Tuesday 5th July 2022, 12.45pm (day 3,967)
It’s three-quarters of an hour into the afternoon, he’s still in his dressing gown and wearing odd socks. Guess a first year at uni hasn’t changed Joe all that much.
Joe pays a visit
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: gallery
Double ticket whammy
Monday 4th July 2022, 2.30pm (day 3,966)
One reason, among many, that I hardly ever drive into Manchester is the enthusiasm of its traffic wardens: this seems to particularly apply around the King Street/Booth Street area, as the driver of this car will doubtless realise when s/he returns to it and its double ticket whammy. When I saw this I recalled this story from The Register, which noted that:
One council operative, identified only as badge number MC1192, issued 5,662 of the council’s 14,887 parking tickets for the month [May 2020], raking in £69,864 with a further £155,266 allegedly outstanding on MC1192’s tickets alone by the end of the month. This workrate is the equivalent of 35 tickets issued every working hour of the month, assuming a generous 40-hour working week with no bank holidays or days off.
….and that was in lockdown. I’ll stick to public transport, thanks.
Fresh ingredients
Sunday 3rd July 2022, 4.55pm (day 3,965)
Summer fruits and rosemary. All picked from the garden just before this picture was taken: and all eaten, one way or another, within an hour afterwards. Most enjoyable.
Modern worship (Paloma Faith)
Saturday 2nd July 2022, 10.20pm (day 3,964)
Our 23rd wedding anniversary. I took Clare to a non-league football match and she took me to see Paloma Faith. I have no idea who got the better of the transaction. Photography opportunities were better at the gig, even if musically this is not my thing. A couple of thousand other people seemed happy enough with it all, though.
Pistyll Rhaeadr
Friday 1st July 2022, 9.45am (day 3,963)
Pistyll Rhaeadr may or may not be the highest waterfall across both Wales and England — the award depends whether you are troubled by the fact that it does not fall in a single drop. Either way it’s an impressive water feature, set off very well by the natural arch in the middle (seen here), through which the water threads like a curtain through a ring. Well worth seeing, despite being ripped off £5 for the car park. (For more pictures from today see my County Tops blog.)
Under the rainbow
Thursday 30th June 2022, 9.10pm (day 3,962)
Yeah yeah, so I didn’t go more than 5 weeks without a dose of football, and travelled to North-East Wales to get it (specifically the village of Llandyrnog, near Denbigh). But the sport is incidental here to the rainbow, which was exemplary, one of the best I have ever seen — a double rainbow lasting at least 45 minutes (the second half, in other words). The price was that everyone got a bit wet earlier on, but it was worth it.
Life-planning tools
Wednesday 29th June 2022, 5.10pm (day 3,961)
The day was spent indoors but the horizons ranged rather wider. What you see here amounts to about 40% of my collection of Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 maps of the UK; ‘the hiker’s Bible’, for sure. I shall hopefully be making use of one chapter before the week is out.
Antique shop
Tuesday 28th June 2022, 3.30pm (day 3,960)
More junk, like yesterday. But no one would come in if it were called a ‘junk shop’, so the word ‘antique’ is employed to give these various discarded pieces of trash some cachet. But it’s all for show. Take the false teeth visible to top right, for example. However old they are, I doubt they would be employed by a set decorator for some period movie.
Detritus
Monday 27th June 2022, 8.25am (day 3,959)
Outside Club Bloom on Abingdon Street. Clearly they feel they don’t need a “Deal or No Deal” fruit machine any more, so if you want one — or a traffic cone — help yourself. What we throw away in the modern world, though. In a SF book I once read there was a company called “Dumpmines” who made lots of cash through mining 20th- and 21st-century landfills for their valuable materials. Seems quite sensible to me, I’d invest in it.
Sheep and Stoodley Pike
Sunday 26th June 2022, 2.00pm (day 3,958)
A June walk, and another chance to experience the British weather’s propensity to change from balmy to, if not exactly wintry, then definitely cold and grey over the course of 24 hours. This is why the sheep have better insulation than we do. Stoodley Pike appears for the nth time: it might not be a very prominent peak topographically but the monument on it proves it can be seen for many miles in every direction.
Being 42 