Not Quite Up To Parr, Aylesford

The film "I Am Martin Parr" was on BBC Four so decided to give it a watch. I thought it was okay but was a rather uncritical approach to his monumental presence (both good and bad) at the heart of British photography. I think it was interesting to see the difference between his earlier black and white work (his most celebrated images from this period were shot in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire and were more in the humanist tradition) and his colour work (most notably The Last Resort from New Brighton in Merseyside and were brash, in your face and, at the time, controversial in their depiction of working class people).  
The talking heads were all in agreement about how brilliant he was/is which made for an unbalanced view of his work, there were no critical voices to give a more nuanced view of his legacy and how his omnipresence in British photography is not necessarily a good thing. I laughed when he said Matt Stuart was everywhere as it was a bit like the pot calling the kettle black!
However, especially when out taking photographs, he seemed a genuinely nice chap when engaging with people. He really took an interest in them, laughed, joked, paid compliments and made them feel relaxed. Such a difference (in good way) compared to the way the likes of Bruce Gilden approaches his subjects with aggression and a snarl.
He does hold a lot of power in British photography, though, through his Foundation in Bristol and I'm sure if you have his support it's a huge boost for your career. I liked his point about photography not being taking as seriously as art form in this country compared to Europe but at the same time he seemed to very dismissive of others work that he didn't personally like. He said he could tell after five to ten seconds (!) whether a photography book was any good or not and that most books being brought out at the moment were "very poor". Due to his clout his opinion matters and I found this unnecessarily dismissive - art is always subjective and just because he doesn't like something doesn't mean it's not any good.
Anyway, here's my "Martin Parr" creation of the cake I made. It was supposed to be a chocolate Guinness cake with cream cheese frosting, topped off with a dusting of dark chocolate. Unfortunately, I didn't have Guinness so had to use Murphy's instead (it's another brand of Irish stout). I also didn't have any light brown sugar so had to use dark brown soft sugar as a replacement. Luckily, it turned out well (even if, technically, it wasn't on "par" with the recipe) and tasted great (thanks to Jane's Patisserie online recipe - easy to follow and came out the oven just as she described).
The rest of the day was spent reading (I'm currently about a third of the way through Trio by William Boyd), watching telly and making the evening meal. We didn't venture out as, for most of the day, it tanked it down.