Pocketed photography (1)

I’ve got a couple of galleries of amazing professional or semi-professional photography which I have placed in Pocket for sharing as and when I have time, inclination and energy. Amazingly, despite this being a Monday morning, it appears that those metaphorical planets have aligned and now there are going to be fireworks – literally.

Yes – belatedly, some photos of the New Year fireworks around the world via an email from professional and semi-professional photography website 500px:

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Some Germany, some Austria and a bit of Dubai there. Yeah. Pretty good stuff, putting my Instagram efforts from Struisbaai beach over recent years (which I was going to link to, but frankly, they’re not worthy).

I’m not going to shoot my bolt on the other gallery of amazing professional or semi-professional photography just yet. It’ll probably make its appearance later this week when there’s nothing better to blog about or when I have a spare moment. Or, more likely, both.

Busy Times

Cape Agulhas is packed. Full of people from all over the country – I have seen cars from each of the nine provinces and I haven’t even left my bedroom this morning. Intersections which usually don’t see more a couple of cars each hour have actual queues at them – sometimes as many as 3 or 4 vehicles long.

Yes, I guess that as with anything in life, one’s definition of “heavy traffic” is relative. That said, I’m expecting heavy traffic even by Cape Town standards as we  head down to Struisbaai beach this evening for the traditional New Year’s Eve fireworks.

It’s chilly (20C), breezy and no-one seems to be particularly looking forward to our late night beach trip right now, but we’ll still do it. After all, as they say, it’s always better to regret something you have done rather than something you haven’t. Actually, that might not hold true for murder, but then I’m not planning on murdering anyone tonight.

As long as the traffic isn’t too bad…

Happy New Year.

Fireworks

Ah. I miss the UK on November 5th. Specifically the fireworks. Yes, they do them here, but for all the mocking of “The Nanny State” on “Mud Island”, the rules here around fireworks are far tighter than in the UK. And, surprisingly for SA, they are generally pretty well observed.

The Isle of Man, of course, is not in the UK, but they still do fireworks and here’s Douglas Bay on Saturday night courtesy of Flickr user cabmanstu:

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Stunning!
Many thanks to Stuart for permission to use the photo.

As ever, twitter is divided over the fireworks here. Some don’t see the need, many are enjoying them and then there are the local dog owners whose animals keep us awake each and every sodding night, but who object to people making noise for a couple of hours on one evening a year.

I hesitate to use the word “killjoys”, but only briefly.

Lantern ban in the offing?

Sky News today is reporting that there are moves afoot to ban “Chinese” Lanterns in the UK because of their potential “deadly impact”. Apparently, these lanterns can drift for miles and land on farmland, where their metal frames can be devoured by livestock:

Agriculture Minister Jim Paice has urged people to think twice about letting them off at celebrations this summer.
“Anyone who’s seen sky lanterns at night knows how spectacular they are, but they probably don’t know how they can cut a cow’s insides to ribbons and be devastating to the countryside.”

Unpleasant indeed, and a compelling argument for banning them rather than:

The lanterns have also caused the death of a foal, which was put down after injuring itself on a fence after being spooked by the mysterious floating light.

Which would also necessitate the banning of planes, cars and celestial bodies such as the spooky moon and the extremely environmentally unfriendly sun.
Also, did the foal (awww. baby horse. heartstrings tugged.) tell the farmer that it was spooked by the lantern? Or was this just a handy excuse for the insurance claim over this tragic equine incident involving some poor quality fencing?
Apparently:

the lanterns are frequently mistaken for UFOs as they drift across towns and cities.

If you think about it though, if the lanterns are airborne and people don’t recognise them as being lanterns, then they are, by definition, Unidentified Flying Objects. So there’s no actually mistaking involved at all.

But I digress. Often. The fire risk from these things along is surely reason enough to ban them – as they have already done in Germany, New Zealand, China [cue irony klaxon] and Australia (mind you, they recently banned swearing there too).

And, as ever, there are calls in the comments to ban fireworks as well, because they scare cats and dogs. Well, hard luck.
While “Chinese” Sky Lanterns may be a relatively new phenomenon in the UK, fireworks have been around for hundreds of years. And therefore, instead of getting all uppity when your pet gets scared by the bangs (one whole night a year), perhaps you should have thought about that at the time of purchase rather than complaining now.
It’s like buying a cat when you live near a busy road: and then whining about banning cars in case your cat gets run over.

Killjoys.

If you should be feeling particularly creative here’s a great post on how to make your own sky lantern. Don’t let it land near any cows or float near any baby horses though, obviously.