Only a short blog from me and no politics today as my spleen’s taking a day off. We’ve had a quiet day here at Bigland Towers with the pair of us focusing on work with little else going on other than enjoying our daily strolls. It’s almost as if we were back in our old Covid lockdown routine! I can’t complain as we’ve had a productive day with lots of stuff getting done and some interesting work arranged for later in the month which will feature in blogs nearer the time.
Having been based at home so far this week the tempo changes tomorrow as I’m out and about across Yorkshire mixing business and pleasure. No doubt there’ll be a rolling(ish) blog documenting my travels as and when. But for tonight I’m knocking off and having some chill time so here’s the picture of the day. This is another from a recent batch of old slides from 1995 and shows the inside of the ‘Rundetaarn‘ (round tower) in Copenhagen, Denmark. It’s design, with a curved walkway climbing up seven floors, it’s ideal for those who don’t like stairs!
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After all yesterday’s glorious sunshine the weather’s reverted back to type here in the Pennines. We’ve had gloomy skies, persistent rain and sleet throughout most of the day. Even so, I managed to keep up my new exercise regime and hit all my targets by nipping down into Sowerby Bridge with food shopping as the excuse. But then carrying a rucsac full of heavy shopping back up the valley is a pretty good workout!
I’d intended to be busy at home the next few days but plans have changed all of a sudden as now I find myself heading back down to Surrey tomorrow due to a last-minute request from Dawn who wants me down there for her own nefarious purposes! Who am I to say no? After all, have laptop, will travel, and besides, there’s a little photographic project that I have in mind if the weather’s up to it…
As another short Surrey sojourn beckons there’s not much of a blog from me tonight – I’ve other things to sort out. I’d planned to write about two social media dishonest disasters from two very different sources (the Dept of Transport, and Greenpeace) but that’ll have to wait until the weekend). Instead there’ll be a rolling blog of travels tomorrow whilst tonight I’m leaving you with another old picture from Denmark with a similar light-hearted theme as the last one. Well, unless you’re an irresponsible dog owner that is!
I found this sign on the side of the block where our friend lived in Copenhagen. Clearly, someone had got fed up with dog-shit being left outside their apartment door and decided to make a point!
I can sympathise. Our local woods can sometimes be a mine-field thanks to dog owners who can’t be arsed to clean up after their pooches. Then there’s the one’s who really get my goat. The one’s who bag it up – and then hang the bag on the nearest available tree branch, as if a poo-fairy will magically carry it away! A bullet’s too good for them…
See you tomorrow!
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No blog from me yesterday I’m afraid. One of my new year resolutions is to reboot my exercise levels which took a dive in December. In order to do that something has to give sometime and yesterday that was blogging.
The reboot’s going well. I covered over 10 miles in 21,000 steps yesterday and hit all my targets except one as I was well below my calorie count – which will help burn off some of the Christmas excess! It’s not that I’m overweight, it’s just that I’m near the top end of the scale at which I’m comfortable with and I want to get back to where I feel happiest. After all, I’m not getting any younger and I’d prefer to be an active pensioner rather than a sedentary one!
As if to offer me encouragement the weather’s changed. We’ve lost the rain – and the mild temperatures. They’ve been replaced with colder, sunnier days. In fact, when I opened the bedroom blinds this morning I found there was snow right across the valley tops. It didn’t last long as the sun soon disposed of it, although it was amusing this evening watching cars go past that were still covered in snow. It was almost a weather vane to show how high up the valley side these people lived.
As well as my physical activity I have managed to get some work done, although I’m easing myself back into the swing of things as Dawn’s still on holiday as she’s a mountain of untaken leave to use up. As well as getting some pictures off to a couple of clients and wading through paperwork I managed to finish off scanning yet another album of old slides and begin the next in the series, which will be the final images from 1995-96 but they won’t start to arrive on my Zenfolio website until the weekend. In the queue are shots from Denmark, various points around the UK compass and India, so there should be something of interest for most people and a ready source of pictures of the day. Today’s is one of the series from Denmark.
