2008: A Year in Pictures

Inspired by a mosaic made by one of my flickr contacts, I’ve chosen a photograph for each month of last year.

January: Flooded footpath, Milton Keynes
A wet start to the year. I was determined to get out of the office and walk each lunchtime if I could. I suffer from SAD and the sunlight will help lift my mood. When the river flooded it limited the places I could walk to in a lunch break but increased the opportunities for intersting photographs.

February: Chinese New Year, Soho
The start of my final Open University course, Film and Television History, saw me back in London once a month for tutorials. Officially, I was supposed to go to tutorials on the far side of Oxford but that’s too difficult (expensive and time consuming) to get to. Much easier and more interesting to go to London for the day. Of course, I took the camera. As it was Chinese New Year I wandered into Soho and to Trafalgar Square to take some photographs.

March: Friends with Kew
We (my OH and I) both love the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and are ‘Friends of Kew’. We love sharing this with friends. Our friends Karl and Magna wanted to see the exhibition ‘Moore at Kew’ and so did I. It finished at the end of March so we wouldn’t wait for better weather or we’d have missed it. It was bloody freezing. I did take lots of photos of the sculptures but I think my favourite of the day was this one of Karl, taken in one of those ‘out of the way’ parts of Kew you only find if you wander away from the main thoroughfares.

April: Ideal Sofa?
The OU Club arranged incredibly cheap travel and entry to the Ideal Home Show in London. Rik and I went down for a day out. I worked at this show, selling membership of a bookclub, for four consecutive years in the 1990s. We looked around the show houses, something I’d never had time to do when I worked there. I loved the colour and depth of this sofa. I’ve always been disappointed by sofas and suspect that I will have to spend serious amounts of money to get one that wont disappoint. I had a lovely, deep, comfortable blue sofa that became lumpy after a very few years. The one I have now is not as big as I thought I was buying (way too small) and wont be coming to NZ with us.

May: Eiffel Tower
Rik and I went to Paris to celebrate having been together for (over) ten years. We had a fabulous long weekend (almost a week – Friday to Tuesday) visiting the art galleries and wandering around. I had seen, but never been up, the Eiffel Tower. I expected to be disappointed by sucha a hyped up tourist attraction. I needn’t have worried, I loved it. Definitely a different experience by night!

June: Deep North
In June I travelled to the Scandinavian part of the Arctic Circle. It was a fabulous trip and my fellow travellers on the tour were a great buch, very friendly. I timed the trip to ensure I was there for the longest day. The sun didn’t set on me for over a week. It only set because I had travelled further south. There’s about six weeks of the sun being constantly in the sky in the far north. It was great being able to wander around in the daylight in late evening. I love the space and clean air. The colours of the buildings are traditional.

July: Kew again.
When we lived in London we tried to get to Kew Gardens at least once a month, even in the winter. Now we are in Bletchley it is more expensive to travel down but we do try to get there several times a year. On this visit Iplayed with the macro setting and the metering on my camera a lot more and took some photos I rather liked. We took two people who were, at the time, new friends. Unfortunately, that friendship turned bad, something that has never happened to me before. Not nice.

August: Walpole’s House, Strawberry Hill
In an effort to ensure I had a chance of pasing my course, and therefore getting an Honours Degree, I attended a study weekend organised by the Open University Students’ London Regional Arts Club.
It was held at a college in Strawberry Hill, an area of London I had never heard of. I met some interesting people, had a good recap of the course (took reams of notes) and enjoyed the break away from the distractions of home. The buildings were interesting and Walpole’s House was next door. I discovered this when I took a walk in the grounds before breakfast and found myself at the back of the house.

September: Henna Heart
In September/October I took another coach tour (I’m trying to see as much of this side of the world as I can before I move to the other side of the world). This was a ten day tour of the ‘Highlights of Morocco’ and was fabulous. I photographed this little girl’s henna-painted hand in Fes. Her mother didn’t speak English (why should she?) and I don’t speak Arabic but we exchanged a few words in my broken French. I thanked her for allowing me to take the photograph and told her how beautiful her daughter was, and gave her a few coins. I didn’t feel comfortable with the way so many people just crowded round this tiny little girl taking photographs and ignoring them as people. I found my broken French useful later in the tour when kids were insisting on ‘helping’ my tour-mates over the stepping stone’s against their will. I couldn’t think of the French for ‘go away’ or ‘leave us alone’ but finally came up with ‘ne touchez pas!’ (don’t touch!). I was amazed at the reaction as they immediately sprung away as if burned.

October: Salamanca
October was a busy month. Six days after I got home from Morocco I was off on another trip, this time to Spain for the fourteen day ‘Spanish Panorama’ tour. In the few days in between I recovered from Moroccan tummy; was reunited with my luggage (I flew Casablanca to London, it flew Casablanca to Paris I gothome on Sunday, the luggage got home on Wednesday); and took my final exam. It was my first exam for years as most of my recent courses have had an end of course assignment rather than a three hour timed exam. One of the things I really like about tours is that you get to see places you might not have visited if you were setting your own itinerary, and they can be brilliant. A very short walk from the hotel brought me to this gorgeously lit square.

November: Unexpected Beauty
I was ill in November. A particularly nasty lurgy, not quite full blown flu but pretty close to it, was doing the rounds and I caught it. We had tickets for the BBC Good Food Show that I ordered months ago. We were going with friends and I had their tickets so I had to go. I could hardly talk, couldn’t taste or smell anything (a serious downer at a food show) and spent the day dosed up with Strepsils, paracetamol, etc. On the way back to the car park, walking along with two friends, I spotted this view. I set the camera on the settings I wanted, rested it on a fence post, set the timer (so It wouldn’t suffer from camera shake / photographer shiver) and got this. I loved it.

December: Bletchley at 3.58pm
The month of the shortest day. If things go to plan, this may be the shortest day I have for the rest of my life. Why? Because their are more hours of daylight on the shortest day in New Zealand than there are in the UK. Wellington has about an hour and a half more daylight than Bletchley. This year I also had my longest longest day – in the Arctic Circle. This photo was taken near the shops just over a mile from my home, before 4pm. Yes it’s pretty, but it’s way too early for a sunset.

Tags: calendar, flickr, photography, review of the year