Sunday, May 04, 2008

Short walk - Cloudy but only shower

I managed a short walk, with wheels, along the Brinsley Headstocks disused Railway Line and came upon these magic tulips. Not photoshopped - just there by Vine Cottage (I believe) referred to in this link as once belonging to Lawrence's Aunty Polly. The linked page shows the front of the cottage.

It is a little tedious for Y having to walk at my pace - but I have to study the flora and fauna and listen to the birdsong !

Picture 2 is courtesy of Reg from last weeks WoW at Highfields.

Who can spot the most faces? I can see a boxer-dog on the left hand stump. Maybe we need the software used for face-recognition in modern compact cameras. The whole image looks rather warlike to me with the right hand stump resembling a clenched fist ! I've just looked again at the thumbnail - perhaps it's Bugs Bunny?

Talking of modern compact cameras leads me to Picture 3 from John who is off touring in his camper-van.

The snap is the old fort at Carcassonne, France and was from his mobile phone camera and sent to me via a text message. The quality amazes me and we oldies can only sit back in wonderment.

I was pleased to see however that the 'main door to the fort' is in the golden-section. Must be his genes.

Had a nice chat to David this morning and they are all fine. Except that Helen's neck is still troublesome. I wish the girl could have some pain-free time with it.

Tracy is coming tomorrow and I'm cooking her favourite lamb chops accompanied by mashed potato with swede. Plus the inevitable onion-sauce and carrots and greens and things.

Comments...... Jill ..... Welcome back and of course we've missed you ! Sorry the cruise didn't match previous ones but the 'upside' of good food, a balcony with chairs and a table and such lovely accommodation sounds idyllic. Mind you, if I snored and grunted, Y would probably make me sleep out on the balcony.

Bungus ...... I didn't make myself clear over the bullfinches - implying that you already had them. What I wanted to say is that I hoped you weren't to be subjected to a raid. Thanks for finding my curser and shouting 'HOME'. He returned unscathed and is dashing about the screen looking for links and radio buttons.

It is a relief that your Blackbird (blackleg?) flouted Union rules over the issue of the dawn-chorus. He would no doubt be joined by the Robin, who also accepts no restriction on working hours.

Office is just a generic name given to a set of Microsoft tools such as Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint etc., - don't worry about it !

Quotation ..... It's this time of year, and Fern Hill is one of my favourite poems. Here are the opening lines :-
"Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green"
Dylan Thomas

Not much planned for tomorrow, except TJ for lunch. They don't do blood tests on Bank Holidays. Might try another short walk with the wheels. Sleep tight and I'll catch you tomorrow.




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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pleased to hear that you are getting out and about on your wheels. I went to the bathroom about 4.45 this a.m. and the birds were singing their socks off, I went down and opened the door to listen better. There were so many I could only pick out thrush, blackbird, robin and great tit and possibly greenfinch.

More travel news - one of our favourite cities is Lisbon, where we landed early and left around tea-time. It was about 75, my favourite temperature, and as is our wont in previuous years we go on the open-top bus, circular tour, for about two hours, it goes slowly and the commentaries we get vary in quality...we had a choice of routes in Lisbon, we have done the historic ones a couple of times, so opted for 'Modern Lisbon' which turned out to be a good choice, we saw part of Lisbon we hadn't seen before, some very way out architecture in the form of residential housing, and we went to the complex built for the World Fair/Expo (?) held there in 1998. Vast, lots of greenery/water features, a monorail connecting with city centre, cable cars, a huge stadium, theatre/cinema complex, restaurants, shops, blocks of flats. Except that it looked like a ghost town, just a few tourists, we were told that they can't sell the flats, and Lisbon i still massively in debt paying for it all, shades of the Olympics?

We also had a day in Vigo, not a toursit cedntre but a working town, a mixture of old and new, we were intrigued to see how old ornate stone buildings (Victorian?) had two or three floors of very modern steel/glass stuck on top of them.

I have taken photos, but need a grand-daughter to get them into the computer for me. I can do it, but they never get themselves to the right place, and then it seems I can either not e-mail or not copy them. I have looked at them in the camera, nothing very good, the buildings ones were all taken from the top of a moving bus....

Anonymous said...

The tulips look like poppies to me but it is the wrong time of year so I am not suggesting you are wrong!

Re Reg’s photo:
Yes, there is a dog on the left of the Y but not, to me, a boxer.
I like the threesome on the Y’s right - a dog and a monkey both looking over the old man’s left shoulder.

John’s phone pics are remarkably good, and, as you say, nicely composed

Your mention of lamb chops reminds me that Sandra cooked two lovely looking pork chops (from the school pig) yesterday for Alan and myself. Unfortunately with my mouth problems I simply could not chew, so Alan had both. He said they were delicous. Drat!

I think it was Jill who first led me to believe that you thought I already had a bullfinch.
The blackbird sings most of the day as does a cheeky sparrow in the front hedge. (someone on Radio Nottm was singing a song about a blackbird, inc bird sound, as I wrote that) What are the chances of that?

I can assure you that Office won’t worry me.

“Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter” Anon.

Jill:
It sounds that you had a good time off the boat, even if onboard was to some degree disappointing.
As to your problem with photos I can only suggest that you load Google’s Picasa. It is so simple to follow, and perfectly adequate for all but boringly keen photographers. I don’t bother filing stuff so if I want a photo I have to look through them all, but that is a pleasure! I think some of my best photos were taken from moving vehicles. But, that said, I have deleted the unsuccessful ones.