Tuesday 25th October 2022

First up I need to tell you something of our travel plans for next year: over the weekend we booked up a week's orchid and butterfly tour in northern Spain. We will share a room, and during the day I will do the tour and photography, and Jools will wander round the three towns we will be staying at, and generally relaxing.

Then in June, we are going to Svalbard for a week's photograhy of polar bears and other Arctic life.

So, much to look forward to.

And after today, I am off to Norwich for three days, meeting friends and visiting the beer festival.

Its all go.

And on Tuesday, the main thing to do is to witness and photograph the partial solar eclipse. That was due to begin just after ten, and peak at just after 11, I had all the gear needed to get shots without blinding myself, just required gaps in the cloud.

This is the last week before the clocks go back, and it really feels autumnal, even if its still not that cold, or even chilly, but nights are now longer than days, and we lay in beyond when the alarm goes off as its still dark.

When I log into work, I find that all my travel expenses have been accepted, and there were no urgent pending stuff I needed to deal with, so it was a day of mostly keeping an eye on the mailbox and fielding questions via Teams. I think in Denmark, it's "potato week", when in the past children would take a week's holiday from school to help in the fields with the harvest. There are machines that do that now, of course, but the tradition of school holidays that week continues, meaning things are nearly as quiet as in July.

All this means that come ten, I am able to spend an hour ataring at the sky, watching clouds roll in and snapping the sun in any gaps in the clouds. Of which, thankfully, there are plenty.

And my friend Gary came round to have a chat, drink tea and snap the sun, using the nD filter I have.

So, all good.

It was cloudy, it even rained at one point, but by half ten, skies were mostly clear, and we got shots as the moon ate up part of the sun's disc, and at one minute past eleven, it reached maximum, and we got shots, then Gary had to head home and I had to check in on work.

Excitement over.

I had lunch, listened to music, and generally frittered the time away. As I had taken an hour off for the eclipse, I worked to four, though nothing much happened, so I set my out of office message, and that was that.

Dinner was to be toad in the hole, as we had some spare sausage meat and cauliflower to use up, so I made the crispy roast potatoes again, and topped it off with the last of the fresh corn.

It was a winner!

A friend once said of these blogs that there is always a disappointing football match. And so to Norwich who were playing away at Burnley. I know the results hadn't been going their way, but they can't be playing as bad as some reports suggest? I would find out as it was on the tellybox.

And City were every bit as bad as reported. They spent 97 minutes pretty much chasing shadows, forwards feeding off scraps, and lost thanks to a penalty. So, 1-0 defeat, but the manner of the defeat suggests some serious thinking about what happens next. I have long supported Dean Smith, the manager, but this looks like something he has caused, so might not be able to fix.

But I am now off for the rest of week.