Trying not...

I'm trying not to say "Oh blimey, it's Thursday already" but oh blimey, it's Thursday already!

I took a friend of mine out fishing yesterday - to give him an Arctic Fox style introduction to the noble art.....  and although it rained....and it rained.... and we were alright until the wind changed direction and the two of us impersonating drowned rats had to hang onto one of the umbrellas to keep one of us from going all Mary Poppins.......  He loved it!

We had a good day, but it's taken a very hot day and the hours until just now to dry my gear out.

We've pencilled in another trip for Sunday.

Now, back to my gardening.... having just spent a half hour in the company of grass trimming equipment in the exact colour of orange of your dreams....  I do still maintain that I'm a lazy gardener.

My garden's wildlife-centric or so I tell anyone who would care to comment on the strands of sticky willie and buttercups gone to seed.  The crops that grow beneath the bird feeders.  The borders that were once pin sharp are now beyond blurred.... they're positively overflowing.

Occasionally I walk round my garden with some secateurs..... sometimes with a kitchen knife..... I poke at this plant or prod this weed.... in fact, I even go as far as to not call my weeds weeds, because everyone knows weeds are just wild flowers in places they're not meant to be.  I pull something up that looks like it might be choking a more desirable thing..... and I generally just show the living rectangle out front of my house who's boss!

I find it therapeutic right up until the point it starts to resemble work.... and then I go and play computer games or something.

Anyway..... the reason why I'm motivated to write another bloody boring garden blog, is that today, during one of my fist shaking type garden rants, where I am trying to tell it to behave but it's not listening..... I noticed something which simply enforces my "laid back" approach to gardening.....

Now, bearing in mind it's August, and in fact, having just consulted my calender realised it's MID August.....  I noticed a couple of pots in the garden that still have winter bedding plants in them..... and not only are the plants STILL alive..... they're actually starting to do quite well.....  just goes to show.... if you hang onto something for long enough it DOES eventually come back into fashion..... now where's my sheepskin waistcoat?

some sort of pansy or summat

a primula

They say....

Make hay while the sun shines is what they tell me, and whilst I have no fields, nor do I have grass quite long enough for the purpose of turning into animal feed, it did seem fitting to mow the lawn as the skies darken around me.

In true British fashion, I find myself blogging about weather!  Idiot!

I've mown the lawn and strimmed a little bit around the edges.  I've put a few more stones onto my little dry stone wall in the garden where the tree-that-used-to-be, used to be.  I've pulled up a few buttercups and puled out a load of daffodil and bluebell leaves that were going yellow and rotten.  I've weeded between a particularly overgrown patch of flagstones..... and then sat down and drunk coffee in my garden.

Following on from that..... I took a few photos, and organised some software so that I could make a Hockney-esque photo mosaic or "joiner" as he calls them.... and this small process has taken me the rest of the day - time flies when you're tinkering with computers!!

Anyhoo.......  without further ado..... here's my first effort at creating a joiner..... which also displays the fruits of my hard work in the garden....... see how nicely all that ties together now?

Smoking

This hot weather is too much!

Imagine if you would, a film named "Some like it quite warm" and you'll be somewhere near my thoughts.

I need variety.

Too much sun makes everyone go crazy.

For some reason it also brings out the boy racers and motorbikes that see the sun as an excuse for tear-arsing past my house.

I've spent the entire day, out in the garden, surrounded by a positive plethora of piscatorial paraphernalia!

I've washed and oiled, tidied and reorganised, unpacked and re-stowed all my worldly tackle!

Rods, reels, bait, weights, floats, hooks, cloths, wheels, handles, nets, boxes, bags, tubs, sticks, arms, heads, catapults, wallets, tubes, tools, they've all been spread round the grassy area I laughingly refer to as a "lawn", like an explosion in a fishing tackle factory!

