Our trip to watch Macbeth at Ripley Castle near Harrogate in North Yorkshire was met with mixed reviews and superbly dramatic weather.

Winter England 2010

The Moon in Autumn
It’s not really like Mars in the Autumn I’d imagine.
A picture gallery from early 2010 of Twyford in Hampshire where I spent – I think – the years 1970 to 1979.

Sandal Castle
I went up to Sandal Castle, which I last visited with my SortofExWife and Daughter, Marcus and Amanda in 1996 for fireworks and a general welcome to the world to Daughter who was one or two months old at the time.
This time I took me and I took the new camera that I can’t afford.
I pointed the camera and, as ever, messed with the settings in the way that lucky idiots do, and came up with these.
I hope you enjoy them.

George Orwell passport picture via MI5
Good lord, I was looking for a picture to illustrate a story about the Orwell Rolls in His Grave documentary and I came across this passport pic of George Orwell.
The first striking thing about this image is, obviously, the Hitler/Chaplin moustache. I’m guessing it was the latter and that his photo came from the 1920s/early 1930s. Still, even if it was Chaplin, George (or Eric Blair) wasn’t exactly noted for his comedic slapstick work.
The second most striking, to me, thing about this image is that I found it on the MI5 website. Sat there under the heading, ’4 September 2007 releases: Communists and suspected Communists’ was George… or Eric.
Included in the text is the fact that, according to a Sergeant Ewing (January 1942):
"This man has advanced Communist views, and several of his Indian friends say that they have often seen him at Communist meetings. He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours."
Given that the documentary I am going to blog about includes references to 1984 and Winston Smith’s changing historical records at the Ministry of Truth, there’s a genuine irony in being able to search the Internet for MI5 records.
My first trip to Moscow in an organised form. More photos once they’re processed.

Moscow Sculpture