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.

Looking Forward - Looking Back 10 Years!

January 2023

So, another year, another start-the-year blog post. Except, this time round, as promised last January, it has to be a bit special. I started this primarily photographic blog ten years ago (or it will be ten years come February, because my first ever post was Saturday, 8^th February 2014).

So, another year and now a 10th Anniversary blog post. Who’d have thought? Well, I certainly didn’t back in February 2014. Indeed, I worried whether the blog would make it through 2014. If truth be told, last year I wondered whether I’d make it through 2023. I only managed ten posts last year – the lowest level of posting in the ten years this blog has been running. “Why was that?” you ask.

February 2023

Well, actually, you probably don’t, because, let’s face it, this blog and its owner don’t exactly have influencer status, which may be one of the reasons I felt, last year, that both I and the blog were running out of steam. I also had a lot of “stuff” going on and, whilst I was still taking photos, many of last year’s photos were phone pics. The pics made it on to my personal Facebook page, but few were posted here because, well, you know, quality.

 

So, as this is a post in which I look back and look forward. I’m going to make a thing of 2023’s phone pics. On and around the text of this post you will find twelve photographs taken on my phone in 2023, one for every month of the year just gone. The link going forward is that I undertake to post at least twelve posts in 2024, one for every month of the year to come. I may post more, who knows? I certainly don’t. You can, however, expect to find a post for each month of 2024. There will, hopefully, be new photos, but there may also be photos from the archives. It’s going to be a proper ten-year anniversary celebration.

 

March 2023

As they say, watch this space...

April 2023

May 2023

June 2023

July 2023

                                                                                                         

August 2023

September 2023

October 2023

November 2023

December 2023