A classic symposium/conference scene. The speaker emotes to present his point to a bunch of guys looking at their laptops. Ah well, probably the rest of the audience were paying attention; although your humble diarist can’t criticise seeing as he’s just taking a photo at this point.
Although I have been doing plenty of work trips recently they have all been in the UK, and it’s been six months since I was actually at Manchester airport heading off somewhere for work. Today I changed planes in Schiphol, one of those hub airports that almost everyone who flies probably ends up at some point or another, and what a joyful place it is…. I was sitting behind this fence watching the arriving passengers get off the plane we were about to get on, and I kind of like this shot just for the effect, how the fence and the light make the woman look sort of ghostly.
Rydal cave, on the slopes of Loughrigg Fell, is the biggest cave in the Lake District. As A. Wainwright says in his Pictorial Guide, “there is room in here for the entire population of Ambleside (though admittedly many of them would be standing in water)”. It’s not a natural cave however; instead, it is the product of quarrying. I guess you need a certain confidence in the local geology to dig out such a big hole…
Anyone who has documented every day of their lives online for more than four years cannot but be at least part-geek, so things like festivals of board games appeal to me, and I wasn’t even the member of the family who initiated this trip to “MeepFest” in Leeds today. (No, it wasn’t Joe either.) Great setting, a church in Leeds now converted to an arts centre. Good fun gaming, too.
Passed on a walk through the countryside, on a muggy day. I dislike this kind of agricultural mess (why should someone feel free to litter the place just because they farm it?) while at the same time liking it as a subject for a picture.
Hampden Park is Scotland’s national football stadium and also home of Queen’s Park FC, currently in the fourth tier of Scottish football, a bizarre but strangely endearing arrangement surely not replicated elsewhere in world football. The stadium has been on this site since 1903 and when it was substantially rebuilt in the 1990s this old version of one dressing room was preserved as part of the Scottish Football Museum. In this room, more or less, Real Madrid and Eintracht Frankfurt prepared before the 1960 European Cup Final, often cited as one of the best games of football ever played (7-3 to Real).
I returned to work. It rained. Well, these things will happen, they still need documenting…
Because this blog is just me documenting my life, one day at a time, as it comes, it is inevitable that the periods of activity and interest must subside. Little will happen over the next couple of weeks. Spent all morning doing the photos from the trip, then the afternoon unpacking, the evening reacquainting myself with the local pub and eating out. So this is as good as I could do today.
OK, we’re finally here. I’m off tomorrow for the first stages of a trip that on Sunday 2nd August should culminate with me reaching the summit of Kilimanjaro, at 19,340 feet (5,895 meters). I’m not taking the laptop so there will be a two-week hiatus in the blogging, but hopefully not in the picture-taking — I have a backup camera just in case… I’m certainly ready, in fact I feel like I am just hanging around and am very keen to get on with it. So let’s do it. I’m back late on 6th August, will probably be spending all day on the 7th sorting out the social media, so expect to hear from me again then. In the mean time, if you would like to support my fundraising cause, the Calder Valley Search and Rescue Team, feel free to visit my sponsorship page: every little helps and all monies raised will go to the CVSRT.
