Roads to Joy

I reckon that folks throughout the Allen Valleys have been loving James Little’s photographs for at least the past five years, if not longer. The very first one I clocked was his drone image of the enchanted setting for the Cricket Ground, and I loved it so much that I knew I wanted him to work on a similar sort of perspective for the East and West Allen Valleys.

His images now feature on the front and back covers of the book, AllendaleDiary.org, published at the beginning of 2020, which incidentally is still on sale at The Forge, as well I believe as at Coffee & Kuriosities down at Allen Mill. By chance, however, I saw that he’s holding an exhibition of his photographs, as well as presenting a talk on his work, at Sinderhope Community Centre. It’s a special delight, considering the size of that venue, to have a precious ticket in my hand for the talk.

It’s lovely to share in the successes (as we say, vicariously) experienced by the new generation coming along. Every joy our children find along their own way gets transmitted back to us somehow, along with, it must be said, every trial, tribulation and soupçon of angst. But I’m really concerned here with joys, so let’s concentrate on them, shall we?

Somehow the little morsels of pride in the successes of the next generation help to boost optimism in the future. And what a dreadful future it appears to be, so that any opportunity to be cheerful is so very welcome! We too, we were once children, and our parents may have stored tiny snippets, precious gems, of memorabilia along the way. My brother is dredging his way through the accumulated files of our pastor parents, finding some family mementos amongst endless wedding and funeral programmes of ‘the flock.’ We have to live with some joy in the midst of what might be overwhelming fatalism, else we will succumb to despair.

So I too continue to search for joys to share, and definitely, whether I can actually get to James’ exhibition or not, I shall be sharing the exultation in his wonderful work.

Thanks James, a sheer delight!