825 photographs in less than 2 minutes?

People often ask me where are all the photographs of all the people holding thesignedphotograph are. Well, it’s a logistical admin job and a half and I get very confused So to enable you to see the scale of the project I’ve updated the previous APOTSPOAB flicker film and hereby present to you “825 photographs in less than 2 minutes?”

Music courtesy C64Audio.com I hope you enjoy.

Warning – please don’t watch this film if flashing lights and fast images affect you at all

It is hosted on my new website which I am gradually moving everything over to —–> You can watch the film and others HERE

If you are an APOTSPOAB I hope you can spot yourself! Thanks so much to everyone who has taken part. It was a pleasure meeting you, and I have made many friends on our travels. I still need another 1365 people, so if you wish join in let me know and I’ll come to you. I hope to be having an exhibition and film screening shortly too so ears peeled for that

It is a pointless pointlessness for a very good reason… I will get the website tidied up shortly so it all makes sense… for info on how and what and why, please visit thesignedphotograph.com or follow on Twitter

Have a great weekend,

Anna x

Hoover!

We went to Portsmouth and saw the hovercraft which was a geeky ambition

And here is @thesignedphoto with the Spinnaker Tower

Steve Clark at The Palladium

Regular readers will know I am a complete variety and theatre history nut. I was fortunate enough to meet Steve Clark while at the London Palladium a few weeks ago. Steve is one of The Clark Brothers and dance history on legs – or feet to be precise. Have a look at the clip below – it is absolutely incredible!

He is a true entertainment legend who regaled us with tales of working with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr and many other names I never thought I’d be one degree of separation from. He also said he worked at the Kilburn Empire!

Also below is a link to a lovely bit of video with Sandra (a wonderfully jolly lady with a beautiful beaming smile) when they broke into impromptu sing songs. This clip makes me so happy – it’s a real joy to watch!

http://www.annablack.com/steve-clark-at-the-palladium (scroll down it’s at the bottom of the post)

(apologies for the hazy video quality – the lighting was very gloomy and had to brighten a bit…)

(I’ve managed to visit a few of the West End Theatres recently so will write more soon about my backstage exploits )

2010 to 2190

Happy New Year everyone! Hope everyone is well and that the snow is jolly rather than a problem for you. I spent a few days up in Edinburgh just now and it was beautiful, although it was a lot of fun getting back as the trains were askew. Braved Arthur’s Seat for well, you know…

As you can see @thesignedphoto has had a bit of an accident. I slipped on the icy path and fell on him. New glass is a’coming. It won’t be the same though…

New Anna Black Website

I’ve been updating my main website and hope to move thesignedphotograph dot com blog over to it soon, and integrate it all in, so it’s all more er… integrated and less complicated for my poor brain

Please pop over to have a look @ www.annablack.com – cheers!

I’ve put up one of my old films “Steps” which I hope you enjoy

West Hampstead Speaks!

APOTSPOAB @ 822 / 2190

I love it when a town, city or place talks to me. The whole of West Hampstead very kindly retweeted thesignedphoto project and I hope to be attending their get together at the beginning of December. I am wondering how an entire hamlet will get into a pub though. I do like things or places that talk as regular readers may have noticed (as well as in the previous sentence…)

Also this week I have created a number of lists on Twitter.

1/ APOTSPOAB’s on Twitter
2/ People who I have actually met!
3/ Commodore 64 fans and/or chaps

Talk about procrastination. I should really finish editing this film. See you in Birmingham!

John Nakashian

I bump into the most interesting people you know. On a ship recently I was looking out to sea thinking about the meaning of life and whether to have a cup of tea, and/or coffee in the restuarant, when I got chatting to a fascinating chap over the rails. John is an artist and had been travelling for inspiration and climate

Please spend some time with his beautiful work on his website www.jnakashian.co.uk

Ed Fordham in Super Kilburn!

Ed is most likely to be my MP come election time and a good all round chap. We’ve been conversing online for a while and finally met up for a photo. Cheers Ed! You can’t get any more local than Kilburn for me and I’m a proud Kilburnetter. It’s a great place to live

Stephen Fry Day…

Friday wrote Mr Kipling. Let’s all go into town with a signed photograph and meet some people. Via the joys of Twitter via the retweeting of @Cartoonbeardy I met the jolly nice @mrjames in Soho Square. Mr J is working on the new Clash of the Titans remake and it seems he is being stalked by pigeons…

After a stroll and a cuppa on the South Bank On Friday evening we went to see Stephen Fry read excerpts from his new book in Bloomsbury. Afterwards Stephen kindly took time to chat and agreed to become #APOTSPOAB number 814! Thank you Mr Fry for being such a kind, generous and lovely chap

On the way out I got interviewed by a couple of girls from an internet site called WinkBall. I think somewhere on their site there is a rather rough looking me insanely selling the signed photograph and saying nice things about Stephen Fry. I darn’t look! But here they are!

Thank You !

So over that last two years or so we have met near on 800 people who have had their photograph taken with the signed photograph of Arthur Bostrom, travelled over 20,000 miles amongst many odd things met Father Christmas at the Arctic Circle, dived to the bottom of a lake in Surrey, been on Outer Hebrides Radio, spoken to a man obsessed by mullets, and randomly bumped into famous nice people such as Vicki Michelle from Allo Allo itself, Danny Wallace, David Icke, Richard Vranch, Jeffrey Holland, Red Dwarf’s Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules, and Rob Llewellyn, and generally lived life in a bit of a strange, but self fulfilling coping mechanism type way.

Well looking back it’s kept me sane and doesn’t feel strange. Suffering from M.E. or any weird chronic illness is a strange experience in itself. No-one really but you can see or feel it. Doing something pointless to pace yourself  isn’t as strange as it seems. APOTSPOAB’ing has become such an integral part of my life, I can’t imagine not travelling around meeting people and chatting to them about all of this. It’s helped me much more than any pills. *wibble*

I don’t write much about the ins and outs of feeling crap. It doesn’t make for jolly reading but life can be difficult sometimes for me. I don’t want sympathy or owt, I’m just trying to do my thang, live the creative optimist life and surf life’s challenges as just that. Challenging init?

Anyway, I guess what I am trying to write is a thank you. Thank you to everyone who I have come across on my travels. Thank you to everyone who said “yes all right”, to those who have emailed me, patiently waited for a reply and who have invited me into their lives.  I hope everyone had fun with all of this, I certainly have!

So, at the moment the sun is shining. I feel relatively well, so I am planning some trips. Expect more of me and thesignedphotograph around and about as we push towards the magic number of 2190. If you can help me out I’d love to hear from you. I’m hoping to be back in contact with the great man himself shortly too.

Much love and thanks for everything,
Anna x