Considering it was a rather dank and gloomy day it was a bit surprising to see the Moon shining so brightly through the skylight in the attic early this evening. I offer this photo as proof that, first, my camera’s long zoom still works reasonably well and that, second, the windows of our skylights are not quite as covered in cack as I thought they were: this is definitely taken through glass.
It’s very good that I can still find reasons, opportunity and (though this was not an expensive trip) the money to come and spend Thursday nights in places like this. As seen from outside the Ardlui Hotel, which even has its own train station.
The moon looks much the same from Bradford as it does from everywhere else, I imagine (until you get down below the Equator, when it does this weird turning upside-down thing), But here we have a nice conjunction, I think. Will it come out unscathed after its journey along the serrated edge? Probably.
Clear skies are not always a feature of the time of year, so let’s take the chance to photograph this impending conjunction tonight, although surely the Moon is going to move even closer (apparently, anyway) to Venus before the weekend. A fleeting contrail decides to butt its oar in, too.
Jamestown isn’t usually the most rocking capital city on the planet — then again, neither was my last one, Windhoek, and Jamestown may well be the more lively of the two on a Saturday night. But not on a calm Monday evening. The lights climbing to the left are those of Jacob’s Ladder. Above, the moon.
Hardly the most sumptuous shot. photographically, but it suffices to represent a day spent entirely in the local vicinity. It’s getting lighter in the evenings, as it always will at this time of year, but not yet past 6pm.
Students from a quarter-century or more ago will know the UoM’s ‘North Campus’ as ‘UMIST’ — but this institution has long been merged out of existence, and quite a few of its buildings, like this one beside the Mancunian Way, have stood derelict for years. But there’s still an aspirational feel to this shot — climb the ladder and jump over the moon? And let’s get some blue sky into things. It’s been altogether too grey lately.
Football matches are finishing later and later, now this whole ‘add on every second that players spend rolling around on the floor’ thing has kicked in. Rochdale v Chesterfield is still going on behind me at this point, even at 10pm, but I had to leave before the end to catch the train. Anyway, all of this is irrelevant to what I think is quite a pleasing shot of the moon riding on its little cloud.
This photo is garish and could certainly be sharper but with my camera in the state it is presently in (following the still-painful St Helena Tarmac Incident) it is as good as we’re going to get at the moment, after dark. I like the picture anyway: first, it represents that moment that I finally got to have some fresh air after nearly 11 hours on three separate trains today (none of which had on-board catering) and second, that I arrived in what is both the most southerly and most westerly decent-sized town in Britain, namely Penzance, Cornwall. Where you get to see palm trees outside the bus station. We’re not in Yorkshire any more, Toto.
Having had an interruption to the normal procession of sunrise times, since I came back from St Helena it’s clear that things are getting noticeably lighter in the mornings — or, rather, becoming lighter earlier. This is welcome. Spring is on its way…. eventually.
Being 42 