by If any of you are wondering what my little profile picture is, it’s of a busker drumming his guitar on Wellington’s Cuba Street. I thought I wouldn’t mind being him, so I took six snaps of him, and spliced them together to make a shaky, slightly manic-looking GIF. It’s cool that WordPress lets me use it as my pic.
I had a look at my posts from a year ago, and although the world has changed so much in that time, so much was the same: wishing I had a bit more work, Brexit, Sfânta Cruce, hot weather, and a gripping men’s US Open final that I failed to see.
Dominic Thiem came from two sets down to beat Alexander Zverev 8-6 in the fifth-set tie-break. It doesn’t get tighter than that, or harder to take for the loser. Zverev was distraught at the end. It’s the first time the men’s final has gone to 7-6 in the fifth. I’m happy for Thiem that he won – he’s been close in grand slams before – and this might help him to win another slam, one that won’t be “asterisked” by the absence of players like Nadal. I didn’t see the match – it started late and I had a lesson early in the morning.
It was striking how many children were milling around in town today, either with their parents or without. Today is the second day of the school year, but most schools are doing some hybrid system of both online and in-person teaching. In some parts of the country, this is a real challenge, because not everywhere has the super-fast internet we do. (Those mostly rural places tend not to have much Covid either, so they have the green light for school to go back as normal, but there are exceptions.) Seeing all those kids, and the kids I work with, those incredible bundles of life full of so much hope and joy, makes me a bit sad that I’m unlikely to have any of my own.
Sfânta Cruce – or Sfânta Corona this year, perhaps – was as big as ever. Crowds outside the cathedral late night, and a long snaking queue today. Earlier this evening it was right back to the bus stop. Masks, mostly, but not much distancing.
Dad sent me a nice picture of Mum and me in Ireland. We went there as a family when I was ten. It was a very different country in 1990; the Celtic tiger hadn’t begun to roar. They still used pounds (for money) and miles per hour. It was beautiful but also bleak. We boarded the newly kitted out ferry, named Felicity, at Fishguard in Wales, and that took us to Rosslare. We spent two weeks, mostly in Cork and Kerry, where we camped. Mum saw a priest in Kerry to help with a family history request. (Her family came out to New Zealand from Kerry in 1874.) The weather was good for the first week, but it rained almost non-stop the second week. We came back a different way, from Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead, on an older ship.
Some good state polls for Biden today. “Only” seven weeks to go.
Here are some pictures.
A bit of variety in the pics. Hope you like ’em.