Paris in the Springtime … A quiet square at the western end of Ile de la Cité. This was taken on a warm Friday lunchtime. Noreen and I were sitting outside the café having a delightful lunch with our friend Allison, who was a student in Paris at the time. All the while, just visible in the middle distance, there was a group of Parisian workmen playing boules.

Click the image for lager versions on Flickr

Montage: Place Dauphine
Paris, May 2006

Let’s have something cheering to combat this ghastly Spring weather.

This rose was spotted growing over a garden wall in Pinner, a couple of summers ago.

Roadside Rosebud
Pinner, July 2011

This week’s photo is only a rubbishy snapshot of “Harry the Cat” fast asleep in the paper recycling box by my desk. I don’t understand what it is about cats and boxes; or dogs and water come to that!

Cat Recycling
6 March 2013

This is a miniature Phaelenopsis orchid of my mother’s which I’ve been looking after and which has come back into flower in the last week. Seen here enjoying the sunshine on our study windowsill next to the scented geranium cuttings being rooted for this summer’s patio planting etc. The orchid was returned to my mother when we went to see her yesterday; we also took a collection of catkins for her to paint.

Mini Orchid
4 March 2013

I took this while sitting people watching at London’s Paddington Station. GOK what these two where on, or where they’d been, at 10 in the morning!

Jack Hats
London Paddington; July 2012

Another instalment in our occasional series celebrating the underbelly of Britain, at least as perpetrated locally. This is the Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.

This empty shop (at one time I recall it was a double glazing showroom) is at Rayners Lane, in west London, opposite the tube station. This was a nice small local shopping area, even when I worked there almost 30 years ago. But no longer. Now it is decidedly scrofulous and decaying; populated only by Asian and Polish establishments which never seem to do any trade.

And as you’ll see that above is next to this …

Which has definitely been tidied up a bit in the last couple of years, but to me still looks pretty disreputable.

No story behind this week’s photograph, it’s just one of those things one seems.

Bollard
Lyme Regis harbour, July 2006

Sorry everyone, I’ve been neglecting you again. Last week was insanely busy, made worse by the fact that had my pre-Christmas bladder infection back again. There’s lots to be done again this week, but hopefully I might get some catching up done here too.

Meanwhile I thought we’d have something to remind us that Spring is on the way, and that means summer, flowers, sunshine and (hopefully) warmth too. This is from our garden a few years back; the rose is Buff Beauty and it is supposed to be a bush, but it has gone like a beanstalk up through our silver birch tree.

Rose ‘Buff Beauty’
From our garden, 15 June 2008

This is Hockney-esque joiner I did of the middle of Rochester, Kent back in 2007. The gateway leads towards the cathedral (behind the gate to the left) and the castle. The road running across the view is the High Street. The finished photo is made up of at least six solarised images montaged together.