Tag Archives: photos

Jan 23 2025
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Daily Post, Landscape

Francis Plain, early

Thursday 23rd January 2025, 7.40am (day 4,900)

Francis Plain, 23/1/25

Was ‘at work’ ridiculously early this morning, at least by my standards. Francis Plain is the location of St Helena’s secondary school: that this view is taken across the nearby football pitch is not a further manifestation of my, perhaps, over-interest in that sport but just because that’s what the view is. On a generally dull day this was one of the few observed shafts of sunlight. Yes, the litter bin to bottom left does irritate, but otherwise, there are worse views to gee one up at 7.40am.

100 days to go until day 5,000. I guess I can keep it going until May 3rd.

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Jan 23 2025
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

Elephant head plant

Wednesday 22nd January 2025, 1.50pm (day 4,899)

Elephant heads, 22/1/25

I have no idea about the actual identity of this species — and I think these are buds rather than the mature plant — but tell me you don’t think the name is appropriate. Look at the one third from the right on the stalk, it even has an eye in the right place.

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Jan 21 2025
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

Invasive species: two for the price of one

Tuesday 21st January 2025, 2.30pm (day 4,898)

Flax and chicken, 21/1/25

St Helena has been subjected to many invasive species since humanity first arrived here five centuries ago, some deliberately planted or otherwise introduced, some accidentally so. In the background, New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax), which a while back someone decided would be a good cash crop, it being the basis of things like rope and mailbags. The cash for it stopped flowing fifty years ago, but that doesn’t mean it all decided to stop growing. In the foreground, well, you know what bird that is (Gallus gallus domesticus, according to the biologists): much the same thing happened, but as a chicken is for life and not just for Sunday dinner, when there stopped being much economic point in people looking after them, out into the environment they went. There are now large numbers of feral chickens on the island.

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Jan 20 2025
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Daily Post, Interior

Ascension: the first approaches

Monday 20th January 2025, 1.35pm (day 4,897)

Ascension map, 20/1/25

Ascension Island is, nominally, a dependency of St Helena and lies about 800 miles from it. Whereas there are many friends who think that when I come here (St Helena, that is) I am swanning away to some ‘desert island’, it’s not like that, as my photos make clear. But, as far as I can ascertain, Ascension really is such a place. The plan is that I will be going there in early April, all as part of the same research project that I’ve been working on since 2021.

But Ascension may well be the most bureaucratically impenetrable place I have ever tried to visit. It might be depicted on maps — this one hangs in a corner of Anne’s Place in Jamestown — but does it officially exist? In practice, can your average person actually set foot there? About these things, I am not yet convinced.

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Jan 20 2025
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Daily Post, Landscape

High Knoll Fort

Sunday 19th January 2025, 12.35pm (day 4,896)

High Knoll Fort, 19/1/25

I spent the day entirely in my accommodation, marking. Something I could have done at home (whether on a Sunday or otherwise). The options for a photo were of the garden at the flat, or its view, so let’s try the latter. I have a decent view at home, too… but the day was what it was. Anyway this is High Knoll Fort, or one end of it anyway: a significant St Helena landmark, visible from most of one half of the island, which is, of course, why they built it there.

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Jan 19 2025
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Daily Post, Landscape

Rollers on the wharf

Saturday 18th January 2025, 5.10pm (day 4,895)

Rollers, 18/1/25

St Helena sits in such a vast expanse of uninterrupted ocean that sea conditions can often have no direct relationship to what the weather is like locally. The atmosphere was calm today, a beautiful day of weather (in fact, all of them have been, since I came here, except for one bout of mild drizzle last Wednesday afternoon). But the sea…. that was a different story.

“Rollers” are the local name for waves driven by storms way to the north, like off Canada, or Florida, and which just roll down the ocean for thousands of miles until hitting this small lump of rock that happens to be in the way. On one day in February 1846 (see this page) the rollers were so intense that they took out half of Jamestown and about thirty moored vessels. They weren’t quite that bad this afternoon but still, it’s noticeable no one was parking their cars on the wharf.

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Jan 18 2025
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

(Very) Red fody

Friday 17th January 2025, 4.25pm (day 4,894)

Red fody, 17/1/25

Another bird, yes, but I’ve been trying to get a decent shot of a red fody, a.k.a. common fody (Foudia madagascariensis) since my first visit here. He — and this is definitely a male — really is that red: I’ve not tweaked the colour settings at all on this one. As the species’ Latin name suggests, they are originally from Madagascar, but have made it over to the other side of Africa by one means or another down the centuries.

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Jan 16 2025
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Daily Post, Portrait, Stranger

The Standard guys

Thursday 16th January 2025, 3.20pm (day 4,893)

In the Standard, 16/1/25

I’ve been here before — not just in life, but on the blog, with this picture, taken on my first trip to St Helena. That one is also in black-and-white, and today that aesthetic move relieves some of the more garish colouring, particularly of the Hawaiian shirt of the guy on the left. Who, by the way, keeps saying hello to me as if he’s never met me before, whereas in the past we’ve had numerous conversations. But perhaps I am just forgettable, in a way that he is not.

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Jan 15 2025
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

Lucky continues to ignore me

Wednesday 15th January 2025, 5.05pm (day 4,892)

Lucky the cat, 15/1/25

Lucky is the guy who really runs the place where I’m staying. “He doesn’t like strangers”, I’ve been told. This seems to be true. Steadfastly, he continues to show his disdain for me. Even rubbing up against car exhaust pipes seems to be preferable. I feel suitably rejected.

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Jan 14 2025
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Daily Post, Flora/Fauna, Landscape

Tableau: cows, turbine and Flagstaff Peak

Tuesday 14th January 2025, 12.40pm (day 4,891)

Cows, turbine and Flagstaff, 14/1/25

Whatever the wind farm on Deadwood Plain is doing to help St Helena generate power in a sustainable way, this particular turbine ain’t contributing. The cows seem stoic about the situation, though, as cows so often do. I passed on my way up Flagstaff Peak behind, at 2,257 feet above sea level. A century and a quarter ago, this place would have been crowded with tents and huts — it was a prison camp for those captured in the Boer War (fought so the British state could get its hands on gold and diamonds, before anyone tells you it had worthier motives).

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