London,  Newcastle-upon-Tyne,  The Changing Seasons,  Themed galleries

Gallery: a February and March selection (2025)

March 31, 2025 / 34 Comments

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

Rachel Carson

Writing this at the end of March it seems appropriate to start with a quote about the spring, which seems definitely to have arrived in London now. Street trees are in blossom, birds are more active and more vocal, and our garden is awakening.

But my ‘story’ starts back in the tail-end of winter, February, one of my least favourite months. That’s because I was away at the end of that month, travelling in the Philippines, so this is a round-up of both February and March.

February at home

We had two weeks at home before setting off to the Philippines. Things were a little quieter than January had been, but we fitted in three visits to the cinema (A Real Pain, my choice; Becoming Led Zeppelin, Chris’s choice; and September 5, which we were both keen to see!) We also went to the V&A’s photography galleries to see an exhibition themed around Energy in photography. While there we had a quick wander through the Japanese galleries, and stopped off for a coffee in the magnificent setting of the museum’s café.

I went to a meeting of my photography group where we discussed plans for our forthcoming exhibition. And I joined the U3A (University of the Third Age) and went to an interesting talk about the life and poetry of John Donne, which took me back to my university days. I hope to get more involved in the group now I’m back from our trip.

Philippines travels

I’ve already shared some photos from the trip and no doubt will share a mountain more. So I haven’t included any in the slideshow below. Suffice to say, we had a great time and found it a fascinating country!

March at home (and in Newcastle)

We returned to a lovely weekend in London, feeling that spring was on the way. But after two days of warm sunshine the cold of winter returned. However spring definitely was coming, and we saw more signs of it as the month wore on. Blossom appeared on street trees, daffodils in the parks and the days grew longer.

And there was more than just the weather to make us happy. A week or so after our return, Newcastle United beat Liverpool in the Carabao Cup Final and won their first domestic trophy in seventy years! We didn’t have tickets for the match but watched it on a big screen in a bar in Southwark with 500 other London-based fans, and celebrated afterwards with friends. Two weeks later there was day of celebration up in Newcastle with an open-top bus parade and party on the Town Moor, so we went up for a couple of days to join the fun with our friends there. The city was decked out in black and white, everyone was smiling and an estimated 300,000 people turned out either to watch the parade (as we did), party on the Town Moor, or both.

Less dramatic but still fun were our various outings in London. We went to the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, had dinner with friends we’d first met on our 2019 trip to North Korea (one of whom we hadn’t seen since the end of the tour), and I also met up with former work colleagues for dinner one evening.

Excitingly, I also had two photos included in the Ealing LIP (London Independent Photographers) exhibition (you can see them here, along with two that didn’t make the cut) and enjoyed our private view evening. And although not exciting, I was pleased to have surgery on a cataract in my left eye which had been somewhat affecting my photography and indeed daily life. That meant that it was only towards the end of the month that we could resume our regular-ish cinema trips with The Alto Knights.

I think all this activity shows how much we appreciate living in London with all that it has to offer!

Technical notes

Most of the shots in my slideshow were taken with my phone, but I used my Panasonic Lumix point and shoot camera for the blossoms and birds. Most have been at least a little edited with Photoshop Elements and some also with Nik Color Efex and/or Topaz AI (denoise and sharpen). The one monochrome shot (Greenwich) was edited with Nik Silver Efex.

As always I am linking my selection to Ju-Lyn’s and Brian’s Changing Seasons challenge. Use the arrows to navigate the slideshow if you want to see all the images. And apologies, there are more than usual because of the two months’ coverage (even without including the Philippines!)



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