Run for home run as fast as I can

This week's Tuesday Challenge was "Ten second start". Basically, find out how your camera's self-timer works, put your camera somewhere with a guard so that it's unlikely to get stolen (or, in my case, run over), and run away as fast as you can.

Here's mine:

You take your left arm out ...

... Oh.

What a silly man.

Got no time for explanations got no time to lose

Piggy's having trouble peeing again. :( He was fine this morning, but by lunchtime he was straining to produce only a few drops. So I called the vet (Easter Sunday - good timing Pig!) and went to the surgery, where he was duly rodded. He was such a brave boy, standing still and not grumbling while a tube was pushed up his willy! The vet couldn't feel anything that might be a stone obstructing him, and got a fair amount of urine (not as much as I thought he needs to pass) to test. It's a bit too alkaline (the usual dalmatian stones form in acid urine) and she couldn't find any crystals in it when the sample was spun and looked at under the microscope. With any luck it's an ordinary infection and the antibiotics and anti-inflammatories we've got will sort it out. But in the meantime the poor fellow's still having problems and is an unhappy little soul. We'll see how he does tomorrow - it won't be life-threatening fora couple of days, and I won't let it go that long - fingers crossed the inflammation will have subsided and he'll produce a flow and be a happy boy again.

I really don't want to have him opened up again.

You like tomayto and I like tomahto

Here's something I've been meaning to ask those of you from across the Herring Pond; what's the correct pronunciation of Barack Obama's first name? Is the accent on the first syllable, as in a soldier's billet; Barrack, the way we'd naturally say it over here? Or is the accent on the second syllable, as in Baroque?

Just wondering, in case I ever meet him. It'd be awfully Bad Form to get it wrong.

Hit the road, Jack

Takeaways don't bounce.



Apparently it's my fault. If I hadn't been trying to keep up, Ned wouldn't have run so fast that he fell over and squashed supper and cut himself so many times that we run out of sticking plasters. The curry still tasted nice though, even with the unplanned addition of a quantity of A+.

There's something moving in the sidewalk steam

The things that can be done with sheep!

Enjoy!

He'd smile from the bar on the people below

Today was the Big Day for Ned's charity abseil down the Fort Dunlop building, in aid of the Stroke Association. Every time he looked at a picture of the building over the last few weeks he commented on how it seemed to be getting taller and taller as he became more and more nervous. But he did it! The weather was perfect, if flipping cold in the shade.

Oh heck, it's very high!


Here we go!

The point of no return.


Ned's the one on the right




The Eagle has landed!

I'd reside by the side of the silvery sea

When I was a little girl I lived in Budleigh Salterton (yes, a real place and not a music-hall joke); see the picture in my profile ...

mainly in this house (then called Rill cottage because of the rill that ran a few feet away).


My mother's family had lived in the area virtually since the beginning of time, and we only lost contact with the place when my great-aunts died in the early 70s; I went back at the time to help sort out their house (which, if there was any justice in the world, would still be my mother's home, but hanging on to resentment only damages my soul) but haven't been back since. My great-grandmother had the house built for her, and I'd love to live there - we even still have a lot of the original furniture. I wonder if the current owners want to sell?


So when we had a golden opportunity to visit the town again I seized the chance, despite me having a pounding headache and Ned (aka Mr Snotty) a feverish cold. We walked along the beach to the rocks at the end where, as a child, the challenge was to throw a pebble over the river onto the cliff edge and have it settle on a ledge without bouncing off into the water. As a four year old this was a feat beyond me - I was a rotten thrower anyway (father always reckoned that the safest place to be when I was throwing was beside the target) and the river seemed really, really wide.



In the near half-century since my last attempt the river seems much smaller and my aim improved somewhat and after a few abortive attempts I finally succeeded - at last I've navigated the rite of passage and my pebble sits snugly on the cliff. (I wonder why I didn't take a picture of the ledge, just for my own satisfaction. Oh well, I'll just have to go back again sometime.) And so does Ned's so that's good too; a short celebratory victory dance was performed, much to the disgust of the nearby bird-watchers and we could have our picnic with a satisfied glow in our hearts.


