Sunday 8th January 2012, 3.35pm (day 136)
I am on there, you just might have to look for me for a couple of seconds.
The contents of the saucepan eventually became a very nice plum & blackcurrant sorbet, by the way.
I am on there, you just might have to look for me for a couple of seconds.
The contents of the saucepan eventually became a very nice plum & blackcurrant sorbet, by the way.
Eureka! (and don’t forget that exclamation mark) is a kind of kid-oriented, interactive mini-science museum in Halifax, just down the road. It overcharges you for entry and then feels guilty, so turns your ticket into an ‘annual pass’. But I suppose there are enough things to keep someone like Joe busy on more than one visit and he is, after all, the target audience. Me, I just take photos these days.
Beautiful plumage. But if it hadn’t been nailed to the perch, it would have been pushing up the daisies. It’s run up the curtain and joined the choir invisibule. This…. is an Ex-… Parrot.
Which, no kidding, arrived in our mail today. I bet you didn’t get one.
Today was one of those miraculous days of brightness after days of rain (and more forecast). Let’s not dwell on Virgin Trains’ inability to get me to the Lake District, as I had planned. I had to turn back at Preston. It didn’t matter. I went out walking at home instead, up Stoodley Pike and round to Cragg Vale. Windy, but spectacular day. See all the best photos from it on my Flickr site.
2012 has been a very wet and windy year so far. This picture may look worse than it actually was – these small trees are pretty much on the edge of inundation most of the time anyway – but I hope it does capture the way the water was thundering down through the town this morning.
Another day spent mostly inside, working, and I saw about 15 seconds’ worth of sunlight today. Fortunately at that point I was outside, getting my one dose of fresh air today, up at our allotment garden (Hebden Bridge being what it is, our garden is a few minutes’ walk away from our house). What to photograph in this one burst of light? Only one candidate really – the last edible vegetable remaining there from last spring’s planting. I like leeks, not just because they taste good but because they just keep growing, and even my black fingers (the opposite of green fingers) don’t seem able to prevent this.
Having stayed up past midnight for obvious reasons – and it’s a rarity for me – this first post of 2012 becomes the earliest in a given day by far. Usually when I see anything before 6am it’s because I’m up early, not in bed late.
Hebden Bridge seemed pretty laid-back when we walked back through it after leaving the party. Maybe it was the incredibly mild weather – unseasonably warm, we were able to sit outside at 1am having a final pint of beer with no sense of cold or discomfort. I like this shot because of the mixture of lines and textures, even if it is a bit blurred (but you try taking photos like this at 1.30am with no tripod!). I also like the mysterious, solitary blonde on the right. (As a compositional device, you understand.)
The feet are those of a fellow guest at the New Year’s Eve party to which we (including Joe) were invited. It wasn’t the most exciting party in the world but it was nice to be out on Dec 31st for the first time in 9 years, since Joe was born.
So ends 2011, the last 128 days of which have been documented here. All in all, it was an interesting year… 2012 is gearing up for more of the same. And I kept my 2011 New Year’s resolution: to take my photography more seriously. This blog is one manifestation of that. Happy New Year to you all, may it be a safe and fulfilling one whatever it brings.
This has not been an active couple of days. I have spent almost all of both of them at home working. Fortunately I have yet to exhaust the photographic possibilities in the immediate area. This is the factory across the street (see also 5th September, for instance), looking to me like the cover of Led Zeppelin’s finest moment(s), the Physical Graffiti album. But perhaps it’s been a long year, not to mention 33 hours in the house on my own not talking to anyone, and I am starting to hallucinate.
In the 126 days of this blog, few have been harder than today was when it came to finding inspiration. I worked at home all day, not leaving the house; the weather outside was flat grey skies and rain; I didn’t even have the other family members as subjects as both were out from early on and aren’t coming back until tomorrow.
But I have a duty to fulfil, so here is my best effort – given a little tweak by going black & white, which works on this shot, I think (and disguises how faded is the coloured fabric of the duvet cover). It also gives the eagle-eyed among you a chance to vet my sense of humour and football-related reading matter.