I’m walking again. If you want to know more about that part of the day then see my other blog. It was a gorgeous, glorious summer’s day, perfect weather in every respect, and this is more-or-less the only picture I took all day that didn’t have some blue skies on it somewhere. But nevertheless it’s the one I like the best: good curve on the wall, the solitary X-shape of the stile.
Life round here definitely feels chilled at the moment. It’s amazing what a nice, sunny four or five days does to this country, particularly when it’s been about a year since we had any such sustained period of pleasant.
I know I did the same theme a couple of days ago but if I’m to truly encapsulate the day then I have to return to it. Went on a walk up to the woods of Hardcastle Crags today, and the bluebells are making a spectacular display this year. They are a signal species, if the bluebells are healthy, the wood’s healthy, so this is a good sight. I think anyone familiar with the English countryside reacts to bluebells at a pretty primal level.
Joe here shows his opinion of gardening, refusing to be impressed even by the relatively substantial leek harvest (these have been in the ground at least a year). Only the promise of a picnic got him up to the garden in the first place, despite the decent weather — but here it is still 10 minutes away.
Three days of photos back home in HB and they’ve all had a floral theme; which is certainly pervasive as a theme, round here at the moment. There is more going on in this picture than you might at first think, however: this was taken into a cloud of insects, several of which are lit up in the sunlight to the top right of the shot.
Time to start finding photographic inspiration back at home, if I’m to keep this blog going. There’ll be more pictures of local flora yet I am sure: having missed out on (what has passed for) spring at home, there’s some catching up to do. I like the seemingly random distribution of focus on this shot.
On the return home,
Fallen blossoms. I’m sure there’s
A haiku in it.
What have I missed while I’ve been away? Little things, the family, my DVD collection, pubs. Whitelock’s has in the past won ‘Best City Pub in Britain’ awards and is this great little oasis in the middle of Leeds’ shopping district. Plenty of reference is made within to its foundation date of 1715 AD: fifty-five years before any Europeans properly set foot in the country I have just left.
What have I not missed while I’ve been away? The weather…
The title of this post is used with a mild sense of irony. Because of the role this airport wants to play — a bridge between Europe and East Asia/Australia as well as a destination in its own right — many of the flights seem to land and leave here between midnight and 3am, to fit in with flight schedules to and from countries that have stricter controls on when planes can come in and out. As a result, Abu Dhabi airport was as busy at 1am as anywhere I’ve ever been. I didn’t deliberately get a shot of these two, but was taking something of the decorative pillar in the center of Terminal 1 — as many other people were doing to pass the time — as she turned around. Cropping did the rest, it’s a bit out-of-focus but never mind, I quite like this shot.
And so, thanks to a three-hour stopover, another country, the United Arab Emirates, technically makes it onto the blog, though I don’t consider I visited the place. However, I think this shot is a little more representative than the dull one, technically of Singapore, that I got on the stopover during my flight out just over four months ago. This shot also becomes the earliest on any of the 641 days so far, and one of only four taken before 6am.
Here is my luggage awaiting what amounted to the second leg of my 9,000-mile journey home: the train journey from Circular Quay station to Sydney airport. Circular Quay must have one of the best views of any railway station in the world — accepting stiff competition from Durham in the north-east of England (look it up…) – so you’d think they might clean the windows now and again.
