Boadicea's Chariot

Its happened again!

Everything, but nearly everything happens to me in threes.  It has become quite ghastly waiting for the other shoe to drop. (Okay, so triffids would wear three shoes wouldn’t they?)

Three people dropped dead on the week of October 10th over the recent past years, so that date is finished now!  Three relatives in the 80s died within a few weeks although none were apparently ill.  Three husbands and three dead children, I won’t go on!

This time it is only appliances thank God!  The other day my worthy, elderly, very comfy desk top computer blew up!  Smoke billowed forth, thank heavens I was using it at the time or otherwise it would have burnt the house down.  Needless to say, I ran screaming, (Union rules!)  Spousal unit had it disabled before it could render the office into a funeral pyre.  Seriously pissing off as it held my whole photo archive or so I thought and all my club admin stuff, but a great troll round his mates has found all the material to retrieve data so no real harm done.  So here I am on my laptop which already has my photo archive thanks to forethought of spousal unit, (I knew there was a reason why I married him!!)

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Thank you, Araminta, for the chance to judge this photography competition. As the deadline has now passed it is time to announce the results.

Araminta’s picture of a tea pot was a good way to start the competition. My intense addiction to caffeine made my sympathetic to this entry.

FEEG’s two entries were welcome additions, although I must concur with Christina that there is little normal or regular about Washington, DC. If you’re interested I can put you into contact with someone who is an expert on the US Civil War.

LW: thank you for the picture of the boat. The comment about scraping barnacles off the bottom gave me a chuckle. I often spend hours and hours at my computer researching and writing reports.

OZ: your picture made me a bit hungry. Well done.

The winner of this competition is Soutie for his pictures of the vegetable seller and the road to Cape Town. Both captured the spirit of the theme perfectly.

There is a short article in DT by Jane Shilling about the Britons’ love of living in cul-de-sacs and it brought back memories of my childhood in a “no through road” in Aberdeen.  It was unfortunately not signposted as such, so we did occasionally get lost motorists, who then had to do a three or more point turn in a very steep and steeply cambered street.  Entertaining to watch, as were all the learner drivers brought to practise in this particular purgatory.   I don’t think the milkman’s horse was too keen on it either, though he was regularly rewarded.  Taxis used to refuse to come down it in snowy weather.

But the best point of our cul de sac was that it ended in an entrance to a park, “our” park.

http://www.aboutaberdeen.com/victoria_park_gardens_aberdeen.php

At that time there was no conservatory or greenhouse in the park and not many visitors, but there was a small eminence that had been designed to look like a grotto and planted with rhodedendrons and other sizeable shrubs and which was ideal for childrens’ games.  We were in ignorance of the fountain’s history, but it was great for paddling in the summer.  This was our playground and we didn’t bother the neighbours. Very few children from other nearby streets ever came to it, so it was definitely “ours” and our parents knew we were safe there.

Now I live in another cul-de-sac and the driving instructors still bring their pupils to practice three point turns, but there is no camber to speak of and the entertainment is not the same.

Last week I started reading Tove Jansson’s “Travelling Light” while on the Northstar Line between Big Lake and Minneapolis. One paragraph reminded me so much of our Ms Osborne that I couldn’t help but laugh maniacally.

“Dear child, make sure you bring your young man so I can have a look at him, but don’t go buying some expensive and unnecessary gift. At my age, I’ve got pretty much everything I want, plus better taste than most of my progeny. And I don’t want to leave a load of rubbish for others to clean after I’m gone. Just pick out something simple and affectionate. And don’t go bring art into it — you’ll only mess it up”.

We are well used to canine kniptions and explosions of manic barking, people, eagles, coyotes all set them off.  To be fair, they are not discouraged, it is their job to alert us to approaching ‘threats’.

The goats normally live behind us, five acres away and are ritually visited for a bark up a couple of times a day.  No great threat just a canine ritual.

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Is it me or pensioners being demonised by the government and the press, especially the Biased Broadcasting Company?

Hardly a day goes by when I don’t see some report or other telling me that pensioners must repay this allowance or that benefit; or how pensioners have the audacity to expect hospital treatment for their illnesses. Read more…

Thank you to Araminta for giving me the privilege of judging the May photography competition.

The topic for the month is: let’s do the things we normally do. Submissions should be of life’s normal occurrences. Taking walks, cups of coffee, roasted wild boar, etcetera. The deadline is 18 May at midnight British time.