The beach at Budleigh is a pebbly one, but it's not like the shingle on most beaches; the pebbles are smooth and flattened and rounded and tactile, and there are some wonderful colours among them. There are so many uses for them ...

Looking down on creation

For this week's Tuesday Challenge we had to take a picture where our camera was at least 30 feet (10 metres) above the subject of your photo. I get wobbly standing on a chair, so I wasn't over-impressed at this at first! And my camera is a very very very basic point-and-click (with monumentally irritating shutter delay) so no chance of doing anything particularly fancy. But then I found a couple of places where I could keep my feet firmly on the ground, so that was okay.

The first one has had a tweak or two - I'm not sure whether or not that's against the rules, but anyway ...

Arlescote



Here it is untweaked. See, it still looks like Toytown!




The other one is totally au naturel - utterly untampered - so I know for sure that's not cheating.

Jacob's Ladder

Reality came around

I know that people mean well when they bring us 'abandoned' or 'I think it's injured' wildlife, but what they're generally doing is actually lessening that animal's chance of survival. With young animals the mother invariably knows exactly where they are, and is only staying out of sight until the terrifying humans have gone before returning to their babies. If the humans abduct the youngster the mother is left bereft, and the baby itself has to survive the third-rate upbringing that's the best we humans can provide. Even if they are actually injured it's best to leave them alone. Minor injuries they'll probably recover from anyway; treatment for more major injuries would involve so much handling by humans the animal is likely to die of shock.

Our hearts sink when the door opens and someone proudly and carefully enters with a cardboard box, and the words "We thought you'd be the best people to bring it to". No we aren't! But once you've picked it up it can't go back because it'll stink of human and then will be abandoned. So we have to decide whether to put it down straight away or keep it overnight with food, water and warmth then release it in the morning.

That's what I'll be doing with the not-quite-fully-fledged collared dove that's currently in the utility room. It stood more chance before it's 'rescuer' came to its aid.

Leave. Them. Alone.

Can you put your hands in your head?

After conducting extensive experiments I can confirm categorically that Omally is not a pedal-bin. Even if you stand on his toes really hard the top of his head doesn't flip up.

You don't know how much they all mean

Good Lord. I'm absolutely stunned.

During the morning I set up a fundraising page to try to achieve Ned's target of £75 for the Stroke Association. In under 12 hours we've surpassed it. Thank you all so very, very much. (But let's not stop quite yet!)

Ned is now feeling absolutely terrified and has passed nearly enough bricks for an extension. And I'm making sure the life assurance policy is paid up.

Set my hopes up way too high

Ned's not sure what he's let himself in for; although his vertigo is less than it was, due mainly to his current job which often involves being off floor level, he's still not entirely confident at height. So he's not sure why he volunteered to take part in the International Man of Mystery abseil in aid of the Stroke Association down Fort Dunlop in three weeks time. The thing is that he needs to raise £75 in donations before the big day so, as they used to say on Blue Peter (and might still do for all I know), that's where you come in. Any donations to enable him to scare the living daylights (d'you see what I did there?) out of himself will be very gratefully received.

Every picture tells a story, don't it

This week Stu's Tuesday Challenge was to take a photo of something that wasn't there; he describes the mission thusly:

"This week, the subject is absent from the frame. This could be for various reasons - location: your subject is present but off to one side of the frame; temporal: your subject was present but has now gone."

I had several ideas (and might yet set one of them up, weather permitting) and missed a corker through not taking my camera to work. A client rushed in with her dog which had cut its leg quite badly, and it left the most perfect trail of scarlet footprints across the reception floor and into the consulting room. Instead I came up with these:




I reckoned that the flower-bedecked tree where a young girl died was ghoulish and in poor taste.

Who do you think you're fooling?

