This tree, just across the road is a favourite of ours. I'm afraid, in my overactive imagination, it has its arms raised in supplication.As its back is to us and is facing the football field it could be something to do with a long-forgotten goal.
On the other hand is it reminiscent of the Crucifixion !
This is anthropomorphism gone mad so I'll stop.
Picture 2 is a climbing rose that always flowers late. I hope the vivid orangey red colour comes across because it is very reminiscent of 'Super Star' in the 1960s. I know it isn't Super Star because I have grown it and it is a shrub not a climber. Few of the roses have had a successful year and although some have been prolific some have not. Ballerina, for instance, has had a poor year - some years she seems to flower steadily from May to November.
Y says I've been grumpy ! And I admit it. I cannot get my new monitor calibrated properly and it annoys me. This new PC was designed for me and my photographs, and to be an improvement on the quality of the laptop. And it isn't.The sharpness and definition is sub-standard and it isn't just a matter of personal preference as the computer shop try to tell me. If I put the same picture side by side on both, detail in the laptop version is lacking on the PC. In one York Station snap, for instance, I can read the station-name on the laptop but not on the PC. I know I've promised not to 'bogger about' with it but I'm simply not happy and feel I must 'have a go' again tomorrow. Solemn promise though - I won't do anything which could conceivably disturb Photoshop.
Karen came and mowed the lawns and told us she is moving into her new house at Codnor tomorrow. So we gave her a little house-warming gift. I had to correct a typo there because I had written 'a little house-warming git' and she can do without one of those.
This beautiful video please click of satellite pictures was posted on WUforums and I thought you might like to see it too.
Comments
Bungus ..... We shall have to agree to a small level of disagreement in the matter of the acceptability of four-letter words in mixed company. As a uniformed Inspector once, in Old Market Square, after I had taken to wearing spectacles, I was once addressed by a rather drunken young lady as "That four-eyed c*nt". I'm ashamed to say that I didn't find it at all acceptable.
Hope your dentistry results in less painful discomfort for you. It would be good to see you.
I think lateral/elastical thinking are definitely 'stretching it abit' and I shall not therefore think of the phrase as pejorative from now on.
Proboscis seems, as you say, to be predominantly for liquids. Wikipedia has it thus.
anonymousRob ...... Welcome back 'niftygoogler' and you are right the site you found is much better about The Jessop Monument. I've put it into the body of the blog for the benefit of other readers.
Lucky you, finding a carboot sale with a photo-stuff stall. There was much to be said for the Weston and nothing was better than standing it (with invercone) on the item you were interested in to get an accurate light-metering. But, like you, I would probably have kept my tenner in my wallet. In these digital days it's so easy to check a shot in your screen and if it's over/under exposed, delete and try again.
I'm hoping to see you for an hour on Friday evening. I shall arrive early and leave early due to pressure of bedtime but I want to wish you well and buy you a drink.
Reg ..... You are quite right about Jessops and Jacobs being on opposite sides of the road. But I am confused as to whether the Granby Street you mention is the Nottingham or Leicester one. Granby Street Nottingham is I fear no more unless still hiding somewhere under Maid Marion Way.
As with Rob's Weston light-meter I think you were wise to keep your money in your pocket. Even at the time of the miners' strike I would have thought £50 wasn't a bargain.
As per previous remarks, I feel I am more inclined to your view of 'strong language' than I am to Bungus's. And I'm firmly against the 5yr olds you mention reading the words in a children's book. Whatever happened to Janet and John.? I think we need input from the younger generation. Please chip in David, or anyone else out there.
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Speaking of whom - a Longleat holiday picture has just arrived from David.
A lovely photograph of a Giraffe.
Such gentle looking creatures.
And this time grazing grass rather than nibbling the tops of trees. I guess that can't really be encouraged at Longleat because of a limited number of trees.
And, unless my eyes deceive me there is a Zebra crossing in the middle distance.
Speaking of whom - a Longleat holiday picture has just arrived from David.
