Now for something that could definitely not be called cute but it is beautiful. Slow moving corals and sponges seen in timelapse.
Slow Life from Daniel Stoupin on Vimeo.
Nice 'n' Springy |
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Let's face it Grey squirrels whilst being vaguely enchanting animals are vermin who do immense damage to the environment. They eat an amazing variety of food – bark, buds, flowers, nuts, berries, seeds and fruit from many different species of shrubs and trees often causing irreparable damage along the way. They also kill the indigenous Red Squirrel and take birds eggs and nestlings too. In short they are a bloody nuisance. So why was it that when Donna and I were taking a walk around Sheffield Park today we both came over all soft in the head and said "Awwww!"? It was only a grey squirrel after all and cute as they may be, they are (as I have mentioned already) destructive vermin - a pest. The reason for our sudden loss of senses was because this grey squirrel was different. It was snow white. We couldn't tell if it was an albino or not because we were too far away to see its eyes but the sight of this little puffball bouncing across the cricket grounds at Sheffield Park was just too cute not to mention. So why would a colour change make all the difference? Is it the "unusualness" of the beast or the fact that it looked like a miniature polar bear or a fluffy toy? I don't know but it brought out the worst in us. If it was a universal factor (a colour change makes things cuter) then it would be used by all the unmentionable and unclean members of society (second hand car dealers, accountants, politicians etc.) Just imagine the furore if Ronnie Biggs, the Black Panther or the Yorkshire Ripper had stood up in court in a white fluffy suit and asked for clemency or if Tony Blair had stood up to make a speech dressed like a fluffy bunny? No - thankfully this sort of cuteness attack is limited to fluffy puppies, kittens, bunnies and the like - even grey squirrels. Now for something that could definitely not be called cute but it is beautiful. Slow moving corals and sponges seen in timelapse. Slow Life from Daniel Stoupin on Vimeo. After a busy day in London yesterday and WWF Earth Hour last night, we both collapsed into bed last night and found out that someone had robbed us of an extra hour this morning! Yes, we had forgotten to put the clocks forward but now that we are both retired, that didn't matter too much. First things first, both Mother's were phoned and wished a Happy Mother's Day and assured that appropriate bunches of flowers had been sent and were to be delivered. So on our first "retired" Sunday together and with the weather being so nice, we took a nice brisk walk for four or five miles and discovered some new footpaths and bridleways to tootle along. Donna is still feeling a little stiff where she took a tumble in London but the walking has been good for her. We returned home and pottered around the garden, I mowed the lawns and Donna pruned the Dogwoods. The day has been gentle, blissful and rewarding and better still, we won't be getting up early tomorrow. Who knows, we might even stay up for an extra half hour tonight! How about a little Daffy Duck to round the week off nicely? Have a good week ahead. Sorry for the lack of a blog entry yesterday just too much to do but absence makes the heart grow fonder and so here is today's hotchpotch of writing. I have just returned from a magnificent day up in London. Gorgeous weather and lots of photo opportunities (can't think why I chose the above shot to post for the day though). Let me start at the beginning... London Bridge station was closed and trains were being directed through the back end of Norwood which explains the announcement from the guard when we arrived at Loughborough Junction... "I'm sorry for the delay, Ladies and Gentlemen but we have the signals against us. We are currently running ahead of schedule." Up to that moment, everyone was muttering "Here we go again..." but the train moved off on time and arrived at London Blackfriars ahead of schedule. That is where Donna and I parted company, she heading off for the British Museum (and a fall on the way that broke her spectacles) and me to meet my photographic colleagues. We had coffee (which someone else paid for), I have taken multiple photographic shots, enjoyed an al fresco lunch (which someone else paid for), we walked for miles and eventually ended up in a pub where someone else bought me a beer! All very satisfactory. Couple that with a religious experience and an excellent return journey on the trains, I really can't complain!
