M. J. Alford

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M. J. Alford

Inspiring digital content exploring our rich global heritage, and discussing hard-hitting facts and

26/04/2025

Pray for Pope Francis as he is laid to rest today. 🙏 While many will remember him for his great and indeed admirable kindness, sadly, his legacy has hardly been the most fruitful for the Catholic Church. 🤔 May God have mercy on him and raise us up a good and holy pope.🙏

21/10/2024

Solemn Requiem Mass at the SSPX Chapel of St Michael the Archangel in Burghclere, Hampshire, England for Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallarais on Saturday 19 October 2024. 🙏

I think a lot of newer generations of Traditional Catholics can easily fail to appreciate just how crucial a role Bishop Tissier played in establishing the traditionalist movement within the Catholic Church - dare I say that without Father & later Bishop Tissier, we would not have had the historical giant that was Archbishop Lefebvre. I did know some of the well-known stories, such as his involvement as one of the first nine seminarians who went to Abp Lefebvre during the initial upheavals in the 1960s, and of course his later consecration as a bishop, but there were also many stories of his ongoing support to the Archbishop both in the early days of the Society, and later in the lead-up to the consecrations of which I was personally unaware until after his recent untimely passing.

Thanks be to God for such a wonderful man!

03/10/2024

Road traffic presses on during the evening rush hour on the outskirts of Taunton, apparently heedless of the magnificent double rainbow in the heavy, but patchy rain - taken last Friday evening as I was on my way to see the Mayflower vintage steam railtour passing through Norton Fitzwarren.

I can't help wondering how many people were just too busy getting on with there lives to notice - indeed, it says something about the modern world and its mentality that we so easily miss such fleeting finer things. If you're seeing this post and were in the Taunton area on Friday, did you notice the rainbow?

Hopefully my work as a photographer might help to draw attention to the little details in the world around us that make such a difference to life, and the importance in creating such details when designing the places we are to live, work, and play in.

30/09/2024

British Rail Western Region/Great Western steam locomotives Nos 5043 Earle of Mount Edgecombe and 7029 Clun Castle double head the returning Mayflower steam service through the dusk shadows, passing Norton Fitzwarren shortly after sunset. This was about as much rail-related photography as I got attempting to beat the train to Dainton, only to have a delayed CrossCountry train, a missed bus, and a trip on the wrong bus thwart my attempt earlier in the day. Going for the evening shot, my camera conveniently decided to refuse to focus in manual mode just as the train was already in view, so a had to make a rapid switch to auto mode and hope for the best. Considering the way the shot looked in camera, I can't say I'm that upset with the final result post processing.

24/09/2024

1 year apart at Chester... It's not just the PEPs that have gone, but the TfW class 150s are doing the disappearing act as well, with some being listed for sale by ROMIC, the same firm behind the export of the class 43/Mk III HST sets to Mexico and Nigeria.

Like a lot of people I'll definitely miss the classic, rugged, utilitarian looks of a lot of these old British Rail built multiple units, but I have to admit there's been an incredible amount of thought put into passenger amenities on a lot of the newer regional, suburban, and local trains taking over services across the country.

30/08/2024

The Chapel of St Michael the Archangel, owned by the SSPX in Burghclere, England, seen decorated for a wedding last Saturday, and reflected in the bright afternoon sunlight in a puddle left over from a solid downpour of rain in the morning. These conditions of bright sunlight following a solid rainfall necessary for such a great puddle reflection are quite rare in the UK, although they tend to be more common in the Autumn, but they're such great fun for creative shots, and traditional architecture, with all its colours and human proportions always looks great as a puddle reflection. The chapel was only completed last year.

22/07/2024

Some shots from a visit to Pendon Museum the previous weekend for their 70th anniversary celebrations with a special sequence of trains marking key points in the history of the former Great Western Railway network. Pendon Museum is very much dedicated to the people who went to great efforts to record life on and around the railways in southwest England in the 1920s & 1930s, and is entirely composed of working diorama models of fictitious scenes, but with all the buildings being accurate replicas of real-life ones, and it has so many more stories to tell besides just the railway history. There was a short video playing in one of the upstairs conference rooms telling the tale of some of the buildings in the village on the vale scene on the upper level of the museum. I am working on a YouTube vlog covering my experience of the museum, but pretty much everything got stalled last week due to me catching a bit of a cold.

23/04/2024

St George & Merry England!

This country may have a more complicated past than some may like to think, but let us never forget that which made our country great. Let us build upon it, learning from the successes as well as the mistakes and failures; let us make England great again and put the "Great" back into "Great Britain!"

Work is underway rebranding my website as part of my developing photography & photojournalism business, with the aim of having my "Michael's Mission" blog/podcast launch on Pentecost Sunday 19th May. Together we can restore England to her true greatness and help other nations revive theirs too!

Happy St George's Day everyone!

31/03/2024

Christ is risen!

Indeed He is risen!

Happy Easter!

🙏😇⛪

11/03/2024

Happy birthday Victoria Coach Station! Opening on March 10th 1934 as the headquarters of London & Continental Coaches, it's celebrating its 90th birthday this year! I spotted TfL's info on the heritage of the building heading home from a church youth conference a few weeks ago, but had too much luggage for easy photography, so I popped into London (on the coach of course) last week to take a few snaps.

It goes without saying that as London's main central coach station, it's grown significantly over the years, with a separate arrivals facility and some coaches using bus stop style bays on the street outside, or a second departure facilities beneath the NHS Digital building.

The original building is an interesting example of Art Deco architecture and the transition from Traditionalism to Modernism in architecture the style represents, with its rather grand entrance facade, on the corner, but plain, unornamented facades on the sides. It's very striking, but more at a distance, with little granular detail at closer level to interest the viewer.

23/02/2024

Cheeky afternoon coffee for the Feast of the Chair of St Peter.

14/02/2024

Ash Wednesday deskfast while cracking on with my business plan.

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