A day in the life . . .

There's a Flickr group called A Day in the Life . . . which I rather like. Four times a year, on the summer and winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes, all the group members spend the day taking photos of their day-to-day lives. Five of these photos are posted to the group pool, and the rest in a folder on the member's own Flickr page. So four times a year we get a fascinating glimpse into the lives of ordinary people like ourselves, leading ordinary lives, but in different parts of the world.

Today is my 3rd DILO. My first was on December 22nd last year, and it happened to be the day I was driving down to Wasdale to pick up our free range turkey, so I had ample opportunity to take interesting photos. And being Christmas time, the sun came out from time to time. (Gone are the days when it snowed in December . . .)

My second was on 20th March 2008, on Chris' birthday. Not such nice weather, but I was in Cockermouth where lots of houses are painted in bright colours, and was also lucky enough to capture a bird flying over the Moon, which I thought was incredibly cool.

Today, being midsummer's day, it rained continuously. We're mostly quite pleased about this, as our veg garden has been parched and poor Steve has been marching up and down with buckets of water.

I took some midnight photos last night when the sky was still clear and starry and bright with the nautical twilight known in Shetland as the Simmer Dim - the one on the left was taken at nearly 1am.

Sadly, by the time I got up this morning conditions had deteriorated, and it all looked grey. We'd already decided on a trip to Keswick, as for once I didn't have to rush off anywhere playing music for morris dancing or helping people move furniture.

An unexpected phone call took us to Cockermouth first, though, as members of Steve's family were in town, so I took some photos of the little lad playing on his grandfather's electric chair (no, no, not that kind - this is the sort that raises and lowers the seat, making things easier for disabled people) and creating aged paper for the treasure map he was drawing. I was delighted when the neighbour's tiny black cat, Sammy, came wandering in, as I've been trying to capture her in a photo for a while. Today she posed beautifully for me, singing feline airs with gusto.

By the time we left, the rain was well and truly settled in, but who cares? It may be wet, but it's not particularly cold.

Keswick was fairly busy, as you'd expect, as it's full of tourists at this time of year, and there's not much else for them to do on a rainy Saturday but wander round the market stalls or sit in cafés drinking coffee.

The DILO's theme this time round is green, and for once I'd taken very few photos featuring anything green, unlike my usual pics full of hills, trees and fields. We left the main road on the way home and parked up by the Bouncy Bridge, from where I could take some photos of the clouds settling down on the fells and the River Derwent meandering through the farmland.

You can see all my photos from today's DILO here

The day's not over yet of course - it's only 25 past 9 - but it's still raining, so I don't think I'll be finishing off with my usual flourish of a YABS (Yet Another Bloody Sunset).

I am keenly awaiting Chris' contribution to the DILO group. He's in the Czech Republic at the moment with Rudsambee, and they apparently spent the day on a trip to the local spectacular mountains. I guess I'll have to wait until he returns to the UK, as he doesn't seem able to access the internet at the moment, or even use his phone, which for him is probably worse than the pain he suffers from his sinuses while flying. I only hope his batteries have lasted.

Too late

. . . to be writing much. I want to go to bed. But I promised myself I'd write a bit every day so here is today's news.

FLICKR EXPLORE


Why does it seem such an honour to have some of your photos appearing in Flickr's Explore? It's a computer algorythm for heavens' sake. Why should it matter? But I've just discovered I've had 2 photos put there, having a high degree of interestingness (now there's a neologism that just slips smoothly off the tongue, isn't it?) Both are photos of the Cumbrian sky, and one of them wasn't even taken with a camera, but with my O2 Cocoon phone. I dunno. Really, I dun. But for some reason I now want more pics in Explore.

TRYING OUT NEW BOOTS
Took dogs down very muddy lane, wearing my new walking boots, purchased in Keswick at the weekend. Came back with dry feet and dirty boots. They seem to work, then.

PIPING HOT
Supposed to be 8 of us, but only 6 stayed to play. Helen turned up long enough to convey her apologies, but they've sold their house and will be moving away on February 1st, so she will, sadly, no longer be available to play with us. The rest of us played a Petite Symphony by Gounod, and a few other things, and laughed a lot. This is what it's all about, really.

There's always something to say

If you're so busy doing boring work all day that nothing worth blogging about happens, what do you do? If you've been paying attention to the outside world you can comment on current affairs or politics, or the neighbours' affairs, but apart from dog- and cat-watching I've not seen anything worth commenting on.

Well, you could try picking a photo at random from your 2018 pics on Flickr and commenting on that. (Two thousand and eighteen photos? Can this be true? And the ones on Flickr are only about 10% of my actual stash of photos taken since I got my first digital camera, which can't be more than about 5 years ago. And then there are the boxes and boxes of slides and prints and dageurrotypes and hand-tinted sepia-toned Victorian photos, and the little black & white snaps taken by my mother on her Voigtlander during her Indian travels, and the hundreds of prints made by my father while cooped up in his smoke-filled darkroom, and my grandfather's collection of prints of engineering works in India, taken on a home-made camera on hand-made film, and the pictures of various ancestors, posed formally in a succession of professional photographers' studios from Blairgowrie to Darjeeling, and the stereoscopic pairs, also created by my grandfather, showing views across fragile rope bridges spanning precipitous Indian gorges, and many many others.)

OK - random photo coming up. Well, not completely random - it had to be something vaguely interesting.



So, what's this about? I took this photo on 15th December last year, just after I'd parked my car in the big car park in Carlisle, just under the castle. Glanced into the cab of a white van as I passed it, and realised the smiling old man was only the face of a smiling old man.

Is it a mask? Did someone wear it while committing a crime? Was it for a fancy-dress party? Is it a copy of the actual face of an actual person, or is it an invented face? (It does look sort of like a real person, doesn't it? Even in its hollowed-out state.)

Why did the owner leave it so conspicuously on the headrest? Is it to deter car thieves? Is it to provoke controversy?

Or . . . was it a real man, whose insides and torso have been sucked out and consumed by hungry aliens/vampires/monsters? You know, the sort of hungry aliens/vampires/monsters that can eat anything and everything apart from elderly people's faces? They know from experience that this sort of thing is likely to make them sick. (Well, would you want to eat an old man's face? You can't blame them really, now, can you?)

Now, if you happen to be the owner of that van and that face, and you're reading this PLEASE talk to me!