Beautifully sunny day today, the sort of day that makes you realise why we have autumn. We also have a ‘Food Festival’ in town at the moment, including a stall on which these gentlemen were making fresh pizza, and though I didn’t eat any it was definitely worth watching.
It’s Clare’s birthday today so I let her have final choice on today’s photo. This was taken somewhere over the UK as we came into the final half hour of my flight back into Manchester airport this morning. A mouth? Lips? Had I got this a couple of seconds earlier you would have seen an almost perfect heart (as in the card suit shape) below the line. Anyway – happy birthday dear 🙂 XXX
The view from my hotel room. This is my last night in Moscow…. until next time.
When you see Russians like this you can’t help but wonder what they were doing 50 years ago (around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis). He looks quite well-to-do: I suspect he may very likely have been the sort of chap who would have had a key role to play in, say, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Yes, I’m stereotyping, but not without some justification, I feel.
Hardy chap, at least, particularly to be out without gloves on today. It was freezing in Moscow, literally, and – albeit briefly – I saw the first snow of the winter today. You have been warned.
I know this is a poor photo in almost every way but it does sum up my day. Here I am in one of the world’s great cities and I sit working in one room, then get a ride to another room where I sit working, then get a ride home, have dinner and go to bed. I am offered the merest glimpses of the architecture, culture, nightlife, all these other things to enjoy. This, for instance, is a tower of the Novodevichy convent, certainly one of the most beautiful buildings in this city, glimpsed as I got my taxi back to the hotel. Well, I’m having the afternoon off tomorrow, hopefully more will be seen of Moscow then.
I’m a very nosy person, which is, I guess, one reason why I like photography. Invite me into your house and within a few minutes I’ll be checking out your book collection. I love things like this, collections of knick-knacks on shelves. Most of all I love the fact that my colleague Yevgeny, who is in his mid-50s , something of a Soviet era throwback and a very big wheel in UNESCO, has on his office shelf, amongst the dramatic photos and plaques inscribed in beautiful old Cyrillic script, a stuffed toy version of what appears to be Emile, the fat greedy rat from Ratatouille. Brilliant!
Flew over to Moscow again today, where I’m working all week. My intention was to post a totally gratuitous photo of Germany, where I changed planes, purely to get an 8th country onto this blog. But though I got some decent shots of Frankfurt today, where it was a lovely sunny day, this shot of the Pennine hills just outside Manchester as we took off this morning has to be the winner. Germany can wait. I’ll be passing back through on Friday so we’ll see if an equally gratuitous shot makes it then. Meantime, the mist.
Been a while since the wife featured: 21st August in fact. One thing about her is that she does have this cracking pair of eyes on her, thanks to the green-and-orange colouring. See for yourself.
Incidentally I got another picture today of her eye in which I, the photographer, was clearly reflected in her contact lens – clever, but it didn’t make her iris look as good as this one. So I’ll choose this one. She’ll thank me for it… I hope. (And yes, I know I did this theme once before with Joe, but again, it was worth revisiting.)
Man, it’s been a tiring week. Marked its conclusion by taking the family out to the theatre in Manchester tonight, to mark Clare’s birthday (the specific date is next week). They had been in the city earlier, shopping, and here Joe displays some of his purchases. I like this shot because of the focus, the reflection in the table, and his big doe eyes.
By the way I now have 100 followers of this blog. Thanks to you all!
You’ve seen versions of this scene before. But no harm in showing it again.
