A-Z Blogging Challenge 2025 - A is for Arches and Anchors

As I travel the world I take many photos that pique my interest, these could be lumped into a "peculiar category" ie. they are peculiar to my interests and may be different from what one usually sees in a collection of travel photos.

For the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge in 2025 my theme is Peculiar Pics. During April I invite you to join me for an online tour of Peculiar Pics from my digital albums. These will be sourced from my travels between April 2024 to March 2025.

Britannica tells me that an "arch, in architecture and civil engineering, (is) a curved member that is used to span an opening and to support loads from above. The arch formed the basis for the evolution of the vault."

So my first image in this post is not really an arch!
 

Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine - Osaka, Japan 

On our walk through the old town - Tangier, Morocco

Supermarket - Lisbon, Portugal

Royal London Yacht Club - Cowes, Isle of Wight UK

Mural - Gadigal Light Rail Station, Sydney, Australia

Exit from the Old Town - Kotor, Montenegro

St Emillon, France

Melk Abbey - Melk, Austria

Wikipedia provides a detailed description of an Anchor. Most of the anchors I have snapped are out of the water in Museums and on monuments. 

Timber Anchor in Museum - Cadiz, Spain

Anchor from the Amoco Cadiz - Portsall, Brittany, France

Spotted on our way to the Balenciaga Museum - Getaria, Spain

Driveby - Matosinhos, Portugal

A Light Month for Reading

March for me was a month of travel. As often happens I didn't get much time to read when I was on the road, sea and sky. 

I am pleased to report that I managed to read seven books and that I am still on track to reach my goal of reading 100 titles this year.

I'm still on track with the Goodreads Challenge

My reading in March included some new-to-me authors, Charlie Donlea and Alafair Burke. Their mysteries certainly drew me in and maintained my interest.. 

Blogging from A to Z April 2025 Blogging Challenge - Theme Reveal

 

During April I invite you to join me for an online tour of photos from my digital albums at the Blogging from A to Z April 2025 Blogging Challenge.

The A to Z April Challenge requires bloggers to post through the alphabet: 26 days, 26 letters, 26 posts starting with the theme of A on April 1st. As April has thirty days Sunday is designated as a day of rest. I was hesitant about joining the challenge again this year but, encouraged by fellow bloggers in Australia, I was convinced to join the party.  

As I travel the world I take many photos that pique my interest, these could be lumped into a "peculiar category" ie. they are different from what one usually sees in a collection of travel photos, they are peculiar to my interests. My theme for 2025 is Peculiar Pics. 

I'm currently travelling in Asia but will be back home in Australia in plenty of time to join the challenge.

Quite Pleased with February Result

My 2025 Challenge Stats

 Although I have only read a few pages in the last couple of days I am quite satisfied with the volume of my reading in February. 

As I will be be travelling in March and attending and speaking at Connections2025, an Australasian genealogy conference, my reading time will be impacted. Being eight books ahead  of schedule will help me to keep on track to reach my target of 100 books read this year.

You can follow my reading journey on Goodreads, here https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2580847-jill-ball

Here are the covers of  the eleven books I read in February.

On Track

 I'm pleased to report that I managed to read 13 books in January towards the Goodreads 2025 Reading Challenge. Hopefully being ahead of schedule will stand me in good stead when Mr GeniAus and I are distracted when travelling. 

My 2025 Challenge Progress Stats

You can follow my reading journey on Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2580847-jill-ball

Following are the titles I have read so far in 2025. 

Children Writing

In efforts to clean up my stuff (personal assets) I am going through my genealogy folders and of course I'm unearthing some treasures of times past that had faded from my memory

Back in 1970/1972 I was the Children's Librarian at Randwick Municipal Library (now Randwick City Library). In those days, when many schools did not have libraries on site we forged strong alliances with local schools and hosted regular visits from there classes. We also cooperated with neighbouring Municipal Libraries on several ventures. One of these that I had forgotten was a small publication, Children Writing. 

With the Children's Librarians from Waverley and Woollahra Libraries and support from local schools in our areas we edited and published several issues of Children Writing. I cannot remember how many issues were published or what happened to the funds raised from its sale. 

Children Writing : Record on Trove

When I fired up Trove this morning I was delighted to see that four Australian libraries hold copies of  Children Writing a little project to which I made a contribution to over 50 years ago. 

I grabbed my phone and took a few snaps of  my copy of Issue 2, June 1971 this morning.

Cover of Children Writing

Title Page 

Editorial

Snapping my way

I sometimes list Photography as one of my Hobbies  but that's not really accurate. It's just an activity that, since smartphones came into my life, is a part of my everyday life. 

A photo is an aide-memoire to assist my flagging memory - it may be a photograph, a business card, a memorable meal, a book for the reading list, treasured time with family, the changing moods on our Lake, an offer in a Facebook ad, an idea for a blog post.

For the reading list

A meal to remember - not just for the food

A sensational day out

All of these images or snaps are reviewed regularly and either consigned to the trash (not many) or transferred to my image archive, an external hard disk drive, where I religiously catalogue add metadata: the who, what, why, when and where of the images.

When we are travelling my snapping activity goes into overdrive. I add a small digital camera with a long zoom and several batteries to my arsenal so that I have plenty of juice to get through the day. I try to process these each evening before I forget where they were taken. When I forget this task I create a nightmare for my return home

The result is that I have an external hard drive (and another for backup) with several terabytes of images. Whenever a family member needs a photo of a particular event or a selection to show at family event I can quickly search my collection and come up with the goods.  

Recently I came across and joined a local photography group, Lake Macquarie Area in Photos,  on Facebook that issues a weekly challenge or two to its members. I love a challenge so I very quickly entered some, it is an opportunity to share some of my better snaps. As I am mostly sharing photos of Carey Bay the focus of my One Place Study it may help me to connect with people from the local area. 

I have received lots of positive reinforcement from members of the group and even received an honourable mention for my first entry. Since then I've had a few honourable mentions. 

One of last week's themes was "Shimmer", I was overjoyed when my image of the moon's reflection in our Backyard (The Lake) was chosen as photo of the week. As well as gallons of personal satisfaction I was rewarded with my image being posted as the header image for the week on the Facebook Group.

My winning Image "Shimmer at Carey Bay"

I recently discontinued active participation on Twitter and moved my social media activity from that platform to Bluesky (I am @geniaus.bsky.social). While my main focus there is Family History I have been reading unrelated posts. A weekly challenge from a Scottish Lass, Sheena, appealed so I joined her Alphabet Challenge in which one has to post an image related to a them related to the letter of the week. 

Three weeks in I am enjoying this fun activity as it is helping me to meet new and interesting connections who participate.