All the travel hassle did eventually get me to the destination, namely the 2017 European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL). In the past this has been responsible for the appearance of Dubrovnik, Tallinn and Prague on the blog; this year we are in St. Malo, France, a beautiful town, of which a picture will appear at some point I am sure. But for now, some work. I am the keynote speaker this year so I’d better show willing.
Thanks to the problems depicted yesterday, my connection in Guernsey could not be made, so I was here for the night and the morning after. But there are worse places to be stranded for a night I suppose.
Other small islands featured so far on the blog (that is, islands like Guernsey, and not islands like Great Britain, or Honshu): Kangaroo Island, Stradbroke Island (Australia); Stewart Island (New Zealand); Wayasewa and Wayalailai (Fiji); Kvaløy, Snilstveitøy, Tromsøya, Sotra (Norway); Æbelø, Fyn, Sjælland (Denmark).
I was supposed to be flying to St Malo in France today, for the ECIL conference (which in past years has been responsible for the appearance of Dubrovnik, Tallinn and Prague on the blog). However, what you see here is the aftermath of the reason why I have only thus far made it as far as Guernsey in the Channel Islands. There I was meant to change planes, but we ended up departing five hours late from Manchester as, when the first plane began pushing back away from gate 21, its wingtip managed to spear the catering van you see here in the centre. So off we passengers all toddled and returned to the terminal, while (count ’em) eighteen people, including a whole slew of hi-vis and two fully armed coppers stood around doing not very much that could be seen as productive. Nice to see so many people gainfully employed by such a cockup. So that’s me in France 24 hours later than scheduled then — just as well I wasn’t down to do my keynote speech on Monday morning.
Not much was ever going to happen today. I put this one up in vague homage to this weekend’s Hebden Bridge ‘Steampunk Festival’, as for some reason lovers of this genre hang around HB this weekend looking vaguely Victorian and take photos of each other and admire lighting like this. Well, that seems to be how it works, though I guess I just do not understand it.
The six years I’ve been doing this blog have overlapped with the eight years I’ve been regularly going to the Lake District to get my walking fix. It’s been long enough for locations to recur, as I intend to cover the whole place twice. Back in October 2011, quite early on in this blog (day 64), the cover star was a sheep on the summit of Rannerdale Knotts, a small but perfectly-formed peak near Buttermere. I returned there today, and the local sheep-life continued to seem rather chilled out and happy with their lot in life. So let’s picture them again. (Rannerdale Knotts is the green stuff we’re all standing on at this point — the dark mass in the background is Grasmoor.)
However you make ‘miracle substance’ graphene, or go about making it into things once you’ve got it, you clearly need a lot of liquid nitrogen to do it with…. Early morning delivery here at the National Graphene Institute, from the big tanker out of shot to the right. And yes, I was on campus by just after 8am. How keen of me.
There haven’t been many animals on here lately so let’s rectify that. If anyone living toward the top of Highfield Crescent was getting any reception problems with their satellite signal this afternoon, here’s why.
Yes, it’s raining again — it’s rained seemingly constantly since I got back from America, it feels like. And yes, it’s football again, though several levels below what I saw on Saturday — tonight, I was on assignment at Stalybridge Celtic v Buxton in the Northern Premier League. On a night like this, it was not a glamour posting. I doubt the linesman would think it was, either.
My walk to work this morning took twice as long as usual due to having to take shelter twice from vicious bouts of rain. I’m inside here (in Caffe Nero as it happens, and yes, I had bought a cup of tea), hence the reflections in the coat of the woman on the left. Inside was the place to be at this time, I can assure you, and I’m sure these two would agree with me.
I do like side streets. Particularly in an attractive place like Brighton, where the graffiti artists have talent and vision, on a relatively sunny morning.
Being 42 