*cue Toggy rant*

It's really irritating when young whippersnappers, barely out of nappies, are firmly convinced they're right and you're wrong. I needed advice about some embroidery I was planning, so thought the best thing to do was visit a little specialist shop I know in town. Unfortunately when I arrived there was a notice in the window saying that they'd relocated, so I followed the directions from the window of the closed shop and scoured the streets to find their new premises. I'm not sure I actually found it, but there was nowhere else for it to be. Usually the staff in sewing and craft shops are remarkably helpful and friendly - I found the exception. When I was asked if I needed help (I was looking round rather randomly because all I could see was fabric) I asked if they stocked embroidery equipment.

"Tapestry?"
"No, emb.."
"Machine embroidery then"
"No, hand emb ..."
"There's no such thing. Either tapestry or machine."
"Sorry, but tapestry is done on canvas with wool ...

Embroidery is done with cotton or silk onto other sorts of fabric."



She glared at me, pushed past and stalked over to a drawer cabinet and pulled out a random skein of embroidery thread.
"Like this?"
"Yes!"
"This is called tapestry" she triumphantly announced.
"No it isn't, I'm afraid, and I don't think you're going to be able to help me."

I left, thinking 'So, I put the egg in my mouth and suck ...'

You'd laugh and say nothing's that simple

For the past few weeks the newspaper has printed a voucher for a free gift - just cut out the voucher and take it to the relevant shop to claim the item. Some weeks it's something I'm not in the slightest bit interested in so I don't bother, and some weeks there isn't a local branch of the participating store. Other weeks are different; we thoroughly enjoyed our free box of Thornton's chocolates a fortnight ago! This week the offer was for a free pashmina (retail price £19.99) in a choice of colours. I thought that sounded rather nice so decided to do the week's shop in Leamington rather than Banbury because that's where the nearest branch of the shop was. We didn't bust a gut to get there particularly early, and I was surprised when I arrived, at about 11 o'clock, that there were still some left, although the choice of colours available had reduced during the morning. So I chose one (even with a limited choice of colour I think I should have gone for cream rather than brown, but hey-ho) and queued to hand over my voucher.

What amazed me was the woman who arrived shortly after I did and proceded to complain loudly about the reduced selection. She made certain the poor shopgirl knew that she'd made a special effort to come in from all of 10 miles away (so had I) and accused the staff of false advertising and so on and so on. Hats off to the poor girl - she remained very polite and explained that they'd opened at 8.30 and there had been a full selection then. It was also politely pointed out that the voucher did say "while stocks last".

I couldn't help but think about gift horses and mouths - the damn thing wasn't costing her anything, after all.

*notices that several pashminas from that particular chain of stores have appeared on ebay!*

Blue, blue, my world is blue

This week's Tuesday Challenge was simply "Blue". A seemingly straightforward topic has many possibilities; as well as just blue objects, 'blue' can mean depressed, or the Boat Race (Oxford and Cambridge blue), or the police force (boys in blue) or even pornography. But on a beautiful day like today, all I had to do was look up ...

Give me one moment in time

This weeks's Tuesday challenge was to take just one picture,and do all the planning and setting-up in your head before taking the picture, and not take another one when you notice the telegraph pole sprouting from someone's head - that sort of thing. And, if possible, make it more of a challenge by shooting a moving object. Well life's pretty peaceful round and about - the only dynamic moving object was one sheep's jaws as she chewed the cud. So with the flipping annoying shutter delay I couldn't get her with her jaw amusingly over to one side, but instead she has her mouth open.

"I don´t belong here", said old Tessa out loud

I had a cunning plan to obtain another image for the 'Red' theme; I'd go to the supermarket greengrocery area and arrange the red peppers into an artistic heap to see what interesting shapes could be obtained. What I hadn't realised was that, because of the inclement weather, the supermarket would be heaving with people stocking up as though for a siege. Anyone would think it was a bank holiday. When I eventually struggled through to the fruit and veg I was alarmed to see that there weren't many red peppers left; but to make matters worse no sooner did I start arranging the remainder than other customers came and snatched them away. So I had to snap what I could before they vanished entirely, and hope for the best. This is the best I could get in between the grabbing hands.

