checks

The Arctic Fox looks nervously over his shoulder to see if anyone is watching.

At the same moment, he tries to remove the gun from its holster and promptly shoots himself in the left foot whilst simultaneously putting his right foot in his own mouth.

You didn't know i was a contortionist did you?

Well those were the thoughts that swum lazily through my tired little mind early this morning when the landlord/lady confessed to having found my blog.........

"Arctic Fox" she laughed "nice photograph" and my feeble brain swung from thoughts of balance sheets and profit and loss calculations to whatever I might have divulged within these pages that may be incriminating / insulting / unprofessional / stupid.

It's the age-old blogging quandary - should I blog anonymously? should I be more careful with what I say?  I can't decide what's for the best.  I always hated it when my mum used to quote back things to me that she'd read on my blog....

Always when someone discovers my blog that i spend time with in a "real-world" scenario it makes me question whether i should be doing this at all.

I guess the difficult part about blogging is that you quickly realise that not everyone who reads blogs is familiar with the spirit in which some of the items are written.....

Some blog entries are written in the heat of the moment or in a state of emotion that might easily be taken out of context when read by the uninitiated.  A blog entry that might have been written a year ago in a tongue-in-cheek style may well not stand up to the scrutiny of the eyes of a relative who discovers my blog today.

I  hate looking over my shoulder and I hate not having the freedom to blog as i feel......  perhaps anonymous is the future?

The spirit of blogging MUST prevail!

Too hot for me.

I actually got a chance to say, in live weather oriented conversation, to my neighbour and the free weekly paper delivery man.....

"Oh, it's too hot for my liking"

I nearly shouted "bingo" just after the words had left my mouth and jumped into passing conversation.

At least I have managed to solve the music playing, picture hosting and webcam issues that have been making a mockery of my blog. I nearly, and almost did, set up my own web server so I don't have to rely on them third party freebies to achieve the level of service you've all come to know and love.

I'm hungry and I need to get summat to eat..... and a cold beer!!

I'll be back to posting more pictures as soon as this hot weather subsides and I come back indoors.

Straightening it out.

Well, my laptop died and for the best part of two days I tried to revive it. Eventually, against my better judgement (as is always the case in the untimely death of a computer) I decided to start from scratch - formatted and installed a brand, spanky, fancy, clean, new operating system, which is about as brand, spanky, fancy, clean and new as any Microsoft operating system could be... which isn't very!!

I'm back, of a fashion.

One good thing to come out of the recent laptop related disaster is that I've now installed a new art package (the newest version - obviously illegally downloaded and hacked, cracked and packed) which is a more up-to-date version of the package I used to use. The most immediate thing I notice is that there is now a "straighten photo" option - I've tried it and it's very good. Hopefully I will be able to combat my patented two degree slant on all my photos now!!!

They say every cloud has a silver lining.....

They also say that it's an ill wind that blows no good......

They can't both be right!!



Well, an old photo from a trip to London that we took some time last year. Nelson's column was so badly tilted that this photo was never likely to see the light of day - well I couldn't be bothered to manually rotate the thing and then crop out the picture and so on, to get rid of the white corners that creep in whilst rotating. So here it is - my perfectly straightened column for you all to feast your eyes upon.

An ill wind.

In a few weeks I will be forty. We are booked to go off to Wales for a few days to celebrate by walking up Mount Snowdon. I like to try some sort of active pursuit to celebrate my birthdays, and last year was a Lake District walk from Keswick to the top of Catbells. With this in mind, I thought I had better get back into my walking shoes and get some miles under my belt so I don't end up breaking myself over the course of the weekend that we are away. I found a book of local walks that was written by one of my old school teachers and decided to get out there and crack a few Colne Valley circular walks.... I managed a three mile ramble around Blackmoorfoot Reservoir and into the village of Helme and then I walked a four mile route around Deer Hill Reservoir. Today is the first time I've had to use my new waterproofs in anger!!

I had a great walk and the book that took me there was very good too.


Deer Hill End Road..... a self portrait that made me laugh. Wearing my VERY unfashionable walking hat under my hood, complete with waterproof pants..... you can see the rain clouds that passed overhead as they disappear into the distance behind me.

Turtle.

