Up here the room is dark, but sunlight streams in through the south-facing leaded window on to the bench below where Haydn is working. It illuminates hundreds of beautiful old wooden-handled chisels, files and assorted tools. Some stand to attention like soldiers on parade in their respective positions against the low window-sill. Others scattered at ease on the bench, their location known only to their solitary commander. Each tool blackened over the decades, but still proudly retaining the strength and precision it was designed with, for the job. Solid and dependable. Made by the hand of a crafts person that has gone before.

I’d expected Haydn to be ageing, maybe even with a distinguished beard. But he’s in his forties, near clean-shaven, slim and with a quiet and gentle manner about him. He welcome’s me in to his workshop. It’s quiet, all but for the tiny, almost mute, noise of a radio for company. Around the edges Haydn’s apron hints at its former white, bleached brilliance. But now it shows the traces of tired hands, pausing to wipe away the dirt before returning to their manual labour. Familiar, skilled, comforting work even.

Much of the machinery looks like it hasn’t been touched for a long time, left in situ it seems for maybe thirty years. Some have fan-belts, stretching skyward. Reminiscent of early twentieth-century workhouse factories, once preserved in memory upon black and white photographic paper. Some have huge steel wheels to set their parts in motion. Some have spiralling drill bits. Some have blades.

Haydn works as we talk, filing and smoothing small metal components at a comparatively oversized steel clamp by the lit window. My questions are now coming fast, but he doesn’t seem to mind. I ask about the business. He reflects on its name Jesse Hill, called so after his now departed grandfather and namesake. Haydn began working for the family business as an apprentice at the age of sixteen, following in the footsteps of his father. It was expected, assumed even, that he would become a gunmaker too. I ask whether gun making is his passion, but I’m surprised to hear it’s not. He doesn’t even own a gun, but still has the highly specialist skill to make them.

I ask if Haydn has any photographs of Jesse Hill from the past. He disappears through the wooden door behind him marked PRIVATE, and in to the small one-man office, and returns holding a frame containing three black and white photographs. He talks of his father and grandfather, pointing warmly at each portrait as he speaks, and with nostalgia. The local Stirchley History Society would surely be interested in seeing these, I remark. As I silently reflect for a moment on what has been said Haydn rests the frame on a small circular, wooden stool, facing out in to the room as if his grandfather is now with us in spirit. His silent presence in the room.

I ask about the future of his business and learn that Haydn is the last in line. There is no next generation to take on the baton of responsibility. But what will happen to everything here once Haydn has gone? And with only one or two gunmakers remaining in Birmingham, this is surely becoming a unique but dying trade. We talk of heritage, museums, restoration and preserving history, craft and beauty. The campaigner in me sparks an interest in what I could do to help. But is it my place to interfere?

Haydn sets back to work at the bench and I realise that I haven’t seen anything that resembles a gun yet and I’ve been here now for half an hour, forty-five minutes even. With curiosity I survey the room again. How could I have missed it? There’s one leaning quietly against the legs of the bench – right in front of me. The double barrel of what seems to be a huge shotgun but without all its other parts. I don’t think I’ve ever even held a gun. There’s no technical or even sporting knowledge of guns stored for safe keeping in the farthest regions of my brain. I’m clearly not a gun expert or enthusiast. But Haydn is patient with me.

I’m surprised that the gun hasn’t been screaming ‘look at me’ all this time. Instead it has retained a vow of silence. Haydn picks it up to show me, and I become aware of how imposing it is. I rest my camera on its strap around my neck and pick up the gun from his hands. It’s weighty, almost unreal.

Haydn also shows me a newly restored shotgun, ready for his client to pick up at 3pm. It is slender, decorated with fine engraving flanked on either side by polished wood. He disassembles it pleasingly in to manageable, constituent parts. Haydn is at the beginning of the supply chain. Some of the guns he makes and refurbishes go to experienced collectors, some of whom then ship them on to clients abroad.

As I photograph Haydn now back at the work-bench clamp, there is a jarring moment when I realise I am literally looking down the barrel of a gun, in the line of fire. It’s a position I have never been in before. But there’s nothing threatening about this beautiful bold, object and its maker, a craftsman continuing the work of his father and generations that have gone before.

Stirchley Local History Photograph – Jesse Hill

It’s Saturday morning when I head out. I haven’t made an appointment. I don’t even have a phone number for them. I take a chance they’ll be working today and walk over the canal bridge and down the hill to Stirchley.

When I arrive I’m not quite sure where the entrance is. There’s a narrow, muddy path to the side of the building that runs behind the adjacent shops on the main high street. I’m looking for a sign-posted public entrance. There isn’t one down here. I re-trace my steps back to Ashtree Road, to see a small window-like hatch in the green warehouse wall. Like the entrance you might get at a garage when the metal shutters are down to the public. But this door is made of wood, and the padlock is open.

