Balmy Daze

Setting yourself the task of blogging every day is a bit silly. You would think finding something to write about would be easy - but it isn't. Especially when you've been stuck at home coughing up a lung and the highlight of your day was a gentle walk down to Aldi half a kilometre away.

Pudding Cat has been keeping me company - I've changed his name to Pudding for he is a little on the tubby side and he loves showing off his belly. He's going home on the weekend. Blarney's confirmed that they'll be back sometime Friday and I'll return him the following day.

So today - on the agenda was an interview - that was postponed until tomorrow or Thursday. I'm thankful for this as I'm still coughing a bit - though I do feel quite well in myself. Fingers crossed for this one - that is all I will say.

Other things on the agenda. Put some stuff on ebay, fill in a few more applications, make some phone calls, cook lunch for the next two days (a very yummy roast vegetable and chick pea salad) and spend some time reading. All got done.

Then, when speaking to Kath from "Blurb from the Burbs" she made the suggestion of writing on the subject of a photograph. What a good idea.

After photographing my items for sale - some books, the odd CD and some trousers that are way too big now, I stumbled across this on the SD Card.

I remember this day. The shot was taken in Granada on a day not unlike the weather here in Melbourne today. The weather was balmy for mid-Autumn, with a hint of chill coming off the Sierra Nevada mountains. Being early November, the shadows seemed to get long early and stay that way for an eternity.

The lane way, like all the streets in Granada, are cobbled and narrow. Eliot put it well - "streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent." These streets, in grid formation, were easy to get lost in - and to lose yourself in. The lefthand wall is part of the Granada Cathedral - a particularly underwhelming building, slapped in the middle of the town to show Christian might in a place that had been dominated by the Moors for centuries. In the shadow of the Alhambra, these streets existed in relative mediocrity.

Granada is also a university town. A place filled with students, unkept buildings, flyers for bands pasted to ancient walls, over flowing bins and young people, lethargic in the day, energetic at night. Like most Spanish cities, the place becomes alive around 9 pm. It feels safe, though where I was staying  I felt a small element of malice - I don't know why - nothing happened to me there.

Looking back at the photo, I see the busker slumped against the cathedral wall. the booted woman making her way home, the long shadows, the expectation of the evening.

I love this shot.

Then I remember how much I love travelling, how I have no idea when I will be travelling again and how I wish I could find somebody to pay me to be a travel writer. It's my one dream job.

Mind you, I'm pretty good at manifesting things like travel and I have to remind myself of this.

Dreaming big can be a great thing.