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.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Portrait
Joe, spaceship pilot
Saturday 7th January 2012, 3.00pm (day 135)
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.
Clare at the Centre of Britain
Tuesday 27th December 2011, 2.55pm (day 124)
Drove home today via the scenic route, and took some landscape shots I’m quite pleased with (two others have already made it onto my other photography sites – see the links at the very bottom of the home page).
However, this picture is more fun. Said scenic route from Morecambe to Hebden Bridge takes us through the remote (well, remote for England) Forest of Bowland and through the little village of Dunsop Bridge. According to the nice people at the Ordnance Survey, Dunsop Bridge’s telephone box is the exact geographical centre of Great Britain. So here we are at the centre of the country.
No one seems exactly sure how this is measured, however. Is it just the island of Great Britain? Or do you count all the satellites, like the Shetlands? Or is it the UK, which should therefore include Northern Ireland?
Let’s not worry about it. Few people seem to, anyway. The box is in a bit of a neglected state to tell the truth, I don’t think BT are really that bothered about it. I doubt anyone actually makes calls from here.
Matchday hospitality, the Globe Arena
Monday 26th December 2011, 2.00pm (day 123)
I’ve never heard a satisfactory explanation for why we call it Boxing Day. Whatever it means historically, these days it usually means, for me, attending a football match if there’s one in the vicinity. Today therefore becomes the Globe Arena’s second appearance on this site (after September 23rd). We did this one rather differently, however; our Christmas present for Carol & Dave, our in-laws, was to sample the full matchday hospitality package, with dinner in the suite under the main stand. Interesting experience.
This lady appears today for no other reason than I think she looks good in this photo. She becomes, begging her pardon, the oldest person so far on this blog.
Joe tries out his Christmas present
Sunday 25th December 2011, 12.15pm (day 122)
Hard to know quite how to encapsulate a day like Christmas without cliché. But here is Joe using one of his Christmas presents…. a chip off the old block? Who knows?
The game, by the way, is mölkky, a version of skittles for which I developed a liking in Finland last midsummer. Very tactical. Worth a try, if you have a piece of flat land about half the size of a tennis court to play it on.
Also, today is the end of the 4th month of this blog. I feel like I have been doing it forever. Actually I have twice as much left as I have already done.
And a happy Christmas to you all….
The spinner’s hands
Saturday 17th December 2011, 12.05pm (day 114)
Another craft fair. I did OK. It’s a two-day event – back there tomorrow. As will be this lady, carding and spinning wool from the local hillsides. Looked like a lot of hard work. Taking photos is much easier – at least physically. Selling them? That takes work.
Fei at her graduation, University of Manchester
Wednesday 14th December 2011, 6.00pm (day 111)
Couldn’t take lots of photos at this happy event because I had an official role to play: it would not have done to have been snapping away from up on the stage while reading out the names of the many graduates celebrating their achievements this evening. (Reading the names out is a harder job than it looks, I can assure you.) This was the best shot to encapsulate the most important thing about the day however – it makes people happy.
I would say, somebody please tell our government that higher education remains a public good, but we have done so, and they don’t care. Very soon Fei, and I, will sod off to work and study in a country which still values the notion of higher education as something which benefits everyone, not just the student. And we will take all the expertise and economic gains that it represents with us. Their loss. I hope it never happens, but we teeter on the edge here in the UK system, right now.
Riverside School, Christmas play
Tuesday 13th December 2011, 5.55pm (day 110)
Solidarity, brother 🙂
Self-portrait, Domodedovo Airport, early morning
Sunday 11th December 2011, 4.50am (day 108)
Well, this is certainly the earliest time yet for a daily pic, by a margin of some 110 minutes. Still, it could have been worse. It could have been Sheremetyevo airport. (This wry comment of course means nothing to anyone unfamiliar with the pleasures of Russian airspace.)
Doug in his wheelchair
Monday 5th December 2011, 4.10pm (day 102)
Doug is my friend and has been using a wheelchair for at least 10 years due to an autonomic disorder. What amuses me slightly – but I also think it says a lot about stereotyping – is that because his legs are in full working order he often propels himself around using his feet (kind of like you’d move a kids toy car). But you’d be surprised how many people look askance at him for doing this, as if they can’t balance the equation ‘in a wheelchair’ + ‘can use his legs’ = ? Many look at him like he must be a faker. After a while you get tired of pointing out that only a small minority of wheelchair users are paraplegics, and just start finding their confusion amusing.