A few beers with my cousin and the infamous Turtle of Huddersfield town, yielded a bag of home grown veg, the likes of which I have not experienced since I was a kidd-a-lee-dack. The turtle furnished me with courgettes (the size of marrows), spuds, onions, and a jalapeno - in return I gave some bottles of the Turtle's favourite brew, Batemans XXXB.

If you're in the vicinity of the Rat and Ratchet, they have some delicious Golcar Dark Mild on the go at the moment!! Fill your boots!! Also in fine fettle is the Phoenix White Monk - the perfect lunchtime tipple.


A quick shot from the beach at Formby. A young seagull in flight - I am really fond of the blankness of the sky behind..... it's not great photography but I like it.

Nearly there....

It's nearly the end of this current series of Big Brother.... it's been a long one, and I'm not overly sad that we are nearing the final week. I think I've done quite well to avoid discussing it here in my blog..... my original blog was very heavily influenced at this time of year by the reality show's goings on and off.

Well, today's not been much of a day.... crumby weather and catching up with paperwork and generally doing a few of those put-off jobs that have reached the end of their shelf lives.


Continuing with another Yorkshire Sculpture Park image (despite belligerent protestations from those who should know better!!) - this is a Sophie Ryder sculpture - her stuff is "interesting" and this is probably one of the saner examples on display.

Turned out.....

... nice again.

A trip to Formby, a place I knew little about, yielded an empty, sandy, windswept day by the sea. Usual stuff.... eating sand with sandwiches, picking over the myriad of tide-strewn detritus, getting wet, windswept, and generally just plain old sandy.

I heartily recommend the beach at Formby (near Liverpool) for anyone looking for a quiet place for romantic walks..... dog walking...... shell scavenging..... and even (squirrel pox permitting) the spotting of red squirrels.


Just a sample of the seabirds that you can buy in Formby. This one comes with its on sand dunes and includes delivery anywhere within a ten miles radius.

Grim up north.

Spent a day in Hebden Bridge being chased by a goose and scrutinising the local camera club's work. Hebden's a pleasant enough place, but it's overrun by touristy types (of which I am one) and overenthusiastic geese!!


That there is me, looking out over downtown Cairo. A crazy place to cross the road or to smoke a big bubbling pipe.... how bazaar?

Sunday schmunday.

When I used to have a job (a couple of years ago!!) I used to hate Sunday because I knew it meant that I'd have to go to work on the very next day, and the Sunday evening always seemed a bit sombre and depressing. Now I just hate Sunday because my lovely girlfriend has to go home and carry on with her life while I get back on with mine..... bah!!


A lovely Henry Moore sculpture courtesy of the fantastic Yorkshire Sculpture Park which I took my Canadian family members to see last week. Rain fell heavily but our spirits were not dampened.

Done and dusted.

Well, I've been to my cousin's wedding, and moreover, I've completed the reading that I was required to make. In the end it was based on a reading found on the internet and tinkered with to suit my own inimitable stylee. Apart from one Freudian slip where I muddled the words "devotion" and "divorce" it went well..... you can of course, without prompt, guess the disastrous context!! Laughter ensued and the officiant could only respond with the immortal words "I'm not sure I can follow that".


Continuing my "stunning church" series, I managed to snap this lovely pick of the twisty spire of Chesterfield Parish Church..... bloody hell maybe this second coming thing has had some sort of effect on me without me even realising it????

Knock knock....

Who's there?

A man clutching jump leads and a pregnant sobbing wife.

A man clutching jump leads and a pregnant sobbing wife, who?

It's not a joke, it's the modern day biblical tale of what happened at my house last night, or rather this morning at one thirty AM.

They wanted a lift to their car out on the dark moors to see if I could manage to help them get it started...... are you mad? Suffice to say, as much as I'd like to have helped them out in their predicament, I'm not about to go riding out into the moors with strangers offering money at any time of day!!

Bad times.


Deanhead church, in the area of Scammonden Dam near where I go riding my mountain bike. A truly lovely little part olf the world.

Moving along....

.... at the pace of.... well, of course a picture speaks a thousand words, or so they say!!

I'm trying to write a "reading" for my cousin's wedding.... unsuccessfully, I hasten to add!! This is made doubly difficult by having submitted a first draft for approval and now completely changing my mind!!