And so, just like when I fish, it would appear that one side of me has seen more of the sun today than the other.....  my right arm's slightly singed and tingling and a bit crimson, and the left hand side is fine..... no doubt I also have "sunglasses" lines round my panda eyes and lines where the arms have gone over my ears!!  This is what happens when you sit for too long in the sun without actually thinking about being sat in the sun!!

I spent the final hour or two of the afternoon reading a book and nodding off, safe in the knowledge that both arms were being equally toasted, and that my next fishing trip will be quite pleasantly organised - it's so much easier when everything is where it should be.... Part of the "art" of fishing is that once you get sat down and fishing, you should have everything readily to hand without getting up and stomping up and down the bank looking for this or that, or indeed the other!!

So I've got a red neck.... a red arm..... some tidy fishing gear..... and a shed with a roof......

On the subject of "the shed" - as is so often the case, when I asked my friend, John, to come and help me fix the roof.... it soon became apparent that:

a) The floor fell out of the shed!

b) Half the back fell off the shed!

c) Lots of other bits fell off the shed!

Thanks to John we managed to get it all done..... we put a new lower frame into the shed, a new floor, a new panel at the back, a new frame for the roof, new felt on the roof, and some extra bracing and structural suppor..... it's good to go, and we put a little base down to raise the shed off the floor so it doesn't sit in it's own pool of piss, quietly rotting away any more!

Don't get me started on "shed envy"! (caution contains gratuitous shed shots)

Poorly shed......

Poorlier shed.... John surveying the rotten floor - shed on side propped up :(

Shed on the mend!

Shed looking better!

Shed best!

Hand - floor - armour

As a child I was never much into the game of charades....  perhaps it was the thought of Lionel Bleurgh, Una Stubbs and their "jobbing" luvvie friends cavorting merrily on-screen with their secret handshake Da Vinci code style clues.....  i.e. They had a series of repeated actions that you would never find in any other game of charades, like when they touch their nose and point to the person who said the correct word that they had been miming to suggest that they had got it right.....  Twaddle of the highest calibre, and SO overly camp!

Anyhow......

I  DID say I was never much into it... but that doesn't mean we never played it.....

For one thing, as a child, how are you supposed to know if, let's say for instance, Lord of the Rings is a TV show, a film, a book, a play or a song or indeed any combination of the above!  I bet Lionel and Una never had to argue that there had never been a TV series of Lord of the Flies.......  ridiculous concept then.

I only have two memories (and they may well be clues as to why we didn't play it much).....

When someone tried to mime the hit TV show "Panorama" we managed to arrive unconvincingly at "hand-floor-armour" and I think the game was over shortly thereafter.....

Another game of equal success left us with a very firm suggestion that "Emu-gin soldiers" was actually a book and a film, only to be let down by the final answer of "Virgin Soldiers" - Again.... a decent "mimer" could really have given us kids something to think about with that one!!

And all this tomfoolery and shennanigoats leads me to the following......

Whilst in the Lake District recently, I took some photographs - I posted a link to this flickr set yesterday.... but today I've added something very special to that set......

A selection of hand-floor-armours!

night night

just wanted to show off the fruits of my labour - an experiment with a filter and a tripod yielded this lovely moonscape tonight.

Good night all!

oh go on then.... here's a crop of it...... self indulgent idiot that I am.....

Bit of sorting

My mate John is back from his holidays in New Zealand.  He's been out there to catch up with his son, daughter-in-law and his grandkids.  By all accounts he's had a good time and even managed to squeeze a bit of time in with my cousin (John's nephew) and his wife who were travelling (note to spell checker - I like to spell "travelling" with double L - it's not a crime) there from Edinburgh on honeymoon.

Before John went to New Zealand I lent him my old digital camera with a decent memory card so he could take some photos - he's been before but didn't take pictures, and I think it's a shame, especially with his grandkids and stuff.  Anyway I lent him my old Samsung Digimax, which is only a 3 megapixel or something but it's great for point-and-click holiday snaps.

