Sunday, May 13, 2007

McArthur Glen - very wet - very busy - 54F

The author of Picture 1 is an inveterate blog 'commenter' who occasionally complains that pictures on this blog are too brightly coloured. The word 'garish' has been hinted at.

He will prolly tell you all about the picture himself. Actually I like it. Stylish and imaginative. Perhaps a fraction could be 'cropped' from the left-hand side, so one's eye isn't drawn to the sombre grey bits. But it isn't my picture.

And I had Picture 2 all prepared and ready for the self-same Bungus. Best give his overstimulated retinal ganglions a break, I thought. I just happened to be around at first light when one of the garden solar-flares was still lit, so Nikon out and click. Hope this is subdued enough.


Anyway, I do owe him a genuine apology for misreading (twice) his 'comment' about the Gertrude Jekyll picture. I had read from ".......the roses look like overbright etc.," and completely missed the prologue. A coward's way out would be to plead 'pain & suffering' but the truth is, I didn't read carefully enough. And I've 'got form for it'.

Nice to hear from Anon1 and I hope they were supporting the winners, Serbia. No need to apologise for watching the Eurovision - it has become quite cult event. Tracy and friends have been known to make a real party of it, don fancy dress and consume lots of alcohol. Her home is so lovely and welcoming it's an event I wouldn't mind attending myself. Except for the alcohol of course. But Y and I could have a session on the alcohol-free lager I suppose, but I doubt if it would work quite the same.

Whilst on 'comments' I must also say 'snap' Madeline. In my igoogle homepage (can't shake off a mental picture of an igloo) I also went for the beach scene where the light changes in harmony with one's postcode. So clever! I wish the 'bus stop' and the 'town-scape' and the others did the same, perhaps eventually they will.

My Dad would have planted his runner-beans today. His dictum was "plant 13th of May, grow night and day". I think that in view of the earliness of the seasons nowadays he could have brought the even forward to 13th April. But a rhyme would have been tricky ! He did always produce an abundant crop though. And always Scarlet Emperor and always in the same place between the side-path and a wall - and these days one is supposed to move the bed each year. Oh well. Or Ho Hum as Ray says.

This afternoon, not being fit for a walk, we had an outing to McArthur Glen (one of these designer outlets), one junction up the M1. The weather remained awful but I bought 2 pairs of pyjamas and some chocolate gingers for Y. Then she bought me a toasted teacake and coffee. Then home.

A little snack for tea. And then a full evening's 'messing about'. Now my lappy will play DVDs I have one from Amateur Photographer which I would like to watch. Doesn't seem much on the proper telly.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I watched some of the Eurovision - like Terry Wogan's commentary, and the sort of petriotic scoring. Don't think we shall ever win again...I watched Rick Stein about Daphne du Maurier, followed by a drama about her (got bored with that and kept switching to Terry).

My father used to plant runner beans in the same place too - my job was to soak lots of newspapers in warm water to line the trench with - did your father do that too?

We had a day in a remote part of the New Forest today - looking at the house we are going to be house-sitting in for three weeks later on for friends. Very different to Chiswick - no shop for 3 miles, an Aga, and cows, ponies and donkeys looking over the garden fence, sheep in the driveway....it did stop raining about 2.00 nd the sun came out, which made everything look better! Plus we had had an excellent pub lunch with said friends. They have some of the most magnificent rhododendrons I have seen in a garden, such colours.

Unknown said...

I hadn't thought of igloo before, but now I'll probably think of it all the time! I didn't really like any of the other themes.
Thankfully, having no TV, I was spared the annual Eurovision farce. I didn't listen to it on the radio either. I heard Scooch interviewed shortly after their song was chosen and they were insufferable - that's my polite way of describing them! As for the song, words fail me!
Dear Bungus, I'm very sorry if you've inferred from anything I've said that you're "an old fuddy duddy". This is not what I think, so stop it! I'm glad, probably for the first time in my life, that I was taught Latin at school (I even got an 'O' Level). I'm definitely not 'sine macula', particularly as one of the meanings of 'macula' is 'spot' and I still get the occasional one, even at my advanced age!
My spell checker doesn't like Latin.

Anonymous said...

Picture 1 (Pens in a Pot) arrived in the camera by happenchance as a result of a macro experiment. It takes a critic of RadioG’s acuity to recognise its worth (could he be Brinsley’s own Charles Saatchi judgealike?).
With true artistic modesty I am happy to let the picture speak for itself.
Once more ‘Serendipity Rules’!

Picture 2 benefits from enlargement in my view. The brightness of the foliage, the snatch of forget-me-not blue and the accent of the solar light gain significance. Personally, I would crop about a tenth off the top (leaving but a sliver of light), the bottom and the right; and a fifth off the left.

Apology ungrudgingly welcomed. I can appreciate the time-saving value of skip reading, but it can be irritating (to a pedantic curmudgeon) when it is the essentials that are ‘skipped’!
I have the reverse fault of reading every word (at least once). This takes up an inordinate amount of time (which, as the man said ‘is relative’). As with batteries, the more you use the less you have left. Latest manifestation? A reluctance to set up a Telegraph Blog because the small print of the conditions seems to possibly remove author’s copyrights. I shall have to read it again – and again – and again…

Unlike RadioG, I am a TV addict. But I have no trouble whatsoever in not watching the Eurovision Song Contest. I know it can be addictive and provide a few laughs but compared with, say, the nailbiting compulsion of the closing matches of the recent Snooker Championship, it is dull dross indeed.

Runner beans touch a sore spot. I tried them for several years but never managed to produce a single ‘boiling’. Strangely, my climbing French beans were prolific.
Have I perhaps allowed RadioG an ‘in’ to mention once again my lack of success with onion sets?
But I don’t think crop rotation is a modern idea (Turnip Townsend springs to mind). Brassica planted after pulses benefit from residual nitrogen in the soil.

May I suggest that, for a few people, an Amateur Photographer DVD does not exert quite the pulling power of, say, ‘Corry’. ‘Kingdom’, ‘Dalziel’ and ‘Match of the Day’? But, ‘Whatever grabs you’. ي

PS for Madeline:
I failed Latin in School Cert but retain enough for it to be quite frequently very useful. I know 'Sine Macula' because it is the motto of Mount St Mary's School where a friend of mine was a boarder in the 40s. My Grammar school had 'Semper Eadem' (in Mansfield speak 'Yo' Moan't Alter') and the Girls' School's was 'Labor Omnia Vincit' which sounds very tedious.