Liala Payne was also the Mother of my Brother Daniel and the Daughter of my Italian Grandmother, Ofelia.

I guess I am writing it down to clear my head. Perhaps it will be cathartic. Maybe I am finding any opportunity to distract myself.

At 2:20am as we lay exhausted in our beds after many many bedside hours, she was breathing out her last breath.

She lay in a hospital in the center of England. She did not die alone. By her side, Nigel, her partner of 12 years who had shown a superhuman strength in staying with her continuously over the last week.

Although suffering many different ailments it was pneumonia that was taking her away from us. The first hint i had got that she was not well was almost two months ago on the morning of her 57th birthday. I had arrived with presents and a card and could see she was not well.

She never complained and avoided doctors when she could. As a result, a bruise she suffered in a fall had gotten infected and started to spread inside her chest. The doctor we called didn't see it and when we finally persuaded her to go into hospital it had already taken hold.

It grew swiftly and silently until only the most powerful of antibiotics could slow it down. By this time it was too late.

There were many goodbyes. But as each doctor gave us a different prognosis, there were days where we still thought she would pull through. On Christmas Eve we kept to European tradition and she opened her presents in a public ward.

At 1am Christmas morning my first gift was a call from the hospital informing me of an imminent procedure that was about to take place that she may not survive through. Later that day she was moved into a room so she could 'have more privacy'. For me that was the point I knew, but did not want to believe.

The day before yesterday we were told in great detail that she would not last the night. She did.

She was unconscious for most of the following day and every moment a breath passed we were certain it was her last. Both me and my Brother both found the counting of breaths unbearable. Waiting for a moment we never wanted to arrive. From dread to fear and back again, all the time our hearts pounding, aching and on the verge of beating right out of our chests.

We needed sleep and left our sleeping mother lifting and falling behind her oxygen mask.

We got to mine and the phone rang saying that my Mother had opened her eyes. The hour drive back was the worst drive of my life. We did not know what to think.

I am so very glad we got there when we did. My mother had made one of those miraculous and albeit brief recoveries you hear about and we managed more goodbyes and words which had to be said. We had been given another chance to tell her how much we loved her and through movements and hand clasps, She too got the chance to communicate. It was a last momentary reprieve from the edge of death.

Exhausted and deeply saddened by the final realisation we were saying goodbye for the very last time, we choose our words carefully. We gazed into her eyes and she gazed back until this last miraculous bout of awareness seemed to flutter and wane. This was the point me and Daniel decided she was waiting for us to leave so she could let go.

I have always thought mourning to be the selfish act of someone who could not let go. Someone who found it hard dealing with loss and bereavement. I am thinking now it is more natural than that. An inbuilt mechanism to stop your heart from exploding with grief and pain.

I am mourning now and I imagine a part of me always will. It will be a smaller part than the one that remembers her love and cherishes the memory of every moment spent in her company.

She's my Mum. I owe her my life. I hope I made her proud. I hope I earn her gift.. my life.


(There is a small site now up at www.Liala.co.uk)

Tags: Liala, Payne

It feels like it has been days since I last posted. It is days, weeks. Days and weeks spent on Seesmic.

This is what I wanted to talk about today.. Not the fact that I need to work on my time management, not that I have been short of bloggable inspiration, but the fact I am hooked on a new video blogging application I have been meaning to write about since my first 'seesmic post'.

Initially I saw Seesmic as a video-polaroid. A place to sound off in a timeline with a random thought, question or instance of craziness. Then as more and more pre-alpha testers were admitted, conversations started. Then it became more of a Video-Twitter.

Look it up on Wikipedia a few days ago and you would have seen nothing.. today it says "Seesmic is a video micro blogging web application in pre-alpha stage being developed by French Entrepreneur Loic Le Meur" And it was Loic that gave me my invite.

Phil Campbell mentioned it in a twitter post so I DM'ed Loic and moments later I was in. I think that being on twitter already may have helped as Loic did not know me from Adam. He has spent more time hanging out with Bush than he has talking to me..

So now as videos were being batted back and forth at close to real time speeds. Comments made and themes formed, I realized this wasn't just a chatroom I was looking at. These were multi dimensional people not too dissimilar to me and I was getting to know them in a face to face kind of way. In a far more personal manor than on any other social network. The international timezones crossed have tested my ability to survive on only a few hours sleep as i have been facinated with the threads and conversations spanning the globe.

