things change

Mike’s blog – for his amusement

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  • Games at Christmas (1) Carrom

    Carrom against my son. He always wins!

  • Window shopping at Christmas

    Window shopping – as close as I get to shopping at Christmas!

  • Weston Shore, Southampton

  • Just another sunset

    Sunset

  • Some mixed London lighting

    I hate shopping for Christmas presents even more than shopping for clothes. Fortunately my family are all book readers and I like shopping for books! But it’s still difficult finding books suitable for each person, and today was no exception.

    In the Trafalgar Square Waterstones I had no success. I took an instant dislike to the layout of the newish Foyles, though the café on the top floor was a pleasure. I eventually succeeded in Waterstones in Piccadilly – it has long been my favourite of their stores.

    My day started off in bright sunshine and ended as the sun was setting, so there was some varied lighting and colours for taking pictures. Here are the best, with a little help from Photoshop.

  • Experimental image

    When I have nothing else to blog there’s always an experimental image.

  • Three Saturday papers seems excessive

    As I’ve got older I’ve become less interested in the news and I now find cursory browsing of news websites is usually sufficient. So it may seem rather odd that I had 3 newspapers to read on Saturday.

    There was the i, for which I have an annual subscription; The Times, for which I have a ridiculously cheap, introductory, 3-month subscription; and The Guardian, which was a freebie from Waitrose for having spent over a tenner. (more…)

  • Out the window

  • A walk on Ashtead Common

    We hadn’t been to Ashtead Common for a few years despite being not too far away. Although the day was grey, the Common was a lovely brown with the paths covered in leaves and mud. A surprisingly nice walk and a place to revisit.

  • A night out in the big city

    A rare night-time visit to London gave me the opportunity to take some night pictures. I didn’t feel my little camera was up to the job. It had difficulty automatically focusing and I had to resort to manual focusing, which is not easy. I’m not too enamoured with the results, but there you go, and the evening with friends made up for it.
    [Update: On further consideration, I’m more than happy with the pics!]