Things have changed a bit recently, haven’t they?
A year ago, we were here, watching this:
As part of this.
The longer this sorry situation goes on, the more frustrating I am finding it and the more I am realising that there is likely to be no quick fix to any of it.
It’s also made me realise that I need to put dates on my blog posts again…
I miss the old life – like the stuff above.
Doug Hurley (one half of space duo Bob and Doug) yesterday tweeted some pictures of South African cities (Joburg, Pretoria and Cape Town) taken from the International Space Station.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen Cape Town from space – remember Randy Bresnick’s August 2017 image?
I’ve rotated Doug’s image to make it more recognisable and conventional.
False Bay at the bottom, Table Bay top left (with spots of light from ships moored on the anchorage), Somerset West and Strand bottom right. All white Stellenbosch (I mean with LED street lighting, not exclusively race) middle right.
Four and a half million people in just 50cm². Amazing
Do I stop the “Day n” prefix to these posts at 100, much like I stopped my daily photos at 50?
I have about… [checks notes…] 2 or 3 days to decide. The first thought is that I should keep them going until the actual end of the lockdown, whenever that may be, but it could be that the software can’t count that high.
These are the sort of things that keep me awake at night.
You can see that I am a very light sleeper.
Today has been busy. Lots of little jobs which I have managed to stretch throughout the daylight hours. I’ve now lit the braai and I’m planning on burgers for dinner. Quite what the rest of the family is going to do, I don’t know.
And so, let’s chuck up this morning’s quota photo, taken as a light mist descended over the back garden a couple of hours after sunrise:
There’s another one which you may have seen on Instagram already.
Some readers have suggested that faeries should be added (or perhaps just spotted), and I gave that a go, but my photoshop skills aren’t up to those of Elsie and Frances.
I’ll be back tomorrow with more words and pictures – including notes on how difficult it is to ‘tog garden birds when your beagle insists on immediately chasing anything that moves.
Especially if it has wings.
It’s no wonder I couldn’t get a faerie today.
We went exploring in a new bit of the Green Belt today. I took a lot of photos, but I haven’t got time to look through them all right now.
So I picked one Quota Photo to share (hey, it’s been a while…). This are it:
Dewdrops on an tiny acacia tree catching the sun. Bigger here.
Lots more to come (isn’t there always?), but not right now.
I have been trying to get these daily posts out at 8am, but this one is slightly late.
I’m pretty sure that no-one will notice – is there really anyone frantically hitting refresh at 7:59, like they’re hoping to be the first in line for concert tickets on some underprepared concert ticket website that will then crash 10 seconds later?
Remember going to concerts?
That was fun, wasn’t it?
Anyway. I digress. Often.
Yesterday was a flat, dull, calm, grey day. Horrible for photography, but great for taking the drone up for the first time in ages and having a quick spin out of the back garden. It needs some work on the camera (the drone, not the back garden): the lens plate is slightly damaged, but apparently fixing that is not an essential service, so it’s not going to happen for a while yet. So I was left having to do a little bit of fiddling in Lightroom, which did at least give me a different image for my photo-a-day Lockdown album on Flickr.
And then, after a quick rain shower, and just as it seemed that all hope of any colour was lost, a watery peach sunset, which I togged from the top of the braai chimney while the braai was in use.
I would not advise this approach.
This photo really is nothing special, but as a symbol of hope and optimism after a miserable grey day, it’s still nothing special.
Today is also grey. Hold tight for the sunset.