Old Dog, New Tricks, or Lost in the Land of Fuckwittery

I'm in Nova Scotia, Canada, leading one of my favourite tours - the Maritimes. I'm not having much fun though as the tour company has engaged the services of an agency which seems to be interested in creating an ocean of paperwork and alienating our suppliers.
I have to sell optional trips and fill out forms for each credit card by hand. Once I've done that, I have to phone the details of each transaction through separately. I've not had the chance to do my job, which involves planning ahead, preparing in the evening for the following day. All I'm doing is filling in effing forms and trying to convince nervous suppliers that, just because the agent hasn't paid them for services rendered six weeks ago and they never return their calls doesn't mean that they can't be trusted...
God forbid that I should be allowed to get on and do my job. The tour company is owned by a venture cowboy outfit, and it seems that the bottom line is all and clients don't matter. Several of my colleagues have thrown in the towel but I'm still hopeful that this is just down to teething troubles.
I'm not holding my breath.

Ely Cathedral

M. and I popped over to Ely to visit the Cathedral and to have a look around town. It was a spur of the moment decision, but something I've been wanting to do for a while,

mainly to get an interior photo of the Lantern, the window-filled tower above the cathedral choir, which sits on the Octogon; an eight-pillared support for the lantern.
Originally, it was a standard square tower but it collapsed in 1322. In those days, people didn't think too much about firm foundations - Ely's are around 5 feet - and collapses were not uncommon. The new man in charge, Alan of Walsingham, decided to rebuild it as an octogon, having eight pillars to bear the weight of the tower instead of four. It's a unique and fantastic structure, the lantern made mainly of oak.

Ely Cathedral - the Octogon and Lantern are on the right.

The ceiling in the nave is unusual and fairly new - part of the nineteenth century restoration overseen by Sir George Gilbert Scott.

Below is the lantern, taken on a previous visit. The panels open so that people can look down into the choir below.

We spent so much time in the cathedral that we never got around to really exploring the town, so we will have to go back at some stage.

Mooching In London: 3rd August 2013

A lovely sunny day spent in London: M was working at Wimbledon so I wandered around taking pictures. On days like these, London has a nice feel to it; there were people everywhere just enjoying themselves.
In the evening we met with our friends Mei & Simon. We showed them the Oscar Wilde monument as they didn't know about it. When we arrived, a girl was sat on it, which is what it's there for, really. It's a statue, monument, a coffin-shaped bench. Oscar would have loved it.

Glum in Gum: 2nd June 2013

What you do if you don't want to shop in the GUM mall, Moscow.

This blog has travelled: I've moved it from Wordpress, which I couldn't get to grips with and before that it was on Blipfoto, which wasn't right for what I wanted to do.
Eventually, I'll be blogging in real time but there is also a lot of past to catch up on which is why I put the dates in the titles.

This was taken while I was on tour in Russia - just. My visa arrived the afternoon before I was due to leave. I'd applied weeks ahead of time but the tour company didn't seem in a hurry to supply me with the letter I needed to get the visa. By the time they did, it was a bit late and it coincided with several Russian public holidays, which mean't that the embassy got behind with processing applications, putting mine back a week. I got home from another tour and was straight on the phone to the visa agency, who thankfully were a lot more on the ball than the tour company and my passport and visa arrived at around 4pm.

This photo was taken in the GUM store (an upmarket shopping mall these days) during our city tour. I didn't want to shop so I took this pic of a fellow snapper who was taking a breather. He didn't look too happy about being in front of the lens instead of behind it. Maybe he was just sick of shopping.

Airborne: Huntington Beach, 15th May 2011

I've led a few Route 66 trips which finish in Long Beach and I get a day to myself, all being well. Usually, I hire a car and head down the coast to try and find the surfers and Huntington Beach is normally the best spot for me as I can go out on the pier and get fairly close to the action.
This time, I brought along a 2x extension tube for my lens which got me close but, unfortunately the autofocus wasn't quick enough to keep up with the twists and turns of the surfers. Out of the 400 or so pictures I took, hardly any are really sharp. I won't be doing that again.
This guy was a long way from the pier and he was flipped through the air by a crashing wave, describing a beautiful arc before coming back down. He looks as if he can fly, which he could, briefly.
Technically, the photo is hopeless but I like it and maybe I'll get the chance to go back soon.