Category: flickr

Day 509 – Recent photos

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OK. The first half of the photos from our recent (ok, not so recent now, but I have a decent excuse) trip away are now edited and up on Flickr. Truth be told, I’m a little disappointed with the overall quality. That said, it was a really hard job packing all the sheer scale of the landscape into a camera, and we were there for family time rather than photography time.

And there are one or two of them that I still quite like:

Moody stuff. Go full screen for more effect.

The second part of our trip was less landscape and more animal. But it also makes up about 80% of the photos I took. I’m on it, but with energy and concentration at a premium right now, it is going to take some time.

Please bear with me.

Day 507 – Birds

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I spotted this online recently:

And yes, maybe the birds are trying to send us a message about the way we’re treating them and the planet generally.

Most of the time, I’m a big fan of birds, and I’d happily sit and listen to their concerns.

This (Sunday!) morning, however, a couple of sodding Egyptian Geese were having a really loud moan about the environment or something from before 7am.

And I really would give anything for their population to collapse.

Bastards.

Day 504 – Getting stuff done

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Since I can’t do much of anything that requires energy at the moment, I’ve been tidying up some stuff on the computer and the internet. My Flickr page is now looking much neater and tidier, with all the images assigned to groups and albums so that they’re easier to find, enjoy and share. So go and do it!
And I have high hopes that (at least some of) my photos from the Matroosberg and Klein Karoo (remember that pre-covid trip?) will be edited, uploaded and equally well categorised by the end of the day.

Possibly.

In other news, we had a further disaster last night as the recently repaired living room roof, beneath which is the even more recently replaced living room ceiling (literally last Friday), decided to allow another several (or more) litres of water through during the frontal rain in the late evening. Those litres missed the furniture completely, because the furniture isn’t in the living room at the moment, because now that the roof is repaired and the ceiling is replaced, the new floor is being installed.

You know: now that everything is all watertight and stuff? Mmm.

I’m so very, very tired of all this now.

Other things you might also like to know:

Yesterday’s post was very popular. Go and have a look if you haven’t already.

And, this:

Remember when BA brought their A380 over to Cape Town? Just after the Germans had left their towels on the metaphorical sunbeds? [Flickr]

I know that this announcement gives us 2½ months notice, but with SA very much on the UK’s reddest of red lists (and with every good reason right now), I can’t quite understand why BA would be taking this step unless they know something that we don’t – or unless they’re just going to cancel it when nothing new happens, of course.

Watch this space [gestures generally at the sky above Cape Town], I guess.

Day 500 – Day 500 of lockdown

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Not much to add here, because it is what the title says: the 500th day of our lockdown in some form or other. It’s not been pretty, but research does show that it has been somewhat effective. But there have been huge downsides, especially economically and socially.

And where do we find ourselves on Day 500? Probably in a worse situation that just about any of the previous 499 days. It certainly feels that way personally (if we’re playing with exact numbers, then Day 481 was the probably the worst). We’re not allowed out between 10pm and 4am (like I’d want to anyway) and we can’t buy alcohol to drink at home on the weekends or public holidays (tomorrow is a public holiday) (but again, like I’d want to anyway).

On the plus side (again personally), I’m probably safer from Covid-19 right now than at any previous point in the pandemic, but that’s scant consolation given that I’m completely broken after I stayed up for the football last night. And that was a pretty unpleasant experience, as well.

There’s no end in sight for the third wave or the pandemic or the lockdown generally. Will I be writing more about lockdown this time next year? Will my lockdown diaries tag reach 1000 days. I wouldn’t rule it out.

In the meantime, we’re still doing our level best to be good and to avoid people and places. And given that I get knackered just walking from one room to another – and looking at that graph above – maybe that’s the best way to be at the moment.

As a brief addendum, can you imagine if I’d kept my 50 Days Of Lockdown Flickr album going all this time? I was getting desperate for content by Day 8! Day 408 would have been pants.

Day 499 – ITAP

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One of the things that was ruined by our recent family Covid experience was Mrs 6000’s [landmark] birthday, which was thoroughly annoying, because [landmark] birthdays don’t come around all that often. And one of the plans for that day was for her to go on a gentle horse ride with her friends around some of the local vineyards, followed by a picnic in said vineyards. That didn’t happen because of self-isolation and general crappiness.
But we did manage to get that to happen today.

For the kids and I, the brief was clear: deliver the picnic to the vineyard in time for the end of the ride, and get some photos of the ride for posterity. No problem: I’ve proven that I can drive and the horse place/vineyard is almost literally just around the corner. I can set the boy loose taking photos and the girl and I can unpack the picnic stuff.

And so that’s what we did.

While the boy was away doing his thing, the girl went to chat to some of the remaining horses at the stables and I was left alone with the birds: Jackal Buzzards, Drongos, Sunbirds, White-Eyes – feathery stuff everywhere. And when the boy came back, I decided that I had to shoot the Flycatcher that had been flitting around the car.

This was quite a big deal, because it’s the first time I’ve been out of the car for 3 weeks and the first photo I’ve taken in over a month. I only had to go a few metres from the car to get the shot, but that was knackering enough, especially with a football match to stay up for this evening. But, bread and butter shot of a cute little bird posing on a nicely-textured horse fence: couldn’t resist.

Now just to edit 175 various images of ladies on horses. And maybe a nap.

(Definitely a nap.)