A Fresh Start

All the pushing back against Our Favourite Partner’s (and lovely colleagues’) ridiculous expectations finally hit a crisis point at 12:47 today. It could have gone in one of two ways - a bloodbath/resignation on the one hand or capitulation. I felt my battered and bruised resistance melt away. They’ve won. I even considered cancelled my holiday (in return for a healthy wad of used, non-sequencial banknotes) but thought better of this.

I’m so unprepared for the holiday it’s ridiculous. Yes, I’ve got the flights, accommodation and convention registration sorted and - as of this afternoon, at least - have spending dollars for the States and a fistful of euros (my first) for my 4 hour stop-over in Amsterdam airport on the way out.

Let’s face it, prices are expensive enough without factoring in an unfavourable exchange rate as a result of trying to pay in sterling or USD.

I’m hoping they’ll have “cookies” on sale (if you know what I mean ) but somehow doubt it - which is daft, as it’d help keep the passengers relaxed and mellow on the plane.

I forget whether the Hyatt Regency has internet in the rooms or not - might have to give them a ring to check - so I don’t know what’ll happen with the blog while I’m away. I may just prepare some out-of-context (but themed) posts which will then appear automatically over the week.

I could have invited a guest blogger to witter on in my absence, but I’ve left it too late and after this week’s hacking episode I think I’d rather just batten down the hatches than invite someone else in. Mind you, that gives me an idea …

Enough of this drivel, though. You’ll be wanting to see how I got on with the Toy today.

The fish (or “Fishy”, as I think of him) was a souvenir of St Lucia brought to me by Mr and Mrs Tall Andy. Not too bad a shot, considering it’s indoors with no flash. I thought you might be interested to see what the contractors had done outside Marble Hall during renovation - they took photos, enlarged them slightly and used these to create a view block to hide construction work. I think it works rather well, doesn’t it? Finally in the first set is the first of two shots especially for cloud-buff Suzy.

I was lucky, on approaching the station, that there was a combination of strong(ish) sunlight but with a backdrop of menacing rainclouds - I think it shows off the marvellous station building rather well. There’s more renovation work going on inside, as the other two pictures show - the second of these being the cryptic scrawls sprayed in 5 yard (or possibly metre) intervals along each platform edge.

Train buffs might appreciate the picture of the Class 37 here and the Cambridge-bound Class 170 too (nice of them to show the destination of the train you’ve just missed, isn’t it ?). Between these is another shadow-portrait, this time via a mini-digger’s wing-mirror (the digger sitting on Platform 1 overnight, abandoned by the renovators).

The last three shots were also taken at the railway station here in Aaalburgh. I can’t help thinking the “Railway Station” fingerpost is somewhat superfluous, given that it’s the station fence that it’s up against. The abandoned skates make me think there’s a story to be told there - why not make your own up? - while I close with the second photo for Suzy.

All in all I’m rather pleased with the improved quality of these shots - a result of abandoning the automatic settings and mucking about with the manual options. I’d love to hear what your views are, though.