I gave John the relevant bits of information about making sure the camera was set to "easy" and to half-press the shutter button to make the focus and how to zoom in and out and all that guff and promptly sent him on his way.

John came round this morning with the camera and we sat and sifted through his 250 (or thereabouts) photographs looking for ones that worked and ones that didn't and picking ones that he might want to send to people and ones that he might want to put on his wall and ones that should never see the light of day again etc etc - I'm sure anyone who uses a digital camera will agree.... far too few pictures ever get actually printed out any more - our social history is about to fail in this respect!!  PRINT MORE PICTURES PEOPLE!!

We eventually narrowed the selection down to about 130 that were fit to print and I copied them onto a usb stick to print out at Asda (other supermarkets DO exist) and off we went.

When we got to Asda we decided to get the photos printed by the lab because - and here is some screwy maths to go with it - self service is 35p each (133 prints = £46.55) - 1 hour service is 20p each (133 prints = £39.90) - 2 day service is 15p each (133 prints = £19.95) .......  So significant savings to be made.... until you discover that 200 prints on the 2 day service comes in at 5p each .......

So we quickly undo all our good work and sorting.... add back all the ones we DON'T want printing and deselect a random few and opt for 202 images on a 2 day service at 5p each (202 prints = £10.10) and THAT my friends is not only a bargain, but also strange economies of scale!

When it's cheaper to print the images you don't want than it is to not print them.... you have to start questioning your own ability to make cups of tea!  If you use digital cameras - get 200 pictures together and go and get them printed out for a tenner - it's money well spent and may preserve a little slice of social history - when your hard disk or memory stick fails, you'll be glad you listened to me and so will future generations when they look back at our antiquated civilisations!

PRINT:

Also as a complete "freebie" here's a random Flickr set of mine!

Chamone Michael.

The one gloved, plastic surgery experimenting one, is no more. Fifty years of age is pretty damn young for the king of pop to pop his clogs.... I hope someone has the good sense to let the Big Brother contestants know this sad news!!!!!

As for me.... well. I've been taking LOADS of photos..... been walking a bit..... beat the blind, old aged pensioners, to a pulp on the crown green bowling surface.... got drunk..... and today, I've been baking, and baking, and then baking a bit more.

I've made chocolate brownies, hokey pokey coffee cake, and some sundried tomato and parmesan bread. I still need to ice my cake and sort out the walnut praline for it, but other than that it's a wrap!!

Going out for some noodles tonight. Big Brother eviction night too - woohoo!!


The view across Foxstone Moss - Ironically, I never even knew of our foxy connection. I would have normally referred to this location as Buckstones, but am much happier now I've actually looked it up. It's just more cotton grass.

Say it a bit louder.....

.... make you feel a little bit better.

What a hot day it's been.

I spent the morning practicing a few things that I've recently learned about my camera. Having spent a day on an "improver's" camera course, I've been inspired to point my camera in every direction at every opportunity. Lots of bad photos and a very few decent ones.

This all ties in with the fact that I didn't manage to win a spot on the Colne Valley calendar competition with any of the six shots I sent them!!!! (insert sad smiley here) There were 58 entrants, each submitting six photos and they only could pick thirteen of them, so I guess the odds were against me...... All entries will be exhibited though in September and October, so at least that's something.

I gave up walking and taking pictures when it got too hot. I retreated to the relative comfort of my local bowling club (see bowling cam) for refreshment, and indulged in a couple of handpulled Webster's Best Bitter.


Buzz buzz buzz buzz honey bee, honey bee, do what you like but don't sting me. A piece of clover with a waxy legged bumble bee near Ringstone Edge Reservoir. Just one of a series of shots taken using "manual" camera settings - I'm finally venturing away from the "auto" stuff and getting a bit more creative - twenty two quid well spent on the course then!!

Only...

Just a two DAY absence this time.... beats the previous record of two months by a country mile!!

