As with last week, this theme again emphasises how much the apparently disparate topics of this project are actually all linked in subjective experience. The first three images in last week's post could just as easily belong under the rubric 'memory'.
But I've chosen to do something different. When I retired from working, at the end of 2012, my post-retirement treat to myself was to pursue one of the items on my bucket list, and in February 2013 I went on a trip by sea to arctic Norway to see the Northern Lights. I had never previously been further north than the north of Scotland or Jutland.
One of my former colleagues said to me: "Anyone else who retires in mid-winter goes to Australia or New Zealand, or somewhere warm . . . and you're going to the arctic!" Well, I don't particularly like heat, and can't sustain activity when it gets hot . . . and sitting around on beaches was never anything that interested me.
As well as seeing the Aurora I discovered in myself a deep fascination and affinity with 'The North' and the arctic landscape and experience. I have joked to friends that it's my Viking ancestry! I have a surname that is a variant on a Scandinavian name, and my father's family were all from a part of Yorkshire that was famously settled by Vikings. I have no idea if there's any substance to this, but I like the joke. Since that trip to Norway I have also been to Iceland and to Svalbard, and next year I will be going to Greenland.
But for this 'memory' post I'm using a photograph from that first trip:
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