HupView

It was a particularly fine Orkney day and extraordinarily windless. Time for a walk into the sky... ...to have a picnic by the Kitchener Memorial, the glorious tower erected by the people of Orkney to commemorate the loss of HMS Hampshire and all but 12 hands (737 out of 749) in June 1916 as she carried Lord Kitchener to Russia for a war conference. Since it was just me and Olena, our Ukrainian refugee, on the walk, the tower decided to garb itself in the colours of the Ukra

My old, old friend Bob (we knew each other in Morrocco in the 1960s!!!) is an excellent photographer of birds. On hearing that I now had a camera with a 60MP sensor, he said to me that this should give me room for some serious digital zoom and that I should take some pictures of birds. "Easier said that done, matey," was my thought. But I felt challenged. So, with another fine spell visiting us yesterday, I went out into the garden in the morning to have a go. This resulted i

I took this picture in Kirkwall yesterday, using my new camera, the story of which follows below. (I'm starting with this photo because I want it as the thumbnail to this blog post and my blogging software always uses the first photo in the blog as thumbnail) And now for the story: I have just been to Manchester to drop an insane amount of money on a new camera, a Leica M11 rangefinder and a couple of lenses. Because it was a mad purchase, I decided to go the whole mad hog an

Orkney's short summer is very definitely here. It's warm, the winds are light, and the sky is blue, blue, blue. Time to fly a kite. (Funny fact, Orkney is frequently TOO windy to fly kites, unlike the rest of the UK where the problem can be the opposite one.) And, of course, time for Olena and Athina to see skies used peacefully. So off we went to the fourth Churchill barrier, where there is a wide beach to let some of these nice, quiet devices paint some pretty colours in t

Lots of changes this summer. Two wonderful Ukrainians — Mum Olena and her 6.y.o daughter Athina from bombed-out Mariupol — are now lodged in the flat at the back of the house and are settling in fine. It is also suddenly seeing like summer is here. This made headline news in the little pond that is Orkney. Then it was Arthur's 18th and the Jubilee, all one on top of the other. For Arthur's birthday, Olena offered to make Slav food that Arthur might be missing. So the birthday