It is still early days for 'seesmic' At the moment it is in Pre-Alpha release and the number of people signed up and online have formed a tight nit community posting snippets of their opinions from their home computers, from there work spaces and sometimes even out on the road streaming through 3g networks or public wifi.

I feel like I have been a part of seesmic for a lifetime and I feel like seesmic has taken a chunk of my life and placed it online for the world to see.

Whilst podcasting I had previously made a point of not giving too much away about my life or my opinion.. Seesmic has really brought out the Jeckell to my Hyde the yin to my Yang and I find it very therapeutic. Cathartic I guess.

I could go on and on but I won't, Seesmic is a different application to all who use it and to really find out about it's intricacies you need to be signed up and a part of the myriad conversations helically intertwined across the globe between anyone with an internet connection, a webcam on a computer.. and of course.. the golden ticket.

I feel I have so much to say.. but it's easier to show you.. to 'seesmic' it..

Check out the embedded post below and... "Seesmic ya later.."


Incidentally the Seesmic Crew have been kind enough to give me a couple of invites to pass on to anyone that has read this far and is willing to leave me a blog comment below telling me why they want to join Seesmic. Let me know..

If you want to see what I see.. Here you go..

Tags: seesmic, video blogging, internet, social networking, twitter, loic le meur

I was very pleased to receive an email today telling me of a published report being released on a symposium I attended earlier this year.

The report from The Democratic Image - Photography and Globalisation held in Manchester last April covered this groundbreaking event that sought to investigate how digital technology was aiding representation in a connected world.

My initial invite came out of the blue after a listener to my podcast recommended me to one of the 'Look 07' organisers. Before I knew it I was giving a talk on Photography and New Media to some seriously influential movers in the world of photography and journalism. Pedro Meyer of Zone Zero and Geert Van Kesteren the Magnum Photographer behind Why Mister Why were amongst the many that left a lasting impression on me. (In the photo above.)

I didn't blog my experiences at the time as the moment it ended I was continuing further north to commence an expedition by canoe down the river Spey in Scotland. Once at the end of that successful trip I was back in the thick of work and assignments.

Now it seems I can summerise by means of clipping my mention and linking the whole report below. Please take the time to read what Redeye do as Britain's largest photographers network.

NOTES ON THE BLOG In collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery and hosted at openDemocracy.net (http://thedemocraticimage.opendemocracy.net), The Democratic Image blog launched on 11 April and posed the following question: Time magazine has voted you `The Person of the Year’ for `seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game’. As a `pro’, what is your take on the democratisation of art and media in the digital age? First to respond was Christian Payne, the blogger and podcaster behind OurManInside.com, who thanked Time `for the recognition’ and the `corporate media [...] for making me switch off, for making me sick at heart, for making me angry’. Thanks to them, he turned to his computer `to get a bearing on some kind of meaningful truth’. For Payne, the Internet revolution counters the mediation of Big Media, allowing `diversity’ and `a deeper, wider, discourse’ that has enabled him, in his words, to `make up my own mind’. Switched on again, Payne became a blogger, primarily of images. More than that, the medium inspired him to self-finance a journey to Northern Iraq in 2006, video-podcasting a photo-documentary about the Kurdish Peshmerger warriors under the title of `Those Who Face Death’.Payne is very clear of the political importance for image makers like him of increasingly accessible new media, which in his view `are reviving our dwindling hopes for genuine freedoms’. But he is equally clear that the only alternative to corporate mediation for the new `pros’ striving for these freedoms is an alliance with other bloggers, podcasters, and other internet users, in which new work can be mutually financed and supportively criticised online. This raises the issues of the blurring between image makers and audiences, and of how cooperative might the Internet be. What structures might enable real collaboration beyond the much celebrated interactivity touted by the corporations behind the Internet? And to what extent are corporate interests foreclosing the emergence and maintenance of truly democratic internet use that might conflict with their values?

If you would like to read the whole report.. Please click here.

Tags: look 07, photography, journalism, iraq, kurdistan, Open Democracy, magnum, RedEye, Geert Van Kesteren, podcast, Zone Zero

I still make an effort to read the paper but I couldn't help but notice this morning that whilst flicking through the Guardian magazines from yesterday, I seemed to need my macbook to supplement the supplements.

I love the touchy-feely experience of leaning over the paper with a coffee, skimming the bits that don't raise a brow and absorbing the others that do. Still, It was obvious I needed that extra dimension.

