Monthly Archives: July 2021

Marmalade Hoverfly

8.23

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I rose at 6.30, handed my car over for MOT at 6.45, decided to use my time wisely (reading blogs) and just went to answer a knock on the door. It was the car – returned with its new MOT Certificate. That is what I call service. If you ever need a car fixing in Nottingham, try Hillcrest Garage. I’ve been using them for years, and though they recently had to move, they are still a great garage.

I’m feeling a lot more alert than I was last night but have hit a new challenge -now that the car is back, should we go for a drive in the countryside or should I stay and write. I know what I should do, but Julia deserves a day out and we do have air conditioning in the car, which is more than we do in the house.

Decisions, decisions . . .

That was easy. We’re going out.First stop – McDonalds for breakfast, then I’m not sure what. If we go anywhere too nice it will be full people. If we go somewhere that isn’t crowded it’s probably not worth the trouble of visiting.

With six submissions in the pipeline I deserve a day out, but if we all took that sort of view nothing would ever get done. I have another submission in the bag and then there will be a bit of a struggle getting more done by the end of the month. I’ve been a bit lazy and haven’t kept up with the haibun writing – just done the haiku and the tanka.

Ah well, off for breakfast now – see you later.

Hot and tired

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Not much to say. I’m very tired after several nights where it’s been too hot to sleep. I simply cannot keep myself awake long enough to write anything. It’s very tempting just to pack it up and not bother posting, but he habit is strong and the lure of another blue sticker is addictive.

I’m sure that hot weather didn’t used to cause me any problem when I was younger.  A few years ago I found that winter was causing me problems, and now summer is too. That only leaves spring and autumn, and I’m fairly sure that autumn will become less pleasant as I become more arthritic. That’s going to leave me with a mere three months of enjoyment in a year.

I now have six sets of submissions out and am feeling virtuous, though writing poetry isn’t really the same thing as work.  I still have three more possible homes for more submissions but I may not be productive enough to manage them all. I have the day off tomorrow, and the car will be in the garage for its annual MOT test, so I am going nowhere. It’s very tempting just to plan for sitting in front of a fan all day.

Time to put a spurt on – it’s 23.48 and things are going slowly.

What else can I say about the day? It was hot, the shop was airless and I entered 27 medallions on our eBay site, though I did come close to falling asleep a couple of times.Several bad nights, lack of oxygen and a dull task – it’s definitely a recipe for trouble. I think that’s enough fro tonight. My general moan about the state of the world will have to wait a few days until I feel industrious enough to write it. That’s jhow tired I am, to tired to moan. It’s a good thing I don’t live anywhere that is really hot, as I’m sure you are queuing up to tell me, as i’m sure most of my readers are actually a lot hotter than the UK. It’s like snow – we are ahppy while it’s cold and damp, or moderately warm, but we just aren’t prepared for snow or heat. No snowploughs. No air conditioning.

23.57. Just made it.

 

 

A Small Success and a Digression on Auction Technique

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I had a note yesterday to tell that I was on a 24 day streak with WP. The days pass so quickly! It only seems like last week that I broke continuity and it’s already back to 24 days. You know what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t improve my writing and it doesn’t improve the blog.  It’s just a way of WP trying to draw you in – a bit like your dealer congratulating you on taking drugs for 24 days in a row.

Presence arrived today. I have a haiku and a tanka in there. Unfortunately it’s a print journal so I can’t send you a link. I’m liking the tanka form. It’s two lines longer than  a haiku and less restrictive, so it’s more fun. I’ve submitted two lots and had two accepted, so I seem to have the hang of them.  However, I won’t make too many predictions of success as I’ve been here before. Early success is often followed by a run of poor form before it picks up again.

This was quite a common thing when buying and selling antiques. You buy one without knowing much about it, you learn, you sell. Next time, armed with more knowledge and confidence, you end up paying too much, or not spotting a fault, and the second one proves hard to sell. Buying in ignorance is often best. I bought several bargains simply by putting my hand up at an auction when nobody else wanted something. As I’d never risk more than a tenner on this sort of bid, it worked out very well on several occasions, though there could be problems.

