I guess dogs can have a long day, and feel tired at the end of it, just as we can. It was a decent, sunny day today, it’s been a good weekend for me in various ways, but though I don’t share this animal’s feelings, I do sympathise.
Spent the afternoon playing on the marble run with Joe, and when the light comes into our living room in the afternoon, it can be very fine.
Incidentally, I’d say it’s ‘his’ marble run, but I’d be lying. Actually, it’s mine.
Post-lunch pickings on the second day of the staff development workshop I have been running at the University of Bergen. The strawberries and pineapple slices have disappeared, the grapes are going down well but no one seems to be going for the lychees. This is the second disembodied hand of the week, I note.
Travelled last night from Trondheim to Bergen. I do like Bergen, it is a fine city, but it’d be even better if it didn’t chuck it down with rain about 75% of the time.
Could have posted more pictures of glorious autumn colours here in Trondheim but I did that yesterday, and this book has personal significance.
I got to know the work of Machiavelli when I studied for my PhD in Politics back in the latter years of the 1990s. As part of my work here I was taken (with several others) round the special collections of the Gunnerus Library at NTNU and here am being shown an edition of Machiavelli’s complete works from 1550 (hence the M D L at the bottom of the page), published while he was still alive and in extraordinarily good condition. The book may well become largely obsolete as an active information medium over the next 20 years but the tactile and visual appeal of them, particularly old ones, will never go away.
Incidentally only those who haven’t actually read him think that M. was a fascist. Actually he was the man who reintroduced Greek ideas of democracy into the Middle Ages and basically founded the whole political wing of the Enlightenment. He said quite clearly that a populace would always, collectively, take better decisions than a prince or tyrant acting alone and driven only by their own mind. He’s right. Someone tell David Cameron (see the comment made exactly one year ago today, which I feel as strongly now as I did then).
Trondheim is the third-largest city in Norway, founded in 997. At 63º25’N, it’s the northernmost place I have ever been, which explains why the autumn colours have arrived here rather earlier than at home. This is a good thing – the place looks stunning at the moment. These are the grounds of the Nidaros cathedral, built in 1070, the northernmost medieval cathedral in the world, and a very impressive monument.
Here I am in Norway again – specifically Trondheim, which happens to be the furthest north I have ever been on this planet. The views coming in on the plane this morning were spectacular, but though I got some good shots they were all taken through glass and none quite did it for me (though this remains the most beautiful country in the world – well, one of them anyway, perhaps alongside Greece).
Decided, in the end, not to go for the landscape shot, but instead picked one from our pre-conference-reception tour at ‘Rockheim’, a museum devoted entirely to the Norwegian rock’n’roll industry – and more interesting than that might seem to outsiders. This room was a homage to the ‘Pussycats’, apparently the first Norwegian rock band to really make it big in the 60s. So now you know.
Worked at home on a dull and rainy Sunday so not much to take a photo of. You might as well see this, therefore. It’s just the outline, the detail and colour will be added next time, after this has had time to heal. Which, going on how itchy it is, it’s doing properly, I just wish it would speed up a bit.
Taken just past the halfway point of a walk undertaken from my parents’ house this afternoon. The leaves are well and truly turning here and I did get a couple of good photos of autumn colours but this one I like because it seems less a picture of foliage, and more a picture of a moment, a burst of light captured by the water and trapped there.
Busy day at work to end a busy week, and a busy month. Sometimes you’ve just got to admit that the most photogenic thing you saw all day was the rear view of a pretty woman on the walk home to the station. One chance to snap it, taken. I nearly cropped this to just show her bottom half, which works quite well with the leaf, but her hair is too good to omit even if it untidies the composition a bit.
