I think I've posted photos of these mischievous cherubs before on the old blog. What amuses me, and cheers me up, is that they adorn the exterior of the (presumably) more serious Zürich Town Council buildings

Dusk Sorry, Stewart - pre-dusk

Out in the fields around where I live. Cold, bright weather - spring has been put on hold for a bit while we have a little winter reprise.

In Globus cafe

After weeks of grey, low lying cloud I decided to lift my spirits by getting above it all. Here on the nearby Rigi.

As a native of Scotland I don't like to look farther than the Aberdeen Angus brand, but unfortunately the little black, grass fed cattle of the North East of Scotland are not easy to find these days because of the lingering effects of the BSE crisis in the UK.

In these days of lean bred meat it's also difficult to find something worth cooking and I refuse to go for US hormone stuffed imports.

Luckily, the Swiss Simmental breed is just knocking on the door.

You know, I really don't have time for all this posing.....

This old friend is still there, Christmas or no Christmas. Hope everyone is having a good festive season, although dear Chuckeroon has had some bad luck I'm afraid. You can cheer him up here.

The Hague has a lot of new building going on. I commented on it in an old post, on the old blog. Here's some more.

Apart from crumbling architecture, it is also possible in Italy to photograph entire conversations

Completely by accident I've been firing the G11's flash in the wash hand basin. Quite interesting lighting results.

throw in a bit of knob twiddling....

Actually the first one had some knob twiddling as well....

The completion of the building work at the Salute means for the first time in a few years it is possible to walk around this iconic little spit of land. This gave me the opportunity to have a look at the sculpture on top of the Dogana Tower at close hand.

The statue, sitting above a globe supported by two Atlases, is named Fortune, and is actually a weather vane. The vane is the rudder of a ship. Given Venice's important relationship with maritime trade, the allegories are just queuing up.

The new Francois Pinault centre is finished, and the Church has had its roof sorted, so there is no scaffolding any longer.

Clouds and skylines are a bit cliched, but I find them irresistible. They also illustrate though how difficult it is to get the perfect composition. Like here - all the elements are there but they are not quite where you want them. And you are powerless to re-arrange them!

All these photos from Venice have been taking with the Canon G11 which has replaced my Leica DLux 3 as an all purpose carry-around digital camera. In fact it's the only digital camera I brought with me. So far I'm very pleased - in operation and usability it suits me very nicely, which for me is the main thing in any camera. No matter how good the picture quality if I can't get along with it I won't get good results

How to stand out in a crowd. Can you spot him? Click for a bigger view. Probably the best chess player there has ever been.... maybe.. perhaps