Regular readers will know that I don’t often post on overtly political topics but I just had to alert you to this moving article on the postal strike.

I have been a trade union organiser and in my time there I never met any union member who took a decision to go on strike lightly. In my experience it’s a desperate measure. So I knew there had to be another story behind the management spin and the old fashioned union rhetoric that surrounds the postal dispute.

And I thought about those oft quoted figures that were down and tried to match them up with the amount of mail that drops through my door on a daily basis. Though I contact my friends by email or skype, I get more post than I ever did. These days I even get my film developed by mail.

Something didn’t add up. And finally I found some sense on the London Review of Books LRB · Roy Mayall: Diary.

So now you know.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when we turned up to hear Martin Parr speak at the BIPP meeting.

Ok, I’m lying. I had an idea. Martin Parr would be witty, achingly British and a bit random  just like his photos. The BIPP would be an insular clique of self-important wedding photographers, and we’d spend an uncomfortable half hour while the members sized us up and dismissed us as amateurs.

I wish I could tell you I was wrong about the BIPP – who were instructed to wear badges so they could recognise each other. I’m sure I’m doing a disservice to 90% of them, but the 10% clustered around us talked loudly about recent weddings they’d shot while eyeing us with distaste. In France where modern photography was invented the word amateur has a completely different meaning: someone who loves the activity they are describing. People use the word with pride. No one sneers.

And I’m kind of glad to say that I wasn’t wrong about Martin Parr either. His talk was informative, amusing and challenging. He accompanied it with a presentation in which the slides sometimes shot forwards a couple of frames at a time, adding that randomness which is all part of the Parr experience.

He showed us his first exhibition, with his early work juxtapositioned against a backdrop of a living room, complete with floral wallpaper and a flying duck as centrepiece.

We saw his wedding shots, of Princess Anne’s wedding as it appeared on television in a living room. He showed us photos from one of his early books, and pointed out one member of the audience who had appeared in that book. (Anyone who can prove was in one of his shots gets a free print. Sadly, I’m not one of them).

He talked about his influences, from Tony Hancock to John Hinde, his work in fashion shoots and advertising, including Paul Smith and Cabury’s. He mentioned Magnum in passing once or twice.

But perhaps the most interesting was his approach to candid photography. He almost never asks for permission, except in France where the right to privacy is enshrined in law. This is a bad thing, he said. I have rights as a photographer, he told us. He urged everyone in the audience to get out and exercise that right as much as they can. And that’s where it falls down for me.

Honestly, if Martin Parr wanted to take my picture, I’d probably be flattered. But there are too many wanabee Parr’s who think it’s their right to get out and shoot whoever they like and portray them in whatever light they choose. Martin Parr talked about the use of humour, and I’m certain he knows the difference between poking fun and ridicule. Poking fun includes an element of the self – the lens is in some way turned on the photographer as much as the subject. But that’s an art – the safe option is to go for ridicule.

I didn’t tell Martin any of this. I’m not sure my opinion would have held much sway with the ranks of the BIPP. I’m just an amateur, someone who takes photos for love, not money.

But I do have a solution. There are so many photographers out and about these days, and whenever I catch one in the act of ridicule, I’m going to turn my camera on them. But rest assured, I’ll only be poking fun.

I have been without my beloved Vlad for almost 3 months and I have to tell you it hurts.

It’s only a camera. I know that.

Just glass and plastic and metal. But still.

But I miss it so much that I haven’t had the heart to look at the photos I took before I sent it away to get fixed. The emotion I feel when I see another Blad user cradling their camera in their hand and looking down through the viewfinder is a curious mix of homesickness and loss.

And I’ve tried not to think about what could be wrong, or when it will be fixed, just let things take their course.  The repair guy’s got my number, he’ll phone me when he’s got some news.

But this week I cracked and phoned him.

“It’s not good,” he told me.

I held my breath, fearing the worst. I could get another Blad, I know that. I could, but it wouldn’t be the same.

Things aren’t quite that bad.Then again in some ways it’s much worse. Vlad is ziplocked in plastic, stashed away somewhere safe. Unrepaired. Undiagnosed.

Just after I sent Vlad to him the next door neighbours decided to reroof their house.

“It’s been terrible. They’ve knocked through the wall at least twice. My workshop is covered in dust. And, well, it’s not the kind of work you can do on the kitchen table.”

And he’s not sure how long it will go on like this.

Sure I could retrieve Vlad and send him off to someone else. I’ve thought about that. But the truth is that good repair guys are getting harder to come by. With second-hand camera prices falling, people trash their faulty cameras and buy a new one – it’s often cheaper that way. And spare parts are harder to come by, those crazy overbidders on ebay can take their share of the blame for that.

