Monthly Archives: May 2018

Trivialities

The big news of the day is that I completed my poetry challenge, with 200 written in a fortnight. Very few of them are any good, but it was meant as a writing exercise rather than anything else so that doesn’t really matter. It seems to have worked, though there were days that it seemed to be working as aversion therapy rather than a writing exercise.

It’s only 14 a day when you work it out and if you stick to haiku that’s only 42 lines. it hardly seems like much of a challenge does it?

Or so I thought…

I then went to Sheffield to pick up Number Two Son.

That took more time than I thought, and gave me a few photo opportunities.

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Struggle? Don’t make me laugh…

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I had to laugh yesterday. On the TV News someone referred to the struggles of Prince Charles bringing up Princes William and Harry as “a single parent”.

Normally I think of a single parent as being someone bringing up kids on their own, usually with limited resources and often unemployed. Prince Charles certainly qualifies from that angle, as he hasn’t held down a proper job since he left the Navy in 1977.

However, the normal single parent doesn’t have a 9 bedroomed stately home, a nanny or a butler, so I think he may find it difficult to convince me of his “struggle”.

Apart from that, I’ve mainly being ignoring the Royal Wedding…

Something New

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It’s always good to see something new, and yesterday I saw two new things.

One is a small medal for the marriage of Prince George, Duke of Kent and Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. Royalty have such long names…

Prince George was the first member of the royal family to work in the Civil Service, the first to be trained in Intelligence (make up your own jokes there) and the first to be accused of…

…well, you’ll have to follow the link.

He was also the first royal to die on active service in 450 years. The previous one, I presume, was Richard III.

Royal Wedding Medal 1934

In real life it is only 19mm across. It’s ironic that it’s stamped “Foreign” as our royal family are German and Marina was Greek. Or Danish.

The other is a race course pass for Sandown Park in Surrey. Members used to wear them to show they had paid their membership fees. You don’t see many this old – 1905. You also don’t see many that are made to mimic beaten copper with an Arts and Crafts style of suspension loop. It reminds me of Newlyn copper work.

Sandown Park Racecourse Members’ Pass 1905

Yesterday’s Photographs

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Here are some photographs from yesterday.

Glossy Ibis – not a great shot but the best I could get

Stock Dove

Kestrel

Distant Avocet

Aqualegias

Bug Hotel

Campion

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Bogbean

Cream Tea – functional but not as elegant as Clumber’s offering

A Booming Bittern, a Glossy Ibis and a Cream Tea

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We went to Old Moor today, an RSPB reserve about fifty miles from home. We went there last year and took so many photographs it took not one, but two posts to publish them all.

Today wasn’t quite so prolific in the photography line.

The day started early when I nipped down to the laundrette to do the washing I’ve been avoiding for the last two weeks, then we had bacon sandwiches and set off.

The lady who checked our cards told us that one of the paths was blocked off to protect the nesting Bitterns. That was the path we had wanted to check out as we hadn’t done it last time. However, as compensation she did tell us there was a Glossy Ibis on the wader scrape.

On the way round we heard the Bittern booming, which is how it always seems to be. I’ve heard Bitterns booming many times, but never actually seen one. They are very good at remaining hidden.

This is symbolic of my life.

However, I did see the Ibis. We walked into the hide, looked out and immediately saw a dark bird prodding at a mud bank. After about twenty minutes it annoyed a nesting Coot, which chased it off. It then lurked in a reed bed. According to one of the other watchers it had spent most of the morning lurking in the reeds and had only showed itself for about half an hour so we were very lucky.

On a dull day a Glossy Ibis is not an impressive bird, looking a bit like a dark curlew. On the other hand it’s better to see a dull Ibis than no Ibis at all.

You can probably guess how we finished the visit by studying the title.

There will be photographs later…

And a description of two prize-winning Senior Moments…

Boredom, what Boredom?

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Yes, I’ve been doing cards again. I’ve done Star Trek, The Beatles and yet more A&BC football cards (the orange and red backs from 1972-3). Thanks to an informative website I’m now in possession of much more knowledge than I really need on this subject.

I think my brain may be grinding to a halt, but I think I’ve isolated the point when the rot set into football. The 1970 set shows footballers with serviceable haircuts and quite a few broken noses. The 1972-3 set shows straighter noses and shocking haircuts. That three year window was the thin end of the wedge, and look where we ended up – diving, spray foam and perms.

Look at that haircut…

…and that moustache.

I grew my first moustache in 1975. It wasn’t a success. In truth they rarely are. Some things from the past should be left there – moustaches, I feel, are one of those things. As are rickets, platform soles and The King’s Evil.

For those of you interested in why one photo is upside down I have to confess that I don’t know. I struggled with a glitchy internet last night and had problems with a lot of photographs being upside down on the photo card. Eventually I just used two that seemed to be cooperative.

This morning I found that the post hadn’t actually loaded and one of the photos was upside down again.

So I gave up and loaded the post again with extra lines to explain the upside down photograph.

For those of you more arty types it’s an ironic take on the topsy-turvey nature of modern sport.

For the others, it’s what happens when you hand modern technology to a man who is barely past the crayon stage of artistic evolution.

Clumber Park

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We had 13 packages to send off this morning, including two very expensive bank notes and two very cheap football cards (my labours of last week bearing fruit!).

Then I took Julia to lunch and decided to get some use out of our National Trust membership. Last year, we didn’t get a lot of use out of them. We went to Clumber Park, which isn’t far from the spot where I took the bluebell pictures yesterday.

