Coastal Crocuses

Flowers in an unexpected spot by Dunbar Esplanade, the Bass Rock in the background. I cycled into town to hand in some documents which will move things along, and spotted these little blooms perched on an outcrop. Here's another view of the outcrop on Flickr, when my friends Ian and Mark were visiting last year.

Big Flowers.

I read in the local paper today that the first Gannet of the year has arrived on the Bass Rock, so we'll be seeing them fishing off the coast soon.

A quiet day working at home after the late night yesterday, with a quiet evening to follow. I took delivery of some great music so there's "Inni" by Sigur Ros and "The Harrow & The Harvest" by Gillian Welch playing. Inni is a double CD with a film too, so I'll plan to slouch on the couch later on with that on and finish reading my book.

The book's highly recommended, "This Thing of Darkness" by Harry Thompson, which is a historically accurate narration of the relationship between Robert FitzRoy and Charles Darwin. FitzRoy, amongst other things, captained the Beagle which is famous for taking Darwin round the world. FitzRoy later invented synoptic charts and weather forecasting, founding the Met Office in the process. Darwin famously rejected religion and developed evolution, whilst FitzRoy's science was based in a devout Christian belief. It's a fascinating juxtaposition which illustrates the debates and the strength of feeling raging at the time.

Next - Stalin! That book's been sitting there for a while since I needed a break after reading Mao by Jung Chang. Ah well, here goes...

EDIT... Later on I popped along to Asda in the howling gale. I discovered there's a bug in their self-service tills: you can't buy 2 lemons. 3 is fine. But to buy 2, you need to put them through 1 at a time and then get "Approval" from the staff. Bizzarre.

I also bought an Amateur Photographer, which has news of 2 new Nikon cameras: the D800 which has ... 36.3 million pixels (!!! eh? !!!) and is very expensive indeed, as well as the compact Coolpix P310 which is £299 and has everything I'd want in a little camera, including 'proper' vibration reduction. No flash hot-shoe, but I think that's OK. HmmMmm! I was planning to swap the D40 for a D3100 later in the year, but a P310 might be a better investment - I could stop carrying a DSLR around all the time. Interesting!

EDIT again.... I stumbled upon the Edinburgh Pinhole Photography Festival which is coming-up and sounds brilliant :)