The last person I sent my spare back off to kept it for months, sent it back in a worse state and when I returned it, he kept it another 4 months and messed up the frame counter.  Ok, I admit he did eventually fix the original problem. But his handiwork didn’t inspire confidence.

Like I say, good repair guys are hard to find.

And the man who’s going to fix Vlad once the neighbours have finished messing up his house – he’s had to change professions because there just isn’t the call for camera repairs. I don’t know him well – I’ve only had that one conversation with him but I heard the note of sadness in his voice as he told me how the business has dried up, how he used to trawl around the camera fairs for spare parts but can’t justify that any more with the level of work he gets.

So though I’m feeling sorry for myself, don’t waste your sympathy on me.

Think about all those repair guys who have spent years building up the skills to treat our cameras with respect,  the ones who can fix the frame spacing without messing up the counter. The ones who you’d trust your favourite camera to, but some day soon won’t get that chance.

I honestly can’t think of a happy ending to their stories. And I so wish I could.

I’ve been shooting black and whites for around three years but when I started I had no idea how difficult it would be to develop black and white vision.

It would be easier if I was shooting digital, there would be far fewer mistakes and disappointments but much less fun along the way.

Shooting in black and white isn’t just a matter of loading a different film in the camera – it requires a whole new approach. You have to look at colour differently.  Your prominent subject can melt into the background or insignificant details (like the fly in the shot below) can take centre stage.

A few weeks ago I shot a gorse bush with flaming yellow flowers and rich green foliage. Out on the hill it was spectacular but fresh from the developing tank the result was an almost uniform grey.

Different colours of a similar tone can turn out muddy and indistinct in black and white. But different tones of the same colour, which look much of a muchness in a field, can make dramatic black and white subjects.

You have to remember to filter out the colour information and look at the tone – keep practising, compare the results with expectation and it starts to make sense. You can use a digital camera to preview your results – I tend not to do that as I suspect it would make me lazy but I sometimes take a snap in colour and use it to compare when the film is developed.

It’s still a learning process but I had an idea that when I took a some shots of bracken leaves unfurling in a grassy field, that it would make a decent shot. I wish I could show you the colour version but you just had to be there.

I’m learning not to underestimate weeds. To appreciate the subtle differences in shades of green.

I’m shooting less landscapes and focus more on the details. These days I usually have a rough idea of how things will turn out but there are still surprises and plenty of fun along the way.

Way back in May we packed up our walking gear and some of our favourite cameras and headed off for a week to a place that Ron and I both had connections with before we ever knew each other.

His parents had owned a house down there, and I’d come to know Cornwall in a previous life with someone else.

We’d walked on the same beaches, visited the same Celtic sites, driven down the same country lanes. But never together.

This time around we changed all that. We stayed in St Just and made friends with local musicians in our new favourite pub. Visited ancient places. Took photographs. Got lost in cornfields.  Watched the sun setting over a  the ruins of a  tin mine perched high on sea cliffs. Got chased by a herd of inquisitive cows.

And I learnt a new word – Gurnard.

Not just a quaint Cornish headland. Not just a pub with great food and fine ales where we celebrated Ron’s birthday.

The gurnard, I learnt this week, is an unloved but tasty fish that we should all eat more of if we can get our hands on it, to save it from being another fishing vessel reject.

Gurnard’s Head (the national trust land not the pub) was our last stop on our week long odyssey. We walked as far as we could, over the fields towards a narrowing track that led tantalisingly close to the edge where it disappeared onto rock and then clear blue sea. We sat there and looked out at sea and back at the curving sweep of land, dotted with sea pinks that nodded in the breeze. Further behind us we picked out where the land had slipped causing hapless hikers on the coast path to divert to the lanes where temporary road signs warned of their presence.

We sat for a while under the rocks watching the sea gulls wheel above us, waiting until we managed to snap one. Watched the sea pinks bobbing in the breeze and in moments of stillness photographed them.

There was no one else around, just us and those gulls, and in those fields we’d crossed now far in the distance, a few placid cows too busy chewing the cud to be bothered with us.

It was one of the most peaceful moments I can think of.

I’ve seen mountain rescues that end in tears. Danger is a hazard of being in the mountains – everyone who spends time in the Alps understands this. But often they end with a laugh and a joke. This is one of those tales.

In our guidebook it’s billed as one of the loveliest walks in the Chamonix valley – and given that there is quite some competition, it’s not an idle boast. The views of the Mont Blanc range from the Aiguillette des Possettes are incredible (I’ll show you as soon as I can get rid of the scratches that the lab put on my negatives)  and though it’s a stiff climb up you can take the easy route via cable car on the way up and walk back down.

