Created 29/9/20
The last four days have been pretty dramatic up here, we seemed to jump most of autumn and plunge into winter. You may be looking at the image that is, I hope, above this post and thinking “The mark of Zorro” or “Harry Potter was here”. No, that’s the rather lovely mark made by an icicle falling off the balcony above the terrace here into the snow. I like the strange shapes and the precision with which the punch into the snow. I think the sharp angles come from the bit that held onto the edge of the balcony coming off as the sun loosened its hold. (As ever, I think you should be able to click on them to get bigger views.)
So here’s my shadow as I do like a good selfie, well, I like a rather weird one.
I like that you can see the fallen icicles and the big ones still hanging above me. The snow was from mid-calf to knee deep across the terrace and I didn’t want to wade across not just as I was going to end up very cold and damp, but also because I loved that it was marred only by falling icicles. The lighting creating my spooky shadow is from the strong sun reflecting off the window behind me.
It’s nearly three months since I last posted anything so it’s almost as if I’ve missed out on the summer and the reality is that I have been working pretty hard. On the really sunny days I generally got myself 30-60 minutes in the sun reading and just soaking it up and before and after the actual summer season (4/7/20-29/8/20) I walked down and up to shop in Plagne Centre (I wasn’t doing that last Friday when the snow had hammered in: I think bits of the walk would really have been salopettes and snowshoes only). What have I achieved? Well, I am a bit less, no, significantly less, behind with the many long overdue collaborative bits of work that sort of buried me over the last ten years. Somewhere between a year and seven years from now they’ll all be done! With colleagues in various countries I’ve started to be more successful in terms of getting papers accepted and published and I think my infrastructure in terms of hardware and software I use, backups etc. are in better state than they were. “The book”, familiar to some, is with the publishers and about to come back to us for final revisions before going to press. However, blogging, social Emails and chatting and getting out into the Alps around me all went by the board as one urgent pressure followed another. To the many people I’ve neglected: apologies.
The work is still screaming at me so no more words. Just some images starting with icicles still hanging against beautiful sky before they drop to make runic inscritpions in the snow.
Pale views,
I love the way the peaks can seem to float above cloud and how windows break through the cloud. At other times I got brighter views, not looking through cloud: stunning blue skies but less my sort of aesthetic.
Sunset views.
And some links to the better timelapse videos from these snowy days:
- 25th
- 26th
- 27th (just the first 20 seconds or so for the flash of sun, the rest is not so interesting!)
- 28th
Of course, all the timelapse videos are I’ve got are available, index here. There ones from the 2018, 19 and 20 now. Now I really must try to blog a bit more and work a bit less!