Been farting about with my crappy webcam, and have now managed, without the assistance of any crappy third party and their crappy free webspace, to get a bowling green webcam back up and running. Simple things and all that. There's possibly too much crap and farting in that last sentence to be very healthy really. I'm sure that Dr. John Harvey Kellogg would approve quite heartily.

My crappy webcam now has some unbeatable refresh rates.

Next thing to fix is the music......

I'm disappointed that nobody was arsed, or had a relevant sign-in ID to comment on my Scotland photos..... boo hoo..... Saying that, even when emailed to my relatives, they never even acknowledged that they had looked at the pictures either!! You have to wonder why you bother sometimes.

Cheerie-bye-the-noo.

Ahem.

Well, you probably haven't even noticed, but I haven't been here for quite some time.

I haven't been doing all that much in the interim period, but I have been simply too busy doing nothing to get round to "tweaking" my blog.....

It all started when I cancelled my domains and then the picture links stopped working and so it goes on..... and before you know it there are so many little things that need looking at and fixing and generally pissing about with that I get overfaced and consequently..... do nothing!!

So now......

I've fixed my profile picture.... I've still to fix my crappy webcam, which will probably involve just deleting it........

I have managed to put a little photo gallery together of a recent trip that I went on to Scotland. You can view a slideshow of it here or jump directly to the photo album here.

Following....

Following on from a spate of recent beer festival action that would make a Trappist Monk blush, I'm currently to be found engaged in the noble art of roofing.

I'm at my Aunty and Uncle's house near Lincoln, surrounded by fields and a veritable cornucopia of wildlife.

More to follow.



Fairly plain, but I think effective photograph of the road by Blackmoorfoot Reservoir. Possibly, in fact, an unnamed road!! Taking whilst walking there on Sunday or Monday... I'm old and I forget.

Earwig.

Earwig oh again......

Here we go again .... geddit??

It's like a dingbat but more moronic.....

That's what you get when you get a drunken fox blog......

Yesterday's Examiner dingbat was:

O _ e r _ t _ o _

I came up with several ideas but the most serious one I could come up with was "painless operation" and if that's the case, whoever thinks these things up needs sacking!! Is "painless operation" a well known phrase or saying?? If so.... here is my response, in dingbat form:

abracadabra o_er_t_o_ not your posterior!!

Translated - spoiler (highlight it to see it): magic painless operation my arse!

Idiots.

The Old Ship Inn's first beer festival in Brighouse today... I'm glad to say that I made it there to sample their fine array of ales..... not all of them good, but then not all of them ordered by me.... miraculously - most of the ones I ordered were brilliant..... highlights:

Golcar - Dark Mild.
Elland - 1872 Porter.
Marble - Chocolate.
Marble - Ginger.
Brass Monkey - Silverback.
Brass Monkey - Monkey Pooh.

At a paltry two quid a pint on all the festival beers.... g'wan and fill thee boots.

Just a quick note to Emma - I love it when someone enjoys a punchline as much as I do..... magic cock my arse!!



I have lost count of the number of photos I've taken at Cupwith Reservoir, but here it is.... ANOTHER and one unlike any other.... melting snow and ice on some lovely colourful moss at the side of the water. Suck it up.

Starting....

I'm starting to annoy myself.

Firstly, I'm beginning to think my house may be haunted. Strange bumps, creaks, moans and groans abound in this place. Sitting on the sofa tonight it actually felt like an animal of some sort jumped up on the sofa and sat beside me.... I don't believe in ghosts..... this is an old house though and the more time I spend here, the more it takes on its own character.

Secondly, I can't stop slaying zombies!!

Having recently (Thanks to Al) got my Nintendo Wii "chipped" with a Wiikey V2 - I've discovered a whole raft of new games to play.... for the most part I'm desperately trying to scramble over the finishing line of Resident Evil 4. Other titles that are gracing my living room are "Onechanbara - Bikini Zombie Slayers" and "Dead Rising - Chop Till You Drop" - I frequently dream about being a Japanese schoolgirl armed with a samurai sword and whipping the heads off people out walking in the park.

