Tag Archives: selfie

An Interesting Day

Got up late and felt sluggish. Socks went on OK but the trousers fought back and it took some time to sort out. After that it was down to the pharmacy to sort things out (again) which took nearly half an hour). Then, with what was almost a bin liner of dressings and bandages, I staggered across to the doctor. Here I had a blood test. The nurse in question has a good record of getting the blood, but clearly learnt her testing technique in a time when patient pain was not such an issue. They are still short of tubes. There was a short wait after that as I changed nurses and gat new bandages. The leg is looking a lot better. I’m still not keen on having it attached to me, but it’s not as repulsive as it was last week. I now have,enough bandages to make myself into a passable mummy for Halloween.

As I left the surgery I had a phone call – it was the shop asking if I was anywhere near McDonald’s as we had visiting London dealers and they were making a day of it.

That was about the end of the excitement apart from the tempura pork. We had a pork joint at the weekend and still had some slices left so Julia did it in tempura batter and put sweet and sour sauce on it. It was delicious. We also had stir fried vegetables but, as you know, I consider them a penance rather than a pleasure. Fried pork in batter with a sticky sauce, on the other hand, is a real pleasure.

The diet?

I’ll get back to you about the diet.

The picture is an old selfie from a day when Julia left me waiting in the car and I ran out of inspiration to write haiku. At that point it’s either turn to limericks or selfies with special effects . . .

Thursday

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I must say I’m finding the titling of the posts a lot easier this week, though I’m not sure what to do next week. I might insert “Another” into the title, or “Next”. That will see me through another seven days. However, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

One of the computers is working again in the shop. It seems it’s a well known quirk of that computer and often occurs after automatic updates. You cure it by repeatedly pressing f11 as soon as a message appears on the screen.

When I say “well known” I mean well known to one of us. If the rest of us had known we would have fixed it. Communication is important in business but is often ignored.

I have a haibun out in Failed Haiku. You will have to scroll down to find Simon Wilson, though there are a lot of good things to read on the way down. The submission requirement this month was that the prose portion of the haibun should be fifty words or less.

If you want to know more about Southwold Pier (that’s what the haibun is about) try this post, or this post. Actually, now I check those two, you also need this one. The haibun is a bit pretentious and, if you like to know these things, actually relates to two different visits – the rude woman visit from several years ago and the visit the week before lockdown, where everyone had fled to their holiday homes to sit out the plague.

The pictures feature my new glasses. The featured image is the box with four pairs remaining. The other image which I am going to title “Study Number 1” is me in Serengeti mode, with my zebra mask and zebra glasses, though they look more than slightly polka dot to me. The general impression of a village idiot with a camera is enhanced by my self-inflicted lockdown haircut and the suspicion of Old Testament which hangs around my beard.

Now, what can I call tomorrow’s post?

Study Number 1 – The Idiot

That Tuesday Feeling

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Now that I have Mondays off and my week starts on Tuesday, I find my thoughts about Mondays are increasingly positive and, after two days off, I am also more positive about Tuesdays and getting back to work.

From that point of view I can say that my week got off to a cheerful but belated start.

From the email point of view, I have to report less positive feelings. The recent improvements made to my email system have proved, as usual, to be cosmetic interference and the new system has not contributed to either a better experience or a better temper.

When I switch on now I can only see either two emails (on the netbook screen) or three emails if I use the proper computer. This is much less useful than the old system and I can’t find any way to reset it.

At the weekend I seem to have pressed a button by accident and rearranged my emails by some sort of random reverse date order. It wasn’t exactly reverse date order because I could have coped with that, but old emails kept coming to the top of the pile at random.

Today it seems to have reset the screen size and managed, initially, to prevent me viewing anything apart from fragments of one email title.

This left me with a decision. Do I blog on the Great Classic Lies (‘new and improved’ for instance) or do I blog about the rest of my day?

Or, as I have reached the magic 250 word limit, do I just show a couple of selfies showing you the new masks my sister has made me?

Man in another mask

She has solved the early design problems by selecting a more masculine fabric and I feel the resulting masks would actually look good with a business suit. The same can’t be said of my head. The backlighting by fluorescent tubes reveals that my head needs a shave and a little theatrical make-up to remove the shine.

