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.

Misty

Misty today. All day. You could lose your dog on a day like this. Fortunately, I didn't.

Don't know why . . . there's no sun up in the sky . . .

. . . stormy weather. Well, it's been quite exciting to watch, with our perfect view from our windows of the sea in all its wildness. BIG waves and squalls of hail and rain and nearly-snow hurling themselves towards us across the water. Strong, gusty winds chucking stuff around. Notice the eucalyptus tree in the photo - it's bending seriously to the right - it normally stands up fairly vertically. The sun, however did appear from time to time, as there were nice big breaks in the clouds, as you can see here. You'd hardly believe it was such a wild day, really.

But this is normal weather around here. The trees down the lane are all bent in that direction permanently, because of the prevailing winds.

You have to drive more slowly than usual, especially when you're on roads with overhanging trees, as there's no way of telling if there's going to be a big huge tree limb lying across the road in front of you as you go round a bend. But hey, it's all fun.

Apparently the M6 was closed for a while, and a car ferry on its way across the Irish Sea had to be evacuated by helicopter. Can you imagine being out in the Irish Sea in a car ferry in this weather? I think I'd have stayed ashore and waited for the wind to die down if it'd been me.

Happy birthday to me

I got 3 actual physical birthday cards, and many virtual ones, which is fine, as it leaves less to recycle, and of the 3 real ones, two were home-made while the third is so pretty that I'll probably want to keep it anyway.

I also got enough reading matter to keep me quiet for a while, enough games to distract me even more than usual from real life, some lovely home-made jewellery and half an acre of Brazilian rain forest, which I plan to visit and set up a holiday home on as soon as I've brushed up my Portuguese a bit. (Oh. I see. I'm not supposed to use it - I'm helping to conserve it. Well, that's actually even better. Thanks Patti.)

I gather it was snowing the day I was born. It was snowing the day Chris was born too, and that was 2 months after my birthday. These sort of things don't happen any more. Yesterday's feeble attempt at snow had vanished completely by lunchtime, and now it's just rain and flood warnings and wind and greyness and general dreichness.

Weather

Eventually we are all reduced to talking about the weather. Well, if we're British, anyway.

Wild today. Wind and that really cold nasty rain that penetrates clothing and chills your skin even if you're just dashing from the car to the Post Office. You don't see people standing around in the street on days like this: they're all dashing from one sanctuary to the next. I didn't even notice the usual knot of smokers outside the pubs, but having been one myself for many years I know that it takes more than bad weather to stop a smoker lighting up, so I guess it was just the wrong time of day or something.

There's a stretch of road between Netherhall School and Maryport that always floods when there's heavy rain, and on my way into town the whole left side of the road was waterlogged, forcing all the traffic to veer to the right side of the road. On my way back the flood had spread so that there was only about a car's width left on the dry side. A little later and it would have filled up completely. Someone told me the Dearham road was flooded too, so the poor Maryportians may have ended up beseiged in their own town, with the only way out being through Flimby.

By the time I got home the rain had turned to sleet, and within minutes the sleet had turned to snow. For a while I got quite excited, but it turned out to be that nasty wet sort of snow, that will certainly lie for a while, but makes crap snowballs and is useless for sledging on. Oh well, with the full moon it looked quite nice in the garden anway. Hmm. Wonder if the moon's still visible? Might be an opportunity for some interesting long-exposure photography if I can find warm enough boots.

Working

Not much else to do on grey days like this, apart from work. Finished the bamboo chair with its Danish cord seat. Normally I'd have taken it outside to photograph it, but I don't think the owner would thank me for taking it outside into the rain/sleet/hail that was going on at the time, so it remains, for now, unphotographed.

Spent some time attempting to get the bookkeeping up to date. Every year I have a failed new year resolution which goes something like this: This year I shall keep my bookkeeping up to date. Never works. Depressing, isn't it?

Decided to start practising the alto sax in preparation for Roz' Sax Day in about 10 days' time. The funny thing is, when I'm playing my C-melody, all I play is folk music, but the minute I get an alto in my hands I want to play jazz. NB - I want to play jazz. I don't think I really can play jazz, but at least the desire to try it is there.

When Roz holds a Sax Day, she ropes in Steve to be the Sax Doctor, doing running repairs and tweaks for her students who come along, en masse, to play together for a day. And if Steve's there, so am I, as I am his loyal chauffeuse, and if I am there, I might as well join in the fun, even though I am not, as yet, one of Roz' students. Well, it was fun last time.

Playing my C-melody for Belfagan in Keswick a few years back.

A few resolutions for 2008:
1) Practise the sax.
2) Get bookkeeping up to date.
3) Get more exercise.
4) Don't leave sarcastic comments on poor fragile son's blog.

Stormy weather

Through the night the wind howled, the thunder crashed and the rain battered the rooftops. If you opened a window you could hear the roar of the waves crashing on the shore, just a mile away. I just couldn't wait to get down there with my camera!

There's not a lot else you can do in weather like this, and if you live near the sea it would be a crime to pass up such a fine opportunity.

Took over 200 photos in the end. Some of the better ones can be seen here. The sea is usually quite calm around here, so it was quite exciting to see real big breakers, crashing over the promenade or the pier. Anglers, hardy souls, were out in force in their gaily coloured jackets. I saw a swan, apparently surfing for pleasure, great flocks of seagulls (mostly the smaller gulls rather than the evil herring gulls) and oystercatchers.

Eventually the sun came out, making the big waves blue, but still just as loud and stormy. But the colour and quality of light that comes after a storm is quite beautiful, and even Maryport looked lovely for a little while.


It's a shame that Flickr was having an off day. Suddenly everyone was finding that only some of the photos they were uploading could be accessed, and chaos reigned around the globe for a while until they fixed it and we heaved a collective sigh of relief.