Graduation Day

We've had a fabulous day at the University of Birmingham attending our daughter Jess's graduation ceremony.  Coincidentally, 35 years ago this July I also graduated from Birmingham University.

The weather was kind, and all the arrangements came together without any panic or stress. I've taken any number of photos of this special day, of which a handful should be keepers.  Its late now and I need to get to bed, so I shall have to defer looking at the rest properly until I have more time.

For the fun of it, I have chosen as my main, a shot of Jess throwing her mortarboard in the air, in front of the old library building on the Edgbaston campus.  This was taken with the fisheye, but I've used the Hemi plug-in to reduce the distortion.  My extra is a shot of the rest of Jess's group of students of Russian (there were 8 of them but one was sadly not able to make it).  Behind them and to the right is the new state of the art library building, still in the course of being finished, but due to open in September when the old library building is (sadly) due to be demolished.

I had not appreciated until today (I am not always this slow on the uptake) that Jess was the only person in her year doing a Russian and Politics joint honours degree. Considering that when she started at University 4 years ago she could not speak a word of Russian we are mightily impressed and proud of her first class honours and distinction in spoken Russian.  Go Jess!

I'm in a rather better place now, and have switched the comments back on.  I hope to get around to catching up with other people's journals in the next  few days or so - please bear with me. In the meantime, many thanks for all the kind hearts and stars in the last few days, which have been much appreciated.