I don’t recall why I didn’t contribute to Tara’s Gallery last week, apart that is from being too busy, but we’re back this week for the theme of Autumn.
So first here are two taken last year in our garden …
… and one I took yesterday of a tree in the street close to my house …
… on what was a glorious clear Autumn morning.
I’ve not partaken in Tara’s Gallery for a couple of weeks. This has been partly due to the lack of available hours in the day and partly as the last couple of subjects haven’t grabbed me.
But I have to do this week’s Gallery as the subject is something dear to my heart: books!
And yet I find I have no photos of books. Except for this one.
This was my home office, my desk, about three years ago.
For the last several years I was working I was lucky enough to be able to work from home much of the time. Despite being a project manager much of what I was doing could be done remotely: I had email, a mobile phone, a fax, a laptop. And because my teams were geographically spread meetings were held by teleconference. It actually worked well, and saved the company huge amounts of cash and travel time.
A couple of years into retirement it doesn’t look a lot different. The laptop isn’t there so often, and the fax machine has gone.
The books have been reorganised but are largely the same. These are my working books; the ones I use every day; just a couple of hundred of the thousands in the house.
Here it is today; when I was in the middle of writing this and even with the image above on the screen!
See still lots of books, bigger geraniums and chillies creeping into the top right corner — not a whole lot different!
I don’t recall the subject of Tara’s Gallery last week, but whatever it was it didn’t excite me. But we’re back with a submission for this week’s theme: Yellow.
Almost inevitably yellow means flowers, but I’ve tried to find something else as well.
This water lily was in the Water Lily House at Kew Gardens.
Isn’t it delightful?
Again at Kew, a couple of flowers in their garden centre shop.
But you know, it’s very odd. I really don’t have that many shots of outstandingly yellow things. Lots of reds, greens and blues, but very few yellows. Maybe I just lead a dull life?
So what are you normally doing at 8 o’clock in the evening? Or even what are you abnormally doing? That’s what Tara is asking as her theme for the Gallery this week is 8PM.
Until recently my normal activity at that time would have been eating, but we’ve now brought evening mealtime earlier (it is better for you, it seems) so the answer has mostly now become reading, in one form or another. One thing I mostly am not doing at 8PM is taking photographs. But of course there are always exceptions: when late home, away on business, on holiday or just out on the town. Which is how my three contributions come about.
I can’t guarantee they were all taken at exactly 8PM, but they were all taken around then.
Click on any of the images for larger views on Flickr
Waiting for the Virtual Curtain
Montage of the Globe Theatre on a very wet evening
We’re Going Home!
On the M40 into London after another long day at the office
Night Ride Timelapse
Another late evening on the road from somewhere
The theme for Tara’s Gallery this week is Breakfast, and what’s more this week there is a prize.
Now breakfast is the meal we are all supposed to indulge in. The old saying is Breakfast like king, lunch like a lord and dine like a pauper. And it does actually work. But I can’t get on with it; evening meal being meal of the day is too ingrained from my childhood. Besides I’m not a breakfast-y person; I never have been. I can’t face breakfast immediately on waking. When I was working I never had more than a mug of tea before going out but always wanted something once I got in the office.
Even now when, due to the diabetes, I’m supposed to eat breakfast as often as not I don’t. However when I do I’m not wedded to particular foods; I’ll eat anything I fancy for breakfast.
So here’s my usual somewhat askance take on breakfast possibilities.
Click the images for larger versions on Flickr
So the theme for Tara’s Gallery this week is simple … Beauty.
Simple huh?
So what is thing called “beauty”? Is it merely something cultural; an attribute based on whatever is the current common consensus? Or is there some “universal beauty” which transcends time and place? It seems (see here and that it’s actually a mix of the two. But it’s also interesting that aside from the biological markers of health and fertility, there’s no definition of beauty that isn’t considered ugly in another place or another time.
Which means I can choose anything the hell I like! So what shall we have?
Some pretty flowers?
(Yeah OK, so a cabbage isn’t a flower, but you get the point!)
An attractive blonde?
Or some pussy porn?
But then again we could have a crane!
I know, I’ll let you choose …
For her Gallery subject this week Tara has chosen another “mummy topic”: Back to School. So of course I’m struggling with it — well I would wouldn’t I, ‘cos despite my wrinklydom I’m not yet quite mummified; neither have I had a sex change, at least not when I last looked.
So about the best I can do by way of a contribution is this:
Click the image for larger views on Flickr
I took this at London Zoo way back in June 2008 — blimey was it that long ago; it seems like last summer!
I’m not sure if these girls (and there was a whole gaggle of them) were part of a school trip or just locals who were able to take a short cut through the Zoo, but the former is more likely. Anyway despite the tiger masks these two were failing to blend in with the animals, and no doubt got carted off back to their penitentiary.
Just look at the ladders in those stockings/tights though! Surely only a schoolgirl would be seen dead in those!
Another instalment in my occasional series documenting some of the underbelly of Britain. 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 garage area is at the back of one of the houses near us and opens onto the main road. Here it is just before last Christmas.
And this is the same area around Easter time.
Now I know I’m not the tidiest and most organised person in the world, but at least the rubbish at the bottom of my garden isn’t visible to the whole world.
Well I thought I was going to pass on Tara’s Gallery this week as the theme is Movies. And as we all know I don’t do movies. But then I remembered I had this …
Jaws!
It was actually part of the fish counter display in our local supermarket a few weeks ago.
This week over at Tara’s Gallery we’re being asked for photographs of sky.
Now there are boring, dull, flat grey skies and boring, wall-to-wall clear blue skies. But just about anything else is interesting: clouds, stars, the moon, sunset, sunrise, rainbows … the list is almost endless.
So here is a small selection of mine from across the years.
Click the images for larger versions on Flickr
Trees at dusk, taken one late winter evening as I left work
January sunrise seen through the birch tree in our garden
“Armco Sundown”, sunset on the A11 in Norfolk taken from the passenger seat
of the car one late February
This could be almost anywhere in England on a hot summer’s day; it’s actually in Norfolk, again taken from the passenger seat of the car
