2025 has been a very good year for the garden, probably the best ever in terms of the amount of food grown and gathered. We had so many plums that they couldn’t all get picked and used before the wasps or some other rot got them. I think these ones are well past their best though. Taken during today’s job — pruning the tree, so it can produce more fruit in 2026, we hope.
It is the limbo period between Christmas and New Year, and while many of us might see this as an opportunity to do very little, our Clare (being who she is) decides to launch into a significant manufacturing operation. In Fight Club the Paper Street Soap Company was a front for the manufacture of bombs and general subversion, but I assume that’s not the case here. Who knows for sure, though.
“Hi Bob. Good pickings today, don’t you think?”
“Definitely. Must be all those people driving back from their Christmasses in Scotland. Ahh… look, I see an abandoned Kit-kat over there.”
“Sure — see you later….”
I wasn’t trekking all the way to Scotland without adding one more to my life list of football grounds, and as there’s not much else to the town of Forfar (though it seemed a perfectly decent place), Station Park, home of Forfar Athletic FC, can get the nod for today’s shot. At this point I think it’s 1-1; the final score was 4-2 to the hosts, over Elgin City, with Scott Shepherd of Forfar scoring all four of their goals and thereby winning the game more or less on his own. These things keep me going…
Boxing Day was spent walking in the Ochil Hills. Grey skies above us were contrasted with the sight of sun shining on hills to the south. This shot, from the summit of Innerdouny Hill, was taken with a very long zoom, and I am prepared to state that what is seen here is Culter Fell, the 2,454-feet high summit of South Lanarkshire — it’s in the right direction, and it certainly looks like it (see the second image down on the page as linked). Which means that here we have a view of just under 50 miles. That’s impressive — but in the end, I pick the shot because of also capturing the aeroplane, which is just cute. (More pictures from the walk will appear on my other blog in due course….)
The Firth of Tay makes a second appearance in a row, though this time, it (rather than a train) is the focus. The tide is definitely out. Taken from the top of Dundee Law, on what has become the mandated Post-Present Christmas Day Walk, as there often isn’t a great deal else to do on the day except the eating, drinking and watching movies part — which did follow. A Happy Christmas to you, wherever you may be and however you spent it.
As seen crossing the Tay rail bridge, more-or-less on schedule. The shot is taken from Newport-on-Tay, on the opposite side of the firth from Dundee. I am feeling minimalist this Christmas Eve, it seems.
Joe’s first appearance since — chainsaw in hand — 4th August. It’s Christmas. It’s time to re-engage.
Re: the title. You do understand Joe is our only child, right? Just checking.
I believe that the person who is the subject of the most statues in the world is Buddha, but I would be fairly sure that Queen Victoria is the most-depicted woman. She never seems to look particularly happy, though: whether she really said ‘We are not amused’ or not. That most public statues have invariably become covered in guano (that’s birdshit, of course) doesn’t help either. This one stands in Dalton Square, Lancaster: another stage in a slow journey north, for Christmas.
‘Tractor runs’ seem to have become a definite thing in the last couple of Christmases, giving the local farmers an excuse to drive their machines out on public roads, blocking them while making large amounts of noise and raising money for, well, something or other. Following on from the one at home last year, here we have the Ribble Valley version. Virtually impossible to take decent photos of these things, at least, not with my kit, but I go with this one if only because it reminds me of something from the twisted mind of H P Lovecraft; Great Cthulhu’s Tractor perhaps?
Being 42 