Bwhere: a farewell

Almost exactly two years ago at the BW village show, I bumped into M and he gave me a card with a link to his blipfoto journal. He told me a little about it: just one photo a day, and a written journal entry. He said he would have given me 5 stars for the photo of a Boletus fungus that I showed him on my camera. I looked up his journal when I got home, it was surely one of the most quirky I have seen, eccentric and funny. It inspired me to open my own journal, for here was an outlet for the photos I took on my daily wanderings around Arnside. M was my first subscriber, something of a mentor in the early days, who gently encouraged me to do life.turns and to try new photographic things.

M passed away today in a hospice. Perhaps the story of his last weeks will be told here by his family who are also blippers. Though I have just read his last entry at the end of April, the last words of which were "What is happening to me?!". The exclamation mark shows he said it in jest, but it is poignant to read it now.

Wifie has known M and K since they first moved to her home village when she was about 10. Her Mum sent her over to help them as they were settling in. They were a touch alternative for a traditional and conservative rural East Yorkshire village, K spoke Swahili and they didn't eat meat, vegetarianism as a concept was quite unheard of in the village at that time. As Wifie grew up, she was their baby sitter. They came to our weddng, and they travelled across for Wifie's big birthday. Wifie loved them from when she first met them, and the connection remains as strong today as ever.

So, this blip is for you, M. I know my pretty coastal landscapes with solitary gulls didn't really do it for you, and you would have been very polite about this if you had been commenting - but today this is all I have to offer. It's a place that is special to me, and that is something that you would have understood. Solitary gulls seem to appear in my photographs at particular times, and this bird was here today as I came home and before I heard the news.

Farewell, M, we shall miss you.

ps Wifie showed me an angel in the reflected clouds.

Please see Teamdel's journal for today.