A simple close-up of a snail in my garden that appeared in the middle of the lawn while I hacked a few trees to bits earlier this "summer".

Failing and falling.

Flat on my face, I've already failed to make a daily post for three days straight. I think that's a fair reflection of my current level of commitment!! I blame beer, a stag night, and the impending sense of dealing with stuff.


It's just a nice example of a sculpted stone lion.... guardian of the College of Shipley College in Saltaire. Just an excuse to continue my rash of photo blog updates.

Old Salt.

Just because I probably won't get proper time on Saturday for real (it's just after midnight, so technically it really is Saturday), I thought I'd better at least try to keep up the posting.


Dawn, enjoying a drink of Weston's organic cider at Fanny's Ale House in Saltaire near Bradford, last weekend. For those that don't know Saltaire, it's a world heritage site which is made up of a mill and housing created by Titus Salt. It's worth a journey there to see some cool David Hockney works, and more importantly it's bloody free!!

More?? MORE??

You know it's the real Arctic Fox just as much as you ever did!!


Some might say "eyesore" others might say "treasure" - Blackley Brickworks (sadly disused), above Elland, viewed from Jagger Green. I can only imagine it will be turned into more unaffordable "luxury" shoebox apartments. They'd certainly get a good view from there. I took this photo when I went out for a walk one day on the 1st of July. I like the blank expressionless glassless windows.

Neglect!

I'm still here..... I'm still alive......


In retrospect, I figured I ought to at least add a little commentary to accompany my photograph.... outside Buckingham Palace (London) when I took Dawn down there for the weekend to see Justice play an open air gig at Somerset House in July - it was wet - read a review here.

Bam!!

Kicking it up a notch with the spice weazle.

What a crap day. Foggy, rainy, cold, miserable..... woke up to the distant sound of a recycling wagon making its way along my street. It's a long street and the house numbers go well over a thousand.

The fact that I could hear the wagon could mean any of the following:
a) I slept very late.
b) The wagon was early.
c) I had already missed it.
d) I had to get up and check which way it was going and whether I could get my bin out in time.
e) I would not be able to find anything to pull on to go out in the rain.

In golfing pants and flip flops I trundle out with my bin, relieved that I haven't missed another monthly collection.

I like recycling. I like the fact that my rubbish bin, which is collected weekly, rarely has enough in it to warrant collecting it more than monthly. I'm in the process of ordering a compost bin to further reduce my landfill footprint.

I DO have issues with the way our recycling is done......

a) We have co-mingled collection, which means that paper, cardboard, tin cans and plastic bottles are all mixed together in a big green bin.
b) We currently have no glass collection service.

The problems with co-mingled recyclables is that they are actually fairly worthless. Most local councils that opt for co-mingled are just embarking on a number crunching exercise to obtain the relevant targets with no regard for what happens to our rubbish, other than the fact that it's less in our conventional grey bins.

Take for example plastic bottles..... from co-mingled waste, it's not cost effective enough to get someone to sort it all out so we ship it out to china, and thirty miles away from the place that is shipping it out there, there's a place that's importing plastic bottles from Germany.

The councils that do collect glass and mix it all up are effectively destroying the value..... co-mingled glass is broken up and used for creating roads (i.e. another form of landfill) - Those glass bins at the supermarket are much better when you separate your own colours of glass.... one bin for green... one brown.... one white.... the value of glass collected in this manner is much higher and can be put to good use.

There is actually no substitute for finding a good recycler..... there's no real lazy solution.

What to do when you can't be arsed to blog?

4) Widget!!

Invest some time in a crappy widget that will inevitably slow down your page loading times..... I've got loads of 'em over there on the right hand side if you don't believe me.... one plays music.... one is my (sporadically updated) bowling cam..... one for the moon phase.... one for the weather.... an Iraqi civilian death counter..... and even a defunct polling booth.... and here's another for good measure!!

My blog is worth $6,774.48.
How much is your blog worth?

Drunken idiot.

Well I may or may not have mentioned that I wanted to take a trip to Wakefield (of all places) to find the Fernandes brewery tap. Last Saturday night we finally decided to make the pilgrimage.

