The first day of my long weekend and I feel I’ve achieved little. Well little of what I wanted to do anyway. Instead I’ve been caught up in things I had to do, which are usually not the same.
I had to take our cat to the vets for his annual booster vaccination but there was a delay and I ended up waiting 25 minutes past the appointment time. Due to Covid you have to phone the surgery upon arrival and then wait in your car until it’s time for the vet to see you, whereupon they come out, take your animal from you, and whisk it into the surgery for treatment. I had plenty of time for a good conversation with our cat, who was quite vocal in the car. I suspect he was just moaning about the delay though.
Once I got home, I had to then drive out to pick up some groceries with my wife. Once a month or so we go to a discount supermarket open to employees of certain organaisations such as the police, NHS, some supermarkets and others. Normally this is a relatively quick run up the motorway but today I had to make a detour into town to pick up some anchor bolts from the nearest branch of Screwfix that had them in stock. This added some time onto the journey, and then further time was needed to get some lunch – a drive-thru Burger King saw to this. Arriving at the supermarket we were greeted by a very long queue. There’s normally a bit of a queue to get in, but this time it was much bigger than usual. Again more time was sliced from my day.
When we got home I had to start looking at the pull-up bar that my son has bought as part of his exercise regime. Well, we’ve bought it for him is more accurate. There’s nowhere suitable to fit it indoors, so it’ll need to go on an outside wall instead, which is why I needsed the anchor bolts. I’d hoped to get it fitted today but by the time I’d put the piece of equipment together it was time to eat and I didn’t fancy having to start drilling the wall after that, so the chore has now rolled over to tomorrow.
Sigh…
I really hate chores They get in the way of things That make me happy
Back when I got my GW690 it arrived with a roll of Velvia 50 already loaded with a single frame shot by the previous owner. Keen to try out my new camera I hurried out on the first opportunity and shot the remaining seven shots on the roll. They were all disappointing.
Velvia is a beautiful film, but you need to treat it properly. Rushing about on a slightly overcast winter day is not the best way to get quality results. It showed, and I wasn’t happy with what I had made. My next few rolls through the camera were black and white, I took greater care with what I was doing, and the camera started to show me what it was capable of.
The disappointing Velvia photos went in my negatives (or in this case, positives!) binder to be quietly forgotten.
Yesterday, because I’ve just bought some more expired Velvia (and Sensia) reversal film, I was looking through my older E6 images and came across the GW690 set. While I still think most of them are disappointing, one of them looked like it might have some potential, so I decided to see if I could breathe some life into it, and the result is presented here today.
It’s not the best photo, but it has a nice early winter morning feel about it and I like the light on the grass and the hazy sky. I’m not one-hundred percent sure about the yellow sunlight on the bridge supports, but it was catching a warm early morning glow so perhaps they’re not too far off the mark. Anyway, here it is for you to make up your own minds. Was it worth the effort do you think?
Don’t rush with slide film Treat it with care or you’ll risk Fujichrome failure
A super-speedy post today. I had other things I had to do, and not much time to pull a blog post together. So here’s another birch tree (a mini theme with these of late!).
In a rush today I hope this silver birch tree Might please my readers
The day that this picture was made left me a little disappointed when I awoke. We’d had some bright days with sunshine and clouds in abundance just prior to this but, as usual, I was otherwise engaged and unable to fo make photographs. So, when I say the grey, murky skies I almost took the decision to stay indoors and find something else to do. In the end though, I have myself a gentle mental kicking, pulled on my walking boots, and headed out the house. As it turned out, the flat skies also held some mist – not thick by any means, but enough to add a nice, soft layer of atmosphere to the surroundings.
While the lockdown has restricted me from travelling very far, I decided to make the effort to take a long walk to Shirebrook Valley, which is maybe 2-3 miles from home as the crow flies, but longer when following the routes that us ground-dwellers need to tread. The valley is a wooded area with a brook running through the bottom. While I’ve passed it close-by on countless occasions – the bypsss that leads to the city centre skirts its edge – I’ve only visited on foot once in recent times, and walked across it from one side to the other on occasions when I was a lot younger – it was part of the route if we ever walked to or from my grandparent’s house instead of travelling by car.