The new nose clip design cuts out most of the problems with misting glasses, which is a problem I still get when using a disposable mask.

Last night we had prawn jalfrezi made using a spice kit from Simply Cook. It was very good, despite me having the wrong coloured peppers and slightly wrinkled tomatoes from the back of the fridge.

Having made a mess of the pale blue and white shirt I wore yesterday, I am now reverting to shirts that don’t show food stains. I have an idea for a new fashion range using a red and brown colour palette and a pattern consisting of random blotches. The strap line for my advertising campaign – ‘A Shirt Made for Bachelors’.

The rest of Tuesday was pretty standard stuff. I did think about writing it asll down and leaving it as an historical document for future generations – Tedious Tuesdays – A Study of mid-week in 21st Century Britain – it would be like Diary of a Nobody, but without the drama. In the end I decided that as future generations have never harmed me, I would not inflict it on them.

Nearly forgot – my blood test results arrived in the post today. Yesterday’s blood test was bang on the bottom of the range, but still good enough to get me a new test date in October. That’s a good result.

The Road to Hell…

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…is paved with good intentions, as the proverb says. I can’t rid myself of a feeling of guilt as I think about missing a day of blogging, so here is another post I wasn’t meant to write.

I’m going to give in to the inevitable and keep writing, but on the days I was intending not to write I’m going to write, but without a word limit. This will allow me to stay free of guilt, but will not be too onerous. Until recently I tried for 250 words, then upped it to 500. Now I’m dropping it to 100, though in explaining that I’ve already done one hundred and five words. One hundred words is not an onerous task.

Brambles, progressing nicely

Lockdown news is that all the people who went to Spain are complaining that it’s unfair they will have to go into quarantine on their return. Well, if you go on holiday to Spain, in full knowledge that there is likely to be a second peak, you can’t, in my mind, complain when the second peak comes and the Government takes decisive action.

A doctor was on the news this morning saying that he couldn’t take two weeks off to self-isolate on his return because he had an important job to do. Shame he didn’t work that one out before going on holiday to a virus hot-spot. It’s not him I feel sorry for, it’s his colleagues and patients.

The scenario was completely forseeable and anyone who has been inconvenienced by the Government’s swift and decisive action must hold themselves to blame.

I complained earlier in the year about lack of Government action, and am glad to see they are taking action now.

So there you are, I am not feeling guilty about not writing a post, I have done a moderate number of words and I have expressed disapprobation of all the whining British holidaymakers in Spain. I like this new, non-blogging regime.

Yellow flowers – I really must look it up

It’s Cordyalis Lutea – thanks to Tootlepedal for the suggestion. It sounds like the sort of plant for me.

Pictures are spares from yesterday.Having not taken a foreign holiday since my hovercraft trip of 1975 I don’t have any pictures of me sunning myself abroad. In fact, as it was a day trip to rainy Calais, I didn’t do a lot of sunning in 1975; I ate snails and I watched people being sick on the roughest hovercraft trip in history (the pilot’s words, not mine).

Elderly man in search of a Profile Photo

I tried several shots. Julia says the ones with glasses are better as you can’t see so much of my face. The hair makes me look more surprised than I actually am. I was holding the camera and pointing it at myself so the photograph was not really unexpected.

A Tale of Two Kings

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Four years ago I went to the opening of a Great War display at Nottingham Castle. I was there as a guest of one of my gardening customers, as I don’t normally move in such circles. There were several people I knew there, including two local historians and someone who works as a volunteer in the regimental museum. One of them said to me that I was looking very much like a King.

Henry VIII

“What,” I said, “Henry VIII?”

With my ginger beard and regal looks, I have in the past been likened to Henry VIII, though I would like to point out I have no intention of obtaining a divorce or expelling the Church of Rome from the UK.

“No,” he said, “the other one…the bald one…Edward VII.”

Edward VII, or Edward I if you are Scottish

I had to admit, after a few seconds of thinking, that I do look a lot like Edward VII. Considering his somewhat loose morals there is, I suppose, a distant chance of me being in line to the throne.

This is what Edward VII would look like if he had less ermine and more Cotton Traders shirts. And no comb.

