Category: Photography

September Photo Competition – Then and Now – Results.

Well that was then and now it’s well past the closing time, but better late than not at all, so here goes.

All entries responsive to the theme (including Janus with one both late and illegal from Hong Kong)  and some with a slightly different take on it.  I particularly liked Soutie’s notices (the changing world of announcements could be a subject with almost as much scope as butchered movie titles).

But the prize this month goes to Pseu, a  couple of great photos, taken close to home.  We tend to forget how much our immediate surroundings also change over time,  just look out the window and try to recall how it was when you moved in all those years ago.

Congratulations Pseu.  Good Job.

Shark Attack, with pictures. Not for the squeamish.

Well that’s what I’m telling people.
It happened two Sundays back about eleven in the morning.
I was working on the boat, tearing out and replacing old waste water piping. Most of the pipe is in the bilge, not the healthiest spot in which to spend time, and I was lying on the galley floor reaching into the void to thread some more pipe when I must have kicked the companionway steps. The steps are a heavy wooden four step flight that mount into clips on the bulkhead and have pegs that drop into holes in the deck. Having done what was needed below I needed to climb the steps into the main cabin.
Thinking only of the next job I was off up the steps, well I got to the top when they let go, sliding down the bulkhead and onto the galley floor. My left leg caught the left mounting clip, opening up an seven-inch gash from ankle to mid calf. It felt as if I had been hit in the leg with a hammer, and my first thought was “I’m going to have quite a bruise there”. Then I saw the extent of the damage, kind of like a busted watermelon. I took off my dirty gloves and pushed the wound shut with both hands to see if it was something I could fix with a few band-aids or some electricians tape, but it was clearly beyond that.  I took off my t-shirt and tied it around the leg and started off the boat, up the dock and into the house in a kind of Quasimodo hobble. Nobody home of course, and as far as I could see, nobody on the creek.

(There are pictures coming up, if you do not wish to see them STOP NOW.)

Continue reading “Shark Attack, with pictures. Not for the squeamish.”

Life’s a Beach

On vacation this week, borrowed a house from my rich business partner, on the beach at Lewes (say Lew-is), Delaware. Got here late Friday night via Delaware City, Delaware (more about which later). Raining today and windy with it, holiday innit?
Lewes (the First Town in the First State) was settled by the Dutch in 1631 in what was to become Delaware (the first state to sign the Declaration) so naturally it is home to the Zwaanendael Museum just a couple of blocks away from here, and perhaps a little more surprising home to the Kalmar Nykel, a replica of the Dutch ship that brought original settlers to Wilmington, Delaware (sixty miles North of here), however, they were Swedes, following me so far?
Here she is back in 2011 on the Bay.

Continue reading “Life’s a Beach”

‘Testing’ for photos in comments

I have just managed to post a photo in comments…. and without following any complex instructions. SO now I shall test if I can do this again and if I can give good instructions on ‘how’ for others.

Here are two pictures, loaded in the usual way through the add media button?????????? Continue reading “‘Testing’ for photos in comments”

Spider time

It has felt like September for a couple of weeks now and the garden has taken on a distinctively ‘early Autumn’ look, with leaves turning and spiders’ gossamer glinting in sunlight, or glistening with dew or raindrops in the early morning.

??????????The hedgerows are full of berries: rose-hips, haws, blackberries, sloes and many others. Just off to pick a few more sloes. Anyone have a good recipe for sloe gin?

May-ish Photo Comp. – Trees.

Abject apologies for the lateness of this, I have been busy repairing some winter damage to the other house but that is no real excuse for my dereliction.  Anyway here we are and May is almost gone and photographic opportunities abound.  So how about we make the subject “Trees”.   It can be one, a few or a whole forest if can get them in the viewfinder.  I like trees and can often see the Ent in many of them.

Here are a few I took this morning wandering around the yard (me that is, the trees were their usual stationary selves).  t3cs

The conifer in the middle was our 1994 Christmas tree, now about 50 feet and thriving.

Continue reading “May-ish Photo Comp. – Trees.”

Rote learning

Before the 11 plus our primary school classroom would be full of the sound of children’s voices chanting their times tables, and other important facts, such as length from inches up to miles, depths in fathoms, areas in hectares and acres, weights up to tons….but most of these facts are lost to me, partly I suppose because of decimalisation, negating the need to know in so much detail. I didn’t find rote learning a useful tool, quite often finding myself speaking the ‘Nine eights are…’ then mumbling the rest. I do know of course now know my most of my times tables and have strategies for checking my memory! What I remember from those classroom days are random things like the texture of the speckled paint, the smells, the anxieties, the friendship inconsistencies, the risk of having one’s head knocked sideways for not knowing the value of a minim….

I wonder if any of the Charioteers can remember the wordings for rest of these classroom chants…. this is to do with a poetry project I’m working on. Interweb searching has not yielded results!

And just to prettify the post, here is a picture. Continue reading “Rote learning”