We decided to earn the views and sweated our way up through the trees and onto the wide grassy ridge path that winds its way through a series of false summits to the top. We’d started late and though it’s only two and a half hours to the top we knew at the outset that we’d be having lunch on one of the lower plateaus instead of by the summit cairn.

The rule in hill and mountain hiking is that the first place you can find to stop for lunch is always 20 to 30 minutes after the moment when you know you need a break, but we were happy enough when we eventually found a dry spot on a wide bluff cushioned by bilberry and heather shoots. The path wound up the hill behind us to another of those false summits and we hardly noticed the group of a dozen or so French hikers who had stopped on the path as we unwrapped our Reblochon and broke off chunks of crusty baguette.

The chatter at our backs continued and we didn’t think anything of it even though those walkers had been blocking the path for a good 10 minutes. We’d lived in a town in France where people would stop on the traffic island and get out of their car to greet a friend crossing the road, so this was nothing special. Not until we overheard a complaint from a couple passing by that  an old man had come out without his mobile phone and got into trouble. We looked up and saw the man sitting in the middle of the path, calling the emergency services on a borrowed phone.

‘Non, non, pas de douleur,’ he laughed. No pain. Only I just can’t move my knee.

While he spoke to the mountain rescue team one of the group of hikers that surrounded him set off down the hill, prodding at the swampy grass and shrugging his shoulders, trying to figure out where the helicopter could land. After a while Jean-Paul found what he judged would be the perfect spot, waving and grinning from ear to ear at his friends who clustered around the old man, before he rummaged in his rucksack and retrieved two carrier bags, one green and one red, which he set down to mark the landing pad.

One of the group ran down to warn us that they had called the mountain rescue. “You need to make sure everything is secure.” She glanced at my boots that I’d taken off to give my feet a rest. ‘L’helicopter vient d’arriver,’ she announced with a proud smile. The helicopter is coming.

We wrapped up the cheese but our boots would probably survive the updraft, we reasoned. Anyway, the helicopter probably wouldn’t land anywhere near us, if at all. The ladies and gentlemen of the walking group that stood on the path scanned the skies. “The helicopter is coming,” they told each other, but the skies remained empty.

“What shall we do when it arrives?” one of them asked.

“How will they know where to land?”

They consulted their guidebooks.

“Fait un ygrec,” someone said. Make a y. But the questions was, where? Should it be Jean-Paul, waiting by the makeshift landing pad or the hikers, standing guard over the injured man. But before they could decide there was a buzzing high in the air – the helicopter was approaching.

“Jean-Paul fait un ygrec. Tout le monde fait un ygrec.” And the group of 10 all raised arms and trekking poles in the air in the shape of a y. Jean-Paul, alone on the hillside below, shrugged and made a waving, beckoning sort of y.

We decided not to join in – that would only confuse matters even more.

In the end the temporary landing pad wasn’t needed. Jean-Paul stood dejected in the swamp while the helicopter circled and dropped off two off their crew without even touching one foot on the mountainside. Jean-Paul sloped off and retrieved his plastic bags and we gathered up our cheese and bread and prepared to move on.

The rescue crew were amazing.

By the time we’d walked up the few feet to where the man was, the doctor had taken a look at his knee and decided to whisk him off to the local hospital. The doctor had something reassuring in the tone of voice and the jokey but kindly way he dealt with the old chap so that when they told him they’d immobilize his leg and winch him up to the helicopter, he smiled as it if was perfectly normal.

I suspect he was just relieved that he’d get down off the mountain with no fuss.

One by one his friends set off down the hill, promising to meet up with him at the hospital. One took his walking poles and stopped us to ask Ron to collapse them so she could carry them down for him.

‘Poor fellow, he’s got a bad knee,’ she told us, and she pointed at my knee support. ‘You have a bad knee too,’ she said. ‘Maybe they could give you a lift to the hospital.’

I began to worry that she would rush to make a ‘y’ and call the helicopter back. ‘No need, I told her. It’s nothing like that.’

But to be honest, it could have been. Every day people get stuck in the mountains and it could just as easily have been me. It’s reassuring to know that whether you’ve fallen hundreds of metres into a crevasse or simply got stuck on the side of a hill they’re just a phone call away. And if it is just a dodgy knee, they’ll treat you with respect and kindness and most important, they’ll get you down to safety.

I’m sure everyone must have a favourite fruit, one that in a single bite will conjure up your most precious childhood memories.

Mine is the blackberry.

