Monthly Archives: November 2017

Eleven Photos and the Benefits of Blogging

Teasels in flower

The main picture shows some teasel in flower. They have gone over a bit but you can still see some of the bluish flowers. I thought I’d include the picture after showing the mature ones earlier on this week.

Fungus at Mencap gardens

Mooring ring

Common Blue at Screveton

I thought I’d ID’d this one…obviously not.

Straw Bale Bowie Bear

The fungus is growing out of one of the raised beds in the Mencap garden and the mooring ring is from the quay at Burleigh pottery in Stoke. I spotted the blue butterfly on a visit to Men in Sheds in the summer and the bear was in a field near Scarborough advertising a music event. The dragonfly was pictured on our trip to Rutland Water, but I don’t seem to have identified it on the photo and can’t find the reference. I think it’s a Common Darter if I remember correctly – I only see common things.

Nuthatce at Rufford Abbey

Detail of the mouse

Swan at National Arboretum

Mint Moth

Poppy and chamomile

The bird with the bandit mask is another Nuthatch and the Swan was cruising down the river at the back of the National Arboretum last year. The mouse is from a harvest loaf we cooked on the farm and the remaining two photos are also from the farm – a Mint Moth (there were dozens about in the herb garden) and a poppy with chamomile.

They all bring back memories, and without blogging I wouldn’t have restarted with the photography – another thing I like about blogging!

A Grey Day

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It’s a drizzly grey morning and the traffic is slow. That sentence reminds me of something, though there are no jumping fish and a distinct lack of cotton.

As usual, the drizzle seemed to bring out more traffic and the journey became more of a trial than usual.

I can’t help thinking the whole blues thing would have developed differently in a colder climate, or if the musicians were often clogged up in traffic following a cement mixer and a skip lorry.

That’s what happened to me this morning. There was also a woman on a Moulton bicycle, and an idiot on a moped.

The site of the incident was, as usual, the three lanes of traffic leading up from the Goose Fair roundabout to the site of the old gallows. It always seems so appropriate when you see how people behave there.

First the Moulton mounted woman had to skip up onto the pavement to avoid being killed by a bus. Then, as she returned to the road and stopped at the pedestrian crossing, the mentally challenged moped rider swept through and nearly hit a pedestrian on the crossing. There’s something about a bus lane that seems to suspend the normal rules of traffic. And there’s something about this stretch of road that, one way and another, that brings out the worst in a number of drivers.

The rest of the day is likely to be similarly grey in aspect as I have a list of domestic tasks to get through, some paperwork to do for Julia and more internet research to do for the jerk seasoning. It’s not a thrilling list, but it needs doing.

I can’t think of a title – it’s that sort of day

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We just had an interesting problem. Julia is working with an old notepad, or whatever we used to call small computers before we had all the stuff you can get now. You know the one – it looks like a small laptop instead of the current ones, which look like large phones. Having said that, a lot of phones also look like large phones compared to the old-fashioned phones. Life, and fashion, can be strange.

After charging and setting it going she found the screen was upside down. It took ages to sort out, particularly as she can’t read upside down. I can, as it’s a useful skill to have when visiting offices and trying to sell things to people. She was adopting a female approach – logic and trying all the buttons in an orderly fashion. I tried route one – went on my laptop and typed in “upside down screen”. Thirty seconds later the problem was solved. Sometimes a direct approach is best.

I’m now basking in self-congratulation. Julia is, it seems, unmoved by my brilliance.

To be fair, she’s probably still confused that I didn’t try hitting it,which always used to be my preferred option. Over the years I’ve discovered that hitting computers hardly ever works. That’s a feature I’d like to see on modern technology – a special reset switch that activates when you hit the malfunctioning item.

The answer, in case you ever need it, is – Control + Alt + the Up arrow.

I’ve finished my list of local Farmers’ Markets, though it’s likely to be of limited use to most of my readers. If anyone wants a copy (covering approximately a 40 miles radius round Nottingham) let me know and I’ll send you a copy. There are 26 of them.

The poppy photo? Well, I always like to have a photo if I can, and it seemed seasonal.

The Best Laid Plans…

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I didn’t quite get the Armistice Day post done as I suggested in the last post. After writing two part posts – probably a thousand words or so in total -I decided to give it a miss because it wasn’t working.

At that point I switched over to cookery. Belly pork and roasted veg for tea, chicken and ham pie for tomorrow and vegetable curry for Wednesday. Tuesday, which you may have noticed was missing, will be fishcakes. I cheated by buying fishcakes last night, so I didn’t need to make any.

With the associated washing up, and moving of red cabbage, this took a surprisingly long time. Finding the tarragon took the best part of ten minutes because it’s a small packet in a chaotic kitchen. Julia had unpacked it last night and as she had neither left it in the bag or put it in the fridge I was left slightly clueless.

