Tag Archives: robin

Doing what I’m told

Yesterday it was suggested that a post full of Robins wouldn’t go amiss. I need something cheerful to post, and people like Robins. I can’t do an arty montage because I’m still using the Stone Age editor so it will just be a dull stack of Robins.

I won’t use that to start a discussion on the evils of WordPress, because I am better than that.

Nor will it be a discourse on double standards in politics. It’s tempting, as I watch Kier Starmer struggle to condemn the Bristol riots whilst telling us that the London riots were fully justified. With such admirable flexibility of spine, and such a wide range of standards the man clearly has a great future in politics.

So here are the photographs.

Robin

Robin in a Garden Centre Cafe

Robin on a Fence Post

1995 Robin stamp

Robin – Stoke on Trent

Robin at Clumber, Nottinghamshire

Robin

Robin at Budby Flash

And so we come to the end, and as I can here my lunch sizzling in the oven (it’s leftover pasta bake from last week) this is probably a good time to stop. Check out this link if you want to know more. It is listed as the European Robin after an international panel decided that it was confusing to have different birds called robins in Europe and the USA. Nothing is ever simple, is it? And international groups can’t leave anything alone with attempting to make it “new and improved”. And as we come full circle to the subject of WordPress…

Am Awkward Day

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It’s Monday, so it should be the start of a new week, but somehow it doesn’t seem much of anything – being in that awkward gap between Christmas and New Year. When I was working with poultry it was never a problem as they needed attention every day. The same when I was in the antiques trade – I always had plenty to do in the days between Christmas and New Year because people had Christmas money to spend and time off to attend fairs. Even when the kids were at home, we had plenty to do.

This year, locked down and instructed not to travel, it’s trickier, so I decided that today I would lounge around the house in dressing gown and slipper socks and loaf my life away. It’s after 11pmnow and the plan seems to have worked reasonably well.

As usual, after watching a bunch of high achievers on Christmas University Challenge, I’m left wondering how they managed to rise so high in their professions when they are unable to answer comparatively simple general knowledge questions. Same goes for Celebrity Mastermind, Even the contestants on ordinary Mastermind didn’t exactly shine like beacons of brilliance. The contestants on Only Connect, of course, continue to mystify me.

In other words, I’ve watched far too many quizzes today. However, while I’m watching quizzes I’m not eating, so that is good. We still have chocolate and biscuits in the house, as we are cutting back. I suspect we may not finish them until well into 2021. That’s partly lifestyle choice and partly over-exposure to Weight Watchers adverts.

I just found that I can select a month when looking back at old photos. Seven years on WP and still haven’t learnt how to do it!

Seal pup – Donna Nook, Lincolnshire

This is a seal photo from the days we were allowed to travel.

22.07 and not a thought in my head

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I’ve let the day run through my fingers again. It is now one hour and fifty three minutes to midnight and I don’t even know what I’m going to write about. There isn’t even anything I can use in my drafts folder.

I note from checking the internet that Black Lives Matter called off their demonstration in London today rather than contribute to the problem. That, I feel, was the right decision and has put them right back on the moral high ground. Really, being anti-racist is to always have the moral high ground, but you know what I mean. Vandalism never looks good. An organisation that will give up its right to make a peaceful protest is clearly one that will, eventually, prevail.

The trouble with modern life is that we have so many people who know “their rights” and not enough who are prepared to think things through. Just because you have a right doesn’t mean you should exercise it. If I were ever to go on Room 101, “people who know their rights” would be top of my list.

Talking of this, we had a right to protest about Tibet when the Chinese President visited during the early years of Tony Blair’s premiership, but we weren’t allowed to exercise this right because Tony Blair was concentrating on trade. Tony Blair went on to even greater hypocrisy, we allowed various other shady dealings and I got older. With age comes the realisation that you can’t do anything about it, which is why I confine myself to shouting at the TV and asking young people to stop mumbling.

In the meantime I’ve been thinking about statues.

I haven’t come to any conclusions, I just thought I’d tell you I’d been thinking of them.

