Marc Provins

We have now entered the dark months of the year here in the northern hemisphere and after hundreds of years we still mark the festival associated with this shift into winter. Halloween apparently takes it's name from the day set aside for  remembering the dead, which also included saints (hallows). It's  Christian and Celtic origins may have got a little muddled over the years but some elements have persisted like carving a pumpkin and apple bobbing because of the autumn harvest. It is more likely these days that most people get their plastic pumpkins from Quality Save or Tesco, but I'm proud to boast that I've grown these crops this year for the first time, so will be partaking in both carving and bobbing. 

A sensational title I know but it is actually true.  Whilst staying with my parents this weekend I walked from the outskirts of the city into Gloucester and as I walked I remembered my bedsit there in the 1980's.  When I first left school I worked for a few years before going to college in Birmingham to study photography, and so I lived in Gloucester in 1986/7. My bedsit was in a big Victorian block on Belgrave Road, which was two roads up from Cromwell Street where Fred and Rosemary West lived. I regularly cut up Cromwell Street on the way to work and probably walked past the Wests or their children. They were charged in 1994, Fred with 12 murders, Rosemary with 10. Oddly a friend knew the psychiatrist assigned to Fred after he was arrested. The picture is the only one I took on my walk. The scrambling plant is a pyracantha often called Firethorn, not because of it's colour but because it is a poisonous plant with toxic thorns that cause a burning skin rash on contact.

Given the right attitude it is possible to grow to like almost anything, even a motorway. I say this as driving back from my parents' home this morning it struck me that the M6 and M5 have acted as a long and winding tarmac umbilical cord over the years.  I grew up in Gloucestershire and although they're not in the same house my mum and dad are still there. Strangely, over the years I seemed to keep moving up the M5 and then the M6, going to college in Birmingham, university in Staffordshire and then on to Manchester. So we've had decades of visiting each other by travelling up and down that same stretch of highway.  The clocks went back this morning, and I woke up thinking about the aide-mémoire 'fall into winter, spring into summer'. It's definitely autumn and whilst talking to mum in her garden I couldn't help noticing the hair like seed heads of one of her clematis. This also happens to forge a further link between our two homes as I have the s

Flash storm out of nowhere The cat heads under the bed at the sound of thunder We grab the washing from the line The heavens open Other half says "weird light" from another room Strangers run down  the street trying to shelter I suddenly remember  Mum  pedalling frantically, me in a child seat on her bike Both of us laughing hysterically Drenched

Today started with a red glow. By just gone 7am my home was rose tinted and  viewed from my kitchen window  the Manchester terraces looked ablaze. The day continued in a dreamlike manner as a few hours later I was on the set of Coronation Street with a group of students weaving in and out of familiar rooms usually flickering on a TV in the corner of the room. It was a strange and wonderful experience, with an atmosphere I've never experienced before silencing even the most surly of students, mesmerised by a  northern institution. So the weirdness goes on as later tonight I'll attend The Blog North Awards to celebrate this very blog being shortlisted for a gong. Wish me luck! The picture above is the view from my living room at 7.20am. I've not manipulated it in any way, apart from sampling a colour from the morning sky.  So apparently one of the colours of morning is #6b5371.

  Occasionally it seems wise to rest up and withdraw from the world a bit, and this weekend has been one of those times. I have a hunch that this often happens to me around October as short sleeves give way to long and heavier coats suddenly feel like a good idea. One of the benefits of living in a Victorian house is an open fire left over from an era before central heating. The first few blazes of the season bring an unparalleled pleasure that must connect us with our ancestors in some deep primal manner.  So my pictures today go no further than my living room and luckily I decided to get my camera just as the sun was low and the colours mellow. Home and my immediate surroundings are often the starting point for my projects and a source of inspiration. My other half who has been hit by the recession, redundancy and periods of unemployment over the last few years said that home can both a prison (when out of work) and a sanctuary (when working), which I thought was quite pr

I've been thwarted in my efforts to make photographs recently, too much work and not enough play. Anyhow I managed to grab twenty minutes today to speed walk the streets of Bradford, which was pretty interesting and so different to Manchester even though its just down the M62. 

It wasn't until I looked at this photograph on my computer screen that I realised how symbolic it could appear. The Royal Mail is literally fading away in front of our eyes, after 497 years of being run by the state it is about to be dismantled and sold off.  It would appear that nothing stays the same forever. I am continuing my experiments with colour and if you are interested the hex code for the colour sampled from the lorry, and the title of this picture is #ca5e80.