Just in case I might tire of zombie slaying or go a bit too psychopathic..... I've lined up Rapala's Fishing Frenzy (I bloody love a good fishing game), Samba De Amigo (a game that allows you to skillfully follow the career path of the maraca shaking Bez from the happy Mondays), and last but not least Tiger Woods 09 (web enabled multiplayer golf game).

Between the Wii and my laptop-enabled TV for watching movies (via that lovely 2m (6ft) Atlona VGA to RGBHV (BNC/RCA) breakout HDTV cable from San Jose) and sorting out all my photographs and files and managing the bloody computers that house everything.... well, it's almost a full time job aint it??



Getting a good photo on the canal is literally like "shooting fish in a barrel" or indeed relates firmly to "sitting ducks". I just liked this photo.... looks like the duck's actually laughing at us. You decide.

Refreshing change.

It's not often I blow someone else's trumpet. I make an odd exception today.

Today marks the launch of a new website called Freeze Frame. It's a collection of digitised images of polar expeditions between 1845-1982. Some of the images are so rare (on glass plate negatives for example, and purchased with a lottery grant to preserve them) that we would otherwise never get to see them.

There are some great pictures on there and it's a great archive of historic images - some great images from the Scott expeditions. As you can imagine, on the day of launch, it's very difficult to get anywhere near the website.... I'm sure it'll settle down and we'll all get to view these great images.

Go and have a look for yourself, but don't get too frustrated with the speed of it!!

As for me.... well I've been out with my own camera (again) and taken some almost "passable" shots today... a good thing.



One of two.... a snowdrop shot from the recent photography class that I went to. This is the image that was billed as the "snowdrop shot of the day". I quite like it, but there's a little bit of fault in the focus to my eyes.... Personally I prefer the second shot of the two, which you'll see at some point soon. Spring springing.

Bloody Sunday.

A depressing day is Sunday. I used to think it was a depressing day because it's the weekend wind-down back into work mode, but as I currently don't work, then that can't be the case. What a crappy day it is.

For some reason, my blogger wasn't working today.... and that's annoyed me a bit.

Just stopping by to give a list of things I've been watching lately.....

Currently viewing: Prisoner Cell Block H season 1 - A great Antipodean blast from the past. Actually I noticed that the date stamp on the episodes is 1979 which of course makes it thirty years old. I bloody love it.... Vinegar tits, Lizzie Birdsworth, Bea, Doreen and the gang..... Fabulous and stands the test of time, despite the wobbly walls and decidedly dodgy wallpaper!!

Recently viewed: Early Doors - Seasons 1 & 2 - A not very widely viewed comedy when it first aired. I think it was during my "quiz night" period with spice-the-cat and Lenny..... it's fabulously funny, dry, grim, and extremely northern!!

Currently viewing: The Complete Goofy 1939 - 1961 - Worth watching just for the Motor Mania episode featuring the Jekyll and Hide type Mister Walker and Mister Wheeler characters.

Cued up for viewing: Futurama - Bender's Game; Futurama - Into the Wild Green Yonder.

Recently viewed: Extras seasons 1 & 2 - Extremely rib tickling Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant (who I actually prefer to Ricky Gervais) Bafta award winning sitcom - it ticks all the boxes before you even start watching and continues to do so all the way to the end - I (guiltily) managed to get through the 12 episodes over two days.

Recently viewed: Lipstick on Your Collar - Ewan McGregor's first "major" role in this Dennis Potter made-for-tv suez crisis based war office serial. I can imagine you've already switched over by now.... but stick with it.... I remembered it from being on the tellybox in 1993 and decided to look it up again - I'm not sorry I did. Quirky and pretty unpredictable rock-n-roll extravaganza.



Don't feed the animals - they'll end up stuffed!! A distant cousin on the recent photography course.

Excuses.

This blog entry is just an excuse for me to imitate Ron Jeremy and to blow my own trumpet a little. But then if I can't blow my own trumpet on my own blog, I'd like to know where else I might go to do it.