I know that if I don't check that link or search that person or view that trailer or check the price of that product.. I will forget and not get a grasp of the whole picture.

Feed reading is a new thing for me as up until a few months ago I hadn't found a feed-reader I liked. I try to avoid the homogenized world of google and was glad to stumble apon Vienna.

So today I was reading Stephen Fry's blog (which I subscribe to online anyway) and was fascinated by the 'Trevor Baylis Eco Media Player' he was talking about. It is the sort of device you will wish you have come the apocalypse and we are all living 'Mad Max' lives. A kind of windup hippy ipod with a torch, radio, phone charger, audio recorder and so on.. I got the gist of this amazing gadget but needed to see a photo to complete the picture. After 30 seconds I had not only viewed a selection of photos, but had also read some reviews and found an ethical superstore selling it for a much lower price.

With this mornings realisations I fear for the continuing purchases of my Saturday/Sunday paper. Perhaps I should have more faith in the RSS feed..

Tags: rss, feed, guardian, news, newspaper, print, gadgets, macbook, vienna

This blog entry was going to be something completely different to the one it is now.

I was a little uncertain as to how 'transparent' a blog should should be and upon reading out all the intricacies of these last few days I then went on to delete all but the title. This is after all a blog connected to my business and not purely about personal issues.

Never-the-less I aim to be frank and candid about what goes on 'out of hours' as regarding my photography.. there is no such time.

This last couple of weeks and in particular these last few days I have withdrawn myself a little from the 'new media' world. Not so much on the absorbing of it all but more so on the content creation side of things.

I wanted to focus a little more time on my family, particularly my Mother and my Grandmother who have both needed serious medical attention within days of each other on both of their birthdays. Maybe it's a Scorpio thing?

My Grandmother is 84 and occasionally gets health issues you would expect at that age. But my mother is only 57 and has been hit the hardest having been rushed into hospital and giving me a fresh new glance into our National Health service.

I have been shocked and amazed at how certain moments in these last few days have played out. At one point I was being told by a Doctor over the phone exactly how I should give my Grandmother an enema for her birthday. It was only when I commented on what a great tabloid story this would make that he decided to drive over and treat her himself.

Then mid insertion he muttered under his breath how "In the good old days, people used to care for their family". She is a strong proudly independent woman who back in the war was a partisan in the Alps smuggling secret messages cross german lines in a bicycle pump. I think the least she deserved is a little dignity and respect. I put his flippant comment down to stress.

This whole time she was being treated I was also worrying about my mother 15 miles away ill at home and who only hours later was rushed into her local hospital in Rugby with stomach complications and other issues brought on by a couple of nasty falls she failed to tell anyone about. She is not a complainer and often keeps her ailments to herself.

Rugby's St Cross is a really friendly place full of kind and attentive nurses who seem to understand that it is the care that cures as much as the medicines.

Still as with many other places in the UK what they have in personal attentiveness they lack in technology and equipment and before long my semi-concious drip laden Mother was moved to the dreaded Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry. I say dreaded as although new, I find it difficult to erase the sad and disturbing memories of previous visits to the place.

Walsgrave (or University Hospital as it is now called) is now a brand new state of the art city of the dead and dying. So shiny you can almost see the superbugs sitting proud of the surfaces.

Under some kind of new system implemented since the last time I had to visit a hospital, from the moment you can see the building to the moment you leave, you feel you are inside of some kind of privatized corporation. Not the healing, caring centre it should be.

The car parks are vast, extortionately priced to raise millions a year and due to a non staggered visiting system always full. Up until recently even disabled people had to pay for parking. (The nurses still do, although after a lengthy and hap hazard process I think they can get a refund.) I would not be surprised if we soon see parking meters on the ambulance bays.

You can't even phone your sick relative. You are patched through to a receptionist on something called 'patientline' and the message is passed on sometime later that day. Perhaps 'Be Patient Line' would suit better.

If during their miserable stay they would like to distract themselves from the pain the supplied pay-as-you-go TV on a hinge is there to suck you of all your benefits till you wish you were able to go private. Is that the governments plan, privatize every non-essential yet comfortable amenity till it drives the population elsewhere.

If anything is important it should be access, attention and comfort.

Yesterday the ward my Mother was in had some king of lockdown due to a 'bug' going round. Only one person was allowed to visit for one hour in 24. I understand the reasoning behind quarantining but sometimes visiting is the only way we get any information about our loved ones. If you phone you are told that due to patient confidentiality they cannot tell you anything and when you do get close to someone that may have a clue, they lie.