I was following the pack

Just in case there are people who aren't yet bored with pictures of the recent weather conditions, here are some more ...


I love the way the falling snowflakes flare in this one of the village church. Unfortunately I didn't get it quite in the frame due to the dogs I had with me at the time jogging me, and then the camera battery finally died. But it's still a nice enough shot.

This tree just looked so beautiful I couldn't resist it.


I was very taken with the monochromism monochromosity black-and-whiteness of this scene through the wood. It makes me think of Narnia and the Lantern Waste.


Our road never gets gritted, which makes for interesting driving.

Three to get 'reddy'

Three possibles for the Tuesday Challenge.




I have an idea for another one - but it depends whether we can get out of the village!

Today's your birthday, friend

It's Beattie's birthday! When she was an adolescent she developed a health problem that we were told meant she'd be unlikely to make old bones; that's when the course of her life changed and her planned role as mother to my next generation of dals went out of the window and she assumed the sole role of companion dog. So to reach her 14th birthday, especially after her stroke last autumn, is surely a cause for celebration!

In her prime ...

When I'm feeling blue

What a shame this week's photo theme isn't 'Blue'. Blue we can do. Harry and Piglet love running in the snow ...





Beattie, however, wasn't impressed. (And was about as red as we could manage.)


I'll have a bash for 'red' another time.

It's been a long cold lonely winter

This week (just got in by the skin of my teeth) Stu's Tuesday Challenge was to produce an image suitable for a magazine, either front cover (portrait layout) or for a double-page spread (landscape layout). My muse ran away screaming at this particular idea so here's a fairly rubbish (but showing willing) picture for a bonsai mag showing the green shoots of recovery.

Water difference a day makes

For Stu's Tuesday Challenge #2 I thought about using this picture I took in Cornwall last year



but he said that using existing pictures isn't really on, so I went out today and took this one instead:


And this ....



and this too.

It's a hard-knock life

Poor Harry. Life's just pants for him at the moment. Piglet's terrified of fireworks and thunder (and heavy rain, because he's bright enough to have noticed that heavy rain is often accompanied by thunder) but not gunfire. Harry doesn't like gunfire, and at the moment there are a lot of automatic gas-powered crow-scarers being used to keep rooks and pigeons off the growing winter crops. So when we go out for walks instead of running ahead, investigating the hedgerows for rabbits, he's walking nervously at heel. Now, to make things worse, he's being picked on at home. Beattie's never been very keen on him (she likes Piglet - we think it's because Harry's the only black-spotted dal she's known, and she's colour-prejudiced), but for the last few days every time he's gone too close to her - to walk past her to get a drink, or to pick up his toy that's near her, for instance - she's turned on him, snarling and barking until he cries.

Wee'll meet again

The weekend nearly went according to plan; Piglet knows how to choose his moment! He'd been a real grumpy-bum for the last couple of evenings, so I'd wondered what was wrong - I found out when I was setting out with them for their afternoon walk and noticed he was cocking unsuccessfully.

Panic stations. Back home (with the dogs protesting about the rubbish walk) to ring the vet and say we were on our way. This was at 2.30; surgery closes at 3 on Saturdays, and Leamington's 10 miles away. Isn't it always the way that, in an emergency situation you get stuck behind Mr Forty-five-mph-is-plenty with no opportunity to overtake, and all the traffic lights turn red at your approach? We parked as close as we could to the surgery and ran, which seemed to help a lot because, as we paused outside the vet's Piglet cocked his leg again and the floodgates opened! No rodding required thankfully. He was given a quick check over (because it would be rude not to), while the vet nurses sulked at not being able to add catheterisation to their list of accomplishments.