I twice bought lots thinking they were one box, and they turned out to be multi-box lots. Once I bought some toy cars and six boxes of unsaleable secondhand Christmas decorations. Another time, I bought a box of old pots to get a book and found they came with four boxes of mediocre amateur paintings. At least I was able t give the paintings to a charity shop. I couldn’t even give the Christmas decorations away.

Anyway, I digress.

It is now time to write some more and see if I can repeat my early success.

IT could be a lef. But then it could be a writing prompt . . .

 

Quiet Sunday

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I’ve had a lazy day. Lie in. Bit of writing, bit of TV, made a light lunch (avocado based salad), watched cricket on TV and am now back to writing. I have sent off one set of submissions and will be sending another set off this evening. That will mean I have six submissions out, and I’m trying to make it nine by the end of the month (unless someone replies). It’s been a busy month.

I’ve just read a few other blogs and thought of making tea, so I’m going to go away and cook. I will then finish this off, do my online shopping order and fritter the rest of my time away.

Later . . .

OK, so I watched Professor T and he programme on Ronnie Corbett before returning. And browsed the internet a little. Time flies.

It has been a hot day, one of the first all year. Fortunately, we have a couple of fans. The one in the living room doesn’t swivel but every so often we give it a push and so it moves round to direct its air at us alternately.

The day has been noisy, with people doing household jobs, including a lot of power washing, plus slamming car doors and playing car stereos too loud. It’s summer and people are beginning to move round.

Tomorrow is freedom day (freedom from acting sensibly, I fear) and as we already have a high infection rate I’m not holding out much hope for the future. I’ll be wearing a mask fro the foreseeable future and will be avoiding crowds. Having said that, apart from the mask, lockdown wasn’t a lot different from my normal social life, so it’s not much of a change either way.

 

 

A Tale of two Customers

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We had two contrasting customers in today. One was caught stealing a coin. He palmed it and slipped it in his pocket. The owner was serving him. My co-worker went through to say hello, as we hadn’t seen him since before the first lockdown, and spotted the the theft.

He is now banned from the shop, and we are wondering how much he took in previous visits. When you have so many individual items about it is difficult to spot when things go missing unless they are very obvious. He was banned from the Birmingham Coin Fair years ago after being caught stealing, but the owner gave him the benefit of the doubt. It seems not to have paid off.

The next customer brought us ice creams,because he knows the shop is like an oven in summer. The part of the front room within 6-10 feet of the air conditioning vent is OK but the rest can be fairly unpleasant and the back rooms are very stuffy. We could open the back door.There is a grille on it and security would not be compromised, but the alarm can be tricky to reset so it’s easier not to mess with it.

After ice cream I went home and made a conscious effort not to go on the computer. I have tendency to switch on as soon as I get home and it can soon swallow up several hours without producing much benefit. Over the years I have turned into a browser of trivia when I really meant to turn into a producer of Great Literature. That is what happens when you allow yourself to drift. If I’d taken more control of my life I could have become a leader of men instead of a shop assistant.

Moths and Mistakes

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It’s time to move up a gear. I’ve been idling for a few weeks and time is pressing. I have one deadline on the 25th and three at the end of the month, with very little to offer at the moment. It’s the same old problem, I can’t work until a deadline threatens.

Poplar Hawk Moth – scale is in inches

However, life can’t be all rush, and this is what I found in the vestibule of the shop this morning. The light was not quite so cool and blue, but I had the camera set up for silver coins. It’s a Poplar Hawk Moth and is quite a size, as you can see from the scale in one of the photos. I put it outside and it flew away to seek cover.

I tried restoring the colour, but the available filters didn’t really work so in the end I left it.

Wollaton Park is close by, and there are quite a few poplars, so I suspect if you had a moth trap out there would be plenty about.

