Monday, January 21, 2008

Arnold Charity Shops - Lunch with Joan

Having mentioned these chinese beach-scene pictures which Reg sent, I thought you might like to see them. That grey haze can only be atmospheric pollution. The pictures have been stuck together in Photoshop, not that they merge, but this way it only counts as one picture in my PicasaWebs account. Not that I'm anywhere near my limit but I don't like wasting space. That frugality probably accounts for some of my resistance to RAW files.

p.s. Brian has just sent me more of the chinese-holiday pictures. please click they are horrendous. Note the MacDonalds parasols though!

This morning I had two blood-tests, a 'fasting' one for my cardiovascular bits, and the other for my warfarin-inspired blood thickness, or lack of it. Then we went to Arnold and I attacked the charity shops while Y had a more civilised mooch. We actually bumped into each other in the remaindered book shop; so our interests are not completely divergent. Charity-shop acquisition snaps may follow tomorrow.!

After that we collected Joan and she took us for lunch at the Restaurant near Sherwood Lodge on the A60. It used to be a steak-house but has now been converted to a 'carvery' at £3.50 a head. What can I say without sounding ungrateful? The surroundings and ambience were first rate and the meal was a £3.50 meal, not a £12.50 one! But fine. Joan is always good company and we had good chats and laughs. Her Mum and Dad are wearing her down though and her deep-seated cough and chest problem seem to be getting worse not better. The snap has been photoshopped, obviously, but my aim was to emphasize the important bit, whilst fading the setting. You opinions will be valued.

Comments...... Thanks Madeline for your almost 'scholarly monograph' about the 'cataloguer' clue.
As I remember, you are a fairly cool-cat yourself. ..with your music interests. Thanks for the WordWeb link. I've had a peep, and bookmarked it. The one I currently use, please click, has the advantage of being permanently there on my igoogle homepage.

Ray (Ourstanley) also solved the clue but e-mailed me rather than adding a 'comment'. I wish he would sometimes treat us to a gem though; it would be fun.

Thanks your entertaining comment Bungus and for the foodie stuff. You are quite right that I share Sandra's aversion to the threatening & gloomy on the telly, let alone the violent. Which by a circuitous route leads me to:-

Quotation for the day....................

"Let not the sands of time get in your lunch"



National Lampoon
.......Tomorrow is Y's 'hair' day and then we are going over to Wollaton to have lunch with Margaret. She hasn't been too well either, so we aim to check in the morning before setting off. Y has just brought me my 'sweet', pineapple jelly including pineapple chunks. It looked rather like 'pineapple on the rocks' and tastes delicious. Sleep tight folks. Catch you tomorrow.....


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why in the heck would you want a comment from moi ? Anyway as you can see I've 'commented' shortly after you updated the page. Why ? Beacause I'm reading this in my new freeware reader RSS Bandit. That's the only gem I've got at the moment if anybody is interested. All the best Graham. :)

Anonymous said...

A Grrr prevented me viewing the additional China pics but I cannot think I missed much!

How did your £3.50 carvery, at what used to be known as the Seven Mile House or Halfway House (halfway between Mansfield and Nottingham, and what a pity it changed its name) compare with the similarly priced Pensioners’ Special at the Snooty Fox?
I am not greatly impressed with the photoshoppng but might be if I could see the original!

Sandra was stricken with a flue type bug this morning; got up, made a pot of tea and went straight back to bed until 10.00 pm when she rose again to dress Ralph’s leg wounds (a result of carpet burns). It has been necessary for me to avoid her to prevent my being infected and, therefore, I have been leaving cups of tea and coffee at the bedroom door.
Apart from there being no hockey mask, it’s a bit like living with Hannibal Lecter *; I leave the drinks outside the bedroom and she collects them after I have gone downstairs. Stephanie has called in a couple of times (also providing drinks plus a packet of crisps) and no doubt will do the same tomorrow.
* I watched ‘Red Dragon’ but thought it inferior to the ‘Manhunter’ version with Brian Cox as HL (pre ‘Silence of the Lambs’).

Sadly, I was as unconvinced and disappointed as expected with the denouement of ‘Messiah’.
Although he is OK in secondary roles, I'm afraid I can never quite believe in Mark Warren, as I could not believe in Richard Attenborough in his early film roles.

And finally, in lighter mood, a Woody Allen quote from 1972:
“I don’t know if you’ve read my book, ‘Advanced Sexual Positions, How to Achieve Them Without Laughing…?’ ”

Unknown said...

I'm not sure why you're baffled by the 'ue' in 'cataloguer', Bungus. A cataloguer is someone who compiles a catalogue. The 'we hear' part of the clue takes care of the spelling, otherwise the answer might have been 'catalogger'.
An example of the spelling clue could be 'A sore part of a window, we hear'. the answer would be pane, where 'sore part' would indicate 'pain'. It's not a very good example, but it's the best I can do at the moment!
I like the Thesaurus.com link RG, but I'll stay with WordWeb I think. It has an icon in the Notification Area and can be opened with a click; it is also available off-line.
I hope your blood tests will have satisfactory results.
I don't think I would enjoy Chinese beaches!

Anonymous said...

A Grrr also prevented me from seeing the Chinese beach pictures. I even signed into Googlemail but still no pictures so I'm not sure what I failed to do. I did, however, find the following article from 2004 on the New York Times website. It would seem. from the pictures RG has posted on the blog, that the beach was NOT at all crowded at the times the photos were taken.

"QINGDAO, China, July 25 - Zong Zhizhong peered from behind his blue wraparound sunglasses on Saturday afternoon at the spectacle that was No. 1 beach. The ocean was filled with thousands of people. The brown strip of sand was clotted with a sun-screened tangle of humanity.
Mr. Zong, 41, a lifeguard, put the crowd at 50,000 people, maybe 60,000.
He was not impressed. "Today is not crowded," he said. After all, he noted, the sky was cloudy and gray. By afternoon it had started raining
Only in China could a crowd equal to the population of a small American city frolic on sand the size of three football fields and be categorized as a light turnout. But Mr. Zong said that as many as 200,000 people had shown up on sunny days. His measuring sticks are the sea and the sand; if you can see them, it is not that crowded.
"When it's really crowded, you can see heads all over the water," he said. "The lifeguards can't even use the boats. They can only swim out and swim back."
He gestured toward some narrow stretches of vacant sand and said that on busy days every square inch of beach seemed covered by flesh.
"Sometimes at night you can't walk a straight line," he said."

I particularly like that last line; it's reminiscent of Nottingham on a Saturday night but that has nothing to do with crowds.

£3.50 carverys/carveries seem to be the rage around our neck of the woods; we had a not very good one last night at Underwood. We shall not go again.

Sorry, RG, but I'm not sure your Photoshoppery resulted in an emphasis on the main bit. I wonder if the faded bit just need darkening down (I nearly said "burning in") but I'm now starting to go into camera club judge mode. The important thing is whether you feel you have achieved your aim.

Rob

Anonymous said...

I can't seem to get the Chinese link working either. Still I think the others give us a fair idea of what it's like. Not a beach that I would like to visit as somewhere like that would be my worst nightmare. Not too sure as to the effrect on the piccie and if it adds anything to it but your mastery of photoshop puts my attempts way in the shade.

Pete