Ian Rapley

@irapley.bsky.social

949 Followers 583 Following

Historian of modern Japan, part time shepherd, clueless beekeeper, forensic cricket scorer.

A Welsh hillside reduced to ash.
Ballycurrin lighthouse, a lake, a cloudless sky.
A TV showing the Hurling final.
Marvin the paranoid android.
A picture of the lough shore
A first place sticker. I did not, in fact, come first.
The cricket square at Llandaff
Wa/ha/ba, the counter for birds or rabbits.
A cricket scoreboard. 141 for 3 off 26 overs beat 138 all out.
A lapwing flying out and back
Credit derivatives explained: a Lehman Brothers research briefing.
The cover of Nonesuch, by Francis Spufford
The ornate front of a public bathhouse
A small harbour on a sunny day.
A zigzag bridge over a small pond
A small garden in a house's courtyard
A temple, and sand garden
A view of a port.
A view of the Seto Inland Sea from a mountaintop temple
100 jumps. Completed after 431 attempts.
An image of a Welsh hillside, with a record of the date of the first cuckoo heard for the last 5 years. Last year was 13th April.
A new set of bookshelves, with space for more books
A middle aged cricketer trying to hit big.
An advert for a £300 toothbrush. Reduced from £800!
He also told a story of Andrew visiting the Welsh town of Tonypandy, saying ‘he insisted on coming by helicopter, unlike his mother, who came twice to the Rhondda and always came by car. He left early and he showed next to no interest in the young people’.
"there are 3 things which have revolutionised academic life in the last 20 years: jet travel, direct dialing telephones, and the Xerox machine"
A faded hopscotch layout that runs: 1 2 3 4-5 6 7-8 9-10
A climbing wall, orange route graded 5+, with a yellow rope leading to the top
Two Korean tourists in an Oxford college
A Google maps of bear sightings in Toyama. There are a LOT of sightings.
A woodblock print of a curved bridge, with mount Fuji in the background.
A hazy moon and a Welsh uplands field.
Jupiter, and its big moons.
A quarter moon
A formal photo of a group of people in a state room
Some sheep in a misty landscape
A map showing two completely different routes, each taking 58 minutes.
A statue of a bull. New York has nothing on Hereford.
A selection of fungi
A toadstool in the moss
A poster for a festival at ikegami honmonji in southern Tokyo.
Four flyers for art exhibitions
A ribston pippin tree, with plenty of apples
A ram in an auction ring.