Today’s been another day for tying up loose ends and streamlining the office – and my archive. The only problem with having pictures in different formats taken over 30 years is that no matter how organised you think you are – something will always turn up out of the blue – which is what I found when I started clearing shelves yesterday.

The process continued today, but only after a coffee kickstart and a meditation session with Dawn which got us both in the right frame of mind to face the day. The weather remained dull and wet, so neither of us minded continuing in lockdown. Like everyone else, we’re hearing all sort of rumours on what the Government may (or may not) do next when it comes to relaxing the restrictions, but no-one knows for sure – and I suspect that includes most of the Government. This shambles seems to be led by one man (Cummings) and his mouthpiece (Johnson). The rest of the lacklustre bunch in the Cabinet just do as they’re told.

Despite the Governments handling of the situation – and there’s going to be volumes written about that – both now and in the future – I’m cautiously optimistic. The reason for that is our weekly Platt family chats on Zoom. Dawns brother works at a senior level for a major international pharmaceutical company who obviously have access to a lot of data on Covid from around the world. I won’t go into detail other than to say that the medical profession now understand vastly more about the virus which appears to be changing again in a way that appears to lessen the treat and also the mortality rates. Time will tell, although none of this will be of any consolation to those who’ve already lost loved ones…

Back at the grindstone I managed to scan lots of loose slides, discover pictures I didn’t know I’d got – and clear a lot of space in the office ready for other projects. So not a bad day at all. The only downside to all this activity is I now have several large bags of broken slide mounts and yards of film, plus hundreds of old DVDs, ready to go to the tip. It seems a terrible waste in some ways but it’s a good advert for how ‘green’ digital photography is when coupled with access to massive but (inexpensive) hard drives or ‘cloud’ based storage. For photographers, digital truly was revolutionary. Here’s a sample of the last of the Hungarian slides I’ve scanned.

Looking across the River Danube and the city from atop Buda Castle. 1st October 2004. 

As usual, I broke up my day with exercise, although I’m really missing the sunshine and ability to sit in the garden. On the bright side, my perambulations are taking me through woodlands and across parks that are noticeably greener – especially the parks, where the grass was brown and in danger of dying off. So, really I shouldn’t complain too much. I wonder how the reservoirs are doing? I’ve heard (but not seen for myself) that they’re getting very low, which doesn’t bode well now folk are being told to wash their hands at almost every opportunity…

Although we’d both had a busy day I told Dawn that I’d knock off early so that we could have a ‘date night’. It’s sometimes all too easy to neglect each other when you work from home. You just keep plodding on and before you know it the evening’s gone. I know it’s something I’m guilty of rather too often so today I said I’d shut down the office at 17:30 and walk just away.

Due to the present circumstances, our date night didn’t involve a meal at a restaurant, a night at the cinema, or any other event that meant going out. Instead, the two of us had a night in playing Scrabble! But it didn’t involve computers and the only time phones were used was to check on the validity of words – so it was a lovely evening enjoying ‘quality time’ regardless of the outside world. Same time next week perhaps?

Ok, now it’s time for…

Picture of the day.

This shot is one of the hundreds I had placed with the old Lonely Planet picture library and that’s been waiting to be scanned and added to my Zenfolio website. It was taken in the vast indoor market in Kota Baru, on Malaysia’s East Coast in June 1998. The market has a balcony which runs round the inside of the roof, allowing you to look down at all the activity on the ground. I spotted these two old women sitting and having a smoke whilst it was quiet and knew it would make a good photo. I love Asian markets like this, they’re such fascinating and colourful places.

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