We all risk missing spring this year, don’t we. I, however, intend to do my best to keep an eye on its developments. Without a spring, the year will just suck. Well, y’know, even more than it already does.
The last picture from my week in Indonesia, and the fourth one to be taken in the grounds of the Kayu Arum hotel, this time by the swimming pool. Yes, it would be nice if the blue line at the top were parallel with the rest, but hey. This blog is not a commercial venture so any endorsement I offer of a place or company is purely based on my own opinions — and this was a damn fine hotel, peaceful (once the weekend family groups had departed, anyway: and the early morning call to prayer was done), beautiful gardens, good food, etc. etc. If you’re in Salatiga I highly recommend it. Indeed I recommend the place as a whole; I haven’t had face-to-face engagement with a non-Indonesian all week, and feel my life has been better for it. Time to head home, however. Until the next trip.
It’s nice that after nearly a decade and a half working in Manchester that I can still discover some new places. This was one: I just fancied a cup of tea at this point, and surely an establishment named like this can deliver? It certainly could. Inside had to be seen to be believed as well, but I couldn’t just snap away at the customers; the profusion of flowers in the porch does give something of the right impression, however.
It’s not been the most exciting of weeks and local flowers and walls are about the limit of my ambitions for a time. Summer colours perhaps, but no summer weather: the monsoon remains clamped overhead with few signs of it shifting just yet.
It’s becoming harder to crank myself up in the mornings to get the 06:32 — best train it might be, when I need to pull an early start at work, but it’s now still dark even when it deposits me in Manchester city centre, a state of affairs which will last until into February. Some places have the lights on at that time, but by no means all. This should be the last of a run of a couple of months spent only in England, but I’m off somewhere else for a few days tomorrow.
Our exertions of yesterday finished late enough to make crashing at the in-laws’ desirable. Morecambe was still a fine, sunny place this morning however. These flowers may, or may not, be columbines — the identification is hesitant. I like the one in the centre, though, just opening up, stretching its tentacles like a little octopus. Or pentopus maybe.
Things have been happening in the outside world of course, but on a purely personal level it’s been an uneventful period: 12 of the last 16 pictures taken in Hebden Bridge. Went on a walk today mainly to give myself something to photograph; the buttercups helped it work out. I’m off on my travels again tomorrow however.
A wholly unexciting day in every respect, so this is a stock photo pulled out of the bag. This patio belongs to a house just a couple of minutes’ walk away and I pass it frequently, been meaning to picture it at some point because I like this moon-face decoration. As nothing else happened today — it finally makes it.
I’m sure that somewhere in the textual ether there’s a better title for this shot but it wouldn’t come to me. I see the slug as a kind of advance scouting party, keeping itself inconspicuous while it checks out the rich pickings ahead. As it wasn’t my garden, I left it to it’s task…
Spring continues to try to struggle through the general atmosphere of chill and damp. Taken by the Stubbing Holme lock on the canal, heavy with water thanks to the snow melt from Thursday’s unexpected fall.