How about a video about someone who engraves images of castles on a single grain of sand? The ultimate in sandcastles! Everything has been a bit of a rush today so there isn't the world's largest amount of time to do anything like blogging. I have to use a bit of hand cream now and again because my hands are starting to dry out in the current cold snap and I would really like to know one thing. When you ladies use hand cream, how on Earth do you manage to perform everyday activities like opening doors? Doorknobs just slip through my fingers! Also, when cooking this evening, I had to squeeze some tomato purée into the Minestrone I am creating - a hopeless task that meant quantities of the purée going where it wasn't wanted or needed. It would be no good having a jar of the stuff because I wouldn't be able to unscrew the lid. It doesn't seem to matter if I use the lotion immediately before I start, ten minutes before or even half an hour before - my hands remain slippery. I suppose the answer would be not to use hand cream until after cooking or wait until just before retiring to bed. Ho hum. Here's a chap doing artwork on spinning wet clay. Fascinating to watch. My apologies for the lack of an entry yesterday. This was because I accompanied Donna to her last day working for the MoD. What an emotionally charged day it was too for both Donna and her co-workers. There was the usual day of work, tidying up loose ends before she left and then there were a few different presentations including a particularly unexpected one in the form of a written and signed commendation by one of the top boys for all of the work that Donna had put in on a recent project (above and beyond the call of duty - that sort of thing). Anyway we finally left to tearful farewells from some members of staff, an armful of different bouquets of flowers and came home to a well deserved take away Indian meal, bottle of wine and a quiet evening.
So how did we spend Donna's first day of retirement? Did we have a long lie in? Well... yes and no. My photographic get-pushed challenge from a colleague this week was to "capture a night time long exposure (>10 sec) and have stars and water in the picture". I consulted the weather charts and the only clear spell this week was early this morning. So an hour earlier than usual we were up (Donna wanted to come along... I didn't make her) and making our way to the hammer ponds near Horsham. As you can see from the shot above, the sodium light pollution from Horsham is very noticeable to the camera but to the naked eye it wasn't. Still, it gives a lovely eerie and warm glow to the shot. Following this photographic sojourn we returned home and went back to bed... because we could! It was blissful. For the rest of the day we have tootled around Petworth House, lunched there, visited charity shops in Midhurst and Petworth and have had a great relaxing day all told. It has been a wonderful start to Donna's retirement and I promise not to get her out of bed too early tomorrow morning. Ooh! Almost forgot to say "Well done!" to Planehugger for adopting a new cat. I know it is going to be a challenge for you, given her background of abuse but stick at it and Fifi Fiddlesticks will turn into a lovely cat, I am sure. I will respond to your email soon. To end the day, have a French video about chocolate making just to keep you going. Tomorrow is Donna's last day at work before she retires. We have argued about the following for quite some time now but she is pushing things right to the limit, right to the end. I have asked her to wind down gracefully because there is nothing that she owes to her employers, in fact quite the contrary. However, today, she is running late because she is just sorting out "one more thing". I am starting to get very irate because, by now, if people haven't asked her for advice on something or to get her to do something then IT IS TOO DAMNED LATE! Right now, I am waiting for a call to say that she has left the office but it doesn't seem to be coming and she isn't answering her office telephone. If she leaves right now, I should get her home by seven p.m. if the trains are running smoothly. Heaven knows what the day will be like tomorrow but at least I will be there to drag her away. I know that she wants to tie up all loose ends but once again if it hasn't happened by now, then IT IS TOO DAMNED LATE! I have told her that she is not to answer the phone or discuss work after she has retired unless they are going to offer her money (i.e. become a highly paid consultant). I intend to make her stick to that promise. Have some Muddy Waters to wind down from Monday. Or perhaps I should make that Glumday? It has been a bit of a nothing day in the Everest household and the only exciting thing that has happened all week, is me losing two teeth at the dentist. Seeing as Sunday is usually such a nothing day, I am tempted to start missing out on Sunday's blog entry - unless I have something important to say. Otherwise you will have to put up inane (well, more than the "usual" inane) chatter about how we went for a walk to feed the ducks or whatever "exciting" things we didn't get up to. I will be up in London twice in this coming week, once on Tuesday when Donna retires and once on Saturday for a photographic meet up. Following that I will have quite an exciting announcement to make (at least I think that it will be exciting - it will be for me) so you might have that to look forward to. Anyway, here's a small animation to finish the week off with. Have a good one! Fallin' Floyd from il Luster on Vimeo. We received a hefty phone bill last week. Using the darned land line is an expensive business. Yes, I realise that a lot of the bill is for our Internet connection but small talk soon adds up and if there is one thing Donna is good at, it is small talk. She likes to phone her Mum every other day for a lengthy chat. I have no qualms about this because it is a few minutes of