Well as some of you know I’ve been talking about a personal project for some time now and I have finally got the photography off the ground.
By joining a flamenco group in London I have been able to attend and photograph my first public performance, last Sunday.
When I was about 13 years old I went on holiday with my Mum and Dad in Spain.
We were camping on the Costa Brava – quite an adventure in those days.
One afternoon Dad took me into town for some shopping and we dropped into a bar for a drink before heading back. It was a tiny taverna in a back street, rather scruffy, and I was a bit surprised Dad had chosen this place – not really his sort of thing.
He ordered a couple of drinks; two Cola Cognacs – large glasses of coke and ice with a very hefty shot of local brandy in them. We were really living vida loca.
It was, I think, the very first alcoholic drink I had had and it set me on the path to ruin.
I loved it.
As we sat there, twirling the ice in our glasses, a small band set up and began to rehearse for the evening show. A guitarist, a dancer and a singer. They ran through a couple of songs and we watched and listened happily.
Lots of foot stamping and twirling and castanets – mixed with the alcohol in my blood I was quite giddy with the exotic atmosphere.
The dancer sat down and the singer moved up and started singing with the guitarist.
But this was not the passionate, joyful noise of earlier.
I have no idea what she was singing about to this day but I remember well that it moved me deeply to see her screwing up her ugly old face in what seemed to be pain as she wrenched out her song.
It may now be my imagination but I’m sure I saw tears running down her face as she wailed out the words.
It wasn’t a “nice” noise.
It was harsh and discordant. It seemed to use notes not intended for humans.
It wasn’t a pretty sight – She wasn’t a pretty señorita in a flouncy dress, she was old and far from pretty – she hugged herself in pain and beat her legs with her hands and stamped her feet in time to a rhythm I didn’t understand.
Dad and I had stopped drinking now and we just stared at this scene without speaking.
The song ended and there was some clapping from the very few people in the bar and a few shouted Spanish phrases.
The band tidied their equipment and went to have a drink at the bar as if nothing had happened.
I had witnessed my first flamenco, and probably that rare version which is called Cante Jondo, “deep song”, the old and authentic song of the gypsies.
The images and sounds of that afternoon have stayed with me for fifty years – I can’t guarantee that I remember everything exactly as it happened: like a witness to a terrible road accident, memories get changed and distorted but one thing you’re clear about is that you have seen something life changing.

Dad said “Well, what about that then ?”, or something similar. He, too, looked shaken.
Walking back to camp we chatted about it, joked even, trying in our English way to rationalise what we had seen and get it comfortable in our minds.
By the time we got back to Mum we just had an amusing anecdote to tell her about the strange grizzled old lady who’d sung in a bar.
I have never seen the like of it since.

When I was looking for a personal project to photograph I remembered the bar in Torres de Mar and decided that was what I was going to photograph.
I want to capture the spirit of the gypsy song: “La duende”.

It’s total madness really: Song Dance Music and I’m doing still photographs.
It’s going to be hard – perhaps impossible.
I need to find a story to give my pictures a “hook” to hang from; a journalistic coherence.
I haven’t found it yet but I am now searching properly.
Last Sunday I went to La Pena Flameca de Londres for an evening of flamenco.
It was lovely.
There was some real passion in the singing and the dance and the guitar, was just beautiful.
It wasn’t the bar in Torres of my youth, but it had real soul and joy and yes, passion.
Just a few pictures but watch this space, I shall be doing more on my own personal quest to find “La duende”.