When buying tickets for football grounds with which one is not wholly acquainted, it might help if warnings were issued to the casual fan: “You are entering an area occupied entirely by people who want to stand up throughout the game and wave flags.” I mean, I admire their enthusiasm and respect their support — but after a few minutes, I moved, somewhere right up the top.
This is Bradford City’s ground; their game against Notts County attracted over 20,000 people to see a fourth-tier game — so someone, somewhere is doing something right…
As I’m having the week off, a chance to do highbrow things like hang around art galleries with the wife, who wanted to see this exhibition, Women in Revolt, at the Whitworth in Manchester. For this artist, her revolt seemed to consist of working with a camera for the three minutes it took to record the piece, the content of which can be guessed from the title of this post. Munch did it better, but if that’s the way you want to revolt, go for it, I suppose.
The really big buggers that used to reside in our sheds — like this one, for example — have not been seen for some time, unfortunately. But the ones presently residing in the accommodation are big enough, and if it the evidence is anything go by, they are laying eggs.
The Thames breaks up into a number of channels as it flows through Oxford. This one isn’t marked on the map as the main river, but the water, flowing in the direction seen ahead, will be back there, and heading down to London, fairly soon. An unscheduled morning here, but I am home now.
I have returned to the UK, but thanks to the inability of the UK rail network to function at any kind of useful level on a Sunday, I still haven’t made it home. A bicycle might even have been faster — not that I can ride one, a skill I never developed. They seem to use a few in Oxford, though.
Seems an appropriate shot to mark my last day here. Though, I suppose, this is a descent rather than an ascent, but never mind. Mostly, this has been an enjoyable and interesting visit, but I feel it unlikely I will ever return here.
On April 11th last year I departed on my trip to Namibia, and tonight I should have been in the air again, but instead am sitting out the year’s latest flight delay and am scheduled to depart tomorrow instead. But there are worse places to be stuck, I suppose. The surf was certainly up today, one reason why none of Ascension’s glorious beaches are considered safe places to swim. In the foreground, one of the historic ‘Turtle Ponds’, thankfully no longer used — behind, Sisters’ Peak makes its second appearance.
The boobies in question being, of course, the species of seabird (Sula dactylatra), of which there are hundreds, possibly thousands nesting on the Letterbox peninsula, at the eastern tip of Ascension Island. They fly very gracefully but have these big, ridiculous flappy feet and, on the ground, waddle in an amusingly silly fashion. It’s interesting that male and female masked boobies can be distinguished not by their appearance, but by their sound. Males whistle, and females honk. Both noises came out as they watched me pass by, I took the shot, everyone was happy.
While there is football here — I saw it on Sunday afternoon — skittles appears to be the principal sporting activity of those who live on Ascension Island, drawing people to the Saints Bar in Georgetown on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. Tonight, The Painkillers team, made up of staff from the hospital, brought their mascot along for support. It didn’t do them any good though, they were well beaten by The Power (they run the power station — you dig?).
In the years I have been doing this blog I have made my way through five cameras, giving an average lifespan, for each, of somewhere between two and three years. The latest came quite close to dying today: a few minutes after I took this picture I thought it had gone, in the same way as they always go, namely the zoom lens freezing up permanently. This would have been a major problem seeing as I am still stuck out in the mid-Atlantic, a few thousand miles from a reasonable camera retailer. However, after putting it in the fridge (literally), it has recovered, for now — but I will be using it sparingly for the rest of my time here. In which case, this is not going to be the very last shot taken with the Leica; but it was close to being.
This is the BBC World Service’s station on Ascension Island — from here, programmes are received, converted and relayed to South America and Africa, including until quite recently the Voice of America, but DOGE put paid to that, and as the manager of the station told me today, who is going to take up the slack? Russia and China, certainly. Thank you so much, MAGA. A fascinating morning in fact, but not an edifying prospect for the future, even if I do know more about global communications technology than I did last night.
Being 42 