Poplar Hawk Moth

They aren’t the best of shots, but it was early for thinking, and I was half in and half out of the shop. I should have done better, but at least I got some interesting shots. It’s amazing what you see, even in town.

I was tempted to make this my contribution to the Big Butterfly Count, but I don’t think they would be impressed. Julia has already submitted her count from the Gardens, though she found it disappointing – just Gatekeepers, Whites and a Brimstone. It all depends on the day, the weather and the fifteen minute slot you select. It’s like the Bird Count – we always used to count at my Mum and Dad’s when the kids did it, as they had a better selection. We got down one morning and they beckoned us through to the kitchen window – three Jays. They very rarely had one, so we started the count immediately.

Most of the day consisted of packing parcels and loading coins onto eBay.

We had a parcel go missing recently. It was shown as having been delivered, but the recipient said he hadn’t had it. It’s an awkward situation. I don’t want to see the customer lose £50, but I don’t want us to lose £50 either, and if the Post Office says it was delivered what do we do?

As it turns out, we wait for it to be returned as “Not at this address”, which begs the question as to how it can have been marked as delivered and signed for. It arrived back this morning. I’d written the flat number incorrectly. Sometimes these lapses of concentration occur and these days the Post Office doesn’t make the effort it used to do to find addressees. It’s readdressed and back in the post now. Hopefully it will be delivered this time.

 

 

 

More Coins plus a King, an Emperor and a Beautiful Design

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I’m desperately racking my brains for something interesting to say. The fact that I have moved on from the coins of 19th Century Spain to the coins of 19th Century France may not be the subject I need. It was an interesting time – they restored the monarchy, then had a revolution and moved on to a new King. Then they had a revolution and tried a republic again, because that had worked out well last time they tried it, and the president, who was also a Bonaparte, seized power, declared himself Emperor, then lost power after a war with the Germans – the first of a three match series that would eventually lay waste to most of Europe.

Louis Philippe

Louis Philippe, who was King from 1830-48 has the profile of a rugby player, specifically one from the second row, and Louis Napoleon has an excellent beard so, despite a number of deficiencies in governance, they did at least look like they were destined to rule. Unlike the rather underwhelming Spanish monarchs.

I have cured the colour problem for now – the camera is now set for tungsten bulbs and despite us using fluorescent tubes. This gives a blue cast which is what you need for silver.

Louis Napoleon before his Imperial ambitions bore fruit . . .

. . . and after

There is a version of the coin with Emperor title and no wreath, but I thought enough was enough. The penultimate coin has a fine portrait on it, and was minted in 1849-51. It is Ceres, according to the books, which makes sense as she has lots of grain in the design. Why Ceres and not Marianne, I don’t know. They decided to do away with that and stick a group of nondescript figures on it, a design that demonstrates that change is not the same as improvement. I only include the final coin to demonstrate the slide to mediocrity, as the republican head represents the peak of the design for me.

A lovely portrait

 

It’s Hercules, but it’s also The Triumph of Mediocrity

PW Crigglestone

I Just Found a New Modern Thing to Rant About!

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Today I found out that there was something called sleep procrastination. It’s also called revenge sleep procrastination. I’ve added the link just to prove that I am telling the truth. The actual, article is rubbish and not worth reading and burbles like a blocked drain. What should have been an interesting article ends up making no sense and not being worth the ten minutes I spent reading it. Any way, I don’t suffer from it. I’m too old, too male and too something else to fit the profile. You can tell how much I bothered to take in from the fact I can’t remember a big chunk of it.

We have too many things with names in the world today, and once you start to give them names you give them power over you. Now that sleep procrastination has a name people will worry about it, “suffer” from it, want time off from work because of it and expect equality with other spurious  ailments like “paternity” (you can get time off work for that) and the weakness in the legs that new parents seem to suffer from these days – meaning they need special parking spaces near the doors of supermarkets. Same goes for hygiene -0 the consequences of hygiene ar truly dreadful, including allergies, from what I see. Kids should be free to run across car parks and eat dirt.

