Category: Blogging Challenge

Rummaging Through My Archives

This week, for the Lens-Artists Challenge, Anne has proposed a Scavenger hunt. What fun! Here’s what I’ve come up with, starting with my featured photo exhibiting the soft coats of of those baby ducklings.

Onwards.

Circular. A window at the end of an exhibition space in  Lluís Domènech i Montaner House-Museum, Canet de Mar.

Glass. All kinds of glass here. The plate glass of the shop window itself, and the glass and the bottle within. Each of them reflecting the Barcelona street where the shop is situated.

Shoelaces – usefully stringing up some discarded trainers in a residential district near Park Güell in Barcelona.

Waves. We’ll leave Spain for England, but just fish out our cameras as the ferry leaves Rotterdam, causing a variety of waves as it glides throuh the water.

Shadow. Some discovered in the Valley Gardens in Harrogate.

Wheels. Some old charmers noticed this year at Masham Steam Rally.

Rectangular: lots of rectangles here, from bricks to planks to the battered doors themselves – afarm door near Staveley, North Yorkshire.

Jewellery: my British readers will understand that I entirely approve of the sentiments displayed in this pair of earrings.

And that’s me done for today. An extra post for the week – just for fun.

Found at the Fair!

Now I’ve always hated funfairs, even as a child. Too noisy! Too crowded! Too scary! But I’ve always loved markets – local markets I mean, full (ideally)of stalls selling freshly picked lettuce and spinach, earth-covered newly-pulled potatoes or carrots. Local cheeses. Local fish. Local anything really.

But … I haven’t got time this week to curate photos from dozens of irresistible markets in France, in Spain, in Germany for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, Found at the Fair or Market, hosted by Anne-Christine. Most of my Spanish family is coming over for a fortnight. Hooray! So I’ll use this opportunity to present just one photo, taken when they were with us last year, and we visited Beamish and its properly old fashioned fairground. It can serve for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness too.

I’m off duty now. No posts (apart from Indian Friday, which I’ve scheduled). No comments. No visits to all the blogs I enjoy reading. My daughter will usually be working remotely: so we’ll be i/c the children, now 4 years old and 20 months. So … a different kind of duty, even more pleasurable than the world of blogging.

Backlighting for the Bold

Oooh. For Monochrome Madness this week, Brian Bushboy has set a challenge and a half. Backlighting. What? I hear non-photographers ask. Here’s what Brian says: ‘Backlighting in photography is a way for photographers to create dramatic lighting. This involves positioning the main light source for a photograph behind the primary subject’. In other words, do what you spend your photographic life trying NOT to do. Take shots direct into the sun, or the light source, anyway. It’s easier in a sunny country, so let’s take the ferry to Spain.

I have no idea who this couple are. But they were enjoying a meal, a glass of wine, with the sun shining over the coast we were heading for.

And here we are in Premià, staying with daughter and family.

We won’t outstay our welcome, but nip down to Valencia. To l’Albufera.

After, we’ll come back to the UK. To Pembrokeshire:

The featured photo is from the UK too. No idea where.

And that is all I have to say on the subject.

Community Reds

I had various Red Images jostling for position on this last day of #SimplyRed. But yesterday, enjoying a cup of coffee with friends in our village’s Community Garden, I realised that what I want to celebrate today is … Community. Specifically the one that Becky has built up, in which the Squarers in particular have the chance to visit old friends and make new ones, and just generally enjoy the world-wide connections that blogging brings to our lives. Thank you Becky. Here are some flowers from our Community Garden. Very few, unfortunately, are red. So I’ve squeezed a clump of pink ones in as well.

Also, probably the first entry of the end of the month for Brian’s Last on the Card.

Bougainvillea Bonanza

In my opinion, you can never have too much bougainvillea. It cheers up any town or village walk in Spain or southern France … or anywhere hot I guess.

My header shot was taken in Málaga, and the others too showcase bougainvillea in Spain.