This lack of previous exploration meant that I was pleasantly surprised by what I found, with some interesting photgraphic opportunities presenting themselves – particularly a whole series of fallen trees down beside the brook in one area – and definitely a place I plan on revisiting when chance and – particularly – conditions favour it.
The image featured today looks down towards the southern edge of the woodland. Although not really apparent, the busy bypass I mentioned is hidden amongst the misty trees at the top of this shot.
Just a feint light mist Adding mystery to things And pleasing the eye
A quick count shows that I have 32 posts in my blog that have been tagged with “power lines”. I would have expected it to be much higher than that as I feel that I post a lot of images of, or featuring, power lines, pylons, and similar things. It could be that some are untagged, or tagged with “pylon” and not “Power lines”, which might bump up the count a bit though.
Anyway, that counter will tick up another notch today as – you guessed it – it’s a photo of some power lines!
I like this one – theres a leading line from the foreground pole, across the field of grass and rushes, and over to the pylon. There’s a stray street-light in there too, photo-bombing his electricity-carrying buddies.
Powerlines again A draw to my camera Many times before
One day post-Covid jab and I can report some side-effects, albeit pretty minor. These came in the form of some soreness and stiffness in the arm where I received the injection, a mild headache, and some general all-over mucscular aches. At first I put these down to the fact that I’ve been for a run yesterday, but they’re not the same as I might expect so more likely a result of the vaccination. These side-effects are pretty common though so I have no concerns and a couple of paracetamols sorted them out.
Today marked the first time I’ve seen my dad in person since last October when our region was designated as Tier-3. The recent lockdown easing measures have so far been minor but do allow for two people to meet outdoors for recreation (the examples given in the official explanation are for a coffee on a bench, or a picnic). Not fancying a coffee or a picnic – it’s March in the UK ferchrissakes! – we decided to go for a walk. It was nice to speak to my dad in person rather than over the phone and we went on a decent walk covering two or three miles.
The route took us over an old railway bridge that I don’t think I’ve crossed in at least thirty years, so I was amazed to see that there was still graffiti dating back to the early 80s on the rusting metal sides of the bridge. Most of this originated during the 1980s miner’s strike and there were still declarations of “Scargill No.1” and “Tories Out“, which took me right back to my teenage years when we would walk past these declarations on a regular basis. I’m going to go back and make some photographs when I get chance. The graffiti is still very vivid, to the extent that I wonder if some diehard advocate of the industial action that took place might be refreshing them with fresh paint occasionally. Whatever the case, I’ll get a better look next time and record them for posterity.
Today’s photo has absolutely nothing to do with the miner’s strike, and was made on another walk a few weeks ago.
Back when we were young Our lives still ahead of us Places in memory
I received my first Covid-19 vaccination today – less than an hour from when I began typing this in fact. I have to say that, despite my earlier reservations at how fast the vaccination programme would roll out here in the UK, it is currently barreling along – I wasn’t expecting my first jab until April at the earliest, so was pleasantly surprised when I received the SMS message from my local health-centre last week. I was originally scheduled to have the injection yesterday lunchtime but, being my usual organised self, I forgot to add it into my Outlook calendar at work and then booked a business meeting in the same slot. Luckily there were still available slots this afternoon.
The process went smoothly, despite there being a queue of people when I arrived. Each person was asked their name and the time of their appointment by two people outside the door to the building, who would then give each person a piece of paper with their details (including the vaccine they would receive – the Astrazeneca jab in my case). There was some minor chaos caused by the wind blowing the little slips of paper that they gave to each person around on the table, but none managed to escape. More minor confusion arose when one of the staff tried to give my slip of paper to the person in the queue in front of me. They looked puzzled as to what had happened – perhaps the fact that we were both bald men wearing face masks didn’t help – but after calling out that the piece of paper was mine a couple of times, all was resolved.