So home, in a more relieved mood, to find the lovely Omally had arrived to help us install our new computer. This, of course, involved copious imbibement whilst downloads were uploaded and uploads were downloaded (I think), finally calling it a day having watched White Horses, the Clangers, Ivor the Engine (psshhtaka, psshhtaka) and Noggin the Nog at one in the morning. Astonishingly when I went into the living room to get the dogs to go to bed all the cheese was still untouched on the coffee table; even Ned's favourite stinky ones. So no worries about a) squits or b) impaction from the clingfilm. What good dogs!

We all felt a little fragile today, and I forgot to thank Om for being wonderful.

And it burns, burns, burns

I'm sure it does. We're not quite brave enough to try it yet ....



*puts roll of lavatory paper in the freezer*

Still don't know what I was waiting for

We have a new computer in a box. I bet that won't just plug in and go either.

And mistakes to which they led

To continue ...

... so what you're saying is that I can part-watch a DVD on my player, take it out of the machine, come round to your house, put it into your machine, press 'Play' and it'll start from where I left off?

A video would.

I'm walking backwards to Christmas

Right. So we now have a DVD player, and some stuff to watch on it. The picture quality's fine, but it's nowhere near as user-friendly as video. If you realise you haven't got time to watch the whole thing you can't take it out and two days later put it back in and it'll play from where you left off. And you can't even rewind a minute or two after saying "Ooh, did I really just see that?".

No, it's not Progress.

Oh, before I forget - Happy New Year, everyone!

I'm glad I spent it with you

When I was at school I never got to be a prefect. I was Ink Monitor once, which was quite fun. In those days we all sat at proper desks with inkwells for real ink, which had to be carefully poured from a large bottle to avoid a disastrous spillage. Quite often some bright spark had stuffed the inkwell full of blotting paper, which had to be winkled out with the point of a pair of compasses. Another term I was very proud to be Pencil-Monitor, which involved the great responsibility of sharpening all the pencils in a marvellous machine with a turny handle which went kerchunka-chunka-chunka; you had to be careful not to get too enthralled and grind a pencil down to a stump. (Milk Monitor was a position nobody relished - although you got to leave class early before break in order to fetch the crate of milk, you didn't half get some stick if you brought the one that had been too close to a radiator and the milk was tepid. And those horrid waxed-paper straws, that went all soggy long before your third-of-a-pint was finished and no matter how hard you sucked nothing would reach your mouth.) Once I was even Form Vice-Captain, which seemed to be a courtesy title only - I don't remember having any task to perform, and certainly not one involving any sort of vices. For all those positions there was a cool enamelled badge to wear on your jumper next to your house (Constable, Chicheley or Dereham at one junior school; Courteney, School or Newton at a senior school) badge, so that everyone knew how important you were. But I was never a prefect. However I've gone even better now. For Christmas I was given a beautiful shield-shaped enamelled badge. Modern schoolchildren won't notice the difference.

She tied you to a kitchen chair

As you may or may not know, Ned's beard has been a vital feature at his work, despite my serious dislike of its extravagant fullness and flamboyance; in fact I only tolerated it under protest and with the promise that everyone else at work would dress up as elves (they bottled out, the worms) and that I could deal with it as a present. So I was delighted to receive this lovely stiffkit.



I started playing straight away.



Just before my four months of control end, I might wax him from top to toe ....

You'd better be good for goodness' sake

Or you might find a strange bearded man in your bedroom tonight ....




Merry Christmas, everyone!

You won't be seeing rainbows any more

This morning we saw 999 in a car park in Banbury. After four years, eight and a half months it's over!

*wonders how long it will be before we stop automatically looking at every numberplate we see*

It's the final countdown

No, not till Christmas, although we're certainly counting down the shifts we need to work until the big day. (I have 6 to go, Ned has 7, then we both collapse exhausted.) No, I'm talking about consecutive numberplate spotting. Way back in the mists of time (2004 actually) Stu told us about this stupid pointless timewasting addictive obsessive pastime and we laughed. And promptly began playing the game (not 'The Game', but the CNPS game). I'm not certain of the exact date we started but by April 27th I'd spotted #3. We had the occasional good run, spotting one or two most days, and the occasional bad run, where we spotted 10 in order but were missing the one prior to that run. But we're nothing if not persistent and tenacious, and stuck at it, although it became more difficult when our weekly mileage dropped from about 400 miles a week to 40.

