So here I am back in Norway for a week, where, if in doubt, there’s always the landscape shot. This is the lake of Seljordsvatn, by which I was lucky enough to be spending the weekend, in the cabin of my friend Eystein and his family (you’ll be seeing him on Sunday’s pic). The lake is famed for its legendary water serpent, apparently. This is also one of the better shots I have ever taken from a moving car.
I’ve only ever seen this a couple of times before — a rainbow, or at least a spectrum, high in the air, nowhere near the ground and with no rain in sight. I guess it must be caused by light refracting through ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Bad weather on the way perhaps. Let’s hope not: I intend to spend next weekend walking in Norway.
POSTSCRIPT: Have discovered this is something called a ‘circumzenithal arc’. They are not rare as such, but apparently only appear when the sun is at exactly the right angle to ice crystals in high-level clouds, and thus can be seen only in very restricted locations on the ground. So if you do see one, feel privileged – it may well only be visible in a space a few metres around you.
Our Clare can occasionally be aroused by football, which is why Morecambe FC (currently of League Two) have featured more than once on the blog in the past. There she is in her MFC kit watching them lose — undeservedly I would add — to the supposedly far superior Newcastle United in tonight’s televised match.
That’s an illusion going on with Joe by the way. He’s not really got a pint of beer in front of him with a straw in it.
There is continued good weather, and flowers seemingly everywhere, a vast improvement over last summer. I seem to have started noticing flowers more since I began taking the photography more seriously. They are good subjects, individually or en masse. The other models here aren’t bad either.
I was born on 26/8/69, so today was my 44th birthday. It was thrice blessed, being also a public holiday in the UK, and finally, a hot and sunny late summer’s day. We went to Haworth – as indeed did about ten thousand other tourists, but somehow the place seems to fit them all in without collapsing into some kind of over-commercialised netherworld; I like Haworth, in fact. Of course one cannot escape the Brontë references, even in this store, though the present owners are almost apologetic in pointing out that the main contribution it makes to literary history is that it’s the place where Bramwell Brontë once bought his opium.
Still in Wetherby – the wedding celebrations lasted all weekend. The Wharfe is one of England’s most beautiful rivers from its spectacular course through the Yorkshire Dales, in Wharfedale, and right on down to here. Eventually, like most rivers in the region, it enters the North Sea through the Humber estuary.
You might also have noticed that it’s day 731. 731 = 366 + 365. Which means this brings to an end the second full year of this blog, one photograph posted every day since 26th August 2011. I did say at one point I would stop here, but I’m inclined to keep it all going for now. See you tomorrow. I will also add another top 10 at some point soon, of my favourite photos from the second year.
Congratulations to Caroline — I’m sure you don’t need to ask which of these people she is — and Loyd, on the right, married today at St Mary’s church in Yarm, with this photo taken later at Priory Cottages, Wetherby, the venue for the reception. And a very good time was had by all.
I dunno, you note a few weeks back that you’ve never depicted a post box on the blog before and then another one turns up. This lady seemed pretty keen this morning to not leave the vicinity of this post box. As with the abandoned wheelchair yesterday… what little stories do we potentially miss, in everyday life, all around us.
Back home, but don’t get used to it. Beautiful sunny day today. Why someone had dumped this hospital wheelchair, the pile of metal chairs and the old stove in this little corner, I have no idea, but at least it provides some variety.
Of course this is a city with its problems as well as its good side. This is South Beirut, where last Friday night a huge car bomb claimed the lives of 15 people. The sectarian divisions within this whole region are too complex for an outsider like me to truly understand. I would also say they are too complex for outsiders like the US, UK, French, etc. governments to understand too, but that doesn’t stop the latter group dipping their hands into the mix anyway. Perhaps appropriately for day number 727, this was taken from the plane seconds after take-off, as I returned home this morning.
Being 42 