Maybe I’m the only one who can see, in this cloudscape, the figure of a kind of zooming, superhero Cloud Man, streaking across the sky with his blond hair flowing behind him in the wind. But as I can see it, that’s why I took the picture.
I don’t claim that reality was quite as dramatic as this — I dropped the red filter on this one — but hell, who said digital photography had to always be about reality? I just massaged the raw ingredients, if you like. It’s something to pass the time while spending another day quarantined in the house. It seems I probably have German measles (rubella), by the way.
Finished work last night too late to get home, but not too late to get down to Brighton and spend the night there rather than in the suburbs. And, well, sometimes you just have to say that you made the right choice.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The only real spiritual benefit one gets from air travel is seeing the world from 30,000 feet. It can be an amazingly beautiful place.
I can’t be the first parent to reach the point in their life at which they suddenly realise their child will be at secondary school next year. Blimey.
Because of this we were invited to an open evening at one of the local high schools tonight. Bearing all this in mind the obvious symbolism of this shot is unfair. But I like the counterposition of the words with that bruised sky above, one of the more dramatic evenings of recent weeks.
I’ve only ever seen this a couple of times before — a rainbow, or at least a spectrum, high in the air, nowhere near the ground and with no rain in sight. I guess it must be caused by light refracting through ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Bad weather on the way perhaps. Let’s hope not: I intend to spend next weekend walking in Norway.
POSTSCRIPT: Have discovered this is something called a ‘circumzenithal arc’. They are not rare as such, but apparently only appear when the sun is at exactly the right angle to ice crystals in high-level clouds, and thus can be seen only in very restricted locations on the ground. So if you do see one, feel privileged – it may well only be visible in a space a few metres around you.
I am in the final stages of writing the first draft of my book and literally did not leave the house all day. With rain most of the day and flat light, opportunities were very slim. But in the end, the atmosphere obliged with a cloudscape.
Back from the red brick of Crowborough, built on its clay soils, to the light brown stone of Hebden Bridge, built on its millstone grit. But the weather was more or less the same – unsettled, rumbly, turbulent. Not a bad shot but shame about the telephone wire. And the time on the clock is fiction — this is a notoriously inaccurate timepiece.
Over the last 10 days Fiji has delivered some damn fine landscapes and seascapes, and here, as a final parting shot, it delivers a pretty fine cloudscape too. Taken from flight VA154, Nadi to Sydney. The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.
It’s getting towards winter, and looked it, this morning – though it’s still warmer than at home, about 20 degrees C today. This will be the last photo of Brisbane itself on this blog, at least on this trip; I might be back next year, and I might still be blogging then, but on Wednesday I’m bidding it goodbye. It’s a decent city, it’s been good to me, so here’s to it.
Being 42 