Poppy Day

I did post this photograph as part of The August Break, but it seemed appropriate to post again today, on Remembrance Sunday.

I found this on the fantastic Woodlands Junior website:

The First Two Minute Silence in London (11th November 1919) as reported in the Manchester Guardian, 12th November 1919.

'The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect.

The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition.

Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all.'

"We love the winter, it brings us closer together"

Something fishy

Self portrait

Teeth!

Strokkur in the sunshine

Under the glacier

Now that the weather here is getting a bit chillier, and we're getting out the winter woolies and hot water bottles, it's inspired me to look back at my pictures from a trip to Iceland last February. Unfortunately I didn't manage to capture the awesome Northern Lights show we witnessed, but here's some of my others - a few more selected highlights on my flickr.

My walk to work

Wandering to work on Friday, I noticed how particularly lovely everything was looking. Perhaps it was because we've had such a dreary phase (in Manchester? never!) but the sun really seemed to make everything sparkle... back to grey now though. (Taken on the Blackberry)

An Emmy the Great Monday Mosaic!

It's Monday and I've made a mosaic! Not quite in keeping with the Monday Mosaic concept but it seemed like a good way to present these pictures of the beautiful Emma-Lee Moss aka Emmy the Great at Leeds Brudenell Social Club a week last Sunday.

Blue

A few years ago I did a proper grown up photography course with a qualification and everything. This set is still one of my proudest achievements - and where I first caught the bug for taking square pictures. These were actually taken on 35mm film with standard aperture dimensions, then cropped and the edges added in Photoshop. I used a blue filter to get the effect. All taken on a wander around Worsley in Salford in about 2006. Click on any of the images to see the full set on Flickr!

Monkeying around with a long lens

My 'adopted' gentle lemurs were in unusually cheeky mood.

Monkey!

It's like he knows we're all laughing at him.

Time to bring this blog out of hibernation. Well, more of a house-moving-induced hiatus. And, having managed to extract my long lens from the piles of boxes and bags, where better to get back into the swing of things (monkey related pun intended) than Chester Zoo? Click on the pics for a few more little gems on Flickr (finally subscribed so I can get more of an album going on there).

A short jaunt to Edinburgh

Had a little impromptu weekend away to Edinburgh last weekend - drank Irn Bru, ate tablet ice cream and got lost on the way down from Arthur's Seat! Oh, and saw these lovely sights (taken with Fujifilm FinePix F100fd)