That way they grow up with better agility and peripheral vision (well, most of them do, there’s obviously some Darwinian adjustment along the way) and fewer allergies. One of my cousins was fond of worms, which are famously full of soil, and still manged to grow up big and strong and win a provincial rowing championship.

Anyway, enough for now, Pointless is on. The picture shows what happens if you encourage your kids to grow up in a car park full of soil. It was a cold day in Leeds and he will get his revenge when he has to select a care home for me.

Day 20 and Some Thoughts on Fibre

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When I post this I will receive a message from WP telling me I am on a 20 day streak. This is not so much a tribute to my ability to turnout a post a day for weeks on end, but a reproach that every so often I become so disorganised I can’t post every day. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in Wikipedia or TV that I forget the time, and sometimes I fall asleep. Either way, I don’t se it as something worth recording. But WP does. I thinks it’s all part of the process of keeping us addicted to blogging, (and paying for the privilege).

I was down for 6.50 this morning, having once again risen when my body decided rather than trying to cling on until the alarm went off. It does feel a bit better as a start to the day, though it has deprived me of a smidgen of my beauty sleep. These things are always a trade off, but I’m not a Kardashian and my blog doesn’t depend on my looks, so I don’t think this is a problem.

You would think that a blank mind and a new day would have come together with an empty computer screen to produce pure genius wouldn’t you? It hasn’t. It’s taken half an hour and several false starts to get this far and apart from the Kardashians the only other thought I’ve had is about dietary fibre. This is getting to be quite a popular subject at the moment.

You need 30g a day according to UK health professionals, and the average Brit is getting  16-20g a day. It’s not good, but compared to other countries, we aren’t doing too badly. However, lots of countries don’t have enough to eat, or have better things to measure, so there’s not a lot of data out there. The ones that ae doing substantially better in fibre intake are the ones where they  have a large rural population growing their own food. The presence of health food shops seems to have little to do with it.

I’ve just been looking at my breakfast.  A two biscuit serving of Weetabix contains 3.8g of fibre according to the internet. My budget ASDA version contains the same, according to the packet. This is distressingly little for something that appears to be compose entirely of floor sweepings and husks. Wholemeal bread has 2.8g per slice, and at least you can have marmalade on that.

It’s going to be a long old slog getting to 30g at this rate. Looks like we might have to call on the prunes . . .

 

Some Thoughts on Coins and Photography

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Today I carried on photographing and loading nineteenth century Spanish coins. They aren’t mu favourite things and some, the ones with the portraits of Alfonso XIII as a baby, are decidedly creepy.

King Alfonso XIII of Spain -looks spooky to me

A problem, became apparent, apart from the demonic aspects of the portraits, the colours had gone haywire. As I progressed with the loading the colour of the coins, which had ben vaguely silver or bluish, started turning brown. This happens with dirty silver coins, It’s not just me, it happens to other people if you look at eBay. There’s a mismatch between the phone (or camera) and the light. Silver things become yellow or brown, gold things become silver and everyone becomes confused. This is particularly true of customers who, as we have seen again recently, never bother to read the details in the listing.

King Amadeo I again – definite brown tone

King Amadeo I of Spain, in his correct colours

I altered the white balance, I altered the lighting setting, I tried landscape (to enhance the greens and blues), I even tried introducing filters. The only thing that worked was taking photos in the front of the shop, which has some natural daylight, but the lighting was weak and it was quite tricky taking hand held photos.

Who would have thought that photographing a coin could be so difficult? Well, 27 coins, with three views of each actually. All done twice. Tonight I will drift off to sleep thinking of coins.

Have a look at some of the pictures to see what I mean. I dream of a small space with proper lighting and equipment. What I get is a small space with poor lighting and no equipment. Considering the poor facilities it’s amazing what we do, particularly as the shop camera, though a better camera for rendering colour, is in all other ways even worse than mine.

There was a short break between monarchs in 1868-71. And 1873-4. And 1931 – 75. Being King of Spain wasn’t necessarily a long-term career.