Road Trip contd-North to Memphis

From Vicksburg it was a long drive up the River Road to Memphis so we took an overnight stop in Oxford to break the journey.

Rosedale, a very small settlement on the River Road. The Memorial Park is overgrown and the Country Club has long gone. No Mar-A-Lago here.

The drive upto Oxford from Vicksburg was across a totally flat landscape apart from the big levees along the Mississippi. The River Road was virtually empty -we drove alone for long distances.The vast paddocks were being prepared for planting and cropdusting aircraft were busy. Cropdusting has been long established in the delta and Delta Airways started out as cropdusting operation in the delta back in the 1920's.
The few settlements we passed through on the way were small and obviously really struggling. Most of the farmers have gone.The farms have been consolidated and are now owned by corporations and run by managers. Mechanisation has totally taken over the work of literally tens of thousands of cottonpickers.
One government solution to the plight of these small settlements is to give them a correctional facility-a prison -to provide local employment. So you find small prisons in the most out of the way places which must be very difficult for visitors. But the prisons are just a band-aid solution . These small settlements have no viable future. The world has changed.
A short by chance diversion off the River Road mid morning took us to Roy's Store -which seemed to stock everything and which provided a snack from their grill. Roy's Store is on Lake Washington and is over 100 years in business and is one of the last surviving country stores in Mississippi.

Adrienne,the cook at Roy's Store. My personal favourite photo from the roadtrip.

Roy's Store-they stock everything it seems.

In 100 years you tend to fill the place up

Dining at Roy's Store

From Roy's Store

We made the regional centre of Clarksdale by lunchtime. Clarksdale is the home of the blues. The town centre is run down and we were concerned that lunch was going to be difficult when we found the Stone Pony-a thriving cafe on the main street.Maybe there is a thriving out of town mall which we missed.
 Some of the locals were very enthusiastic about their local elections which were being held that day. I had a good chat with this crowd below and they were really friendly and enthusiastic. It is not all bad news.

Local elections in Clarksdale

Paramount ,Clarksdale

Miss Del's General Store, Delta Street Clarksdale

Deaks. Music sold here -and cold beer-Clarksdale

After a good lunch in Clarkdale we headed on to the university town of Oxford-not a very original name for a university town-in Mississippi- home of Ol' Miss-the University of Mississippi.There we stayed at a really excellent hotel - the Graduate-with a great rooftop bar looking down the main street.
Oxford was a real surprise. It seems misplaced -such a contrast to so many places we had passed through. It has bookshops and so many places to eat and no boarded up shops. However it seems very dependant on the university and it must be very quiet out of term time.

Oxford from the rooftop bar of the Graduate Hotel

Two wonderful films

It's been raining here for days.As if the big storm of two weeks ago was not enough we now have had torrential rain for days.The garden is waterlogged and everywhere is damp.I have been suffering from cabin fever.I hate being confined indoors.
However one benefit to this awful weather is that I have seen two superb films in the last few days.The first was a Russian film-Leviathan.It is very dark and sinister but the acting and photography are quite extraordinary.It has been widely acclaimed and I would say that it is one of the best films I have ever seen.It has only just been released here in Australia and it is not being screened widely but if you can find it go and see it.It will make you despondent about Russia and the Russians but you will leave the cinema in awe of the skill of the filmmakers and the actors.

The second film was Testament of Youth -a British film based on the memoirs of Vera Brittain describing her experiences in the First World War.Again this film is exquisitely crafted.The photography is superb and I believe that it was shot on film as it has a filmlike look about it.The director uses many close shots and a wide open wide aperture lens so there is very limited depth of field. The acting is wonderful - particularly the lead role played by a Swedish actress Alicia Vikander.The film is very harrowing and moving.It has received excellent reviews locally and I saw it in a packed cinema.As the credits rolled no one moved.The audience was numb and shaken by an extraordinary film.
It has just been released in Australia.I presume that it has already been released in the UK but I see that it is not due to be released in the US until mid-June.See it on a big screen if you can.

The Testament of Youth features Oxford University with some scenes around the Sheldonian Theatre.Sadly Oxford nowadays has become a sort of Disneyland Academia with streets full of tourists and souvenir shops selling T-shirts with Oxford University emblazoned across the front and all manner of Chinese made tat.
I used to live near Oxford and for a number of years I worked in Cowley-a suburb of Oxford.The city was still charming then but sadly I did not photograph it in that period.
Then when I moved to Australia I used to travel back to the UK on business very regularly.In those days all the flights from Australia used to arrive at Heathrow at daybreak.There's nothing like sitting on a plane for 24 hours and then arriving at a chaotic Heathrow first thing and then getting a rental car and heading off onto the M4.Harrowing best describes it particularly if it was raining and it was a weekday morning. In later years the company used to send a driver to meet me and so I could doze but when I was still driving myself if it was a Sunday I would head across country to Oxford and park in the centre and try and find somewhere selling a strong coffee-an almost impossible task- and I would take a walk and enjoy a wonderful experience.
On one such Sunday morning in 1989 I flew in on a Singapore Airlines 747-it was always Qantas or Singapore in those days -and picked up one of Mr Hertz's finest and was in the centre of Oxford just by the Sheldonian Theatre by 8.30am.It was a beautiful day and I had my Leica M4P loaded with Kodachrome (ISO 25) when I spotted this local cycling past the row of houses.It was a grab shot and I did not have time to adjust the shutter speed but to my mind the slight blurring of the cyclist adds to the photo.