It’s home to a number of things including a lake, which I photographed a few times last year, and a chapel which featured in a few photos.

This time we decided to visit the kitchen garden. It’s an excellent place, and very well designed. There’s a massive lean-to greenhouse up against a south-facing wall and a gentle slope to let the cold air flow away downhill. I didn’t walk all the way down, but I’m pretty sure there will be holes in the wall to let the cold air flow away. They designed things better in those days.

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I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

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Hopefully they won’t say something bad.

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And finally.

Cream Tea at Clumber Park

It’s a hard life, but I’m coping…

Sunday Sunbeams in Sherwood Forest

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I went out this morning looking for sunbeams, and even managed to get a few pictures, though they weren’t as good as the ones I saw last year when I didn’t have the camera with me.

The header picture is taken with the Pop Art setting which peps up the colour a notch or two. The sunbeam picture below is taken on the normal setting and is, as you can see, much greyer.

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Gorse in Sherwood Forest

I then carried on a bit further and took pictures of bluebells and litter. I didn’t actually intend taking pictures of litter but I was concentrating on the bluebells so much that I didn’t notice the litter until later.

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It was, in other words, a mixed morning.

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A Gift from the NHS

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This has truly been a week that keeps on giving. A curry, a nosebleed, new trousers and, finally, a booklet on bowel cancer from the NHS.

I think I’ve covered the curry and the new trousers. I’ve probably covered nosebleeds too, as I have several every year. I may have to have it seen to.

That just leaves the bowel cancer. I don’t really need the stress of being told I’m at risk of bowel cancer, as I’ve already had this pointed out a number of times. Nor do I need additional details on taking stool samples, reasons for false positives and how I’m at greater risk due to my weight.

I’m always at greater risk of things because I’m fat.

Greater risk of cancer, greater risk of heart disease, greater risk of running out of chocolate…

It’s possible I may be asked to do as many as four tests before they decide they need to have a look at my bowels.

That’s not a test, it’s a way of taking up more of my time than the NHS already does. Having fully explored the potential of one embarrassing orifice (see the posts from 12 months ago) they now want to shove a tube up another one.

It’s bad enough being 60 without all this.

I’m so annoyed that I can’t even begin to think of other things just now. This is a shame, as I have many other things to talk about.

If you are involved in the NHS I would just like to leave you with one thought – why not leave this sort of thing a month or two instead of diving in while I’m still getting used to being older than I would like.

Actually, two thoughts. You’ve never yet made me better when you’ve called me in for these age-related examinations – you’ve just added to the list of things that are wrong with me. I can do that myself thank you.

Bempton Part III – or Scarborough as it is better known…

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Well, you can’t go to Bempton without having fish and chips can you?

We did have an Eccles cake with a cup of tea before leaving Bempton though, that walking stuff can be quite demanding when you don’t have all the right gear. It also gave us time to look at the Tree Sparrows. House Sparrows are in decline, but the Tree Sparrow is doing even worse – you rarely see them these days unless you are at an RSPB feeding station.

Tree Sparrows at Bempton

Once in Scarborough I took some pictures of the castle. That reminded me of the last time it saw action – 16th December 1914. Not bad for a place that was originally built as a signal station by the Romans in the fourth or fifth century. It was, according the write-up, a favourite place for King John to stay. Richard III was the last King to stay there and it held out for Henry VIII during the Pilgrimage of Grace. Finally, it was reduced to wreckage by a Parliamentary siege in 1645. The Royalists produced siege coins.

I didn’t need to mention siege coins, but I find them quite interesting, and if I can’t ramble in my own blog where can I ramble?

I expereimented with the camera settings. Some are quite subtle. One isn’t.

Scarborough Castle, Yorkshire

After that it sort of pottered around crumbling and, by 1914, hosting a Coastguard Station.

That day in 1914 two German Battleships emerged from the early morning mist and opened fire. Five hundred shells were fired, eighteen people killed. It could have been a lot worse, though not for the eighteen and their families.

There is a list here, if you are interested.

A U-Boat shelled the town in September 1917, but that is hardly ever mentioned. Three people were killed and five injured. Compared to some of the air raids happening at the time, killing 836 and wounding 1,982 in a 12 month period, the submarine raid was almost inconsequential. These were aeroplane raids, the Zeppelins having sustained too many losses to continue, but not before killing 557 and injuring another 1,358.

Sorry about all the stats and death, but after reading John Knifton’s posts on aircraft crashes and Clare Pooley’s mention of wartime damage to Bungay church, I’ve started thinking how violent history has been in some parts of the country.

Here are a few other photographs – a police box, a sea mine and a ship that went to Dunkirk. Violence, always violence…

(Near the lighthouse there’s a Vickers 13 pounder Naval Gun, the Naval version of the field gun the Royal Horse Artillery uses for firing salutes at state occassions. This one was raised from the wreck of the Hornsund in 1982, 65 years after it was torpedoed. I admit, I didn’t want to walk the extra distance to the far end of the harbour.)

It was a hard life in the Merchant Navy.

And that, apart from buying some cheap reading glasses and photographing a gull, was the end of the day.

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Life after the Care Farm

Monthly Archives: May 2018

Trivialities

Struggle? Don’t make me laugh…

Something New

Yesterday’s Photographs

A Booming Bittern, a Glossy Ibis and a Cream Tea

Boredom, what Boredom?

Clumber Park

Sunday Sunbeams in Sherwood Forest

A Gift from the NHS

Bempton Part III – or Scarborough as it is better known…