This photograph was irresistable and I have called it"I've been framed"
I know - but it isn't possible to have too corny a title in photographic circles. Even the RPS !
The floods in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire are extremely bad but I'm not providing links or pictures because the media are covering it more than adequately. I agree with the Telegraph that it's nobody's fault and there is no-one to sue. Everyso-often we experience floods. Always have and always will I suppose. None of this should be construed as a lack of serious sympathy for those who are suffering. Bottled water has had a 'bad press' just recently but, when you can't drink that which comes out of the taps (if any does) what to do?
Also, the chorus of 'don't build houses in flood-plains' is a bit daft. We always have done from the Romans onwards. Prehistoric man seems to have had more sense, favouring caves halfway up hill-sides and hill-forts and the like. "Send the missus down to the stream with the leather bucket" has a certain ring to it.
To return to Banksy and 'comments'. I apologise for the typo and meant to say he has a 'brain' , rather than a 'brian' , but have decided not to edit it because it would make a nonsense of Bungus's and Jill's invisible childhood friends 'Raymond' and 'Dimsie Boy' respectively who both sound delightful and in Jill's case, saw her safely through the War. He sounds rather like a forerunner of 'Del Boy'. I feel sure our readers would love to hear more about both of them.As you will notice I have moved from Hollyhock to Honeysuckle for a flower study. Our common lonicera (all mixed in with the winter jasmine) is mostly where the sparrows live and is in full flush of flower with a super smell. Full of nectar and as a boy we used to go hunting for it to suck the sweetness. We used to make our own fun in them days
There were no proper sweets during the War but I hesitate to start the 'Melloids' thread again. David and family arrived safely in Weymouth with their caravan but how they managed to negotiate a dry route from here to there I don't know.Just to touch briefly on words that we suddenly latch on to their meaning and source. My best example for me is 'wildfire' which I always understood correctly, as something travelling uncontrollably fast. But it is as recently as a few years ago that I twigged it's source as 'wild' and 'fire'. Y has just had one. Until 2 days ago she never realised that St. Pancras was named after a saint of that name. She had always just accepted it as similar to Turnham Green.
I saw the Doctor this morning and she assures me that my pains are due to my back and decrepitude rather than the statins. She made the brilliant diagnostic point that, as it was just the left leg, the chronic pressure on my sciatic nerve would be responsible - the statins being ill-equipped to tackle one leg rather than both. Her remedy for when it becomes excruciating is to try to move it just before it becomes 'set'. She agreed this is difficult when asleep in bed. However, she has put my 'mind at rest' as she always does. My painful elbow is 'golfer's elbow' (medial epicondylitis) and, after I had described it, she pressed her thumb firmly on the exact spot. My yelp of pain confirmed her diagnosis!
My quote for the day is a biblical one, and topical at that :-
........" Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together.".......Psalms 98:8Have a good night's sleep everyone ...
2 comments:
What a very charming robin photo. I just missed a cracker of a thrush cracking a snail this evening.
Like you, I accept that the floods are nobody’ fault (hindsight is a wonderful weapon). Some of course would say they are God's doing; I think it may have been Lisa Simpson who put her hands together and said "Thank you God for sending the helicopter to rescue me after you had sent the wind that blew me into the river."
That said, I think any blog reader living between The Severn and Thames estuaries might think your comments a touch glib, despite your proviso.
As for building on flood plains, our LA has so far resisted applications for development on Ollerton’s water meadows, and quite rightly. These areas do act extremely usefully to soak up and dissipate excess water. And I would not myself knowingly buy a house built on a flood plain any more than I would choose to live below a dormant volcano.
‘Every so often we experience floods’ is true enough. But I cannot ever recall rainfall that has been so widespread, intense and ongoing. And in June and July too!
Well, fancy ‘brain’not ‘brian’!!!
I must now admit that ‘Raymond’ is a figment of my imagination. Not in childhood but last night. But if you would like me to make up some stories…?
And I don’t think it is just the ‘only child’ who has imaginary friends (I was reading today about someone who had three, and the family, on one occasion, had to turn the car around, having set off on holiday, to collect one who had been left behind. He was at the side of the road outside the house, with his suitcase).
Not just honeysuckle but clover too has a sweetness when sucked; and we dug for pignuts and ate hawthorn blossom (called ‘bread & cheese’ for some reason).
Teddy Dawson, however, put us all to shame by catching wasps in his bare hands, breaking them in half and sucking out their innards which he insisted were honey. He was only about 6 or 7 at the time and grew up to be a bricklayer.
I thought ‘St Pancreas’ was a partner for ‘Liver-pool Street’?
But, yes, words of which we fail to grasp the meaning are a treat when we have that blinding flash.
When I had 'epicondylitis' in the 1970s it was called ‘Tennis' elbow but no less painful for that.
I had to learn to pull pints left-handed and it was impossible to pick up anything heavier than a half-full teacup.
I got it through shovelling coal, as I recall.
It is always a pleasure to welcome new contributors but I feel obliged to let Joshua know that I am not into 'loving one another' sight unseen.
As a pagan with Buddhist or Hindu tendencies, I am more an indiscrimnate lover of creepy-crawlies (which does not mean that I want to go to bed with scorpions and tropical centipedes).
Ro has had bad attacks of tennis elbow - it started when he pick-axed up a lot of cement foundation. He swears by acupuncture for it, cures it in 3 or 4 sessions. Daughter Carie is also a sufferer, possibly due to all this mosaicing, she is another devotee of acupuncture too. It's a question of finding a really good practitioner - they share the same one.
Good news is that Mac is back at full-time work, pain-free as long as he is a bit careful, first time in 9 years. Still doing the swimming/pilates/exercises though.
My dimsie boy was very real - I was very upset when he didn't have his own gas-mask, then my grandfathr procured one for him. He accompanied me when evacuated to various places, and when we slept on underground stations and in the shelters on Clapham Common. Perhaps he gave me a feeling of stability, being an only child and being moved around
a lot and not seeing my father for six years all contributed?
The word that fascinates me is 'haberdashery' - cannot tie that up with ribbons and cottons, etc.etc.
I do hope you don't start having adverts, what for, stair-lifts? I'm a bit choosy too, when it comes to loving other people.....
Post a Comment