Today I asked how my Mum's CT scan had gone, knowing too well it had been cancelled. The nurse told me "Fine, we are just waiting for the results." I thought she couldn't possible be lying so I re-checked into my Mum. No. She is not fully with it but she said she would remember having a CT scan.

I went back to the nurse and at first she looked put out that I wanted her to double check. Then she looked embarrassed like she had been caught out. The CT scan had been bumped for the second time. All I wanted to know was that my Mum was getting the care she needed to ensure all the details of her illness are available to those who can help.

I have entrusted that woman with my Mothers life. Should I not have a little more confidence in her.

Today I found my Mother had been moved again. Again, no one had told me and when I found her, after hundreds of yards of codrridors she was tucked away in the corner of a ward staring at a blank wall looking scared.

While sitting with her tonight, trying to cheer her up for my alloted hour, she broke my heart. Normally too week to move, her arm came out from under the sheet and she took my hand. Then looking up at me my Mother said "Christian I am afraid.. I am afraid to die. I have been put in here and forgotten."

I was both gutted and livid. Why is my mother feeling this way? She shouldn't be scared. Who is there to reassure? Is it not the same people that are there to care?

We all get ill and we are all going to die. I just wish with all this technology at our disposal the suffering could be somewhat alleviated.

Sorry, there is no conclusion to this rant, this blog post. This is just the story so far.

Tags: family, health, care, illness, hospital

Everyday I see some new application, web based or downloadable that I didn't see the day before. I now am fully aware that for me to keep up with all these new cerebral arrivals I would need an army of clones and as many mac book pros.

Today in @sizemore's twitter post (tweet to those in the know) I saw a mini video he had made with a web app entitled Animoto.

Literally 2 minutes later I has sucked 15 music photos out of my flikr account and mixed them with some supplied music to produce this..

It wasn't even a a drag and drop affair, just a few clicks.. Where was all the messy editing.. where was the faffing about with cuts, timelines, titles and syncing?

The future is scary... Scary but very convenient.

p.s. The hairy guy with the camera at the start is not me.. It's 'Badly Drawn Boy' I am sat with Noel Gallagher on the last slide.

Tags: music, video, festivals, web 2.0, animoto, editing, Badly Drawn Boy, Noel Gallagher

Is it shallow of me that this current swing away from facebook makes me smile?

In particular, I read Deek's blog and felt a quiet internal fist punch the air whilst whisper-shouting "YES!"

I can't help but think it's all still too late for those that did have an account and have now deleted, as they have already signed away the rights to have their name extracted from wherever it may exist online. It is interesting that they say they reserve the right to extract your details from off line sources as well.. Are there any of those places left?

Years ago I remember seeing an exhibition in New York from an artist (sorry can't remember his name) who had patented the DNA from a select few of his friends. A painter, a sculptor and so on. He stated that with this new ownership he now possessed their individual artistic merits.

Obviously it was a statement against the use of DNA databases, but with the human gnome now technically being 'open source' If we can't own the right to our physical being, how on earth can we expect to keep a hold of the personal details of our life? It's as if by joining facebook we too have signed a copy of the Bermuda Principles.

There are those that would argue that a totally transparent society is the way to go. With DNA for scientific medial reasons I would have to agree making it 'open source' can do nothing but help us find all kinds of cures. But for our personal lives, (or whatever is left of them) rubbish.

Privacy helps us as individuals maintain our autonomy and individuality. We define ourselves by exercising power over our personal information.

Not to mention the functional benefits too. It protects our identities, not just from identity theft but also from repercussions for our political and religious beliefs. The Nazis found ID cards very helpful when it came to rounding people up.
I wrote a little in 'The Perfect Prison' about what happens to our minds and how we begin to behave when our privacy is slowly taken away from us.
I used to think that my home was a 'private' place but when I spend 70% of my waking hours online how much privacy do I think I really have.
Check out this short film on who's watching you..
There are not many 'private' places left. And now that policing has been brought right into out home.. do you have anywhere private to go?

Tags: social networking, facebook, surveillance, privacy, press, data mining, Deek Deekster, DNA

This time last week I was still recovering from sleep deprivation and the remnants of the hangover left over from the day before.

The hangover was a souvenir from 'up North' and the great night put on by Phil Campbell entitled N0shIT (Nosh-It).

This social media event was far more social than media and I had no issue with that as I got to totally exercise my Epicurean desires.


