A day in the life of

Weekly jaunt into town and wander into Bear, as is my custom. And what do I find? Yet more changes, that’s what! Ok, not major changes admittedly, but yet another couple of steps on the slippery slope away from the character for which the pub was so rightly famous (notorious?). “Was” being the operative word of course.

First off, a new beer pump. And its huge!

Mind you, this particular change may not last very long at all, given the damage its already inflicted on my mate behind the bar. (Its assaulted him on both arms plus his back so far. Heh heh!)
Mind you again, could simply be his habitual clumsiness showing itself once more.

Hmm.

On the other hand, the idea of a vindictive beer pump quite appeals to me.
In fact, on reflection (and if indeed it truly is a vindictive beer pump… like something out of one of Terry Pratchett’s books) this particular change won’t detract from the Bear’s traditional character at all. If anything it’ll enhance it.

But the other “innovation”. Ah well, that’s another matter entirely.

Hanging baskets! With flowers and stuff! Strewn about the yard! Oh dear.
(And I hear tell its gonna get worse, with planters and trailing things and stuff. Next they’ll be stringing up coloured lights and serving garlic-soaked evening meals (yucch!) out there with bottles of Chianti and suchlike. Huh! The Goth and Heavy Metal crowd are really gonna love that… and they’re the more “respectable” clientele!)

Anyway, enough of that. Bit of a fast-forward now to back home in the evening.

Right in the middle of processing the Bear pics I’d shot earlier, had to quickly whip into the bathroom… no, don’t ask!
And whilst standing there about my business, staring vacantly at the evening sunlight, filtered through the trees, dappling the bathroom window, I suddenly realised I was staring at the evening sunlight, filtered through the trees, dappling the bathroom window.

And it was gorgeous.

Time for a quick play with the camera then.

But then the implications slowly seep through into the stagnant quagmire that’s my excuse for a mind. Along the following lines…

That’s bright golden sunlight, that is. And its evening. And there were a few clouds knocking about when I came in a bit earlier. Hey! Sunlight. Evening. Clouds. Dammit… photos!
Nothing like being quick on the uptake. And I’m nothing like being quick on the uptake.

Round to the front of the house, lens pointing skyward, snap snap snap. Will I ever tire of taking pics of the sky I wonder? (Yeah, in about another fifteen minutes or so!)

But now I’ve got a whole new spot from which to shoot pics. The back garden! Ever since I managed to clear a pathway through at least some of it (see this post).

So, round to the back of the house, lens pointing skyward, and snap snap snap again. Oh glee!

Well, having finally got fed up shooting the same patch of sky umpteen million times decided it was about time I resumed the pic-processing that had been so rudely interrupted. Particularly as I now had another load of pics to sort through.

But oh, woe is me! For I find, when looking at this most recent batch (the evening sky pics, shot moments earlier), there’s a flaw on every single one of the little buggers that looks suspiciously like a lump of dust on the lens. Sod it!
However, so much do I like this particular batch that I decided to upload ‘em to Flickr anyway, warts an’ all. So there!

(And before anyone suggests it, yeah, I could have Photoshopped the blob out. But I don’t do that sort of thing. A bit of post-processing’s fine, but manipulating an image in that fashion offends my sense of, um, “ethics” I s’pose. Must be the influence of my photojournalist-type activities where such “editing” is an absolute no-no!)