vans on the common. Little husks of melancholic light. The last days of disco.

A few vendors gossiping; tall tales of vans lucky enough to get a spot in the Glastonbury VIP area; untold daily takings. The Taco and Pizza Van Vikings dreaming of a hungry Valhalla.

yes. He has visited once before. A great rushing hug of a dog, though he gets overexcited and barks at everything: "I am full of love please pay me attention" he snaps.

Two small dogs - a wistful looking Jack Russell and a pug with the eyes and ears of a film noir pugilist refusing to take a dive for money.

Devana and Bertie, visiting dogs in the neighbourhood, who I’m helping walk.

Devana a cross between Jack Russell, Poodle and a pirate staring out to New World, while Bertie is a cross between
a pug, Jack Russell and James Cagney dancing down those stairs in Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Have you read Lucy Boston's autobiography on her decades in the Green Knowe house? It's very good on the changing nature of silence in the countryside - how the silence of even 1950 is nothing like the silence of just 20 years earlier.

Alec Guinness, as the foolish Colonel in The Bridge on the River Kwai, uttering "what have I done?" - only it's me, realising I'm wasting a busy day trying to photoshop Paddington Bear into the giant screens surrounding Edward G. Robinson's Sol in the death bed bit in Soylent Green.

A cat dozing on the drive to the dry cleaners on the centre of town, in front of a gate and a sign that sternly commands: ‘Do not park in front of these gates’. He’s a common sight on this one way street. Always sleeping somewhere dangerous.

The Essex rebel.

It was embarrassing, but he needed to share his story, which was rather sweet. He had found his teenage voice again.

Middle-aged* man in the chair at the barbers; as his hair is cut he talks about a woman he's recently met. He's not crude, but he's very eager to share his happiness. "she's wrote me a poem" he confides loudly "which I can only describe as erotic"

*I'm also middle-aged, but not in the same way?

Two long paragraphs from the last page of the introduction. The last, more vital to me this morning, paragraph reads: When the poet Denise Riley in her recent collection Lurex looks back in one of the poems at the saints and martyrs of her childhood, she puts the question I have quoted as an epigraph to the book: 'What hope is there of a purely secular grace?' She sounds despairing, but also yearning. I share these mixed feelings, but - if we are ever to find a purely secular grace - borrowing from long-serving ways of hallowing developed by religious practices might help reveal ways of being at home in the world. Ways of telling shape ways of dwelling alongside one another. How stories made sanctuary, how sanctuaries became effective, what purposes they met and how they can be regained and refashioned, these are some of the questions this book sets out to explore.

End of Marina Warner’s introduction in her new book on the history and notion of Sanctuary. Heady, and more academic than my clattering, penny in a jukebox mind is used to.

‘What hope is there of a purely secular grace?’ resonates.

A calico cat sleeping on my carpet, nose to nose with an equally exhausted fabric mouse.

Lucia wore herself plum out fighting the cat nip mouse I picked up at a church fete. One moment she was a Rolodex of teeth and claws, and then the next sound asleep.

Hello. It is one of these: www.pinstacamera.com.
You develop the photo in the camera body as you go along, so I’m cycling with my chemicals, drying rags and photo frames. You expose to paper rather than film, so it takes longer to expose. Good for messing about.

Pinhole at the Exquisite Corpse outbuilding. 33 seconds exposure. Going to try longer exposure, once background clouds have taken a more dramatic stance.

I hosted a radio show for 15 years, but never wanted to do it as a podcast. Without the chaos of the live broadcast, and - especially - without the Saturday sport and the food problem on either side of us, it would have felt homeless, wandering and, I think, indulgent.

'Chippings has been Requested' is one of my favourite Miss Marple mysteries.

A black paper fan forms the dress of a Martha Graham figure. There is also a small art print in the background with an abstract depiction of her dancing.

The martha graham paper fan in it's packaging.

NEW! Martha Graham Handheld Fan!
Keep cool this summer while celebrating a giant of modern dance and American culture!
From heykidsrocknroll.etsy.com - "the only place that does this sort of thing!"