Great food great wine and great company. All of the people I met at N0shIT I already knew digitally from Twitter

Phil Campbell - Nick Butler - Jason Jarrett - Craig Marston - Rupert Howe

You would think that going to an 'in the flesh' social gathering would take a bit of the magic away from peoples content.. You get to see the reality behind the avatars, the hidden truths behind the great content and perhaps this can be slightly disappointing..

Maybe on bigger events yes, but on this occasion I can safely say all of these guys are so multi faceted, what you see in the flesh is just another dimension to a really deep and creative bunch.

They say alcohol brings out the worst in people.. At N0shIT though it just brought out some hillarious interaction in the most unexpected of flavours.

If there were any uncomfortable moments shared with these people I was only just getting to know, I don't remember any..
But then, I am famous for not remembering most things after a certain cut off point in any night on the wine.

I remember being really hungry and then loads of great food being placed in front of me by Dimitri of Mykonos then it kept on coming... Just like the wine.

I have to thank Rupert for jogging my memory with THIS.. I am sure he has been kind in the edit.

Me and Rupert ended up sharing one of the complimentary doubles that Phil had kindly supplied and my last memory of the night is of Rupert saying "Wow.. you have the video of David Icke on Wogan". Then he passed out.

Any way, I am inspired. Before and after the drinking we had made time for inspirational talk and the bouncing of ideas off one another and all the other times, we had fun.


Above all this, solid connections were made and the avatars that adorn the various web 2.0 apps we saturate ourselves in now have a living, breathing, flesh and blood person behind them.

I feel like I work with these people everyday.. Whether it be a clients project or my own meandering adventure in new media, the tweets, pm's and seesmic'd moments pop into my perspective like a call across the office.

Working at home has never been more sociable.

It's great to be able to choose your workmates from the millions of creative minds floating around out there... And I do so everyday with a click of a 'follow' or an 'add me' button. And if you want a bit of privacy from someone's mutterings.. It's as easy as closing a door.

This in many ways was a works night out with a few of the people I share my day with. There are a handful of others I have already met and a load more I can't wait to meet on another night like this.

Cheers Phil's for the great night.. After this I am inspired to create my own meeting of minds.. Perhaps a weekend somewhere even more out the way.. if people can spare the time..

Keep your eye on www.GeekRetreat.info to see if this happens.

Tags: social networking, twitter, Wine, food, n0shIT

Meet Alf, he used to manipulate people using fear and greed to make them buy products they didn't need.

Now with his friend Bob and many others, he follows one of the paths of Freeganism, shopping from the backs of stores, without money, dumpster diving to utilize some of the many ton's of waste food and other products consumers and suppliers throw away each year.

As we remember the words of the economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill when he said.. "f you want to distroy a system, refuse to buy it's products", Alf agrees it's a dangerous message.

Click HERE to subscribe to the Documentally podcast or click HERE to download the audio.

This blog post originally appeared here: www.Documentally.com

For more information visit:

www.freegan.org.uk and www.freeganism.org

Tags: freegan, freeganism, food, podcast, england, corporations, capitalism, waste, dumpster diving, Alternative lifestyles

This morning I got a link to a musical Jam I was a part of over 10 years ago in 1997.

This was an impromptu get together of a few friends in an attic room in Rugby town UK. Everything was ad-libbed with only a bottle of wine for lyrical inspiration.

The musical attendees were...

Nathan Thomas on bass, Ed Hipkins on drums Georgi Griffiths on guitar, myself on Harmonica, didgeridoo and vocals and some guest keyboard from Jon Bains.

The songs made it no further than a green minidisc labeled with the track list:

Dr Jam ~ Jazzbreak ~ Mad Song ~ Georgi's Son ~ Stoned In The Park ~ Suite Of The Day ~ Stan Jam

I lost my copy shortly after so this morning when i received this link: http://gboyjam.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html from Georgi I was transported right back ten years to that fateful day where we broke the rules and with no holds barred played what came naturally.

I am so glad the tunes live on and now they have been uploaded within easy reach of the world they have been reborn bigger than ever.

I would never have anticipated back then.. sat on my friends carpet, in a spare room decorated with kid's wall paper that the songs would even have survived the recording process let alone now being disseminated to the world.

If you like any, please feel free to download and pass around.. Just credit the legendary P-Funk and the Funky Monkey's.

Tags: music, new media, funk, jazz, jamming, p-funk, funky, monkey, Band