An M. R. James inspired set of photos taken on an evening stroll around Cambridge

At the beginning of the week, after a tiring, but delightful and rewarding few days looking after her three-and-a-half year old grandson, Harrison, neither my wife, Susanna, nor I could face the thought of preparing a meal and doing the washing up afterwards so we decided to go out and eat somewhere in town. It was a lovely evening - wonderfully crepuscular. I could not resist taking a few photos as we walked choosing to use Hipstamatic and their cyanotype-inspired colour plate film. The result, as you will see below, was very "M. R. Jamesian." Now what do I mean by that?

Well, for many years Cambridge was the home of M. R. James. He was provost of King's College, a medieval scholar and the writer of some of the most famous ghost stories in the English language - these stories are, perhaps, my favourite pieces of fiction and are never not to be found by my bedside. The photos below have, I think, something of the atmosphere of those stories and I thought I'd share them with you.

James also translated the New Testament Apocrypha which caught my interest when I was in my teens and I owe to him my knowledge that Christianity was always-already a very diverse and complex human creation. I cannot but think that this must have had some influence upon me eventually ending up on the roll of ministers of the Unitarian and Free Christian Churches who finds himself very much in the Sea-of-Faith "camp" with its stated aim to ‘explore and promote religious faith as a human creation’. Although it has been superseded by the excellent edition of the apocrypha prepared by J. K. Elliott I'm still very fond of my copy of James' edition.

Anyway, enough said, to the photos . . .