Lynn and I used to visit Copenhagen on a regular basis as we’d met a Danish woman and her daughter out in Bali a year earlier. ‘Didi’ was a 60s ‘wild child’ who’d mellowed but still had her character. Her daughter, Amalie was a young teenager and quite a famous TV and film star in Denmark. We used to have some fantastic times when we visited them in Christianshavn in Copenhagen or they came over to stay with us in London. Sadly, neither Didi or Lynn are still with us and Amalie now has her own family and lives in Sweden, so I’ve not been back for many years. But, I still have some fabulous memories of those times. The picture I’m using is a great example of how what sounds great in one language doesn’t always translate well. This was a Chinese restaurant in Copenhagen city centre. I had to do a double-take when I saw the name…
I’ve a favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances appreciate all the help that we can get to aid us in bouncing back from lockdowns. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
To say this week’s been stressful would be an understatement. We’ve been back and forth to the vets with Jet, our aged moggie. The old boy’s nineteen and a half and his health’s taken a turn for the worse. At one point we had visions of being on a one-way trip to the vets but the old bugger’s bounced back again! We’re fearful we could lose him anytime has he’s indifferent when it comes to eating but he doesn’t seem to be in any pain. The vets can’t find anything wrong with him other than weight loss and the passing of years, so we’ve really no idea how long we have him for. But, he knows he’s loved and the fact we’re both working from home means he’s getting lots of attention so we just have to take life on day at a time.
One bright bit of news was that I’ve now got both my Covid vaccinations booked. I receive the first one next Thursday and the second one on the 27th May. With the relaxation of lockdown looming this makes me feel rather relieved as I may be better placed to take advantage of work opportunities due to that fact. I can’t wait to get out and about again as there’s been huge changes on the railways over the past year with massive changes in train fleets, plus big engineering projects like the rebuilding of Kings Cross station that I’ve simply been unable to cover – and that’s without the biggest engineering project in Europe to document and report on (HS2).
The vagaries of the week have meant my plans (and usual routine) have gone out of the window. My daily exercise has gone to rat-shit but I have managed to scan an awful lot of old slides so the light at the end of the tunnel’s getting closer – although the plethora of pictures is making it much harder to choose the picture of the day! This week I’ve gone from India to Bali via Denmark and various ports of call in the UK, but the picture I’ve plumped for is this as I don’t think I’ve featured anything from Denmark before.
I took this shot of the Radhus clocktower and nearby statue in Copenhagen in August 1994. Lynn and I had friends in the city whom we’d met when travelling in Indonesia and used to visit them on a regular basis. Sadly, now both Lynn and Didi have passed away but it’s a city I have some very find memories of.
You can find many other pictures from Denmark in this gallery on my Zenfolio website.
Scanning of old slides may slow down a bit next week as I’ve many other things to catch-up with, but – the next album in the queue is going back to the very beginning. I started taking pictures on slide film in 1989 and the album I have lined-up to get through starts with shots I took in the USA in 1990 when four of us spent a couple of weeks driving around California, Arizona and Nevada, taking in various national parks like Big Sur, Monument Valley, Death Valley and the Grand Canyon as well as cities like San Francisco. After that the album covers UK destinations before containing the first pictures of my 1991-92 year-long solo trip from India through to Australia – most of which was done the hard way – overland. I’ve wanted to scan these pictures for a long time as they contain some brilliant memories and great stories of how backpacking was 30 years ago. Watch this space…
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Which is a very quick one today as most of my time’s been spent preparing for Christmas as well as continuing to scan vast quantities of old slides. There’s a huge amount that I want to blog about, including the latest National Infrastructure Commission report into new railways in the Midland and North, but I keep running up against the fact there’s only 24 hours in a day.
So, here’s one of today’s slide scans which I took in Copenhagen, Denmark on the 26th August 1994. So much of this scene has changed now as the rail yard in the foreground and to the right (which were just outside the main station) have disappeared. They’ve been replaced by new building as this area of the city has been redeveloped. It’s an object lesson in how an everyday scene can quickly become history. The site’s now occupied by the Danish Energy Agency…
Oh, and notice one of my favourite landmarks in the background? Many of the slides I’ve been scanning at the moment are also of of what are now times past – which is really starting to make me feel like an old bugger – as they seem like the blink of an eye to me!
I hope to catch up with more blogging this weekend…
I’ve a favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Paul Bigland 