Assignment 31

It's good to have an assignment to do again. I would have done S2's Forum assignment too if I hadn't previously done an SP (and one of those is quite enough, thank you very much!).

Anyway, last Saturday's dinner hosts are a bit short on chairs, I have a couple of fold-up ones for when they prove necessary, I've helped them out before when they were stuck, they were stuck last Saturday, so I helped them out again. Now, with dinner guests coming to my place tomorrow evening, I needed the chair back again. Today was the first time I could do the pickup, which unfortunately meant braving the dreadful traffic pandemonium which is the Malahide Road (caused by a ridiculous combination of Quality Bus Corridor (QBC) and set after set of stupidly organised traffic lights -- but don't get me started on a favourite rant!). It took an age to travel the relatively short distance between my place and theirs, but at least I was able to combine need with opportunity, since there's a rather nice rather-up-market food shop in the same complex last weekend's hosts live in. I spent more money there than I should have, and was on the way back to the car (folding chair safely stowed in its boot earlier) when I stopped, laid down my bags, and crouched down to blip this piece of street furniture.

I'd actually gone out with a vague intention of doing something for Blip Central's 2nd-birthday assignment, and I had this blipper firmly in mind as the subject. It's taken a goof bit of post-processing, but here it is: Dublin's Northern Cross development area in the style of one of my favourite North American blippers. He and his girlfriend are nominally chalk and cheese, ying and yang, but they both brighten up the bliposphere (she less regularly now than he, unfortunately). I hope I haven't kept you all too much in the dark with the hints ...

Non-sequitur postscript: Beth Wester Ross reminded me in a comment that it's a year ago since she and I cooperated on that mad two-way webcam business. What great fun that was -- how could it be otherwise with those two mad women Northern Exposure and Chick Flick (as she then was) behind it? -- but it's quite a shock to think that it's a year ago.