This is at least the third and possibly the fourth post taken inside the British Museum. It’s as good a place to kill a couple of hours of a London morning as anywhere — lots to see, and remarkably, still free of charge. Of course, this is us Britons being magnanimous in return for all those colonies that provided the treasures, but hey. It’s a nice place architecturally too. (Incidentally this is also the blog’s 50th London shot.)
What significance this sculpture has, I have no idea — it currently hangs above the gift shop of the British Library. I guess I should invent some meaning…. but it’s the weekend.
Oxford Road again, but further up toward the city centre this time, and inside the café instead of outside. So ends August, a moment in time that feels like one candidate for ‘end of summer’ but I’m not declaring it over yet.
Beautiful morning in Manchester. Took two or three photos I was happy with, but all of them before 8.50am; after emerging from a day at work the light had mostly gone. Anyway it’s about time I acknowledged a morning again, after 12 consecutive afternoon shots. The sign points into (or away from) the entrance to Café Muse at the Manchester Museum.
Quite a Hebden-bound period of the blog — in the 20 days since we got back from North Wales, 13 shots have been here (and five of the rest in Manchester). Not so bad I guess but it’s time to get out a bit more. Still, I feel happy that the period signs off with a good shot, this duck and the evening light came together just so — and here’s a sign of where lens flare is integral to what I wanted from the picture.
Moody skies are the linking feature of this weekend’s shots. Is it autumn already? Taken from the beer garden of the Hare and Hounds pub, and looking generally westwards.
St. James’ Park, Newcastle, is the greatest, and certainly the largest, true city-centre football stadium in England. Capacity over 50,000, and all ten minutes’ walk from the train station — well, 10 minutes to the bottom of the main stand anyway. If you are an away fan you then have about another 10 minutes’ climbing of stairs to negotiate: I don’t think I’ve ever been so high up in the air watching a football match before. Good views therefore; better than anything we endured on the pitch today, a poor performance (Newcastle United 2, Brighton and Hove Albion 0).
So let me start this blog’s 6th year, and mark my 47th birthday, by putting up a photo of someone else… After so long doing this, people are going to start reappearing after a gap of some years and this is true of John B, who first graced these pages back in November 2011. Carol can join the cast for the first time.
Another rather uneventful day with little to photograph. After a while I determined that I wanted to capture the number five somehow, and did so with this menu board at the restaurant where we ate out in the evening. Why five? Because today marks the completion of five full years of this blog. I started this on my 42nd birthday, 26th August 2011, and here we are, one day before my 47th. So there you are, now you know how many days are in five years (with two leap years)…
When I started I didn’t think it would be easy to keep it going for one year, but after a while this just became an aspect of my daily diary (which has now been going for 33 years). There’s not always something good to photograph but I do my best. I’m sticking with it, anyway — for now it is just a part of what I do.
As August winds down each year there are some regular events, firstly, I get a year older and so the title of this blog becomes one more year out of date — that’s coming on Friday. To ease the pain of this, however, the garden finally begins to pay off. Blackberries, blueberries and rhubarb in this shot, with apples and plums gathered but unseen here (we have realised fruit is much less hassle than vegetables). There must be a photo like this every year around this time, and hopefully that isn’t going to change however far I take this blog.
Being 42 