Thursday 22nd May 2014, 8.50am (day 1,001)
If you live in the UK, I hope that today you used your vote in the European elections. To paraphrase a FB friend of mine it is one of the few moments at which you can still feel democracy has a pulse.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: 44
On the canal, Manchester city centre
Wednesday 21st May 2014, 9.35am (Day 1,000)
So here we are. It would have been nice to get a shot of something highly significant, or a brilliant capture, to mark day 1,000 of this blog, but while a family of Canada geese is maybe not something one would expect to see in Manchester city centre, like this blog’s previous 999 pictures it’s just a scene from a life.
I don’t go out of the way to get these, anything you see on this blog is just something I have passed in the course of my day. And that’s why I’m still doing it — it’s the same impulse that has kept me writing a personal diary for thirty years, it’s the recording that is the point. Thank you for making it to day 1,000 with me — as far as I can predict, I will be back tomorrow.
As it is a nice round number, I have also updated the ‘Best of the Rest‘ and Stats pages.
Elves in the wood
Tuesday 20th May 2014, 4.25pm (day 999)
Or maybe kids jumping on a trampoline, viewed through the garden foliage. I am not saying…
Well, it’s day 999. Which I can say for sure amounts to two years, eight months and twenty-five days since I started this blog on 26/8/11. I haven’t blown it — no cheating, all 999 photos to appear on here have been taken on the day specified, and by me. Assuming no total disaster tomorrow I’ll make the four-figure mark. I did think a while back of whether I would continue past this point, and have decided to do so, so followers of this blog, don’t give up on me yet, and I won’t give up on you.
Revision week
Monday 19th May 2014, 11.25am (day 998)
The weather stays very fine. If one can find a piece of green space on the University campus — not always straightforward, seeing as there’s not much of it — there are far worse places to prepare for imminent exams.
Cheap cat shot (tortoiseshell)
Sunday 18th May 2014, 3.05pm (day 997)
“…what the **** are you looking at?”
Another beautiful day. Three days to go until a major milestone.
Rhododendron flowers
Saturday 17th May 2014, 2.05pm (day 996)
An absolutely glorious day today, a perfect summer’s day. These flowers were pictured up in Midgehole, near the entrance to Hardcastle Crags, where we were gathering wild garlic to cook and eat with dinner. I love this time of year.
Café Mooch, lunchtime
Friday 16th May 2014, 12 noon (day 995)
It’s nice to travel, but it’s just as nice to come home. This is another of Hebden Bridge’s nice cafés, a good spot for a working lunch, which I had today. Been a good week.
Alexander takes a well-earned rest
Thursday 15th May 2014, 4.20pm (day 994)
My last day in Russia on this trip. I spent it at what must be at least the 20th university campus to grace this blog, Skolkovo, just outside Moscow, delivering a seminar and having it simultaneously translated into Russian by this guy. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced simultaneous translation but the effort and concentration it takes must be phenomenal, so he certainly earned his tea and pastries afterwards. Particularly as he must be all of what, 17? OK, I’m exaggerating slightly, but he was a little waif of a bloke.
Cossacks
Wednesday 14th May 2014, 7.50pm (day 993)
My hosts/friends at the Moscow School (the organisation that is the reason I come to visit Moscow so comparatively frequently) invited me to come to this event at the Russian Army Theatre this evening. Lots of folk dancing and its associated benefits like beautiful women, beautiful costumes and manly men doing manly things with swords, like these guys. And not done for the tourists either — in fact Russia is one of the few places in the world where this kind of cultural event is still seen as a normal evening’s entertainment, there were lots of families here tonight.
I still can’t quite grasp the nature of the Cossacks, are they a separate ethnic group, something one is born into, or a cultural choice one makes, sort of like declaring oneself a Celt or a Gaul? Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure most of us would like an excuse to pull a face/pose like these two guys now and again.
And, by the way, I have one week left until day 1,000.
Church of the Ascension, Kolomenskoe, Moscow
Tuesday 13th May 2014, 1.30pm (day 992)
Second Russian church in three days, and another very beautiful building. This one is on the UNESCO World Heritage list and stands in the park of Kolomenskoe, overlooking the Moskva (Moscow) river, to the south-east of the city centre. It was built in 1532 to commemorate the birth of an heir to the throne, who turned out to be Ivan the Terrible, so perhaps the appeal to divine providence didn’t really work in this case. Bearing that in mind the storm clouds gathering around it this afternoon seem kind of symbolic.
Being 42 