Boston, Not Massachusets

Haven’t had much time to do this blog recently. Although I’d much rather be a film star, a rock star, or a pro footballer, or still better a golfer earning millions on Tour (with a great big Winnebago, with a 42″ pop-up flatscreen, home-schooling my family and teaching the kids how to hit a spinning 30yd chip onto an immaculate sloping practice green as the sun sets over Arizona, crickets chirruping and a giant freght train mournfully whooping its way through the distant canyons), I’m slowly waking up to the fact that I am, in fact, one of those English slightly desk-bound guys who makes lots of phone calls, has lots of meetings, and gradually pulls together deals which – in theory – make business people money, and hopefully entertain / assist the general public.

Having never got lower than 3 handicap (5.4 as a proper grown up), I’ll even need to take a serious sabbatical from the business world before I’m fifty (still five years), if I’m to step out onto the seniors circuit. I’d still fancy myself to get there, if I took two years off – golf and me go way back, and I have the smarts and the good hands, and I love to practice. But that would be bye-bye to a business career which, to date, has looked after me and my family pretty well. And so, in the spirit of backing myself to the hilt and gambling on the future, which I have always done, I’ll probably continue to wheel and deal for the clients, and for my family, for a few years yet before I set off to chase the big sunsets, with clubs in the boot.

Which is why I am far more likely to be found taking photographs of Boston, Lincolnshire, than Boston, Massachusets: 

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 22mm, 1/80 sec at f 18, ISO 200, tripod no flash. I took a week off before our wedding, in spring 2008, and on the fourth day I’d headed off to find some boats to point my camera at. Above, a few Boston fishing boats are moored on the muddy banks. In the Middle Ages (bear with me) Boston was England’s second most important port. Nowadays, it’s been nicely described as ‘an unfortunate backwater’, stranded by being ignored by the motorway system, occasionally visited by trains en route to exotic places like Skegness or Nottingham. But, it has some photogenic boats, and I’ve tried to do the scene justice in this picture, by giving it a painterly look in Lightroom, and a ‘happy finish’ in Paint Shop Pro. This was actually a lovely, warm, breezy day, and I returned home that evening a very relaxed, chilled out fella.