This indecision's bugging me

Tuesday Challenge #22
The challenge this week is to go through your archive and pick out your best picture so far.

Aaarrrrggghhhh! Define 'best picture'! Some of them required spot-on timing but could be reproduced (and haven't transferred well to digital) whereas others are precious memories, and irreplaceable.

This one is moody:



This one makes me laugh:



This one reminds me of a very happy day:



Poohsticks: innocent childhood pleasures:



The timing needed to catch the flame coming from the barrel of the cannon wasn't as easy as you might think:



An iconic image from a particular place:



And finally this one for the shapes and colours.

Sometimes you picture me

This week's Tuesday Challenge theme is Fairy Tales. "Interpret this in any way you wish."

So, as all good fairy tales begin ...



(I got some very strange looks from people at the garden centre as I lurked by the pots of thyme.)

Always believe in your soul

Have I mentioned that for ages I've wanted to get rid of the ponds in our garden? Although they were originally nice I'd got fed up with providing the local herons with a well-stocked larder, and having to get covered in filthy sticking sludge when I cleaned them each year. So when the heron had made a final visit I'd periodically start baling out, but no sooner would I nearly empty one than it'd pour with rain and fill it up again. Anyway, this went on all last year and I abandoned all attempts until the warmer weather arrived. As it duly did. The water was bucketed out and the sludge taken across the field to a natural pond so that any wildlife would have a new home.

This left me with two large holes - one in the lawn, one in the patio.The largest, deepest hole was given a basic infilling with any broken bricks and other rubble lying around in the garden. Then I took sacks down the road to collect subsoil from where the ditches had been cleared (first checking for Civil War relics because it's the site of the battle of Edgehill in 1642). That left holes only a foot deep - perfect for topsoil.

Being careful with cash, I didn't want to actually buy soil, oh dear me no! I've been going out with my spade and barrow, clearing the neighbours' fields of molehills (the most beautiful topsoil you can imagine, all finely riddled and weed-free), but also getting some soil and turf from a house in the village who were getting rid of their front lawn and were only too delighted for me to take some of it away. I think that was the source of my buried treasure:



I felt a real thrill of excitement when I picked this little brooch off the surface of my new lawn! I took it indoors and carefully washed the mud off it; quite pretty! I know how Life works; I know that only other people find really valuable things at random like that - it's probably just cheap costume jewellery, not worth tuppence. But ... you can never be quite certain, so I took it to a jeweller for a professional check, and guess what?!!
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I was right.

Take the long way home

There are some irate motorists in the village; a 200 yard section of Warwick Road (B4086) has been closed for repair and resurfacing. Unfortunately this is right by the industrial estate, so if lorries need to get from one end of the roadworks to the other they need to go 2 miles up the B4086 to the crossroads, turn right up the Fosse Way (B4455) for about 5 miles, turn right down the B4100 to Gaydon (about 3 miles), then turn right again past Chadshunt to get back to Kineton. About 12 or 13 miles in all.

Depending on how much work is needed on the old bridge, this could go on for 18 months.

And walk together down an English lane

Stu's latest Tuesday Challenge involves not using the viewfinder of the camera to set up the shots; basically, return (if you have a camera that ever left!) to the days of point-and-click.

So there’s your challenge. Take a bunch of photos without using any kind of viewfinder or checking the images on the rear screen afterwards. Post your best one of the week!

I can't decide which of these I prefer; the straightforward view


the catch-it-as-it-happens with an unco-operative subject (which would have been great if I hadn't cut off the end of his tongue)


or the worm's eye view.

His welfare is of my concern

I was directed to this video (which won't embed so you'll need to click the link) the other day. Although it ticks so many stereotypical boxes, some of which are utterly incompatible, I found it just amazing.

Slip-slidin' away

This week's Tuesday Challenge is to "take a picture of a creepy-crawly - spider, insect, etc. Preferably a real one, and preferably close-up enough to make out detail. Preferably artistically pleasing rather than just a documentary shot."

This fulfils at least some of the criteria.



This tinkered-with version looks quite interesting as well:

With a little help from my friends

I can't seem to get rid of the annoying caption at the top, but here's my Tuesday Challenge storyboard. Many, many thanks to the lovely people who've helped me (you know who you are).

 

Cherry pink and apple blossom white

Wrong. Whoever wrote that didn't know much about fruit trees.

Cherry blossom

Apple blossom

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.