The story of how I ended up spending this afternoon in Amsterdam is a long one, and to spare you the details I will say only, ask Air France (more specifically their trade union). But I guess there are worse places to be laid over for a few hours, particularly when it was a pleasant, sunny day. Ample excuse to feature it on the blog for the first time since January 2012, thus, 6.3 years ago more or less. Time I came back here for a proper visit.
Last day before the return to work, and fortunately, the weather seems to have relented (for now) and decided to give us a taste of spring. A day for a short walk in the woods then. I like the formal qualities of this shot, the way the parties on the other bank gather themselves into groups; though the two in the middle background seem to spoil it just a little bit.
Easter. A time to celebrate spring, a time of renewal and growth. A day for another few tons of grey slush to barrel out of the sky and drench and depress us all. This should be a tennis court in the park. Instead it’s a sea of crud that doesn’t even have the decency to be solid, at least then we could build a snowman.
The annual Good Friday hike up to Heptonstall took place, to see the Pace Egg play, but I didn’t get any decent photos of that. Looking back down and over the housing of the home town produced better results. Someone a couple of centuries ago decided it would be a good idea to build a town here and had to come up with some solutions to the difficult topography, and here we still are.
Another very uneventful, badly lit and photographically uninspiring day — but at least it marked my last day of work before a 10-day break. Expect… expect… well, not much out of the ordinary to tell the truth but at least I won’t be working until 9th April.
A train strike kept me at home so horizons were limited today, even though it was another fairly mild and pleasant one and it would have been nice to be up a mountain somewhere. Still at work though, for another few days before Easter. This is just a local scene then; I like the arrangement of things. A more placid view of this spot than on 9th July 2012, anyway.
The parking meter waits patiently for custom, all unknowing that it sits just by the very oldest part of this city. Across the road here are the scanty remains of the Roman village of Manucium. Could those guys have foreseen parking meters I wonder? Not to mention digital photography and bloggers. But then again they did build a decent transport system, which is arguably more than we have at the moment.
Decided I’d better put in a photo from Manchester just to prove I do still occasionally show my face there. I know this sign doesn’t mean what it seems to mean, but there’s always something mildly amusing about this idiom. Each generation of kids anew must look around them in trepidation when they pass one.
It was also nice to depict an outdoor scene without a crust of winter over it. Quite a pleasant day in Manchester, in fact.
It’s nice to be able to walk to work in the morning, without the prelude of a train journey beforehand anyway. Even if it was ten degrees below zero in Tromsø this morning.
I did make it into Manchester today, and home again — unlike those stuck on the M62 last night. My train to work passed over the gridlock on the motorway somewhere around Castleton. At home in the evening there were vague signs of a thaw but as one can see from this shot, it is putative at best. At least I’m getting out of here on Sunday. To the Arctic.
Clare would like to take some credit for this photo as she claims ‘she saw it first’. Consider it inspiration then…
Being 42 