I’m not put off by the thick angry thorns – the smell of them alone is worth the risk of any scuffs and grazes they’re likely to inflict. For a mouthful the perfumed flavour of a ripe blackberry I would endure the scrape of a thorn down my entire arm.  But don’t dig it in too hard or I’ll  demand a whole bowlful as payment.

My grandparents had a bramble patch in their back garden – my first experience of gardening was helping them with the harvest. It must have only been a couple of feet long and penned in between a brick wall and a garden path, but in a good year there would be enough for enough pies and crumbles to feed a huge family and plenty left over to make jam.

While my grandfather mowed the lawn I’d pluck the fruits, only choosing the ones that detached from the stalk with the gentlest of tugs. I didn’t mind the stained fingers and quickly enough my technique improved and I was able to reach for the ones at the back without scratching my arms on the thorns. By the time the lawn was mowed and rolled to perfection I’d have a bowl full of berries which I’d take inside to my gran where she’d make something of them with some apples from the tree that was still out of my reach.

Wild blackberries do taste like nothing else – the cultivated varieties don’t have as much flavour. They really don’t. But perhaps more importantly, they don’t taste like my childhood, and they don’t remind me of people who have passed out of my life too long ago.

And I don’t have a bramble patch but this year when I saw the berries in the hedgerows I picked one of the best and I grabbed some memories to look back at some rainy winter’s day.

Evan wanted to climb a mountain. We live in the Peak District so you’d think peaks would be pretty much all around us but it’s not quite that simple.

I’m not sure we have any actual mountains but there are some impressive hill tops. I doubt Evan wanted to get into a discussion about how high above sea level it should be – he just wanted to climb something.

The path up to Castle Naze is not exactly back country – most of the route is along a dirt track that leads up to a handful of farm buildings, but there is a footpath across pasture right at the end and some rocks to scramble up. What’s more, if you step outside my front door you can be on the top of the Naze in under an hour.

We set out with the rest of Evan’s family – his sister didn’t feel like walking and headed back home with her mum after playing hide the dice a few dozen times. That left three of us to wander upwards, admiring the views of the countryside that spreads out in front of you like a picnic lunch on a blanket of green and blue. We stopped to pet some horses munching on grass in an ancient orchard, and I told them about the peacock that if they were lucky, they might spy in the farm buildings at the end of the track.

Soon enough we were scrambling over stiles and up onto the Naze. I began to wonder why I’d worn sandals as the path steepened near the top. But in only a few more steps we were there, gazing out on the countryside that in the last 12 months I’ve come to love with an intensity I had never dreamt possible. About a person, maybe, but this kind of love for a dirt and grass and trees?

Evan wandered to the edge and his dad and I tried not to worry about him as he stood and looked down. I didn’t tell either of them that I’m afraid of heights. It’s hard to make it out in this shot – it’s not a high hills but there is a rocky edge.

There are drops. And when I look down at those drops I tend to panic. It’s a disadvantage for someone who loves mountains.

When it strikes, I cope as best I can by not looking down -  but it’s not a great strategy when you’re there for the panoramic scenery. Sometimes I’m perfectly fine, but this summer it got to me, time after time.

We wandered around the edge for a while – there’s an Iron Age hill fort right on the end and you’ve got to admit the views from up there are pretty damn good. I kept my fear to myself and did like Evan, stood there quietly and watched. And after a while the slight but tangible panic that had taken hold the moment I’d climbed onto the Naze subsided, and I was just a person on top of a hill admiring the view.  I felt like I’d just climbed a mountain when all I’d done was hike up a hill and conquer a fear.

We picked our way down the to the road, stopped to photograph some grazing sheep and headed back to the farm.

They teased me about the peacock.  We get pheasants and grouse in this part of the world, but peacocks aren’t native species. But as we rounded the corner, there they were:

One, then a second peacock strutted into view shaking out its tail as  a pea hen followed behind.

A couple of weeks ago we switched off the wifi, packed up the car and headed south to the Alps.

While we were there we strolled on a glacier, got caught in a thunderstorm on a high mountain pass and witnessed a mountain rescue.

I need some time to dry out the tent and unpack my thoughts, but as soon as I do I’ll be back to fill in the gaps.

lookin up, originally uploaded by ronet.

In my last few months in Amsterdam, I often took my camera out with me. I didn’t know exactly when but I knew that some day I’d leave and I wanted to capture the essence of my life in Amsterdam. Rushing past the Westerkerk on my way to work, ambling along the canals on the way home.

I have a whole stack of shots taken on the way to and from work.

And I don’t miss Amsterdam. Not until I look back at the photos and remember that all this was in my back yard.  Mind you, my new back yard isn’t bad.