We now only have to see 999 and our mission will be complete. I wonder what we'll do next.

How bizarre

Today a foreigner asked me how to spell R.S.P.C.A.

Sleeping in the hedgerow

Some weeks ago at work I had a deputation of two teacher and two small children with a box containing a very weak young hedgehog they'd found in the middle of the playing field. It had no obvious injuries but was very cold and very small, so I took it in to start its care by warming it. At close of play that evening I took it home with me to continue the intensive care with hot water bottles (covered to avoid piercing!) and rehydrating fluid. As it warmed it became more active, and after a few hours was swallowing the warm fluid thirstily. It was left overnight with warmth, special invalid food and drink. When I went down in the morning I opened the box, the patient took a few paces then promptly died, which was very disappointing.

A few days ago during the bitterly cold spell there was a ring on the doorbell, and outside was my neighbour with her small daughter earnestly clutching a cardboard box. Inside was another small hedgehog they'd found and brought for me to look after. Unfortunately even warming this one up would have done no good, for it was totally frozen solid and as stiff as a board. It felt a little strange to be given a corpse.

Ground control to Major Tom

I don't know why this experiment filled me with utter delight when I read about it, and I wonder why I was so concerned about the two without helmets! I'd love to do something like that - and they got them back safely too!

You better hurry cos it may not last

Did you know that credit card companies insist you should pay, including all accrued overdue interest charges, even though they send your bill to the wrong country?

'Nuff said - legal action possibly pending.

Somewhere there is Morningtown, many miles away

Isn't it odd that, when you've got to get up especially early for a busy day, it takes ages to get to sleep the night before? You finally pass out, exhausted, about half an hour before the alarm wakes you, and you go through the day in a trance, looking and feeling like death.

Stand by your man

I think I might have stood a bit too close to him. Man-flu seems to have crossed the species barrier from male to female (and yes, you blokes are another species sometimes!). However I now realise that it only lasts 24 hours, so there'll be no excuses in the future.

Roman in the gloamin'

We have two small ponds in the garden; the orginal plan was that water would be pumped from the bottom one to the top then trickle aesthetically down a little pebbly rill back to the bottom one. Thus the water would be constantly aerated for the happy survival of ornamental fishies in the top and froggies and newts and suchlike in the bottom one. Unfortunately it never really worked out like that because we never got around to permanently wiring in the pump which meant that it only worked when the back door was open to be plugged in, so it could only be on when we were in, and when it was off there was too much water in one pond and not enough in the other, and it was all a bit pants really. Then half the fish died, and a heron ate the other half, and the ponds started smelling manky, so I decided that this summer, before any wildlife settled in the sludge at the bottom to hibernate I'd empty them both and fill them in.

I'd get the bottom pond nearly empty (baling it out bucketful by bucketful, and taking any efts I found across the field to a real wild pond) then have to go to stop for a break because my back ached and it was usually getting late and supper needed cooking. Of course it was at this point, every time (oh yes, I've done this several times) it rained, and filled the pond again.

Ned reckons it's a Sisyphean task that will never be complete, but I reckon it's merely Herculean and will be done eventually. I wonder if the Greeks or Romans are right.

Working together they get the job done

Barack Obama
Can we fix it?
Barack Obama
Yes we can!

Let's hope so anyway!

(With apologies to Bob The Builder)

Rockabye, sweet baby James?

Ned was emailed a picture which has caused great consternation at Genie Towers. Ned studied it carefully and couldn't be certain; I studied it carefully and couldn't be certain. So we called the Boy to have a look and see what he thought. He too studied it carefully, and finally decided that no, it couldn't be him because his trousers don't have a white lining to the pocket.

I'm not sure if that was meant to reassure me or not.