Splash

A pool side party

I’ve always felt that Barbeques  are a bit over rated, in this part of the UK at any rate. Don’t get me wrong I’ve been to some excellent B-B-Q’s its just that around here they need to be spontaneous, The charcoal lit  because the weather is right (this is why our butcher is as skilled meteorologist as he is a butcher, he has to have a keen eye for the weather, its no use having a cool cabinet full of kebabs and burgers when all the customers want is warming stew and dumplings) It’s when they are planned weeks ahead that I get a little nervous, I’ve spent too many afternoons/evenings, not quite warm enough, for it to feel as relaxed as intended, a fleece  layer short of comfortable. So when it was announced that Joe’s year group were going to mark the end of their juniors school days, by not only having a B-B-Q, but that a open air  swimming pool had been hired for the occasion I was a little apprehensive, thinking it might be a long cold afternoon. But I needn’t have worried, what little bit of summer we’ve had , turned up right on cue

It would have been even better if I had remembered to take the polarising filter for the camera. But never mind

Goose

Blue and orange, complimentary colours, how could they fail to be pleasing on the eye.

A handsome family, although the parents were a little hissy if you got too close, geese can be aggressive and are sometimes used to guard property, on the Hebridean Island of Islay, they protect the distilleries, I feel sure McNoddy would approve

these domesticated geese were very much part and parcel of the small holding, but large flocks of wild geese can be a nuisance, in the USA you can call in the Geese police to deal with them, Moss the dog would consider this as a good career move.

On the subject of baby birds, Tom Reynolds, has his own little fluffy pigeon chicks to deal with are they cute or vermin? depends on your perspective I suppose and whether or not you have to clean up the poo.

Wood and Willow

Tom is a keen cricketer, he plays at school and for the village team; unfortunately for Tom, his Mum and Dad aren’t as up to speed with this very British game as he would like, but luckily his Grandma is, and she eagerly awaits news of the results of any fixtures. She played cricket at school, because there weren’t enough boys to make up a team, family legend has it that she fell down a flight of steps, because she had the pads on upside down, but it did nothing to put her off cricket especially village cricket, it seems once it’s in your blood, cricket is for keeps.

 

One of the problems of playing cricket up in the hills

is the lack of a flat pitch, here are the boys, notice the batsman appears to have no feet, this is because this pitch is best described as ‘terraced’, he’s way down the hill.

  

But even from the nets the view is green and pleasant, it’s rather a nice place to spend a sunny Sunday morning.

Faces

A final fistful of photographs from the carnival

 

Simply Beautiful

There was one float in the carnival that stood out from the rest, that of a local Thai restaurant, I felt the photos of it were best in a post of their own, so here you go.

 

 

They must have been frozen, it stayed dry, but it wasn’t that warm, a very clever piece of marketing I think.

Clowning around

 

Carnival day and so many colourful photo opportunities, Tom and I noticed how the people make an assumption that if you have a long lens on your camera, you must some how be, ‘professional’  and know what you are doing, in this case it was me that was clowning around the perception wasn’t the reality. But people certainly played up for the camera and we had a lot of fun.

On my Flickr site I put my ’squared circle’ photographs, in a ‘pool’, with other peoples ’squared circle’ photographs, the idea being you take a photo of something circular and crop it into a square; yes I know there is no end to the strange things people do on the Internet, and I do think sometimes that this pool is where all the train spotters went after they were cleared off the platforms, as some people seem very keen on collecting photographs of numbers, but it’s just a bit of fun, that makes you think, well occasionally in my case, about how you compose a photo (I never even saw the circle in this photo until I downloaded it, it’s not perfectly round, so maybe it will get rejected by the administrator, but I like the shot anyway

No words now  just photographs.

Keep the Receipt

I bought Tom some board shorts in anticipation of our summer holiday, here he is in action, skim boarding and looking as slim as as a stick of liquorice.

 

Having got them home we found that the metal security tag was still attached, not wanting to damage the fabric, trying to prise the thing off, I decided I would ‘Nip them back to the shop.’  A day or so later arriving in town, I glanced in the bag, to check I had got the receipt, only to find I hadn’t got the bag containing the board shorts, but a bag of old socks and underpants,  that I culled from the inner depths of Toms chest of draws….. Oh dear, that was close, well at least I didn’t stride into the shop and tip the lot out on the counter, now that would have been embarrassing.

So I try again, back to town, this time I double check: board shorts, check; receipt, check.  Confident I stride into the store, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeep goes the stores alarm as I pass by, heads turn. At the counter I tip out  the contents of the bag ‘Could you remove the security tag please, I’ve got the receipt’, then out of the folds of the shorts, scuttles a large spider, the shop assistant makes a vertical take off and shrieks far louder than the security alarm, it’s not so much that she doesn’t like spiders, this is more a phobic sort of reaction. ‘Oh dear, very sorry, it must have sneaked in whilst the bag was hanging around the house’ I explain, I scoop the shorts and the spider back in the bag, (I am concerned the assistant might be heading for a panic attack) ‘I’ll just take the spider outside shall I?’ I ask. I hurry back out of the shop, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeeep goes the alarm, heads turn. Outside I shake the spider off the shorts and it legs it off across the polished marble tiles of the shopping precinct, never have I seen a spider look more vulnerable than at that moment, it simply had nowhere to hide.

