England v Algeria – photos

We went, we watched, we booed.
And for Wayne Rooney to have a dig at the fans who have traveled 6000 miles... and spent thousands of pounds to watch that dross just proves how out of touch he is and what a primadonna he has become.
Tosser.

Still – as the photoset above shows, it was a good day out: firstly at the Waterfront, enjoying the view and the atmosphere and the beers and then off up to the amazing Cape Town Stadium, which was filled with passionate fans from both nations.
If only the standard of the football had lived up to the fans’ expectations.

Next up – North Korea and Portugal on Monday.

Late again

Home from a hectic day at work to a hectic evening at home, mainly involving a jungle gym, a yellow barrel and a golf ball.
Don’t ask.

And then dinner and a few episodes of Big Bang Theory. Yes, it’s American and therefore should be rubbish, but the science angle makes it personally relevant and therefore amusing. It concerns me that I identify with certain traits of some of the characters though. (I’m not saying which traits or characters, since the vast majority of the protagonists are completely socially dysfunctional.)
I was going to add a random photo to this post from the Flickr Explore “last 7 days of interestingness”, but they are all photographs of a certain genre – too “mucked about with” (photoshopped) and unnecessarily arty for my liking. So disappointing.

So instead I searched for something from the Isle of Man groups, where I came across this:

group

which appears to be the least successful attempt at a swingers ad ever.

I also found a misplaced sunset picture (taken in Worcestershire) which would make a lovely quota photo. It was heavily copyrighted though, so appropriate permissions have been sought – hopefully you look out for that another day.

A few years on

How time flies when you’re having fun. Or when you’re just getting older, since time is relative and every second makes up a smaller proportion of your lifespan. Which is why you have to get lucky to hit that fly on your Kalahari Kreef. To him, that hand is like watching an episode of Time Warp. There was a BBC documentary on it, so it must be true.

But I digress. Often.

It was Argus day today – that being the day of the biggest timed cycle race in the world – and we went to watch for as long as the kids were interested.
I took this photo (which actually I really like) of the boy watching the bikes going by:

and it wasn’t until I got home and began uploading stuff that I found a photo of the same boy in the same place doing the same thing:

The camera has changed, probably the cyclists too. The yellow line still needs repainting. But the (wholly unintentional) similarity between the pictures is striking, no?

The earlier photo was taken three years and three days ago, which would make Alex 10½ months old. Flickr tells me that young Alex was snapped on my 2MP Sony Ericsson W900i, which would go some way to explaining the (iffy) quality.  As would the fact it was taken at 7:49 on a Sunday morning.

More Argus day pics in the March Things flickr set.

Stairway to Heaven

The kids were anxious to get to the beach this morning after last weekend’s stupifying temperatures and who were we to deny them, despite the fact it was only 18°C under dreary English grey skies?
Clovelly was the beach of choice and Alex’s latest pastime of digging a really big hole in the sand began in earnest, while Kristen’s favourite role as dog-spotter was equally successful. Mum was busy being buried as Dad went off to snap some of the urban ugliness in this otherwise beautiful spot.

It seems so out of place. Look beyond this nastiness and there is the Silvermine Nature Reserve. Turn around and you’ve got a stunning view down the False Bay coast via Fishhoek to Simonstown and beyond towards Cape Point. But the railway is a thin scar that runs right the way along the coast from Muizenberg to Simonstown.
From the train, the view of the beach is spectacular; from the beach, the view of the train less so.