And as there is, after today, only one more day of Becky’s #SimplyRed squares, we might all need a spot of cheering up.

PS. These flowers are redder than they seem in a couple of these shots!

PPS. There’s a late addition to the clutch of stories addressing the issue of What if She says Yes? You can now read it at the end of Sunday’s post. And I recommend that you do!

When is a Phone Box Not a Phone Box?

The plain truth is that these days, in the UK at least, a phone box rarely has a phone within. They have become so iconic that many remain in situ. They’re often re-purposed as community book exchanges (Grrr. No photo!), or as a community planters – spotted in Bath with Becky herself, and Anabel, aka The Glasgow Gallivanter, who wants her own photo of it.

Also in Bath, transformed into a doodle-fest, courtesy of Sam Cox aka Mr. Doodle.

Here’s one in London that’s become a cash point.

Or, saddest of all, an un-re-purposed box that seems to serve no purpose whatever, except as a recipient of graffiti and unwanted stickers.

For Becky’s #SimplyRed.

A Residence for Fairies?

My featured photo is of the colourful (but poisonous) fly agaric. And as we all know, elves like to sit on them. I have no photos of elves, but I can do fairies.

I offer you a fairy collecting the secret wishes of children at Ripon Theatre Festival this year; another spotted on a fence; and a warning on a London front door.

Finally, here’s a genuine letter written by the tooth fairy who visits the children in our family when they lose their baby teeth. She’s a grumpy soul. She writes messages on tiny pieces of paper the size of a postage stamp and tucks them under the pillow as she leaves her silver coin. A Red Letter Day for the lucky recipient.

For Becky’s #Simply Red.

‘What if She Says Yes?’

Last Saturday, I threw down a challenge, because Jude, featured below, was one of those who suggested it: to write a story, up to 100 words long, that addressed the question posed here:

Unsurprisingly, there haven’t been many entries. But what I have read have been class acts. There’s Jude’s clever, and very different story: https://traveltalk.me.uk/2025/07/24/but-what-if-she-says-yes/

And Dawn addresses the age old problem of when, or even if to pop the question: https://lingeringvisions.wordpress.com/2025/07/23/what-if-she-says-yes/.

Here’s mine: But hang on. Before you read Jude’s, or Dawn’s, or mine, make yourself comfortable on this bench. It is after all Sunday, and the day for Jude’s Bench Challenge.

What if she said ‘yes’?

Nell sat slumped against the stairs, leaning into the comfort of her neighbour.  ‘He always drank too much, your dad.’ Her father lay twisted at the bottom—eyes open, unmoving.  The investigators stepped gently round the body and its ooze of blood.  ‘He fell’, Nell said. Only she knew about the bruises beneath her sweater, her sore and aching thighs.  Only she knew whether what had happened just an hour ago was an accident or an escape.  Only she knew what she’d say when at last they ask her: ‘Or …did you push him?’ What if she says ‘yes’?

I wrote two others too, but the judge and jury (‘im indoors and me) chose this one. You can judge the other two if you want to: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PS8t-YsNfiLTwE27WqY9UxVotxIbO1LO6CtHf3OaU40/edit?usp=sharing

PS. A late, great addition to the clutch of flash fiction, from Rebecca of Fake Flamenco:

What if She Says Yes?

When the wallpaper in the downstairs hall began to peel in the heat, I didn’t think it odd. Our house needs repair often after a century of Tiverstons. I bought a bottle of papering adhesive. As I sanded the wall before re-glueing, newsprint appeared in the lower corner. Using an exacto knife, I liberated the sheet. The headline about an Edna Swargle chilled my blood and I stopped breathing a moment. The woman in the photo looked just like mom as a teenager, but her name is Nancy. I walked upstairs where she was reading. “Mom, were you ever, Edna?”

The featured photo is not my own, but squared from an unattributed image found in Pexels, a great source of Royalty free images.

For Becky’s #SimplyRed.