I've been on a "digital photography for beginners" course at Oakwell Hall near Birstall.

Now, based on the fact that I provide a digital photograph on my blog almost every day..... you might be wondering why I am going to a beginners class.... I must admit, I asked myself the same question.

It;s difficult sometimes to judge your own level of something. Alright, so I know I take lots of pictures, and I know that ninety nine percent of them never see the light of day, but it's all guesswork..... Sometimes it works for me and sometimes it doesn't.

Time to get back to basics.

Glad I went actually..... It's been a good day..... I think I've gained a little knowledge and a little confidence out of it....

The proof of the pudding, is of course, in the eating, and the photos I've taken today have actually been slightly better than my usual bunch.

A good source of inspiration.



Now, everyone today took photos of the snowdrops. I took snowdrop photos too. The course instructor admitted that he thought mine were the best ones.... and so, I give to you.... some blossom in a tree.... I don't even know what sort of blossom it is.... nice bokkeh though. I've booked on the next course that takes us a bit further into manual camera settings.

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.

Victor!

As I get older, I am constantly reminded by those around me that I have an increasingly similar disposition to that of Victor Meldrew. I have an alarmingly shortening fuse, terminal bad luck, and an immeasurable amount of bile which seems to spout forth from my vocal chords under its own angry volition.

Things happen to me and I have no tolerance for it to simply wash over the top. I used to be quite laid back.... I was one of those horizontal people.... If I laid back any further you'd have called it a cartwheel.

So what's my gripe today?

I took the plunge and ordered some carefully researched walking boots from an online store. The delivery went fine, the communications were acceptable, the product is in good working order....... they are just a whole size too small for my feet. I look at my trainers.... size 11.... I look at the boots.... size 11..... I look under my feet.... size 11...... ah well, I'll just roll over, accept that not everyone's definition of size 11 is the same, return them (at my own expense) and get the next size up.......

Insert blue air here!!

So, there's a size 11...... and the next size up is...... 12.5!!!!

Oh crimminy!!

Need Assistance? Live Chat - Offline.

Say no frinking more!!

(I also payed for them using PayPal so the refund won't be simple either)



Why do you think he removes their skins, Agent Starling? - I love the blue skies that we get as we head towards winter. Clear, crisp, low slung, powder blue. I also have a fascination with power lines and pylons. When you really take time to look at things like this (the picture) it makes you realise we're a funny species on this planet! Nettleton Hill power lines and a starling.

Dog house!

I'm in the frikking dog house for going out drinking.

You know the score.... one of them afternoon sessions turns into one of them evening sessions .... turns into one of them playing on the Nintendo Wii sessions.... and I promised to sleep over but it's too late and there's no way I can drive anywhere and I bit my tongue eating a Nik-Nak crisp sarnie..... etc etc.

There were surely something much wittier and humorous than this to write, but you also got the bum rush.

Sorry!!

If you leave me now!! - Still life or a landscape.... whatever the frik you want to call it. It's a bunch of leaves in the woods at Upper Greetland - Let's call it art - the glossy finish on them makes it all the worthwhile of course!!

Smash it.

Watching "Celebrity Come Dine With Me" tonight on TV.... I am treated to Caprice (Vacuous model type), Nicky Clarke (Foofy hairdresser type), Nancy Sorrell (Wannabe celebrity type that sounds like a man) and Jimmy Osmond (Long haired lover from Liverpool type) all enjoying a series of dinner parties together.

The time has truly come to smash TV. To kill it. Those rockstars of days gone by that hurled TV from hotel windows surely had the right idea.

I did watch it until it made me so mad that I plucked out my eyeballs with a corkscrew.

There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, it's probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. It fool me. We can't get fooled again. - G W Bush!



A very oldie, but still one of my favourite pics that I have snapped. Using my old Samsung camera when I used to live in Birky, I caught a humble-bumble on my sage plant. A memory of summers past.