Two Geese Take A Trip To Town

This weekend’s challenge on Weekly Prompts is Two.

My contribution is two (ahhh double fulfilment) shots of a pair of geese that I saw casually strolling in the Manchester city centre.

It’s the geese that were casually strolling, not me. I was on my way home from work (I work in the office one day a week.)

Geese are not an unusual sight in Manchester, they occupy the city’s canals (the other day, when out photographing, I witnessed what I’m pretty sure was a geese marital argument), but they don’t come to this location, Piccadilly Gardens.

I wonder what they were doing.

Alone

This week the Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge is Alone.

May I just offer my whole blog?

Only joking. Here is a lone crow perching on a fence by the tram tracks.

Most of the time I’m alone. (Unless you count my cat.) All the time, really, except for days when I go into the office. I’m single by choice and not looking for relationship, and I go everywhere on my own. I can’t imagine it any other way anymore. I can’t imagine not seeing a film at the cinema because I have no one to go with, I can’t imagine missing out on seeing a favourite artist of band because there’s nobody to accompany me to their concert. I date myself.

Sure, the system screws over single people. When I recently needed a hotel for a night, I saw how much the price increased when I changed the booking from the default two people to one, even though it was the exact same room. The insatiable capitalistic greed punishing solo travellers for merely existing, but there’s another way to look at it. They wish they were like us. They wish they had the courage to travel alone. But they’re too scared, and so they take it out on us. They hate us ‘cos they ain’t us!

Some of my posts here on Some Photoblog feature solitary objects or animals. The tagline of my Tumblr blog is “in solitude” (also my username is a play on the word “misanthropy”). I have a Pinterest board dedicated to single life.

It’s just my way.

My Little Assistant

My mum often refers to my cat as an assistant. For example when we’re talking on the phone, she’ll ask: “how is your assistant?” My mum has these expressions that are very her.

But the truth is, Pepper is my assistant. Not that she assists me in any useful way, she is just there when I’m doing something, sitting and watching me.

This is her watching me while I wash the dishes. It’s my typical evening routine, I do the dishes at around ten or eleven in the evening, clean the counters etc. Pepper sits there at the doorway and watches me.

The below picture was taken on a different day, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the same day.

I don’t know what interests her so much about my washing of the dishes. She’s an indoor cat, her territory is a very small flat, so I guess she needs to find excitement in every mundane thing.

Ladybird

That’s ladybug for Americans.

There’s this thistle (I think?) that sprouted out almost overnight at the entrance to my house–well not my house strictly, I live in one of the flats the house was converted into. I only noticed it a few days ago and it did not please my eye one bit.

Then today when I went out, I saw this:

And a phone shot of the same:

At least something nice came out of it.