A trip out of the city. The suburb of King City is not as hick as this picture may make it appear, but I like this shot because it makes it seem like one of those tiny North American places with ridiculously grandiose names. You can almost see the weatherbeaten sign at the city limits: “KING CITY, ONTARIO (population: 47)”.
Yonge Street is the spine of Toronto, defining the point at which the west side becomes the right side and vice versa. As it is the address of the nearest pub to my hotel, I’ve been hanging out there a lot in the evenings. This picture pleases me because it’s basically the one I hoped would come out when I took the shot. The guy sitting in the gutter looks enveloped by the red tail lights that appear to have passed on both sides of him.
There are many good murals around this city — and this one is particularly fine. No further comment necessary.
These are the people I have come all the way to Toronto to work with — because we all decided, no, we are not going to sit and try to interact behind screens. We needed to work together. Ahmad on the left, Dina on the right. They look kinda happy about the prospect, as I was.
My destination on this long-deferred trip outside the UK is Toronto, the largest city in Canada. As the director of this movie about my life, I did consider going with the ‘establishing long shot’, but in a way I’ve already done that, as the Toronto skyline featured in August 2017, when I changed planes here on my way to Illinois to see the eclipse. So here’s a shot from this morning’s explorations; I liked this ‘whirlpool’ sculpture. In the background, Lake Ontario, or at least, an inlet of it. I am here until Saturday: some work to do, but y’know, it’s just nice to be somewhere else for a while.
Yes folks, after 615 consecutive days on the island of Great Britain, I have finally left it. It was February 2nd 2020, in Bucharest, that this blog last featured anywhere outside England, Scotland or Wales. You know the reasons why. And yes, I appreciate travel can be seen as a privilege, and I’m grateful that I’ve finally broken the run, for all that the last 20 months have, at least at times, seen plenty of interesting sights.
This is not my final destination: instead this was taken on my first descent, into Keflavik airport, where I and the family were last seen waiting out the 12-hour flight delay that EasyJet (never, ever again) subjected us to in July 2019. I changed planes here and moved on. You can tell it’s Iceland, though — only that island has random burned bits like this, huge lumps of volcanic cinder that just seem here to be a normal part of the landscape.
Perhaps this shot is unfair on a place that I’d never visited before today (thus, it becomes place number 364 to feature on the blog), as Leigh seemed lively enough, but I just liked the decrepitude of these two buildings. Maybe these businesses are rocking on a weekday evening, but not on this warm and bright Saturday afternoon. But if you want to find out, well, the phone numbers are there.
The end of another week…. and some snacks are required for the journey home. This is one of those where I just saw some good light over on the far platform and tried it out.
Following a negative Covid test this morning — but of course it was always going to be negative — this should be the penultimate shot of around 615 consecutive days in the UK. But on Sunday, I will be leaving for a week; if the clenched-up bureaucracy at each end of this journey does deign to let me through. Destination — well, you can find out on Sunday (or possibly Monday).
The last of the plums have finally been harvested off the tree. I’m leaving the rest for the wasps: this one’s already made a start on the bounty, as you can see.
A long time ago, in the first few days of this blog on day 8, I was halfway up the southern butt end of the mountain of Yewbarrow, in Wasdale in the Lake District, in quite foul weather, wondering what the hell I was doing there. The view I posted there, of the dramatic rocky gash of Great Door, gives an indication of the conditions I faced.
Today, ten years, one month and four days later, I returned. The weather was much nicer. But the climb up to this point is still an absolute arse. For its height I would say Yewbarrow is the toughest of all the fells in the Lake District — but as it’s now done twice, I never, ever, have to haul myself up it again. And that’s a very good thing. (See my Wainwrights blog for more.)
Being 42 