I suppose, to an insect, that the foam layer on top of a glass of beer looks like a solid landing place. But this is one of those risks that if it gets a second chance at it, this will only be because of the benevolence of the putative drinker of said beer, who doesn’t want a mouthful of insect to spoil his enjoyment. Learn the lesson, kid.
You could say there’s been a change in the weather over the last couple of days. I managed to get to and from campus without getting wet but others were not so fortunate, including Susan in the next-door office, it seems.
A public holiday in the UK, but as I had, blatantly, skived off on Friday I worked through it. It was raining anyway. So uneventful was this always going to be, that my idle musings as to just what my present lung capacity might be led to a suitable candidate for today’s photo. A spirometer (definition: “lung-capacity measuring instrument”) hangs around thanks to the wife’s asthma, and there you go. As this figure of, what, 583ml lies at least two-thirds of the way up this particular scale I assume I’m doing OK. (Note: the picture isn’t upside down, but the spirometer is.)
I don’t care that I haven’t captured him actually picking up the piece. Somehow it works just fine like this, and chess is an intrinsically black-and-white subject matter.
Actually, Leeds city centre was phenomenally busy this afternoon. It seems that, by law, one is only allowed to visit there on a Saturday if one is a member of a sten or hag party. But this shot seems to catch the one deserted street, even at henstag rush hour, as with the opening shots of 28 Days Later.
At 3,156 feet/962m, Yr Elen — it may just mean Helen or Eleanor, or it might mean “The Leech”; you decide, that’s Welsh for you — is apparently the ninth-highest mountain in Wales. The last of five biggish lumps of rock that I negotiated today. More details on the other blog, as ever.
First shot from Manchester since the 6th. Do I really spend so little time there these days? At some yet-to-be-determined date in the future, I will, of course, take my last ever shot from there, not so much the city but from campus more specifically. I will not be working at uni for the rest of my life unless that life ends unexpectedly, and fairly soon. But for now I am still going in. I do not know what this sculpture represents though it has clearly been built from the same stuff, and at the same time, as the building that surrounds the courtyard in which it stands. If I have a favourite place on campus, this is probably it.
At least, I assume it’s his granny. She was bearing it all stoically enough.
I do not know exactly what principle of physics this straw is demonstrating, but I will take a stab at it: whether because it is black or not, it has absorbed and retained a certain amount of heat. Enough, anyway, to keep the liquid around it just that little bit warmer and thus precipitate out the bubbles. Sounds plausible, right? But I am guessing.
It’s time for the annual appearance of the “Person Struggling with Umbrella” sign, and all that entails for traffic up and down the Keighley Road. I haven’t driven a car on this island since last August (the only plae I have been behind the wheel was on Ascension), and I’m just fine with that.
Being 42 