Flicker: photos discovered

Flicker photos discovered? Really? Some real actual Flicker photos discovered? No! Pull the other one!

Well, it’s true. Some fabulous Flicker photos have indeed been found, sent and added to the Flicker gallery. And they are rather classic ones!

We have been after exactly these Flicker photos for many years and are truly delighted that some of them have finally been unearthed! They were snapped by photographer extraordinaire Cliff Smith in January 2001, a short while after he took several of the other photos of Flicker that are already in the Flicker gallery.

The Flicker swirly was also photographed on that particular evening. You can see how the swirly was constructed from the picture of the UFO fibre optic lamp.

There are three photos of Flicker down in “The Frumperal Way”, also known as the underpass at the exe bridge roundabout in exeter. There were green frumperals, blue frumperals and red frumperals.

The municipal council’s research concluded that abstract artwork, possibly inspired by magic mushrooms, might appeal enough to those who would wantonly vandalise the underpass with grafitti, to abstain from their sprayings and scribblings. It was largely very successful, as the abstract mushroomy artwork seemed to have enduring appeal to all and sundry.

There was indeed a massive reduction in the amount of grafitti. The friendly colourful frumperals only needed to be repainted every few years, rather than the potential grafitti paradise’s blank canvas of bland magnolia, which needed to be resprayed virtually every week. The project was therefore a tremendous success, as well as the frumperals looking really cool. It had the added benefit of making elderly people using the underpass feel less scared.

The word ‘frumperal’ was created by Dan, when he was maybe one or two years old. It means a particular type of rather haphazard drawing. One could even say some random scribblings. It went a bit like this…

“What’s that you’ve just drawn, Dan?”

“That’s a frumperal! Draw a giraffe, Dad… Draw another giraffe, Dad… Draw another giraffe, Dad… Draw another giraffe Dad… Oh, that’s not a giraffe!”

“Is it a frumperal?”

“Yes. It’s a frumperal!”

Soon after, whilst pushing Dan’s pushchair through the underpass: “Look Dad! Frumperals!”

“Oh yes! Haha!”

And then, whenever out walking near the exe bridges: “Let’s go the frumperal way, Dad!”

“OK Dan, let’s go!”

A few years ago, perhaps around 2016 or so, exeter was the traffic light capital of the uk, with more traffic lights per square inch than any other town or city on that island. The exe bridge junction, where one can find the frumperal way, had the distinction of sporting more traffic lights than any other junction in Europe.

Funnily enough, the uk also had the slowest traffic in Europe, on average. And of all the cities in the uk, exeter had the slowest of them all, with an average speed of just over 4 mph, according to a report by the AA. So well done exeter, the most traffic lights and the slowest traffic. In Europe! Perhaps there is some correlation between those two statistics.

Flicker are planning a fourth album of music, which shall be called The Frumperal Way. Several demos of its tunes already lie in the depths of the Wud Records machines, waiting to be polished and made shiny and beautiful. A few of the Ugstrumentals are included among them, as well as various other compositions. Some of the Flicker photos discovered and newly added will most likely be used in the album artwork.

During the upload, we realised that there were still no pictures of Lucy Welsman (cello) or Emma Williams (flute) in the Flicker gallery. They have now been added as well.

Meanwhile, in other Flicker news, a number of tracks for their growing second album, HappySad, have been developed further. We are hoping that at least one more will be released this year. It might even be quite soon!

If you would like to see or hear more of Flicker, there are lots of their links in their Linktree, which you can access by clicking right here.

To listen to their first album, At Least 1000 Words, on Spotify, click here.

To download it from Bandcamp, please click here.

To listen to or download the band’s second album, HappySad, as it stands right now, please click here.

And of course, to admire all of the new Flicker photos discovered recently, that have been added to their gallery, please click here.