Time is, as they say, a great wrecker.

A Few Odd Photos

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The moon was looking good last night so I thought I might as well take a few shots.

I’d tried earlier in the day but the shot wasn’t quite right. A bigger moon, a gibbet and a crow would have been a great gothic horror image. A small moon, a rook and a lamp post didn’t produce quite the picture I was imagining.

Almost a gothic horror photo

I managed a couple of selfies over the holiday, because I was bored and the weather wasn’t much good for photography and myleg wasn’t much good for walking.

Selfie in a teapot

And a closer view

We were having tea and cake at Snape Maltings when I noticed I’d caught my reflection in the teapot. So I took some more, specifically trying to catch the reflection. The selfie isn’t much good but the triangles are interesting – they were the supports for the glass roof of the tearoom.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Finally there are a couple of selfies taken in the bathroom window. It was much more difficult getting the angle right than I had imagined. I still haven’t quite worked the angles out, even now. I just took plenty. Some didn’t even catch a reflection. I tried some without the small mirror but they weren’t as interesting.

Give a man a camera and there is no way of guessing what he will do when bored.

Philosophy, Photographs and Puffins

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The featured image shows my first attempt at using the Panorama setting on the camera. It just goes to show that a boring photograph is a boring photograph, no matter how you dress it up.

The wheelbarrow is quite interesting, as barrows go, and is a lot easier to use than a conventional barrow if you have mobility problems. The recycled BBQ/herb planter adds a splash of colour. Apart from that the view from the front door of the container/office/canteen is very dull. Julia has plans for this and I’m hoping to document them over the coming year.

What starts as a dull picture therefore has potential to become an interesting series of dull pictures., though it would be foolish to ignore the possibility of producing a dull series of dull pictures.

It is likely that in next month’s photo the barrow may have moved, but will that simple change be enough, or will I have to include another item in the picture to ensure that people keep looking?

I also used the Self Portrait feature. I’m not actually sure what it does. In a break with tradition, I wasn’t wearing my selfie shirt, so maybe it is just a liberating setting to break people out of a rut. It certainly doesn’t make bad haircuts look better. After a few practice shots I have now learned how to avoid the Fungus the Bogeyman look (wide in the chin and narrow at the top) and can make my head vary in shape quite considerably, but that, again, has nothing to do with the setting, just experimentation.

They say the camera never lies, which is true, as the camera, philosophically speaking, cannot form the intention to mislead. It can, however, give a false picture, depending on the angle you take your selfie from. I won’t show any of these shots as you suffered enough last time, so here’s another Puffin. People like Puffins, and it gives me a chance to work three P’s into the title (though a Phalarope would have fitted better). At times they can look very sad. This one appears to be thinking of ending it all…

Goodbye, cruel world

Man, Mirror, Monkey, Selfie

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They say that if you give typewriters to a roomful of monkeys they will eventually write Hamlet.

If you give a single monkey a mirror the results will be more immediate and more amusing.

If you give a man with time on his hands a digital camera, despite the supposed gulf in evolution and technology, you are firmly back in mirror/monkey territory.

I generally try to strike a pose that marks me out as a leader of men. This is easier with a camera than a phone as the phone invariably shows me looking sideways due to the placement of the lens. That makes me look shifty. Depending on the angle of head and camera I can also look like Mr Potato Head. Or a shifty Mr Potato Head.

Mr Potato Head

Somewhat distant, verging on shifty…

I also find that I look older from one side than from the other, and serve as a terrible warning about cutting your own hair.

This is the older, more serious side

Look at the uneven tuftiness of the silhouette – this is what happens when you cut your own hair

Having said that, if you buy cheap clippers you only need to cut it twice to be in profit. Once I qualify for senior citizen offers I may let a barber do it again as the costings will change.

I’m going to gloss over the matter of nasal hair (though I won’t be shooting from that angle again) but there can be problems with the degree of zoom and with holding the camera steady.

Too much zoom

Ooops!

So that leaves this one. To be honest it looks less “leader of men” and more “pining for a decent haircut” but it’s the best I can do.

Best of a bad lot

Julia says next time I pick her up from work she’s going to leave a mirror outside and see what develops.

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Life after the Care Farm