Well, it all started out quite nicely as we caught the train from Slawit into Huddersfield, and had a twenty minute wait on the platform before the connection to Wakefield. Following the twenty minute wait (and a pint in the King's Head pub), it transpired that the train conductor had been assaulted at the station before Huddersfield, and the train was subsequently cancelled.

Well, there are two pubs at Huddersfield station, so to while away the hour until the next train, we visited the Head of Steam for a couple more jars.

Now, it's probably best to avoid drinking BEFORE you go in search of a brewery!! That's all I am going to say on the matter. I was pissed, and the brewery tap was VERY good indeed. Let's leave it there.......

If you were the train spotter on Wakefield Kirkgate train station that tried to explain to me why the train comes into this platform or the other one.... then I apologise for my state of inebriation and lack of concern at your fascinating railway knowledge.

What to do when you can't be arsed to blog?

3) Regurgitate quirky news items from BBC or Ananova.

a) Only in Germany - A bunch of snails walking across a road caused a six-car pile up!! Police closed the road while they scraped up the slimy remains of both living and crushed migrating snails on the B14 near Stuttgart. "Cars were crushing the snails and the slime was making the road so slippery that people started skidding all over the place, said one driver. Motorists had to stop and try to pick their way through the snails. It was like something from a horror film."

b) Paul Gascoigne has been sectioned under the mental health act for a second time.... what only twice?? Apparently the teary-eyed soccer has-been was reported as "acting strangely in Hemel Hempstead" - well, that explains it then, break out the straightjackets!!

With all the good will in the world.

I try to be a better blogger. I try to set time aside each day to read, write and comment on as many blogs as I can get through. In reality, I am just too frikking lazy or preoccupied to get on with it. I actually outprocrastinate myself by avoiding the tasks that used to keep me from doing other things by doing even more outlandish things like walking or drinking or gardening or heaven forbid.... shopping!!

And so it seems quite apt that I should continue my list of things to do when you can't be arsed to write a blog.....

2) A selection of "youtube" videos (Youtube videos in blogs is just about the laziest thing ever!!).

a) Simpsons are always a cheap shot. Here's every "couch" scene.....


b) In true Harry Hill style, here's some "you've been framed" type action.

Can't post, won't post

Sure, I've actually been quite busy for a couple of days.

Against MY better judgement, my mum decided that she wanted a "real" roof on the conservatory. This, of course, changes the idea of a conservatory into one of an unfinished, highly glazed, extension. Neither a stone constructed part of the house, nor a wood and glass sunny lookout post.

Anyhoo.....

For the last couple of days, it has of course, been pissing down with rain, and the moor-grime has been rolling in and out with alarming regularity. What better way to spend this time, than running up and down a ladder carrying roofing slates?

So that's where I've been.

Of course, seeing as the majority of the work is now done (I was just the helper in this respect - I can not be credited with actually achieving anything other than putting things where they should be, when they should be there) the weather has taken an altogether more red hot and sunny outlook!! Sod's law at work again..... where's that Tupperware® box gotten to?

Other than that, I've been trying to keep warm.... the central heating has made a comeback this week, due to the inclement weather conditions of course.... I've been playing Age of Empires.... the Wii Fit hasn't seen the light of day.....

I have booked a weekend away..... for me and my lovely lady friend..... we're off down that London, for an (as yet) undisclosed purpose that (contrary to all women's first guesses) does not involve proposal of marriage!! We're going in July, so that makes the next few months quite interesting with July being my little trip..... August is a trip out to my cousin's wedding (we were also double booked to go to a wedding in Marbella but you can't be in two places at the same time).... and September.... well, I'm led to believe that my much-better-half has organised some form of weekend away to celebrate my birthday. I only hope that pony trekking is not on the menu!!

Here is something you might post, if you couldn't be bothered to post....

1) A top ten list.

Ten things I hate.

* Comic Sans font.
* Misappropriated apostrophes (I try my best and I know I am not always right).
* Jumbled font sizes, colours, and types.
* Social Networking sites (myspace, friends reunited, facebook etc etc).
* Racism.
* Pop-ups.
* Spyware and Adware and spam.
* eGears and eDirectory (more to follow, still working on resolving an issue).
* Slugs (although conversely, I quite like snails!?!).
* Nordic walking poles!