Random birch tree photo. Nothing to do with vaccinations. 🙂
The queue then continued into the medical centre building (not my usual one, but another in the area. Its within walking distance but I drove there, having done one of my C25K runs at lunchtime already, and not fancying further exercise). The queue followed the corridor into the building, myself and my fellow jab’ees staying the alloted 2-metres apart, then winding around a 90-degree corner and to a T-junction where a member of staff stood, directing people into the vaccination rooms as they became free. To the left was a seated waiting area for anyone who had driven to the centre to sit and be observed for 15-minutes after receiving their jab. The man in front of me told the member of staff that he didn’t have time to wait around, and was advised to let the doctor administering his vaccine know.
Shortly afterwards it was my turn to go in and I was directed to the nearest room to where I was waiting. A masked lady in a flower-patterned boiler-suit asked me to sit down, and then realised she had no doses of vaccine left, so went out to fetch more (and to re-fill her bottle of juice). Shortly afterwards she returned with a box filled with vials of vaccine and some syringes. She looked somewhat frazzled, and I can only imagine how tiring it must be to vaccinate what appeared to be a never-ending line of recipients. She mentioned that they had had a couple of “fainters” earlier in the day, which had scaused some delays. After asking me a set of questions about allergic reactions and so forth, presumably with the hope that I wouldn’t join the “fainters” (or worse), I was asked which arm I would prefer to receive the needle. Having no preference one way or the other, she asked me to uncover my left arm and swiftly administered the dose of vaccine. A momentary sharp pressure in the muscle of my arm and it was done. She wrote a time on a sticker and told me to go to the waiting area where I should stay until the 15-minutes had elapsed.
The waiting area had a couple of nurses who gave each person a card containing details of the vaccination they had received, including the batch number, and said to keep it safe as we would require it when we received the second dose of the vaccine. Those people who were not driving were allowed to leave straight away, but otherwise we had to take a seat and wait. The nurses would regularly circle the room checking if people were ok and looking at the times on their labels to compare with the clock on the wall before setting them free into the world once more. Fifteen minutes later I was released without any side-effects (or becoming a “fainter”.
More birch trees. Still no relevance to anything I’ve written…
So that’s my first jab complete. In a few weeks time I should have significant resistance to the worst effects of Covid-19 should I catch it, and in around 12-weeks I will receive the follow up injection.
While there are still concerns that some variants of the virus may be more resistant to the existing vaccinations, I am hopeful that this will lead us out of the worst of the restrictions we’ve had here in the UK and that there will be a return to a greater semblance of normality before too long. Fingers crossed!
A jab in my arm Just one out of millions To protect our lives
Oh look, more silver birch trees. Look, if I had a photo of a syringe, I’d have used that. 🙂
A short section of the Trans Pennine trail close to the western entranct to Rother Valley Country Park. At the end, it cuts to the left on the park entrance path, crosses a bridge over an active railway line, before dropping back to run alongside the tracks to the north for half-a-mile or so. This area was covered in a lot more foliage until the last year, when some tree felling and trimming has taken place. Just off to the left of the scene where the trail curves around the path is a pile of thin logs that remain from the work.
Curving path heads on Up north and to points beyond And then east and west
One of those impromptu, spur-of-the-moment shots today showing some string holding together one of the stick-structures that I’ve featured on my blog before (such as here – in fact, if you look closely, you can see the same piece of string in one of the shots there).
It’s slightly out of focus as it was taken at close distance with a wide apereture and I might have been swaying slightly while I made the image. Nontheless, it appeals.
String ties branches tight These mysterious structures Built by unknown hands
I’m absolutely shattered this evening. I’m having a bit of a stressful week at work – nothing bad, just something I’m working on that I’ve not done fully before and I’m focussed on trying to make the best job of it that I can, which is taking a bit of a toll. Plus, on the physical side, I completed week seven of Couch to 5K today – the last of the 25-minute runs. Two more weeks to go, and three 28-minute runs for the next week. I always feel a sense of achievement when I complete one of the runs, but I wasn’t in the mood today, and it took effort and willpower to not stop moving.
Another grainy HP5+ photo today.
Geese on the water So serene on the surface Liquid hides effort