That left me with the choice of breathing life into a moribund post on Armistice Day or transcribing the list of Farmers’ Markets.

If you consider that the transcribing was more fun than the blogging you will see how badly things were going. It kept turning into a rant on the use of the poppy and the Great War centenary as a way of making money.

Things took a significant downturn when we had to do a Health and Safety assessment and fill out a wad of monitoring and personal development forms. It went badly.

Not as badly as the search for a birthday present though, that is really going badly and Julia isn’t helping by refusing to tell me what she wants.

Hopefully she wants a brightly-coloured paper bag containing supermarket chocolates, flowers and face cream, because it looks like that’s what she’ll be getting.

A Weekend of …er…nothing much

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Got home just after 6am (after dropping Julia off at work, not after a night on the tiles!) and after a few Amazon reviews, a trawl of the internet for birthday presents (I have no idea, she won’t give me a clue and the day is looming), looking at the blogs of a couple of my new followers and a diversion into Avro Lancasters, I now find it’s 9am. Where does the time go?

Yesterday started with breakfast, dropping Julia off at work, taking stuff to the charity shop and going to a meeting. I’m helping someone launch a range of Jamaican seasoning, and this involved having another breakfast to test the recipe for his new omlette. It includes chilli, and has a definite wake-you-up quality.

Home for lunch. This was a cup of tea and a mournful look at the fridge as I decided that two breakfasts meant no lunch. I am dieting, and not enjoying the experience.

Nice cup of tea

In the afternoon I compiled a list of Farmers’Markets in a 40 mile radius and may, possibly, have drifted off for a few minutes due to the sheer thrill of listing. The defining features of Farmers’ Markets seem to be that the website must be out of date and the contact details unavailable.

Then I picked Julia up from work, shopped, moaned about the price of things, fitted a cover to the car windscreen to ward off frost, made tea and toasted crumpets. It’s autumn after all, and you need to keep yourself warm and cheerful.

We re-heated a beef casserole I’d prepared earlier in the week and served it with red cabbage and kalettes. I like kalettes, they don’t take much cooking. they taste good and they are bursting with goodness, or so the website claims.

Picture of kalettes from last year. I do have a beef casserole photo but it shows brussels, not kalettes, and potatoes, which I’m no longer eating.

After that I blogged, watched poor quality TV (including Strictly Come Dancing), suggested that we should go to tango lessons (I’ve always fancied myself as a smouldering Latin tango dancer, despite all the evidence to the contrary – lack of rhythm, two left feet and suspiciously Anglo-Saxon colouring), made more tea, ate a supermarket panna cotta that was crammed with sugar and additives, downloaded Kindle books and, finally, went to bed.

There was, as you can probably guess from my anti-frost precautions, no frost.

I hate it when that happens.

And that brings us back to the top of the post. It’s 10 am now and an hour has gone into writing, and re-writing, a post about where my time goes.

After looking for a couple of stock photos to illustrate this post I’ve decided to do another post about my favourite photos, but first I’ll probably do one about Armistice day.

After that I’ll heat up the beef casserole for lunch and cook most of the food for next week.

Then I’ll wash up.

I do hope all this excitement doesn’t wear me out.

Autumn Leaves

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I finally did what the photography magazines have been recommended for the last month and looked on the floor. There are, ass they point out, colourful leaves on the floor.

The problem is that on a well-walked path many of the leaves are looking a bit threadbare. I’m sure there are still plenty of nice ones in the woods but I didn’t really have chance to check today. Another trip is needed.

Here is a selection of a few of the better ones.

Autumn leaves – Rufford Abbey

They are reasonably easy to photograph compared to birds, as they aren’t very mobile and you can move them round a bit. However, they are trickier than teasel as they tend to blow away as the breeze stiffens. See my last post for further comments on this.

I’ve added a couple of other shots too – one of leaves catching the light whilst still attached to a tree and a couple of an archway that links two of the islands in the lake (taken from different sides of the lake). I can’t recall the exact date when the lake was built but a quick scan of the internet suggests 1750, which seems reasonable. It looks a bit like a bridge but it looks a bit steep and impractical so I’ll stick with “archway”.

Archway between islands – Rufford Abbey

Autumn Leaves – Rufford Abbey

Archway between islands – Rufford Abbey

The final picture is an example of “health and safety gone mad”, as I would say if I was writing for a tabloid. I’m waiting for the warning about uneven ground. There was one at Donna Nook on Monday. Uneven ground in the countryside, whatever next?

Yes, I’m sure they can. I expect the sign is more about avoiding liability than about preventing people being injured. Or am I just been cynical?

