Not that I’ve had anything to do with the preliminaries since completing my marking duties in January, but graduation season is here. Congratulations to all. Although I’d take these three more seriously if any one of them looked a bit happier about it.
My last day in Toronto. I could say ‘on this trip’ or I could say ‘forever’ and the fact is I don’t know at the moment, ‘cos it’s the future, and as yet undetermined. But I do hope to return.
Waiting out a 6-hour flight delay was made more entertaining by watching Spain v Italy in the Firkin pub on Yonge Street: location for what remains my favourite shot yet taken in Canada, namely this one on 14/10/2021. Both these guys were cheering for the same team, specifically Spain: and both went away happy, as they duly won, 1-0.
Some might say 1pm is a little early, even on a Saturday, to be camping it up in full drag queen mode, but clearly this opinion is not shared by the entertainers at the Church St Garage in Toronto. Taken from across the street while enjoying lunch on another pleasant, sunny day here. The other guy is just passing through, but I like the juxtaposition, two people in their own world but in the same world, maybe.
Oor Wullie is a cartoon character who, since 1936, has appeared in the Scottish Sunday Post. He comes from the D. C. Thomson publishing house in Dundee, who also gave the world Desperate Dan, and like him, Wullie has his statue in the city centre. This family seemed to be enjoying his company — the women, anyway. Maybe not the guy on the right though.
I’m as satisfied with this portrait as I can be. Important elements come together: the woman walking past; his ankle (and what it implies); the just-lit cigarette.
Since I last changed planes there in 2015, on the way to Kilimanjaro, Istanbul has built a completely new airport about 30 mies out of the city which is now the second-busiest airport in Europe after Heathrow. It did seem to me that you could catch a plane from there to just about anywhere, certainly in Europe, Africa and Asia — a landmass of which it occupies a very strategic point, and always has done.
I was there early, left early, but so did a lot other people — this moment of solitary contemplation was not characteristic of the whole. This becomes only the second shot in 4,652 days to be taken between 5 and 6am — the other also being in an airport, Manchester’s, while on my way to Moscow in January 2017.
A few days to go on this trip to St Helena and work has definitely been keeping me busy. On the opposite side of the street I was sat there at just past clocking-off time, feeling very much like these guys. Yes, the butt bin to the right annoys me. But only slightly.
Believe me, the St Helena Yacht Club is not as posh a place as it sounds. But it is certainly the best place in town to watch the sun set over the Atlantic, and on Wednesday nights there is a regular food night of some description. In early 2023 it was Taco Night — nowadays it has morphed into Fish Night. Either way, I was there early, and the guy with the impressively pointy beard is still setting up.
This family (I suspect, a boy and his grandparents) were not the only ones wondering what they were doing outside this afternoon — particularly watching Brighouse Town, who slumped to a 1-5 home defeat. For the last 60% of April 2024 I will be somewhere with better (and certainly drier) weather than here — but I’m not there yet.
And so breakfast, and then home again. Had the shot not captured the eye of the woman in the kitchen, there would have been nothing to show here: though I guess his ears are shapely enough.
Being 42 