Tuesday 4th August 2015, 10.00am (day 1,440)
Rest day, spent in Moshi, doing a profound load of nothing. These two just passed by…
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Portrait
Steve at Barafu Camp
Saturday 1st August 2015, 6.10pm (day 1,437)
Barafu camp lies at 4,600m, or about 15,100 feet, and is ‘base camp’ for the final ascent to the summit of Kili, which rises behind this point. One arrives there around lunchtime and is supposed to get some sleep in the afternoon and evening because the final climb is done overnight. But the views are amazing, and I was not the only one defying advice and being up and about later on as the sun went down behind the shoulder of Kibo (and what must be one of the world’s most spectacularly-sited toilets, visible to the right).
At the Kilimanjaro Orphanage, Moshi
Monday 27th July 2015, 9.35am (day 1,432)
The tour company that organised our hike up Kili (Zara Tours) look after their porters and generally seem to support the local community, including this orphanage in Moshi, which we visited while spending a rest day before beginning the hike. I know it’s easy for such pictures to seem exploitative but I hope this one isn’t, it is just meant to represent the fact that although basic I thought this seemed an essentially happy place. Most of the orphans are that way because of HIV, though apparently rates of infection in Tanzania are declining from their peak of a few years ago, which is good news.
Airport hotel bar
Friday 24th July 2015, 9.20pm (day 1,429)
Well, I’m back from Kilimanjaro, and yes I did make the summit, but you will have to wait a short while to see it because I have several hundred photos to get through this morning. No excitement with this first one however, as I waited out a Friday night in one of the massive and anonymous hotels sitting just outside the boundary fence of London’s Heathrow airport. In such places, everyone is just waiting it out, aren’t they, including these three, with the bloke on the right ruminating about how much like Simon Cowell he looks, only without his cash (or why would he be in this hotel?). It will get more interesting… I promise.
Clare, Joe and insects
Saturday 18th July 2015, 8.10pm (day 1,423)
Walking home after a barbecue at a friend’s house. I like this photo partly because of the way the sunset light has caught the clouds of insects accompanying us on our journey, but also because when Clare saw this on the camera she went “bloody hell, he’s as tall as I am”. Which is true, now she comes to mention it.
Resting
Friday 10th July 2015, 3.20pm (day 1,415)
And why not. It was a warm day, and a Friday. I felt the same way today, I must admit.
Lunchtime, York station
Sunday 5th July 2015, 12.20pm (day 1,410)
Normally our journey home from London wouldn’t take us through York but we ended up there because of a blockage on the line at Wakefield. It didn’t really extend our journey time much, to be fair. I took this shot while sat on our Hebden Bridge train waiting for it to leave, and like it because until I uploaded it onto the laptop this evening I didn’t realise how I’d captured this mother and son a couple of platforms away. I wasn’t particularly taking a photo of them, just of this group of people sat over there, and it’s nice sometimes when you get something unexpected.
In the Victoria and Albert museum
Saturday 4th July 2015, 12.15pm (day 1,409)
The weekend in London continues. Visited the Victoria and Albert museum partly to see an exhibition and partly because I had never previously been there in my 46 years. The museum was opened in 1857 and has the largest collection of art and design objects in the world, the scale of which — 6.5 million objects — becomes apparent when you wander around the fairly large building and realise that even then only a tiny proportion of the collection is on display. This artist was one of a group sketching a sculpture which had made it out to public view.
Hot in the city
Wednesday 1st July 2015, 12.40pm (day 1,406)
For me there’s something kind of suburban or small-town about ice cream vans, so it’s nice to find one in the centre of one of the biggest cities in Europe. Good idea today though, it was very hot and humid in London, and indeed elsewhere today.
Victoria station — the new era
Saturday 27th June 2015, 2.10pm (day 1,402)
The title has a double meaning. Yes, it’s a new era for Victoria station, which after a long period of renovation is now just about finished and looks infinitely better for it. It’s also a new era photographically. Half an hour after taking yesterday’s shot my old Fujifilm Finepix camera conked out, I’ve had it some three years now and used it (obviously) every day so I suppose it was due to happen at some point. Went into Manchester partly to buy another one. I can’t afford to upgrade however so we are now working with a Canon Sureshot compact. You can work out, through following this blog, whether I get on with it as well as its late predecessor.
Being 42 