Well, here we are in the last 3 months of the year. I must admit that the last couple of months have been really different, read on to find out what has happened.

August, one of our colder months started of with the Photographic Society of South Africa congress in Struisbaai. It’s about 2 ½ hour drive from Cape Town and is on the Southern tip of Africa. The congress was well organized, and we had the opportunity to visit various locations for photography. The mornings where taken up by lectures on various subjects related to photography.

One of the lecturers a Freeman Patterson from Canada turned out to have a friend called David Maginley who if I recall lives in Halifax in Canada and is also a relation from the Maginleys in Ireland.

As I said we had the opportunity for various photography shoots and I went to a fisherman’s village just outside of Anniston called Kassiebaai, and also Elim which was founded by German explorers. Both the venues where great and I have included some of the images in this month Photographs.

The sad party of the congress is that a large number of us including myself picked up a ‘bug’ whish mine turned into Bronchitis’ which I managed to get treated, thanks to my son David and family for helping out over this period.

September turns out to be something different, this time I went to Spain to see my other son Andrew and family. It was great to see them and have some fun and visit various place around Barcelona. These included Monseratt a monastery in the mountains and some towns along the coast as well as a couple inland.  Photography on many occasions was difficult due to the number o0f tourists. However, I managed to get some and have included a selection in the Photography section.

Spain was very laid back and relaxing with lovely warm weather. Thanks to Andrew we had some great dinning outs, including the local square on Friday nights and also dining in restaurants on the beach.

One of the highlights of the trip was meeting up with Audrey and Barbara for lunch In Barcelona. Audrey’s mother was my cousin, and it was great to catch up on all the news from Ireland. Unfortunately, I was unable to go to Ireland this year and meet up with another relative Tom Maginley from the States, from what I see on Facebook they are having a whale of a time.

Coming back to Spain I flew with Emirates, although it is a long flight the service was excellent.

Now I am home it is a matter of getting back into the norm, what ever that is? So to all of you around the world I wish you all the very best for the future and the remainder of 2025

Just to round things off I had my yearly check up and all is well, so I am afraid you’ve got me for another year.!!

Best wishes to all,

Bob