I quite like civic sculpture (or public realm enhancements to use the jargon term) and think we should have more of it. We have some round Nottingham on roundabouts, such as a depiction of the Flying Bedstead, racehorses outside the race course and various robins and wickerwork. I’ve often thought they would make a good subject for a series of posts but it’s tricky parking and taking a photo when they are on a busy road.

The timings contained in this post may be nonsensical as I note my watch and computer clocks differ by over an hour. I’ve been using the computer as the more reliable one but just did a time check and my computer clock seem to be 77 minutes slow. Technology! Pah!

Photos are selected from the free Media Library as I can’t find any of mine and didn’t want to steal photos from the local paper.

Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

Pictures of Happier Times

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I couldn’t find the photos I was looking for, so I hope these make a suitable substitute.

Whale Jaw – Whitby

Microlight at Sandsend

Captain Cook’s Plinth

Captain Cook – Whitby

Microlight at Sandsend

This group is from the Whitby area, in the days when we used to get into the car and drive where we liked. With hindsight, we should probably have done less driving, both from the viewpoint of pollution and cost. We will be making some changes once the lockdown finishes.

Daffodils

Forsythia

Grape Hyacinths

Spring flowers are always good – I am missing them at the moment as we live in an urban area and the local front gardens are a bit of a wasteland. We will be looking at the front garden with a view to making it more of a spring garden – at the moment it is great for butterflies and pollinators but it is only just about to start. We should look at starting the flowering earlier. We have said this before but always put it off on the grounds we have plenty of time. As current events show, this isn’t actually true.

Scones – John Lewis

Scones – Thoresby

Scones – Peterborough

Apart from driving where we liked, we could also have as much food as we liked. The fragility of our supply chain has been an eye-opener over the last month, as has the behaviour of panic-buyers. It has been very dispiriting to see pictures of bins of discarded food at a time when some people are struggling to get any at all.

After holding back and buying only what we needed, we spent a nervy couple of weeks worrying about supplies. If it ever happens again I’m not sure what I’d do, because our political masters and supermarket CEOs were wide of the mark when they talked of “plenty” of food being available and “robust” supply chains. I haven’t been able to buy flour or even a bread kit for the last month. We even had two weeks when we couldn’t buy courgettes or potatoes.

Robin

Sheep in Derbyshire

Robin in a Garden Centre Cafe

Finally, a few Robins and a sheep – something to look forward to as things return to something that resembles normality. I’m not sure they will ever be quite as they were because I sense we are all a little more afraid of what the future may hold for us.

It’s tempting to get philosophical and political here, but instead I’ll end with a feelgood story.

Three Feelgood Photos

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I’m short of subjects and enthusiasm, so here are a few photos to cheer the day up. I hope I can write something later, but if I can’t there are worse things to do than post pictures of Puffins and think of Mrs Botham’s delicious fresh sandwiches and cakes.

Plans, plans, plans

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The plan for the morning was to rise early, sneak downstairs as Julia slept and get writing. I have haibun to write, submissions to make and a new ambition to fulfil.

I want to hit my sixth WordPress anniversary with an average of 365 posts per year. I’m currently on 333 a year. I think that means I have to write 365 next year, and a further 160 to catch up. That’s 1.5 posts per day.

So, I need to examine the reasons for my deficiencies in posting.

One, obviously, is idleness, indolence, sloth or laziness. There are some nice words for it, but it all boils down to one of my defining character flaws. I don’t like hard work.

Two, which is a similar thing, my talent for procrastination, time-wasting, loafing and wandering off on the internet, either to play games or browse Wikipedia. Recently I found a new games page and I am now a dab hand at Nine Men’s Morris and, thanks to Wiki, can also discuss its history and variations.

Three, memory. I sometimes forget to post. You’d think one a day would be simple enough to remember but I have a lot to remember, such as my name, computer passwords and what Julia just said to me. Some days it’s hard just remembering how to walk and breathe at the same time.

Four. Sometimes I just fall asleep at the keyboard, leading to fifty five lines saying ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg etc

Or, worse, with the pattern of a keyboard impressed in my face, like one of Dr Who’s more low-budget adversaries.

Today I will attempt multiple posts.

Watch this space.

