My three weeks in St Helena meant that I missed out on the first decline of winter, and have thus been plunged straight back into December chill and gloom, without the initial acclimatisation. Sights like this are thus very welcome at this time. It’s only just been lit, but it’s developing nicely.
It’s nice to travel, but it’s also welcome to come home. Mr Steve Grey makes at least his 10th appearance on this blog.
I didn’t plan it this way but this is turning into a very uneventful week, spent mostly at home. It’s lockdown all over again, except the pubs are open. Including this secluded little spot at the back of the Railway, unoccupied at this point in time.
The 2020-21 academic year has been buggered about with, and broken, and (for me) unusually extended — but as of this afternoon, at about 3pm, it is OVER. I am on holiday. Could say ‘feels good’. The reality — more like this.
If you ask me, one of the most damaging consequences of The Great Fear is that it has driven a bulldozer through our close social bonds. It’s ripped apart international solidarity as well, taught us to fear the foreigner again, and that will ultimately kill far more than the virus, but I can’t do much about that right now. I can try to get together with mates more, though — and so today, Steve and Geri, both once regulars on here, make their first appearances on here for (shockingly) nearly three years. We’re all still here, at least.
The Railway pub has featured very regularly on here down the years, but it’s had its long bouts of closure in the last decade; two flood-related and last year’s thanks to the Great Fear, with it not even reopening during the relatively Fear-free summer of 2020. And because of that, I drifted away…. until this afternoon, anyway. There was still not much happening on the picnic tables now set up round the back, but it’s an excuse to present a study of shapes and colours, at least.
Somehow it seems to be a time to say hi to old friends. It’s been a while since Mr B appeared on here.
Marley is the latest candidate for ‘honorary pub dog’ at the Railway, and here takes a brief rest while eyeing up the humans, making his strategic decisions as to which might be amenable to the offering of treats and affection.
Not the greatest photograph I know, but the year isn’t ending very excitingly. Nor can I raise a great deal of enthusiasm for the prospect of 2020, a year whose number bounces pleasantly off the tongue and once seemed fabulous and futuristic in the anticipation, but now promises stagnancy and a sort of darkness. I will do my best to keep documenting it (or my little part of it anyway) but there wasn’t much to see today.
“You’re not pointing that camera at me, are you?” asks Gus. Well yeah, actually you could see that I was… No offence meant my friend.
Being 42 