Saturday, January 31, 2009

Restful Saturday as planned - Y feels better - 34F

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The top two pictures, from which the above collage was made, were taken within minutes of each other on my Nikon, firstly with the 18-70mm Nikkor, then the Sigma wideangle 10-20mm. Skies change so quickly you've got to be ready. ... The bottom picture, a few minutes later, is the result of three pictures taken on my Casio click>click>click and made into a Panorama using Photoshop.

If eagle-eyes notice the skyline is a little different in 1 and 2, its because I moved slightly to the right so as not to include the artichoke head. Comments would be welcomed, and not only from afficionados.

The picture on the left is just a few more snowdrops plus the occasional aconite of which there don't seem to be many ... yet !

Things come at different times some years - a characteristic of the plant world seldom commented on.

'Experts' will blithely aver 'spring is 3 weeks early' but not "the aconite has flowered before the snowdrops this year" for instance. Y and I both like the aconite because, even after flowering, it always looks as if it is going to do something interesting. It never just looks untidy and in need of attention.

Our day has proved as restful as hoped but poor Y is really suffering with her cold. She says she feels better, but she always says that. She is bunged up and, I suspect, a little feverish. I think another Rest Day is called for tomorrow and well wrapped up with the heating on. The forecasts promise a bitterly cold day with the risk of widespread snow. At least the kids will enjoy it.

My responses to your previous comments

Jill.
..... I feel the same about most theatre seats. Our Theatre Royal seating is more akin to an instrument of medieval torture than a place to relax. But the Cinemas we go to are all modern and I find their seats very comfortable indeed. My difficulty is going up the stairs therein due to the lack of a handrail or anything.

I don't think I knew you were an evacuee and how interesting to hear about the Vicar and his Magic Lantern shows. I am including a larger version of one of the hand-painted slides because in the collage they were a little indistinct.

Considering they were painted by hand onto quite small glass-plates the amount of detail is awe-inspiring. Bear in mind that this picture was projected onto a screen and then photographed by me on a hand-held mobile phone without the flash on.

Glad you enjoyed Bob's 'Minotaur'.

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Quotation time ....... Trying as always to be topical ......

"The modern writer is too often a Theseus so enamored of the grotesque appearance and strange cavortings of the Minotaur that he has decided to make his permanent abode in the Labyrinth, and to accept the Minotaur's laws as his own."


Robertson Davies

Lead me to the Labyrinth ! ..... I'm not too sure about the 'cavorting' but I could manage a bit of 'staggering around' before vanishing into space.



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3 comments:

Unknown said...

I have to rise from my sick bed, Graham, to congratulate you on the response to your triptych. When your on-line camera magazine gives you lots of ticks - including one from as far afield as New Jersey, U.S.A. - I must concede that maybe I should stop carping about how much photographic accessories cost!

They are quite obviously worth it!

Anonymous said...

Praise indeed from Y! I thought the photos were magnificent too, some of the best ever....well worth getting up in the middle of the night for.

I was up early (for me) today though, to watch what turned out to be a superb Men's Final in the Australian Open (tennis for you Philistines). So things like lunch haven't happened.

I think it is the seats in the old theatres that are the worst. Don't ever go to the Victoria Palace, that did my back in even before I had a bad one! I am going to our Arts Cinema complex on Thursday (about 20 years old?) the seats there are fine.

I was evacuated all over the place, with my mother (too young to be an official evacuee) we went to Coventry, it was bombed, we came home 4 days later! We were also in Reading and South Wales for quite a time, coming back to London in a lull. But the larger part of the war we lived with an aunt in West Sussex, I went to school there. She kept chickens, and it was a fishing community, we used the barter system a lot. My grandparents eventually retired to the same place, and I spent a lot of school holidays there, and did three months' convalescence there after getting TB when I was 19. Y used to come and visit me in hospital in London!

Anonymous said...

Not many comments,so can I pose a question.Does any one know the location of the water splash at the start of Antiques Roadshow Perhaps Niffy Noogler can find It I can't