Problems Of A First World Variety

I'm terribly behind with my walking posts, thanks to the loss of my dearly departed tower PC, gone too soon. No, seriously, gone way too soon, considering it was only eighteen months old. The warranty, sadly, was already six months out of date. Ach, what do you mean, another hundred euros for a five-year warranty! Pff, one year will be fine. Now take my money before I go and buy something that may not even last that long.

:: sigh ::

I've been struggling with my thirteen-year-old HP laptop since getting back from Israel, and believe me when I say that every post (including those on my Portals blog - oy, those photo posts took an age) until this one has been painstakingly crafted on a machine that takes at least fifteen minutes to load a webpage and can only cope with one open tab at a time. I read a lot of books, though. I think I got through around ten decent-length (i.e. over four hundred page) novels in the time before a friend of mine let me borrow his old-ish Samsung laptop. And let me say here HUZZAH for kind friend who likes to keep abreast of technology, who updates his technological devices on a yearly basis, yet keeps the old ones, just in case! HUZZAH!

So yes, I'm a little behind, but instead of back-dating posts which may just get messy, I'll add them here when I have the time to find the photos online, thankfully automatically uploaded to the cloud from my phone whenever I'm near Wi-Fi!

Anyhoo.

I renewed my visitors subscription to Sorghvliet Park when I returned from Israel, and took myself along to enjoy a good old tramp around the woods at the beginning of this month to find not only the normal fare of fairy snowdrops nodding their heads all over the park, but also a rather early hello from Spring herself!

But even with Mother Nature gate-crashing winter's party, I was still allowed to indulge in the sights I adore, like the sleeping-place of my favourite bluebell spot, already beginning to wake up;

I indulged in my love of black against blue (and grey);

and finally took a snap on the way home of a tiny corner near the Vredespaleis that always catches my eye: spreading ivy winding over old brick and blue-painted metal. There's something that stirs my soul when beholding the uniformity of man-made objects juxtaposed against the ever-changing, un-containable advance of life!*

*Although my first career aspirations in the plastic arts may not have come to fruition, the lessons I learned at art college in the Ways of Bullcrap obviously made a lasting impression!