This was supposed to be a five-day trip down south but I have had to truncate it for reasons too annoying and stupid to bother discussing on here. The picture matches the mood today. Yet another umbrella — there have been too many of them in the last four weeks.
Adding insult to the profound sense of incompetence hanging over England at the moment, the weather conforms to all the worst stereotypes about an English summer.
I’ve lived in Britain my whole 46.8 years and it amazes me that there are still people who somehow believe that our month of June is somehow high summer. There are sound climatic reasons why this is not the case, it’s called the ‘European Monsoon’ or ‘Return of the Westerlies’. Look it up. The Westerlies sure bloody returned today I can tell you.
A somewhat strange day. Apocalyptic weather forecasts led to most of Bergen shutting down at lunchtime; my day’s work at Høgskolen i Bergen was truncated as a result, and it was at the point of termination that I took this picture, which doesn’t quite capture how foul it was here, though I like the greyness of it (I knocked down the saturation a bit, but only a bit). Shortly after this KLM then cancelled my flight home, which explains why I’m still here and won’t be home until tomorrow night, 24 hours after originally scheduled.
Yet in the end the afternoon’s weather in the city, while poor, was certainly no worse than it often can be here. I originally got quite angry about this, feeling that everyone could have done with a little less panic. However, it seems that the coastal mountains may have protected the city somewhat. Apparently areas futher north today had the strongest winds ever recorded in Norway. But hey, I’m still allowed to be pissed off that I didn’t make it home (quite a few flights happily left Flesland airport), particularly on a Friday night. So another day in Norway tomorrow, then. So be it.
A sign of how my commuting habits have changed, basically since I had my sabbatical in Australia — this is the earliest Manchester shot in nearly three years (since 17/12/12 to be precise). God, I’m such a statto.
Heavens! Can it get more exciting than this? The rain. The puddles. The surface of some random street near home. It’s that late October, early winter feeling, and it ain’t going away.
This photo may be dull and grey, but hey — that epitomises things, as this was as good as it got today. One of the rare ‘photowhacks’, the one and only picture taken on a given day.
A familiar scene, given added interest by the drizzle caught in the sun. Worth getting a little wet for. The 8:34 to York departs and my train to Manchester will be along in a few minutes.
It cleared up considerably after about 1.30pm, but until then was pretty awful, vindicating my decision not to go on a Lake District walk today. These swings only seem to get pictured in bad weather.
I returned to work. It rained. Well, these things will happen, they still need documenting…
Being 42 