Another Year Older

 

So, it's bye bye 2025, hello 2026.

Every year, at the start of the year, I produce a post for this blog that is heavier on words than it is on photographs. I look back at the previous year and explore my thoughts for this blog in the coming year. Last year's post was, I admit, anticipating the end of the blog, or at least its significant decline. Yet during 2025 I published 11 posts, which is one more than I managed in 2023 and only two posts less than this blog began with in 2014. So, not a fatal decline. At least, not yet.

The photographs on this post are all from 2025. For one reason or another, they didn't make it onto this blog* at the time, so are doing their duty now by providing a brief flavour of 2025 as we say goodbye to it.

I have no plan for 2026. I didn't have much of one for 2025 and it somehow produced 11 posts. I'm going to approach 2026 in much the same vague way. 

I’m not going to aim for regular, or even semi-regular posts. Photos that I am particularly pleased with for technical or artistic reasons, or because an event or location is special as far as I am concerned, may get uploaded here, but only when the time is right. Words may, or may not, appear if there is a reason or resonance for their emergence. In other words, I am going to go with the flow and see where it does, or doesn't, take me. Years rush by far too rapidly for my liking (and yes, I know that's a sign of increasing age), so I'm going to approach 2026 in as leisurely a pace as it permits. It feels right for me. I'm hoping it's right for 2026 and in its twelfth year of existence, I reckon this blog deserves it.

* If you follow me on BlueSky or Facebook you may have seen some of them there.

Mid Winter Thoughts

Whichever mid-winter festival you celebrate, may it be a good one for you.

I am unable to provide a partridge in a pear tree, but here's a pheasant on a wall.

And because it's Christmas and this blog is supposedly a photographic experiment with words, here's a Christmas poem by me from the website of Acumen Poetry Magazine, Falling Like Feathers

Wimpole Hall Winter Lights

I've visited Wimpole Hall many times over the years - it's just up the road from me. I've never got around to visiting its winter light show, however. See my post on Longstowe Hall and Gardens for other things I've not previously done because they are so close to home.

This year has been a time of doing things I've been meaning to do for a long time, but have never got around to. December was the month for visiting Wimpole Hall's winter lights. 

There follows some of the many, many photographs I took on my camera and on my phone as I wandered its muddy but wonderfully illuminated trails. Photographic quality is variable, but the lights were entirely magical.

Summer - Autumn - Winter?

I haven't posted here for a while, but I have still been taking photographs, walking and writing. In the meantime we've gone from summer to autumn, back to late summer, onto autumn again, and we might soon be headed for winter, if the weather forecasts are right.

Before the winter chill descends, here are some photographs taken during the summer - autumn shuffle in this eastern corner of Britain.

A Tourist in Amsterdam

This year for my holiday I went to Amsterdam. As per my previous post, this is a place I've been meaning to see for a long time, but somehow never got around to it. Silly me.

Taking the Eurostar, I travelled through England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, eventually ending up in Amsterdam. It's a lovely, lovely city. 

I took well over two hundred photos on my SLR and my phone camera (I had a bad experience with an SLR many years ago in China, and ever after I've not been comfortable relying on just one piece of photo-taking equipment) and as much as I love them all, and the fantastic holiday they represent, you will not want to see all of them. Trust me.

I've narrowed it down to about fifty eight photographs, mostly taken on my SLR, but with a few phone pics thrown in for good measure. That's over double the number of photographs I aim for in a blogpost. Sorry. Did I mention that I found Amsterdam to be a really lovely city?

Anne Frank House

Royal Palace

Rijks Museum

Sail 25 Event

Buddhist Temple - China Town

Rembrandt's House

Amsterdam Centraal Station