Loser

Posted on

So, it turns out that my photographs of the endangered African Black Oystercatchers that I took on the day of the walk didn’t win any awards in the photography competition organised by the Elim wine farm of the same name.

Sad. But that doesn’t mean that they won’t make decent quota photos for this blog post.

25348516034_bfc3b77714_z  25886225881_b26be5465f_z
Awesome birds. You can see them in their full glory here and here. And then you can click the left and right arrows to see more Oystercatcher pictures.
You know you want to.

Meanwhile, the competition continues apace on Facebook, where it’s sadly become more of a popularity contest than a judgement based on photographic talent. You can see all of the top 5 there, but something has gone very wrong if this one (it’s number 4) doesn’t win.

More from me tomorrow, as I mentally prepare to head through the lentil curtain to the Other Side Of The Mountain, where be dragons (allegedly), and scary people (definitely).

Another Love

Posted on

It seems to be a thing to take an indie track, add some voice production, remix it with a housey beat and (hopefully) some piano and then share it on Soundcloud. If this Zwette reinterpretation of Tom Odell’s Another Love – allegedly complete with “sanften beats” and newfound “Clubtauglichkeit” – is anything to go by, long may it continue:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/82063832″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

But don’t get me started on Soundcloud, because I’ll be downloading stuff all day.
Have you seen this, for example? Mooi…

Beautiful Stipe

Posted on

For me, there’s not much that Michael Stipe touches that doesn’t turn to gold.
So perhaps it comes as no surprise that I think that this – doing the rounds on social media today – is utterly beautiful.

Truth be told, I was never a fan of David Bowie*, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate a decent song every now and again. And, for me, this cover beats even the Nirvana unplugged version [alienates even more readers].

Just enjoy it. And feel for the apparently unknown and unsung (no pun intended) piano player who gets absolutely no recognition, despite being instrumental (no pun intended) in the performance.

 

* No, you **** off.

New Gatwick flight

Posted on

This almost snuck in under the radar (LOLz – aircraft pun), but here’s some great news for people living in Sussex:

British Airways has announced it is launching a new route from Gatwick Airport to Cape Town later this year.
The major airline is expanding its fleet or aircraft at Gatwick as new three-times-a-week flights are being added to its schedule.

And I suppose it’s good news for anyone in Cape Town too, as adding more flights means more seat, means less competition, means cheaper flights overall. This good news is tempered somewhat by the realisation that if you take one of these new flights, you will end up landing at Gatwick Airport though.

Have you ever been to Gatwick Airport?
Hmm.

You’ll probably recall that it’s almost 4 years since SAA stopped flying the Cape Town to London route, citing “dwindling passenger numbers” on flights to Europe from the Mother City. Something that doesn’t seem to have stopped Swiss, Turkish, Condor, Air France, KLM and (of course) BA from operating such services.

But, back to the new (Northern hemisphere) “winter only” Gatwick flights:

The three flights will depart on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 6pm, arriving in to Cape Town at 7.50am the following morning.

This winter BA will add a fourth three-class Boeing 777 aircraft to its Gatwick fleet, bringing the total number of Boeing 777s at the airport to 12.

Note that those are two separate lines: there’s no suggestion that the LGW-CPT flights will be on 777s – BA currently operates 747s on its Cape Town to Heathrow route (for the moment, anyway).

I’ll get in touch with BA and see if they can tell me what aircraft they are planning on using. It would be nice to move on from the aging jumbos. After all, we were promised 787s way back in 2013…

 

UPDATE: And here’s the answer – 777s!

Fullscreen capture 2016-03-30 022832 PM.bmp Fullscreen capture 2016-03-30 022916 PM.bmp

That does help, Jamie. Thank you.