A lovely photograph of a Giraffe.
Such gentle looking creatures.
And this time grazing grass rather than nibbling the tops of trees. I guess that can't really be encouraged at Longleat because of a limited number of trees.
And, unless my eyes deceive me there is a Zebra crossing in the middle distance.
Quotation time ......
"He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met"
2 comments:
I immediately thought 'crucifixion' when I saw the tree photo. But I'd rather think of it as a footballer!
I skip through the 'you and your computer' saga, but I thought you wouldn't be able to resist fiddling with it....
Good Giraffe picture, they are the animals I remember most vividly from a safari visit some years ago, they tower over the jeep-sort of vehicle you are in, will stand right next to it, at about their knee-level and peer down on you. When you see a group of them moving, they are just so graceful,
all loping along.
Don't know where yesterday went to, I had Poppy (11) here helping me turn out the larder, I find it hard to get to the ground level and lower shelves as they go a long way back. We found 14 packets of pasta of various vintages....but it is all clean and tidy and sorted now and she has some pocket money to go away with tomorrow, with her other grandparents and father. And we watched the Olympians arrive home.
And I cooked for the three of us at lunch time - her favourite fried chicken. She flew (unaccompanied) to Texas for two weeks, to stay with her mother's friends, her views on life in the US were interesting. The family she stayed with never had any fresh fruit or veg in the house...
Watched a rather gruesome but very well-done film last night 'Pierrepoint' - story of the hangman, I only started it because I will watch Timothy Spall in anything.
Bungus, hope you can enjoy your food now, whether proboscis or spoon, and I am relieved to hear that I will get a bib and not have to eat tapenade.
I certainly do not think swear words and the like should appear in children's books (I hesitate to call them literature?). What's wrong with Enid Blyton, apart from her limited vocabulary? I've never thought children only wanted realism in their books. Poppy is now reading 'Anne of Green Gables' - that's about the same age as I read them.
Off to make a fruit cake - shades of Enid Blyton! - but we won't be having the 'lashings of ginger beer' with it.
FAIRY TALE OF QUEEN'S MED
Immediate relief followed the extraction of offending molar. Not that it had been hurting a lot ALL the time but, being very wobbly, it had proved a constant source of irritation and made eating awkward and painful.
Having to be ready for pickup at 8.00, I set the radio alarm for 6.50 but it didn’t wake me till 7.40. A rush then, to have a cup of tea and a pair of Weetabix before dressing.
Transport actually arrived about 8.30 and after another pick up in Bilsthorpe arrived Queen’s at 9.30, ie, half an hour early. I was soon taken in to drink a prelimninary cup of antibiotic and told that a cancellation would mean I should be seen earlier than expected, about 10.45.
At 10.30, a nurse came to ask me if I had given a blood test. I had, to the District Nurse, on Friday. They had no record. At 11.30 I approached the reception desk but before reaching it was summoned into surgery. I asked about the blood test. Apparently it had been sent to King’s Mill whereas I had quite specifically said it was to go to either Queen’s or the City. But no real harm done.
The dentist was a very affable young fellow. As I said later to Sandra, it was a good job the schools are on holiday or he would have had to play truant.
Four or five not too unpleasant sharp jabs, a few minutes wait followed by a quick tug, and ‘Hey Presto’! No bleeding to speak of and no other after effects.
Perhaps half an hour before pick up and a journey home (via Hucknall for another drop off) arriving 1.15.
Since then I have had a yoghourt, a tepid cup of tea (originally made at 8.00) and a luke bowl of homemade celery soup – and I actually managed to eat some bread with it and no discomfort.
To my own dentist next to arrange 4appointments for impressions.
Blog:
I accept your interpretation of the tree. Nice neat Adam’s Apple exposed in the vee of the neckline.
Sorry about your PC disappointment and can understand your grumpiness. But...
