What? Who, Me?

It was very foggy this morning, and it hung around all day. Fog is a bit like a low-rent version of snow -- it transforms familiar scenes into something new and strange, but not always in a good way. Driving to work through thick fog can be peculiar -- all your senses feel simultaneously heightened yet slightly truncated, and there's a touch of what the Board of Censors calls "mild peril" when doing the most routine manoeuvres. But I was really looking forward to getting to the car park and working the early light with my camera before settling into work for the day.

The cranes were good value, as usual:



Then I sat down at my desk, cranked up the PC, and checked the Google Analytics statistics for this blog. I was amazed. Yesterday, I had NINETY THREE visitors. That is, compared to the nineteen I had the day before, which had been the peak so far. And worldwide: not only did I have visitors from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and Melbourne, Australia but even one each from Bangkok and Seoul. Something was up. Hmm, had I perhaps inadvertently used the name of some obscure sex act in my most recent post?

Later, by the simple, but somehow always transgressive act of googling my own name, I discovered that some other blogs had generously made links to mine. Thanks to Struan and Schmutzie, I have taken my first faltering steps towards global domination. [I would insert a maniacal laugh here, but there seems to be disagreement as to how to spell one. Is it Mwahahahah? Or Buwahahaha? Or what? Good Grief, what kind of would-be global dominator gets hung up on spelling, for God's sake?]

Anyway, at lunch, still feeling quite high, I went out to find something to justify all this attention. The fog was even thicker, but -- by quietening the light and obscuring some of the background noise -- it helped me finally to see the point of this pair of Barbara Hepworths that stand in the campus:


There is a twin pair way off on the other side of the valley, but obscured by the mist. Oddly, after years of looking hopelessly dated, these sculptures suddenly seem quite contemporary again. And the fog gives a nice muted harmony to other scenes I wouldn't normally notice. Here, the Students' Union building is nicely washed away by a cascade of willows, punctuated by some UFO lamps and a pit-droid bin: