Today’s been another mixed bag here at Bigland Towers and one enlivened by having a four-legged friend for company again – even if this canine companion was only on loan for 24 hours!

Dawn was up bright and early as she decided it was her turn to take ‘Bernie’ out for a walk. The pair of them padded off long before breakfast and ahead of the rain clouds that threatened to put a damper on the day.

Absolved of such duties I stayed at home and brewed to coffee, ready for their return. I’d various work jobs on my ‘to do’ list as well as household chores so the day’s pretty much flown by. We bid goodbye to ‘Bernie’ this afternoon as her owner came to collect her. Shame – I could have got used to taking her for a walk via our local pub but that would only have got me into trouble! Still, I managed to get out for a stroll (sans dog, and pub) when the weather brightened up as I had some shopping to do in Sowerby Bridge as well as drop the latest old slide sales into the post.

The brightening evening weather gave me chance to sit and relax in the sunshine on our terrace and top up my Vitamin D before returning to the office in order to relaunch my slide scanning project. I never did manage to finish this during Covid and the reopening of the world’s meant that the final few 1000 pictures have had to take a backseat to other (paying) jobs. Now it’s a question of fitting in scanning around other things, but I wanted to get a load prepped ready to be able to fill in an hour or so if the weather turns.

Another things I’ve relaunched now that my monthly eBay quota is about to renew is selling off original rail slides that are duplicates of ones I’ve already scanned. Expect many hundreds to appear in July, but in the meantime here’s 130 to choose from.

OK, it’s getting late so onto today’s picture, which is one of the latest batch of old slides I’m scanning. This was taken in Chennai, Tamil Nadu India in February 1998. Lynn and I had taken the bus into Channai (Madras as was) for a day, swapping the beach at lovely Mahabalipuram for the frenetic pace of the city. Whilst we were waiting for the bust to depart on the return this group of street-children clambered aboard to hustle. Kids being kids, it wasn’t long before they broke off to play games!

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