I rap on the door twice, to no answer and then push it gently inwards. It clicks open. I step over the wooden frame and gaze out in front to me. The room is dark, filled with old looking machinery, and tools hung on the wall. Two faces look out at me. I call out ‘Hi’. ‘Hi’ they respond. ‘Can I come in?’ ‘Yes, come in’. What I love about Birmingham, the Midlands even, is how friendly people are. The door always seems to be open.

I read their faces. Friendly, but a little intrigued to see why a 5ft 3inch woman with a camera bag has just arrived through their door. In his mannerisms John stands out to be the boss. I shake his oil-blackened hand. Pulling across the blue spring-like hose suspended from the ceiling, he describes how they primarily make compressor valves, the sort you may use to spray air in to tyres.

For the next 90 minutes, I’m given free reign to photograph John and Rarinder as they focus on their work, stopping only to give me the odd explanation, before peering back in to machines with cogs and clamps, or dated looking digital controls and moving parts. This work takes a lot of concentration, boring precision holes and shaping small metal parts to the nth millimetre. I’m told not to stand in front of the steel, rotating wheel on the main machine, from which tiny, metal shavings dance in to the air fleetingly before dropping to the floor. I get as close as is safely possible with my 50mm, non-zoom lens.

Towards the back corner of the room is a solid looking, stand-alone heater, it’s tubes glowing red to heat the whole space. Ravinder has a colourful, striped scarf wrapped tighly in the space where his blue, buttoned work coat doesn’t quite cover his neck. On his head is a neat, black turban. I keep my coat on too. It’s cold.

Next to the drill where Rarinder is working, I notice an old work-bench butted-up in one corner, strewn with drill bits and a table top cabinet with protruding, shallow wooden drawers. It’s a relic of the past, overlooked by the clock keeping time above. There’s so much to look at here, but it’s noon and I’ve done enough for today. Their customer has arrived and it’s my cue to give them some space. Saturday is a half-day and they’ll soon be heading home to enjoy their weekends.

Before I go, John tells me enthusiastically about Haydn, the gun maker in the workshop above. He uses even older, machinery than I’ve experienced here today, passed down from his grandfather and through generations. I’m told he’ll be back in on Monday from 10am to 4pm, and well worth the visit. Apparently it’s a real gem.

It’s pretty dark in the morning when I get up. Tom, my husband, has already started his morning sourdough bake. In the dim light I take a few practice pictures and get used to not having any manual controls. My eyes are going to have to work hard on focusing each shot today.

Rossiters, Birmingham’s traditional organic butcher’s shop is open already when I arrive, and a friendly face greets me over the glass counter, followed by owner, Steve. He introduces me to his colleagues Les and Dave. They are all dressed smartly in clean, white chefs whites, and underneath, pressed shirts and black ties. We exchange a smile and I ask how business is going. I’m told very well.

I’m led past a meat-slicing machine between the wall and the counter then we take a left to pass the under-stairs cubby-hole office. The back room contains a huge, imposing wooden butchers block to the right and a cold storage room to the left. There are saws hanging from the ceiling, ridged with sharp teeth.

Steve has already begun work in the outhouse at the back, vacuum-packing seafood. I’ve already arranged to photograph him, but choosing him as my subject from the onset is my first mistake. It’s not because he’s not photogenic or relaxed in front of the camera. He is. It’s just that Les’s work on the butcher’s block, preparing huge slabs of meat is catching my eye. He has an array of tools, and shows a confident and decisive skill with each blade. I compliment him, and re-affirm my observation with a question; “ You appear to be very talented at your job. How long have you being doing this for?” The answer is longer than my lifetime. I ask if he’d mind if I photograph him. Of course not.

The sun light in this room is harsh and low as it streams through the glass panes of the back door on the butchers slab. Positioning myself so that the window frame blocks the full force of the light, I use the rays to my advantage, capturing the scene as the residual light flits over the sharp blades, and bounces off the stainless steal splash-back wall. There is a rawness to the scene. Lifeless lumps of meat. Strong, coiled butchers string. Cold steel. But the atmosphere is warm and the meat is a rich, succulent red.

I stand at the bridge between the shop and the meat preparation room in what is essentially a tiny corridor. Over the shop glass counter customers exchange stories and banter with the staff as sausages, and huge dinner party sized portions of organic meat are purchased. The queue is long, but relaxed as regulars wait loyally for their turn. One mother and her young child, I’m told, are the newest generation of a long line of family that has sought custom here for many a year. To the other direction the precision craft of artisan hands is being outworked upon tender flesh on the butcher’s slab.

I realise that as both a local customer and now a visiting photographer, metaphorically I straddle both these public and private places too. It’s a privilege to be able to experience and capture a small behind-the-scenes glimpse of such a well-respected and now rare traditional business like this.

There are a lot of discoveries ahead. Photographing the rich tapestry of people’s lives around me is rapidly opening up my world… and I hope, more and more, the world of those who view and critique my work.