A Walk in the Woods

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I went for a walk in the woods today and, as you can see from the header picture, I managed to get a photograph of a Nuthatch. It took some doing, I’ve discarded around 20 blurred images and another 20 photos of an empty table. They really are flighty birds.

The morning looked hopeful, with sunlight and a number of great lighting effects behind the clouds. By the time I reached Rufford Abbey the light had, of course gone. It did reappear a couple of times, mainly at the wrong time and in the wrong place.

Black Headed Gull at Rufford Abbey

Robin at Rufford Abbey

Wood Pigeon at Rufford Abbey

Chaffinch at Rufford Abbey

Robin at Rufford Abbey

Black Headed Gulls at Rufford Abbey

There were a few other birds about but I failed in my attempts to photograph a variety of tits and waterfowl. I had been hoping to get some shots of swans, with reflections, but that was doomed by a lack of swans. There were a few of this year’s cygnets about but they didn’t come close enough for an attempt.

One of the few subjects that did benefit from the lighting was the bed of teasels. They also have the advantage of not moving much.

Teasel at Rufford Abbey

Dentistry, Decay and a Difficult Day

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First call of the day was dropping off Julia at work. The second was visiting the dentist, which proved to be the start of the decline.

The X-Rays showed a suspicious spot at the base of one of my teeth. It looks like decay. It also seems that I have strangely-shaped roots. After what happened with my wisdom tooth and its strangely-shaped root the words “strangely-shaped root” do not fill me with optimism.

To remove a wisdom tooth with a strangely-shaped root takes a team of medical students, power tools and just over an hour in the chair. It also involves a fair amount of pushing and pulling and the smell of burning.

There are three choices. One, go to a specialist, who may be able to save the tooth, but who would charge around £1,000 whether he saved it or not. Alternatively, I could have it removed and have an implant fitted. That will be £1,500. Or I could just wait.

When the inevitable happens, and I am groaning in agony from a major abscess, I will have to go down to the dentist for emergency treatment and an extraction on the NHS. That will cost £56.30.

Tricky choice…

I then went to the pharmacy at TESCO, where they refused to supply me. One item is, it seems, difficult to get, so they suggested I try elsewhere. A second was out of stock, so they suggested trying elsewhere. They then handed me the prescription and suggested it would be simpler to (yes you guessed it) get it all elsewhere.

From there I went to the surgery for my blood test.

This didn’t take long as, for once, I bled extensively. This would seem to indicate that the anti-coagulants are doing their job. I then continued to bleed, which was tricky.

From there I visited the pharmacy I used to use, who don’t find anything too difficult and who had all the necessary items in stock. Strange how a small shop can do things a multi-national can’t be bothered to do.

The rest of the day passed in a blur, looking for a birthday present for Julia. Yes, straight after the wedding anniversary and just before Christmas. It’s a tricky time of year.

Reflections, Shopping and Scent

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We went to the doctor his morning as Julia has now been caught up in the excitement of the endless round of blood tests and unwanted health advice. She had two appointments so I waited in the car park and did some paperwork.

After that we had breakfast and headed off for Springfields. I first went there when I was a small child, feeling like I was being punished by being made to walk round ornamental gardens full of tulips. On a really bad day we had to stand and watch an entire tulip festival. It was like a visit to the garden but the tulips drove past, so you didn’t even get the excitement of walking.

The Fragrance Shop, Springfields

There are clearly big savings to be had if you like scent. However, as I am explaining to Julia, reflected in the window, it still looks expensive to me. Aftershave, as you may gather from looking at my reflection, does not play a big part in my life.

The gardens at Springfields

The gardens were looking good in the sun, though the autumn colour has been disappointing this year. I’m sure we will be back in Spring and will take more pictures, which will give a better idea of the gardens and sculptures.

Things don’t change much, even after the passage of fifty years. There’s a large shopping complex and garden centre built on half the gardens now, but as I walk round the shops with Julia I still get the feeling of being punished. Only the presence of a bookshop lightens my load.

And cake. Even the worst pre-Christmas shopping trip can be brightened by the presence of a good slab of clementine drizzle cake.

Coffee and cake

Clementine Drizzle cake with pistachio topping

A Grumpy Newt

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Julia came home with a picture of a newt today – she’s been looking for one all year. This one turned up as they were clearing a heap of rubbish. The heap had been there since before she took over at the garden, in case you are wondering. It was, it seems, a more attractive berth than the various newt habitats that they have built around the garden.

The newt was not, she says, particularly glad to see them.

I can understand that. You’re all wrapped up and snug in preparation for a long winter snooze then somebody comes and rips your roof off. In similar circumstances I’d be pretty hacked off too.

They tucked it in and put all the stuff back on the heap. They can finish that particular job in Spring.

The picture is a bit blurred, but it’s taken a long time to get it so I’m going to use it anyway.

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Life after the Care Farm