Today’s picture is the recycled Robin from the Garden Centre in Scone Chronicles 3.

An Unhappy Man

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The header picture is today’s entry in the Nugget or No-gett Competition. Answers at the bottom of the page.

I had a car accident yesterday, just one more brick in the wall of misery that is my mediocre life.

It wasn’t even an impressive accident.

The short version is as follows.

I had to move my car to allow someone out of a space in front of the shop where they shouldn’t have been parked in the first place. I was irritated. I forgot to engage the electric handbrake properly. Normally it engages itself if I forget.

The car ran down the slope (it’s so gentle I didn’t even notice it until yesterday) and gently came to rest against the car parked next to it. If I’d left my wheels straight, or if he’d been parked straight the cars would probably have not been damaged at all. But above all, it wouldn’t have happened if I had put the handbrake on.

So there you are. A minor collision at less than walking pace while neither driver was in the car. Some scrapes and paint transfer and, in my case, one dinge in the paper thin metalwork of my car.

It’s going to cost me £400 despite being insured, and I’ve already spent well over an hour on the phone in the last two days. Much of it was to a cheerful lady who was, she told me, based in Cape Town. I wish I was. They have good weather, penguins and a high crime rate. We have drizzle, idiots and a rising crime rate.

If you’re going to be robbed you might as well be warm and watching penguins as it happens. They aren’t puffins, but they are an acceptable substitute.

Puffin at Bempton Cliffs

This is a Puffin. Cute as a penguin, but able to fly. It also had a chocolate biscuit named after it.

Presumably they outsource the call centre because it’s cheaper. This has, so far, not shown up on my insurance costs. Over the last few years, despite a full no-claims discount and, until last year, an impeccable driving record, my policy cost has rocketed. I’m beginning to think they have abandoned actuarial tables and are just making things up.

Answer: That’s right, it’s a Herring Gull, so No-gett.

Scone Chronicles XVII

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We went to Harlow Carr yesterday but decided not to repeat either the scones from the garden or the cost of the main tearoom.

I couldn’t get all the way down to the bottom of the garden this time, as going downhill (I refer here to my direction of travel, rather than in my accelerating physical decline), is tricky with a bad knee. So I returned to sit near the sycamore key sculpture.

As I sat, a robin played hide-and-seek and a blackbird perched on a dead tree turned it up to Number 11.

Here I eavesdropped on several bizarre conversations (which may have been more mundane if heard in their entirety) and waited patiently, taking a few photos, as Julia went to fetch tea.

Eventually she returned, and placed a cup of tea on the bench next to me. Then she sat down next to me and we talked of robins, rhubarb and whether she had anything in her bag. Knowing her as I do, it seemed unlikely she’d been to a tearoom and not purchased comestibles.

She had done us proud, with a pair of Fat Rascals.

Fat Rascal at Harlow Carr

Yes, make all the jokes you like. They are rock cakes with spice. My Mum made them like this for years. Betty’s claim them as a traditional recipes, add cherries, nuts and a daft name and suddenly a legend is born!

They were very nice. They were even better with butter (though the butter pat was a bit chunky and needed slicing rather than spreading.

Of all the things I’ve eaten in the Scone Chronicles, this was the tastiest. It was also the best dining experience. No sticky tables or dirty cutlery here!

Fat Rascal at Harlow Carr

Still no pictures, Julia pointed out that the netbook actually does have a USB port, but when I connected the small camera, with yesterday’s card, the computer refused to cooperate.

I’m beginning to hate this bloody netbook…

As you may have noticed I can now add photos…

Change is Easy…

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I’m giving the new editor another try. I don’t particularly want to, but I do want to access some of my older photos and I can’t do that in the normal editor. Anyway, it’s time I started embracing new technology.

Julia has had an adventurous day, first cutting herself whilst trying a spot of woodcarving, then melting a hole in her fleece when she transferred her attention to pyrography. Well, I say “attention”, but if she’d been paying attention she wouldn’t actually have melted the fleece.

I’m now going to put some photos in, if I can. The new editor doesn’t seem keen. I’m already remembering why I switched it off and went back to the old one.

This, hopefully, is a selection of my favourite photos from the last year.