ding dong merrily on high

Right, listen up. Obviously pretty much everyone's experiences of Christmas are very similar, at least in this country. Those who dwell primarily in a mud hut in the Kalahari or a yak-butter-grouted yurt in Mongolia would probably find things panning out slightly differently, but otherwise people generally gather with various family members, eat and drink excessively, exchange presents and then go home again. And my own experience is, largely, no different.

Generally these are relatively orthodox Christmas shots then - the main point of interest (arguably) would be the walk that my Dad and I went on on Boxing Day up the Black Hill (known as the Cat's Back by locals) - this is the same Black Hill that Bruce Chatwin wrote about in his novel On The Black Hill.

Anyway, it occurred to me while I was posting the Boxing Day photos, which include a shot of me leaning on a trig point, that I have been involved, over the years, in an awful lot of similar photographs. So I decided, largely for my own amusement, to compile an album of similar stuff. As if to illustrate how fickle weather conditions can be, kids, consider the following pair of photographs - me on top of Yes Tor on Dartmoor in 2000, and Robin and I on the exact same trig point in 2007. That'll be yer fickle English weather for you, folks.