Sunday 4th September 2022, 7.50pm (day 4,028)
It’s not really the aurora of course. But the sunset tonight was doing a reasonable impression of it. The nights draw in….
Aurora sunset
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: clouds
The Cairngorms
Tuesday 24th May 2022, 2.45pm (day 3,925)
Spectacular View of the Last Two Days, number 1. This is the view from Carn Glas-choire, historic Top of Nairnshire, my 52nd County Top (see my other blog). In the background to the left, Braeriach, which is the third-highest mountain in the whole of the UK, at 1,296 m (4,252 ft). A magnificent panorama, and total vindication of my CT project: giving me an excuse to visit parts of my country that I have never before seen. This one was well worth the effort.
Walking on water
Saturday 7th May 2022, 11.05am (day 3,908)
Today I, and around 250 other people, walked from Arnside to Grange-over-Sands — an easy, flat walk of about 5.5 miles. The complication is that between these two places lies the northern reach of Morecambe Bay, the largest expanse of intertidal land in Great Britain. But in that also lay the fun of the day — the chance to (safely) get a couple of miles away from permanently dry land, into a space that is neither one thing nor the other, a limbo state between land and sea — with a healthy dose of sky, too.
I deliberately cranked up the contrast on this shot because I like the way that all the people look like dashes of paint descending from a horizon that is insubstantial but definitely there. As if we are trapped within a sheet of glass, aware of the heavens above us but unable to reach them.
April Skies
Wednesday 20th April 2022, 11.45am (day 3,891)
A glorious day today, spent entirely outside, getting healthy exercise. Work, in a formal sense, was just something other people were doing, and the day was all the better for it. I do not apologise for the Jesus & Mary Chain reference either, as no one should for referring to such a seminal musical beat combo.
Sunbeams on a New Year’s Day
Saturday 1st January 2022, 1.05pm (day 3,782)
Welcome to 2022, and if all the days of weather are as good as 1st January, that will be fine by me. A beautiful day, and quite warm. I realise this would be a better photo without the foliage to the left but I couldn’t move it, and with limited positions from which this view was visible I decided I’d rather capture the sunbeams before they disappeared.
The entrance to Ainsdale Beach
Saturday 1st May 2021, 12.10pm (day 3,537)
Ainsdale Beach is a voluminous expanse of golden sand: so voluminous, in fact, that like many other places on the same coast, north of Liverpool (see our trip to Crosby last November), the nearby land is gradually being taken over. The buildings you see here are derelict, not (this time) because of the Great Fear, but because of the encroachment of these dunes. This is an attractive place, but a melancholy one.
Another day goes by
Thursday 4th February 2021, 4.15pm (day 3,451)
This one was a matter of looking out of the window at just the right time, and having clouds at just the right layers of opacity. It’s not often we get a visual sense of the sun as being spherical, but this gets close, I think.
Mackerel sky
Friday 6th November 2020, 2.30pm (day 3,361)
Now that’s a mackerel sky if ever there was one. A change in the weather is on the way…
A Sunday on campus
Sunday 8th March 2020, 12.40pm (day 3,118)
I have tried to stop making a habit of working on Sundays, but there was no avoiding it today — and on campus, too, meaning I drove in to work for only the fourth time in fifteen years. There is something post-apocalyptic about campus on a Sunday — but seeing as we might all be quarantied at some point soon, maybe it’ll look like this from this point on.
Dusk on the Long Causeway
Wednesday 13th November 2019, 4.20pm (day 3,002)
The nights draw in. Driving to Burnley over the tops, well before 5 and it’s still getting dark already. November can have its flashes of excellence now and again (I remember this walk up Bowfell for example), but it’s mostly a depressing month, don’t you think?
Being 42 