Status-Q

I was, unfortunately, beheaded today, while visiting Teylers Museum in Haarlem. This was a trifle inconvenient, but I still managed to smile about it.

This is straight out of the iPhone camera, with no image manipulation. I look a slightly funny colour not because of embarrassment at my recent decapitation, because I got rather too much sun on Wednesday.

It's quite an effective illusion, and if you look closely you may be able to work out how it's done -- answers in the comments, please...

What occurred to me, though, was that we in the sophisticated modern age would probably immediately look at this and think 'Photoshop!'... and be quite wrong. Whereas those in the past who had never heard of Photoshop might get closer to the mark...

This little sanderling was a very busy chap on Saturday, at Holkham Beach. He darted about, running up and down the waterline, and showing no interest in stopping to pose for a photo...

We're spending a week around Christmas in a cottage in the Lake District.

It's very wet, very windy, and as beautiful as ever.

Spotted in the skies above Derbyshire a couple of weeks ago. First thing in the morning, perhaps after a good strong coffee...

Later in the day, in those same skies...

Phew, Bob - that was a bit close!...

Status-Q, in its current form, is 22 years old today. I haven't posted for a week or so because I've been terribly energetic on some Swiss ski slopes.

Spotted on today's afternoon dog-walk.

I really should have taken a video clip, because others were arriving and it was great fun watching them come into land.

My brother Simon's comment was, "I hope they watch out for quacks in the ice."

The view from my study window this morning. I literally don't have to get up from my chair to see this. As you can imagine, working from home has been a real trial over the last few years.

I'm very lucky.

Taken in Lichfield in 2013.

We've just been re-watching Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it was just as splendid as ever.

It reminded me of my second visit to New Zealand, in 2007, and the day I spent walking the Tongariro Crossing; a dramatic volcanic landscape where many of the scenes in The Return of the King were filmed.

It's fun showing it in gritty monochrome, but in fact some of its drama comes from the occasional bright colours amidst a landscape of Martian barreness.

There are vast structures through which you can imagine rivers of heat must have poured.

And some of the rocks look almost like man-made art installations.

This other-worldly landscape emerges from placid surrounding plains, so you can look out and see what life is like back on Earth.

It's a fascinating place, and makes for a most unusual one-day hike. Recommended, if you get the chance to visit.

On our mantlepiece, we have a small golf-ball-sized piece of volcanic lava that I brought home to Rose after my trip. "Here you are, darling; I've brought you a bit of Mount Doom!"

I always had a talent for romantic gestures.

We're just back from a few splendid days staying in a cottage on the Pembrokeshire coast in Wales, followed by a weekend of sailing on the River Crouch in East Anglia, with stops in the Wye Valley and the Cotswolds in between. Fitting these into the same week-and-a-half involves rather large changes in longitude combined with almost zero change in latitude!

Wales is a country whose great beauty is occasionally visible through the downpours. I always love visiting, but when it rains, it really rains... and this is from someone whose childhood holidays were often spent in the Lake District: somewhere that is seldom described as arid! But we alternated the suncream and the umbrellas, and only occasionally got drenched.

We saw lovely harbours, both man-made and natural:

We visited seals and lighthouses; castles, cliffs, and cottages; superchargers and woollen mills, and we had some very good food. We saw ancient woods:

We saw the cathedral in St Davids, hidden so deeply in a valley that you can be in the same small town and hardly know it's there. but it's a wonderful and unusual place.

And then we rushed back across the country to go sailing in our little dinghy with friends from the Tideway Owners' Association.

Now, exhausted but happy, we've come back to normal working life to recover...