On a day of ideal walking weather, the Lake District was not a place to go to for the solitude — at least, not the parts of it that I hung out in, namely Great Langdale and the 2816 feet (858m) summit of Crinkle Crags, one of Wainwright’s “Top SIx Fells”. But I cannot begrudge anyone else their enjoyment of the fine conditions today. We are just the same, after all.
They’re very pink, but very ephemeral, the cherry blossoms. Maybe that’s why the Japanese like them so much, it matches their general aesthetic.
Who first came up with the concept of a gargoyle, I wonder? Take what is, in essence, a piece of guttering, and wrap a little monster face around it? Someone must have thought of this first, back in antiquity, and the idea caught on. This one graces the fountain in Albert Square, Manchester, and caught the light quite well on this sunny morning.
A very low-key day, as yesterday was. Very little happened, and this picture of a picture is as good as it gets today. Still, the teeth are healthy ones — Joe should feel satisfied with this — more so than mine were when I pictured my own X-ray a while back.
Joe must have a maths test coming up… equations like these have started appearing around the house.
A glorious — and three-day — weekend continues with the chance to spend a Monday relaxing with our friends in Aberdour and exploring its stellar beaches: this one, known (erroneously) as Black Sands is particularly fine. This weekend has reminded me why I should come to Scotland more often.
We didn’t just visit Scotland for a melancholy afternoon at Raith Rovers. On the second day of three, we drove both ways across this fine transportation architecture. The new Forth Bridge was built after the old one started pinging apart a few years ago. Like the other two monumental bridges — now, one rail, two road, and one from each of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries — it is an elegant structure, worth crossing just for the hell of it.
The football season comes to its many and diverse ends, each club finishing in different ways with different emotions. Raith Rovers of Scottish League One have managed to blow their hopes out in the last three games, promotion hopes have disappeared and at the final whistle today all was over. It was a very melancholy place all round — club, and town (Kirkcaldy in Fife). Maybe this picture captures something of that.
It’s been a very busy week. But one reason for this is that it’s been the last week of teaching; I do not have to stand up in front of students and sound intelligent again until about the 28th September. I need some head-space, so this is a good thing. But then again I do miss them when they’re not around. Here we line up for our ceremonial end-of-term photograph; this little clump is about a fifth of the whole, this time round.
Didn’t a creature looking like this once erupt out of John Hurt’s stomach? The end may be nigh.
Being 42 