Sunday 2nd May 2021, 2.40pm (day 3,538)
May is here. The dandelions are happily engaged in their task of creating further dandelions. And that’s what life is all about, don’t you think.
Dandelion
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: photos
The entrance to Ainsdale Beach
Saturday 1st May 2021, 12.10pm (day 3,537)
Ainsdale Beach is a voluminous expanse of golden sand: so voluminous, in fact, that like many other places on the same coast, north of Liverpool (see our trip to Crosby last November), the nearby land is gradually being taken over. The buildings you see here are derelict, not (this time) because of the Great Fear, but because of the encroachment of these dunes. This is an attractive place, but a melancholy one.
The Canal Street lock
Friday 30th April 2021, 9.20am (day 3,536)
It’s always nice to see Canal Street, in the centre of Manchester, actively live up to its name. Lock open, rather than lockdown. Perhaps I could have stood a bit to the left and made this a more symmetrical shot, but never mind. The guy at the gate has busted the photographer.
This year’s potato creatures
Thursday 29th April 2021, 3.20pm (day 3,535)
When the potatoes went in the ground earlier last year, May frosts killed them off. So we’re hanging back on planting these for a bit longer yet. Time for the sprouts to adopt their own interesting shapes, for all the world like a family of bunny rabbits sitting on some boulders (or have I spent too long indoors lately?).
Nothing to say
Wednesday 28th April 2021, 6.20pm (day 3,534)
Is the title of this post self-referential? Perhaps. This advertising truck might well have been gainfully employed over most of the last 14 months and tonight was just having a break — but somehow I doubt it. The bird doesn’t care either way. A somewhat gloomy photo, but that epitomised the day: we have lost the sunshine that we’d been enjoying for much of April.
A message on Princess Street
Tuesday 27th April 2021, 9.15am (day 3,533)
Since advertising — at least of anything interesting, like gigs, movies, etc. — became just one among many casualties of The Great Fear, this billboard under the railway arch on Princess Street has displayed a variety of messages, several quite subversive (e.g., anti-Brexit) and some only being up for a day or two. This one has been there for a while, though. And raises a valid point. The Joshua Brooks pub/club next door remains shuttered and dead.
Good hard cash
Monday 26th April 2021, 12.35pm (day 3,532)
On a day working at home and a quest for something, anything, to photograph, my eyes alighted on this sunlit pair of purples. Well, why not take a photo of cash. We’re seeing decreasing amounts of it — I don’t mean money (I admit that my income has been unaffected by the Covid crap and I sympathise completely with all of those for whom this is not the case), but just cash, the stuff you hold. Even then it’s all an abstraction, isn’t it. Yet look at the detail in these notes. They’re aesthetically pleasing if you ask me.
The last picture of Devoke Water?
Sunday 25th April 2021, 1.00pm (day 3,531)
A glorious Sunday in the Lake District. The title of the post has layers of meaning. My walk today (see my Wainwrights blog for the details) involved a circuit of the placid and remote tarn of Devoke Water. It was a feature in multiple photos taken along the way, of which this was the last of the day.
But as I walked back to the car, I mused — is this perhaps the last ever? I have visited some of these marvellous places multiple times as I have gone round and round Cumbria over the last 12 years, but the project will end at some point (next year probably), and after that — will I find an excuse to return?
Some might say, that is in the hands of God/Inshallah/fate/whatever you believe. But in the end, I believe it is up to me. If this blog does make it to, say, day 8,000 — perhaps we will see this place again. I certainly hope so.
The latest robin
Saturday 24th April 2021, 2.10pm (day 3,530)
Three minutes after I had dug over the garden a little and this robin perches not six feet from me and virtually demands that I capture its close-ups. Seeing as this is taken in pretty much the same spot as the picture of the last robin to grace this blog, only 22 days ago, it might be the same one — either way, it is the latest example of how this particular species really has learned to not be in the least bit bothered about us humans. Perhaps it, too, is slightly annoyed by the presence of the white plastic tie, but what the hell.
Ladybird love
Friday 23rd April 2021, 1.10pm (day 3,529)
Lately most of the ‘likes’ on this blog have come from bots — can I just say hello to the five or six different accounts, all with the same profile picture, who have supported my efforts lately? Clearly I need to spice up this photo-feed a little, so here’s two beetles getting it on in the springtime. So attached (in both senses) were they that they remained entwined even after I manouevred them up onto my finger, in order to avoid squashing them when sitting down on the bench (at university) on which their amorous activities were occurring. I hope they and their babies are now grateful for this consideration.
Being 42 