Thursday 2nd December 2021, 6.15pm (day 3,752)
It’s nice to travel, but it’s also welcome to come home. Mr Steve Grey makes at least his 10th appearance on this blog.
Home, with friends
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Portrait
Tammy of Saint FM
Wednesday 24th November 2021, 8.00am (day 3,744)
Tammy is clearly the driving force behind St Helena’s radio station, Saint FM (I could give you the frequencies, but you’re not going to be able to pick it up right now unless you are on a boat somewhere in the nearby South Atlantic). I was an interviewee not just once, but twice today — the first very early, so apologies to Saint listeners if I sounded a bit fazed.
Gareth and Jamie bring essential supplies
Monday 15th November 2021, 2.40pm (day 3,735)
The tape marks the legal limit of my world. But I have suppliers who can transfer across it some essential supplies, not least a couple of six-packs of Windhoek beer, from Namibia. Thank you Gareth — who’s also, in the end, the reason I am here in the first place (more on this next week, probably) — and his other half, Jamie. Dear St Helena Government: I didn’t cross the tape.
Birthday person
Tuesday 26th October 2021, 1.10pm (day 3,715)
As this blog cycles (seemingly endlessly) around the calendar there are certain fixed points, and 26th October is one of them — Clare’s birthday. Here she is celebrating it with lunch in the White Lion — her parents, my in-laws, unseen to the left. Happy happies to her: I shall demur from reporting the exact number, but it’s several years fewer than me, anyway.
Hebden Halloween fun
Saturday 23rd October 2021, 12.35pm (day 3,712)
These two certainly look like they’re having a jolly time on their respective Saturday lunchtimes in Hebden Bridge. But perhaps they just feel about Halloween much the same as I do — it’s intrusive and over-the-top, and we could probably do without it.
Colleagues
Tuesday 12th October 2021, 2.50pm (day 3,701)
These are the people I have come all the way to Toronto to work with — because we all decided, no, we are not going to sit and try to interact behind screens. We needed to work together. Ahmad on the left, Dina on the right. They look kinda happy about the prospect, as I was.
Late lunch
Monday 4th October 2021, 2.50pm (day 3,693)
Do I spend too much time in bars and cafés? Maybe it’s whatever Mediterranean genes I have in me. I was working, honest. This is a photowhack — the only picture I took today.
The new students get thinking
Friday 1st October 2021, 12.10pm (day 3,690)
I regret the fact that they all still feel the need to wear a mask. I regret that so many of them have not yet been able to arrive, thanks largely to airlines ripping them off and governments (worldwide) still using Covid as an excuse to be mean to foreigners. But I’m still glad they’re here. This is only the second day in more than 18 months — the first being 4th December 2020 — in which I’ve been able to hold a face-to-face class. There seemed to be some work going on at this point.
The Mayor (with P)
Friday 17th September 2021, 2.05pm (day 3,676)
The gentleman with the somewhat alien purple hue and the ‘P’ branded on his forehead (this is what happens when you sit in front of the data projector) is Andy Burnham, the elected Mayor of Greater Manchester. For a politician, he spoke a reasonable amount of sense at the meeting I attended today. 40 people in a room, about the same number attending online — all expressing freedom of choice either way. Seems fair enough to me.
Joe — the last supper?
Thursday 9th September 2021, 7.10pm (day 3,668)
The beginning of what will probably be a trilogy of pictures. On Saturday Joe leaves home — at least for university, in Dundee. We took him out for dinner tonight, not very far away (hence this also becomes the 1,500th Hebden Bridge picture to feature on the blog). Of course I sincerely hope this will not be his ‘last supper’. But whether he will ever live here again in the truly permanent sense that he has for the last 18 years, five months and five days (he has never lived in any other house than he does now) — who knows… But that’s the thing about the future, isn’t it? Who knows?
Being 42 