I’m away from Britain for the first time in three years, visiting family on the other side of the world. Getting here involved thirty hours of plane travel—going the long way round, at half the price of travelling via Asia. I came close to missing my connection in Newark, thanks to a delayed departure from Edinburgh, and had to fight jetlag in LA and Melbourne to avoid missing my subsequent connections; but it all worked out. My first time on a plane in over three years: I’m pretty sure the longest I’ve gone between flights in my entire life.
It hasn’t been the easiest year, so spending the end of it back in Tassie has given some time to take stock. Maybe I’ll write about it sometime. In the meantime, before the year is over, here’s a photo from the end of it.
Roaring Beach, Tasman Peninsula, 22 December 2022
29 December 2022
The first photo I posted from my iPhone 7 was a sunset, so here’s the last one, a sunrise from a week ago. The battery was on the way out and it had developed other quirks, so now I’ve got an iPhone 12 Mini, only two years old, which makes it the newest phone I’ve owned in a decade. The refurbished price of the things is getting a bit crazy, but then so’s everything.
30 November 2022
There have been more fine sunsets since I posted that gallery of them in June, with a couple this weekend accompanying the rising new moon, so I’ve taken the opportunity to add some extras to it. Meanwhile, here are some that were the wrong aspect ratio—click through for the rest.
31 July 2022
In the first year of the pandemic one of our few day trips out of Edinburgh was to the Scottish Owl Centre, a wonderful place with more species of owl in one spot than just about anywhere else in the world. Last week I was out there again with my daughter, giving an opportunity to take more photos of the same birds, with a few new ones in evidence as well. Here’s a gallery.
18 July 2022
At the start of the month I drove my son and his instruments all the way to Skye in a single day, via Callander, Glencoe and Fort William, for a week-long music camp culminating in a four-date tour around Scotland.† It’s quite a drive there from Edinburgh, so I didn’t try to get all the way home the same day, but stayed a night in Roybridge before making my way back through the Cairngorms. Glen Etive and Glencoe were as spectacular as always, and I got a few misty pics of Eilean Donan to add to my castle collages.
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16 July 2022
What the Internet really needs is more cat photos. This Chinchilla Persian is one of the stars of Maison de Moggy, Scotland’s first cat café, which we took our daughter to for her eleventh birthday. For an hour we got to eat cake surrounded by pampered felines, elaborate climbing frames and strands of cat hair. A great way to scratch that moggy itch (behind the ears) when you sadly don’t have one at home. Click through to see more.
4 June 2022
From our attic window this evening. Mouseover for a view at sunset. Tell me what it means.
25 May 2022
The view this afternoon from our kitchen window.
1 May 2022
Britain still believes the three big myths about Omicron.
Covid restrictions have now eased in Scotland (as of 18 April), and at least two-thirds of people seem to have abandoned masking in the shops. Two of our household caught it again in March, one pretty badly, so we had another few weeks of disruption as a result. I had another faintest-of-faint test result, but didn’t come down with it this time. Is this going to be the story every three months?
The grief of a million US Covid deaths isn’t going away.
The first US cases may date back to mid-December 2019.
30 April 2022
When the kids were little we used to visit North Berwick a couple of times a year, but for some reason hadn’t been in eight years. (Possibly because finding a parking space there on a warm dry day is almost impossible.) I took them out there on Good Friday for a beach picnic of hot cross buns and some soft serve, for old times’ sake. On the way back we spontaneously stopped at Chesters Hill Fort to admire its earthen ramparts, cows and gorse. Click through for more photos.
19 April 2022
