A week off work thus far, and, including today, three days still to come. Perhaps I could have made more of an effort today, but beer was certainly a constitutive part of Saturday 8th April 2023, so let’s celebrate it.
I don’t feel that I have captured the social aspects of this city, which are considerable, and pleasant. What a nice place, perhaps I will never be back before I die, but if not — (as with many other places, like Saigon and Tallinn and Berlin) — that will be a shame. Viva Barcelona. There are many worse places to hang out.
This amount of light, sunshine and relative warmth at 5pm are definite signs of spring. The equinox is past us, the nights are only getting longer. Not that Gus looks all that happy about it.
The house pooch of the Star Inn, Penzance, doesn’t necessarily take his guard dog duties all that seriously, at least not where the breakfast buffet is concerned. Then again I was the only guest, so presumably he’d decided I was legitimate.
And so ends February 2023, a varied month for me, some very interesting periods and some deadly dull ones. Photographically, it ends in a pub on Stoke-on-Trent station, mainly for lighting reasons. Though the beer was quite good too.
The weather this week: long spells of heavy reading, becoming marking; some intervals of lighter reading. When this report was written, in 1985, it was commentary. Now, it’s history. Same words, different perspective.
There really isn’t anything happening at the moment; and not a great deal to be done about this, until the weekend anyway. In the pub, our landlady feels the need to retract a statement presumably made over the Christmas period. The grammar is not mine, no complaints please.
Opening time at my local pub is 3pm on Tuesdays, and a nice thing about arriving early is that I get to light the well-laid fire. The lump of lava on the right is a firelighter doing its job: within a few minutes this whole construction will be alight. Sometimes the interest is in the details — such as the paper to the left, what series of numbers goes 3, 10, 50, 70, 100 I wonder?
One of those where the guy’s profile caught my eye, and the rest of the shot was whatever came into view as I caputred it.
A bit early for a working lunch perhaps, but if it’s good enough for Inspector Morse — a frequenter of the Turf Tavern, Oxford, in both the novels and the TV series — it’s good enough for me, and indeed for this gentleman. One thing about Oxford is that you do really feel the whole city centre, at this time of year at least, is engaged in some form of intellectual pursuit. The environment is wholly conducive to it.
Being 42 