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Thursday 30 October 2014

316: England, my England

The title of my blog today is from a poem by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903). It is also a collection of short stories by D H Lawrence (the man who wrote Lady Chatterley's lover!)
I borrowed the title to highlight my theme for the day. I was in UK last week and took a few photos of what I consider to be quintessential England.
Here they are:






Monday 13 October 2014

315: Castles in the air

The last days of a very welcome Indian Summer (бабье лето). The temperature is due to drop to a more seasonal norm over the course of the next few days and some heavy rain is expected.
Here are a couple of pictures I snapped on my recent peregrinations around Moscow.
This is hotel Molodyozhnaya, built for the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and here undergoing a face-lift

Taken from outside Slavyanskiy Bulvar' metro. A castle or a cleverly disguised ICBM?


Autumnal views from my window, taken on separate days. The same blue van is parked in the same place on both days. I'm reading far too many spy books because I immediately thought it might be an FSB listening post.:)
For a video clip I've chosen Memory, from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical 'Cats', sung here by Barbra Streisand. Why? Because I like it!

Wednesday 1 October 2014

314: Miss Emergency Situations Ministry 2014



This picture speaks for itself. It needs no further comment from me. If you do want to read about the competition then here is the link to the article in the Moscow Times. A paragraph from it is reproduced below: To earn the title … the girls had to have a high level of professionalism, good athletic training, individuality, creativity and good looks," the ministry said in an online statement, adding "the main purpose of the beauty contest was to reveal and develop talent among the women," at the ministry.

To turn now to the more mundane, together with one of my friends I was a hare at Sunday's running of the Moscow Hash House Harriers. There are Hash House Harrier running clubs at many locations worldwide. The Moscow 'branch' has been in existence for 30 years. Many of these clubs bill themselves as "a running club with a drinking problem." I seem to fit in quite well. Every week one or more people take it in turns to lay a trail for the other runners to follow. These people are known as hares. By an astonishing coincidence right next to where we were starting the hash somebody had sketched two hares on the pavement.


Autumn has arrived, with a vengeance. Beautiful colours of the leaves, especially when the sun shines on them but today was much colder (+4 at 10.00 this morning) with a strong Northerly wind.
At 7.00 a.m. tomorrow morning, which is when I am next due to leave my flat, the temperature is forecast to be +2. Hey ho.
This is the view from my kitchen window.


To finish, a video clip from Eva Cassidy called Autumn leaves.