Back into the store, beep beep, beep, beeeep goes the store alarm, heads turn. The assistant  is still locked to the counter with a white knuckled grip and she is taking short, rapid, gasping breaths, ‘I’m very sorry about that, its gone now, honestly’ I explain. At arms length and handling the shorts like an unexploded bomb, she manages to pass the security tag over the device that releases it, ‘It’s OK, I’ll put them back in  the bag shall I?’ I offer helpfully. Quickly taking the shorts, the bag and the receipt I head for the door, thankfully, this time there is no beep beep beep. Now that was embarrassing

A Poke in the Eye

A poke in the eye with a sharp stick hurts; a lot, in a rather nauseating sort of way, I can vouch for this having taken a direct hit in my left eye from a woody piece of honeysuckle stem this morning.

I am rather fond of honey suckle, for its perfume, flowers and berries, a sort of ‘three in one’ good value plant, it grows near the garden gate and this year its growth has been prolific, but it’s become intent on trying to wrap you in a scented, and usually rain sodden embrace, every time you come through the gate.

So having decided that I would hack it to shape,  it fought back and thwacked me in the eye, the pain is now (after painkillers) a dull ache, but I think I’ve scratched the cornea, because my vision is blurred; I don’t think it is as bad as Mr Uhdd’s incident with a hawthorn branch last year, that resulted in two trips to A+E, but I’ll ‘keep an eye on it’ as it were.

On the domestic trivia front, the washing machine refuse to turn, leaving me with wet, soap sodden bath towels; Mr Entwhistle, the washing machine magician is coming tomorrow to wave his magic spanners over it, to try and coax it back into life, having got the aged family estate back from the garage today with a £585 bill (I know the car is still ‘cheap’ motoring, in the scheme of things, but my first whole car cost less than that) we can do with out the additional cost of a new washing machine, so lets hope he can fix it; in the mean time the house is filling with dirty laundry and tomorrow Tom arrives back from a school water sports trip with a kit bag that will undoubtedly be minging. The good news is that he has rung tonight to say he’s been sailing a ‘Dart 16′ in a force 6, and didn’t capsize once and that it was ‘mint’ , not words you would ever hear from his mother.

Technorati Tags: Dart 16, Honeysuckle, washing machines, garden, eye injuries

Bears in the Belfry

An unusual approach to fundraising for a parish church,

Take money off children and then throw their teddy bears off the top of the bell tower, it’s all in a good cause you understand.

But only after adding a parachute;

it caused some tense moments

But it was Ok in the end

No soft toys were injured in the raising of this dosh, although some bears were a little ‘hefty’, they never the less made a safe decent.

It wouldn’t be a church belfry with out bats ( I love and champion bats, well some one has to, they are very ugly) however a rather beautiful velvety bat glove puppet made an elegant decent before reinforcing the myth, that bats get caught in you hair,

they don’t; well not real ones, their echo location if far to sophisticated for such an error

There has been a church on this site since the 12th century, one of the bells, still hanging in the tower but no longer rung, was cast in 1506. I love to hear church bells across the valley . The clock doesn’t seem to work, but never mind, it’s just marking time and that passes with or without a clock; take a look at the window (now blocked up) from a much earlier period than the clock, and gargoyles that surround it, they have been watching the passing of time for many years now.

Technorati Tags: Bell ringing, Parish Church, Norman, Teddy Bears, Bats

The Sound of Silence

I’ve been running around like a

(Ok so it’s got a green bum not a blue, but you get my drift?)

It’s of my own making, well most of it. There are so many thing that interest me and my default setting is to get involved, a more liberal application of the words ‘NO, ask some one else’ and the adoption of a motto of ‘Never Volunteer’ might be a good idea. I thought that after the fell running epic things would ease up a bit but the combination of ‘end of term’ school events, work and study deadlines along with dealing with the ‘fall out’ from the actions of a ‘time stealing mischief maker’ (I am showing great restraint here, but I really can’t put in print how feel about the Muppet.) has gobbled up time and energy of late

A colleague has gone on holiday this week to a silent retreat, it has an appeal, a bit of Zen calm and tranquility; or does it, how on earth would I cope with 7 days of silence? no Internet, no text, no blogs, no radio, paper or news and worst of all no conversation; could I really hack it? What do you think, would you love it or loath it?

I think it sounds more than a bit scary, all that time with my own company, alone with my mind; goodness, knows what I might find lurking, I don’t think I’ll go there.

Excuse me I’ve got a stack of blogs to read, I’ll put the kettle on.