Some nice images in the video of our world although I found some of the captions a bit off-putting. I was surprised at the lack of green south of the bay of Sirte (probably at dusk?); it was once the granary of Rome. The intensity of the electric lights is astonishing.
Perhaps I more easily accept four-letter word usage because many of the women whose company I share are unfazed by their use and are capable of using them themselves. In other words, it is what one gets used to.
When I think of the furore caused by Kenneth Tynan!
But there are certainly some places, company and occasions where/when I would not use or wish to hear such language.
I remember an occasion when, as a pub landlord in the 1970s, I was asked to do a 3-day bar for a gathering of ‘18+’ at a local campsite. I was helped by 3 young customer/friends (in their 20s, I was mid 40s) and we all slept the night in the marquee to guard the booze. It was a very wet weekend and the grass was long. They all remarked, amid hoots of laughter, that, although they had known me well for some considerable time, they had never heard me really swear until I went out into the night for a pee and tripped over a guy rope.
An aside:
All along the ridge of the marquee were flags of the nations. We were lying on our backs one night, looking up, and Murphy suddenly said “Where’s the Irish tricolour?”.
“About eight inches below your belly button.” replied Richard.
(Also see response to Reg comment, below).
Thanks for clearing up the bogey issue of the Proboscis. It’s not so much what you nose as who you nose. Blow me!
Like you (I think) I was a little surprised to see the giraffe grazing. I think the corrct term for eating the foliage of trees is browsing. And I admire the zebra crossing. We should not get overrun by them I suppose?
I’d like to know who Lincoln was talking about.
It would serve to describe Sandra’s first husband.
Reg:
I once read a children’s book with ‘this’ and ‘that’ in it.
And this morning, in Queen’s Med, reading Sunday’s ‘Review’ section of the ‘Observer’ as relief from failing to solve the crossword, I came across a couple of related items:
1)On pre-watershed TV.
a)Apologies for Olympic Bronze Medallist windsurfer Bryony Shaw who announced “I’m so f****** happy.”
b)Helen Mirren on Sky News live, describing their reporter as a ‘f****** nutbag.’
c)Madonna on BBC ‘Live Earth’ season, “If you want to save the planet … Come on motherf***ers.”
d)Johnny Rotten repeatedly swearing at Russell Harty on Thames TCV 1976 (32 years ago).
e)Joan Rivers being booted off ITV’s ‘Loose Women’ for referring to Russell Crowe as a ‘piece of f****** s***.’
f)Jane Fonda on America’s ‘Today Show’ about her role in ‘The Vagina Monologues’, saying that she had been asked ‘to do a monologue called c***.’
2)A refusal by Asda (after 3 complaints from 150,000 purchasers) to stock Jacqueline Wilson’s latest work for teenagers, ‘My Sister Jodie’, until ‘tw*t’ had been changed to ‘tw*t’.
It was also pointed out that Roald Dahl’s ‘James and the Giant Peach’ contains no less than two mentions of the word ‘ass’.
Jill:
Our oldest English granddaughter (18) is currently staying with my son, his wife, and 3 daughters (21, 19, 17) in Florida. They do not eat veg either and Alex texted Sandra last night to say that she had walked their dog 2 miles as she is fed up with being in the car. Sandra herself went a few years ago and said that they never walk. They just go out the door, into the car, drive to the Mall, into the car, drive home again – after a week she flew to New York alone and had a great time. The parents are overweight (by our standards) and, no doubt, so will the girls become when they give up playing ‘soccer’.
I also watched 'Pierrepoint' but Sandra, much as she admires Tomothy Spall, could not. I found it horrific but compelling. He came over as an very unimaginative but conscientious man, solely concerned with doing his job to the very best of his ability. I read somewhere that he hanged over 600 people. I feel compelled to check the truth of the film (did he really execute an acquaintance?). One of his successors was a postmaster in Mansfield and the very nice parents of Richard (see Irish tricolour riposte) knew him and visited his home where he showed them a a scale model of the gallows which he kept in his cellar. THAT's macabre.
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