[ Blogs to come soon 'Engineer...' and 'Gun maker...' A gallery of all the pics from this series will go up on my website over the next few weeks]

It’s Monday morning at 9.15am and it’s busy. I’m sharing a ward room with surgical heart patients. They’re all lovely. Recovering, brave, beautiful, women. There are four consultant types and three nurses in the room. Two trolleys. Lots of talk. Too many cooks. None of the doctors are here to see me.

The weekend was a completely different story. There were no doctors – for hours, literally. I was promised an ultrasound scan on Friday night. It is yet to come and my abdomen pain has, of course, now gone.

I’m young, 30, fit and healthy. I cycle regularly, as fast as I can. I eat a balanced diet and grow my own veggies. I swim, but only when my neighbour is going too and can give me a lift. I walk and bus everywhere. I have a normal temperature, healthy lungs and a healthy blood pressure. I’m up, showered and dressed. No help needed. I’ve had rice crispies for breakfast and a cup of tea.

Why am I here? I woke with severe pains in my abdomen during the early hours of Friday morning. I’ve also had a chesty cough and some diarrhoea. I’ll spare you the details. By Friday evening I was in CDU at the shiny, new, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, just to be cautious. I started my visit in the Clinical Decision Unit hoping for a blood test, something to ease the pain and a suggestion of what it might be. I wasn’t planning on an overnight stay.

I’ve just returned from a work trip to Uganda and this mere fact means without a diagnosis yet, I have to sleep in a hospital bed for a night; ‘Sorry Mrs Baker, we can’t let you go home tonight’. Each day that I ask to be discharged, they say the same. They’re worried about tropical diseases.

I’ve have been waited on hand and foot all weekend by dedicated, friendly nursing staff. Hospital meals, cups of tea, new bed linen, fresh water. It has felt like being in a hotel at times, except that they check your temperature, blood pressure and breathing regularly.

But blink and you’ll miss the doctors.

10.45am Monday morning. At last I have four of my very own doctors in front of me all at once. Now all eyes are on me. So many eyes. I tell them I no longer have any symptoms and please can I go home. They prod and poke me, then conclude I have a clean bill of health. They say I no longer need a scan. Finally, over sixty hours later, the powers that be say that I can go home.

It’s wonderful that our healthcare is free in the UK. I don’t begrudge that at all, especially as millions of people die in developing countries through a terrible lack of medical care or money to pay for treatment. I know we are very privileged to have the NHS. I think the staff work very hard. The new hospital building here is certainly impressive. But from my short observations the NHS needs more doctors throughout the week, better rotas and better communication between departments and shifts to handover patient records and manage decision making and administration more efficiently. Otherwise patients like me get lost in the system for a whole weekend, or longer in some cases.

Another patient could have had my bed instead of me this weekend. The money better spent to help somebody much more ill than I have been.

Now I just need to wait for my discharge letter. I think I’ll be staying for lunch.

Macaroni cheese.

I leave hospital at 2.42pm.

Liberal Democrat Grafitti in Birmingham on the run up ot the General Election 2010. Copyright: Jane Baker/ Greensnapperphotography.com

Copyright © 2009 Jane Baker. All Rights Reserved

Directing a movie

The guys are in to movie making, and act out scenes of street fights, meetings in dark grafitti covered underpasses, money exchanging hands, high speed chases on foot. Of course, as with every good movie, in the concluding scene the protagonists change their ways and a resolution is found between gangs.

When it comes to music, thanks to the project, i’ve discovered a little gem, the Young Disciples recording studio, tucked away above a shop on Lozells Road. Packed full of state of the art macs and recording equipment it’s a great place to find young local talent sweating out the beats over an open mic session. Each young guy projecting a natural air of ‘cool’ in the fast and furious atmosphere of the breathless, dimly lit studio.

MC'ing in the recording studio

The girls are pretty hot on street dance, each one watching their moves reflected in the mirrors in the dance studio above Gerrard St Methodist Church. They barely get to the end of a track before they fall about laughing when one of the group misses a beat, forgets the step or complains that the track is too fast. Their faces start to become familiar to me as the girls return at the next session to perfect what they started.

Street Dance

If that’s anything to go by, who knows, maybe Lozells is growing young talent today that we’ll see on our TV screens tomorrow.

Watch this space!

Brap is an equality and human rights charity based in Birmingham who have launched their very own magazine called Speak Out. Under the strapline ‘Same City, Different Lives . This is Birmingham…’ the magazine invites contibutors and readers to share opinions and consider what it’s like to live in one of the country’s most ‘diverse’ cities.

So that’s why I thought i’d make my own contibution with the feature article:

High Rise to Power (Speak Out, Issue 4: pages 2, 8 – 10). It’s about single mums, Lynsey, 23, and Carina, 21, who took their chance to speak out in Parliament about their experiences living on a council estate in Birmingham.

There are very few magazines like Speak Out that give an opportunity to profile stories of people in Birmingham that might otherwise go unheard.

Lets hope those that can bring about change listen up!

Lynsey, 23, at the bus stop with her daughter Keeley, aged 5. Birmingham, UK (from High Rise to Power series).

Copyright © 2009 – Greensnapper Photography – All Rights Reserved