time that Ruth can have away from Ben and my goodness does she need this time alone. Anyway, the answer had presented itself nicely. When I was with O2, I had three hundred talk minutes per month included with my tariff but because of their crumby network, I was unable to use them. With Vodafone, I get unlimited minutes of talk time included in my tariff and, more importantly, I can use my phone in the house! Problem solved. I can chat to my Mum for as long as I want (or for as long as I don't want to strangle her!) and Donna can do the same. I don't know how Vodafone makes money out of this, I really don't. To put everything in perspective, I have used my new mobile phone to talk to people more in a fortnight than I did in two years on O2. Now that says something for the state of the network, doesn't it? Oh well, time to cook dinner. Lasagne tonight. Now this isn't for the faint hearted or the squeamish and definitely not good if you have sweaty palms. As you can imagine, after a dentist appointment to have two teeth out, I am feeling a little rocky and not up to writing a lot (photography is out of the question). In general the appointment for two teeth to be extracted went as well, if not better than, expected. I arrived with about five minutes to spare, was taken straight into the surgery, injected, left to numb up for a minute or two and then the teeth were pulled (actually, they tend to push them these days). Not that it took much pushing - these two fangs were so loose that I am surprised that they hadn't fallen out already! After a quick examination and a check to make sure that the bleeding had stopped, I was ushered out to pay the bill. Total time? Ten minutes from start to finish. Total cost? One hundred and thirty one pounds! That is just short of eight hundred pounds an hour. Is it any wonder that dentists tend to drive around in expensive cars and retire early? I celebrated / commiserated by driving into town and treating myself to a couple of deep and meaningful Japanese anime films on DVD so I can sit and watch them as I feel sorry for myself when the anaesthetic wears off. At least I didn't do anything embarrassing, like dribble uncontrollably, when I was getting served in shops. Unlike this bunch of folks caught at embarrassing moments. Have a great weekend! I'm gobsmacked. Speechless. After yesterday's budget and my prognostication that we would suffer, Donna and I will be just over one hundred pounds better off in the next year. That's two pounds a week that the Government won't be taking off us. Of course it all helps but everything else has gone up around us so what it really means is that this is one hundred or so pounds extra that we won't have to find towards bills. Oh well. Easy come, even more easy go. No more to say today. Have a Youtube clip with Hollywood star Christopher Walken dancing to C&C Music factory's hit "Gonna make you sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" from 1991. Today is Budget day. When I was a child, I used to hate the words "Budget Day" because it meant that there was no "Children's hour" on the television. Instead of Deputy Dawg or Magic Roundabout there were pictures of stuffy and boring politicians hurling abuse at each other (in black and white of course). Two things strike me about that. First of all "Children's hour" - do you remember those heady days when that is all the programming that was allowed for children? I suppose that if you counted watch with mother at lunch time you could add a further ten minutes of television that was aimed at kids. One didn't talk about ITV or any of the plethora of independent stations like ABC that were part of it. Nice children didn't watch television programs on ITV. I don't think that it has made me any the worse for (a) not having more than one hour of television per day in my formative years and (b) not watching "common" ITV. The second thing that struck me and hasn't changed since my early and formative years, is the feeling of dread that would come over me on Budget Day as my father would sit down and try to make sense of what the Budget meant for day to day expenditure. Because an airman's pay in the Royal Air Force wasn't exactly a huge amount, small changes in the price of petrol or other luxuries were tolerated with difficulty. Now I am an adult and I find that I am still petrified of Budget day. Because my own income is limited and the same standards apply, a feeling of dread looms over me when I have to find out what "luxury" is going to get taxed unreasonably. Over the years I have only been marginally better off after a Budget on one occasion and that was to the tune of about seventy five pence a week. Every other time I have been hit on taxes or National Insurance, petrol and alcohol prices, car tax and when I was a smoker... well, every Budget hurt tremendously as revenue was squeezed out of my pockets to pay for child benefit and the like. Nowadays, thanks to the magic of DVDs and Youtube, at least I can sit and watch what I want, when I want and because I don't have a television or television licence I am not in the slightest bit tempted to watch pictures of stuffy and boring politicians still hurling abuse at each other after all of these years. Whatever the Budget, whichever the party in power, I know that I am going to be worse off. So just get it over with and pile on the grief, you sick bastards. Now pardon me while I go and watch an episode of Hector's House or two. Here's something I must have a go at... unlocking a car with my brain. I love the English language, don't you? I mean... it's easy to learn, where there is only one "a" (and possibly "an") unlike the three in French and the dozen in German. There is only one "the" rather than the three in French and twelve versions available to the Germans. More importantly there is only one "one" rather than the two available to the French and the... guess... twelve available in German. English is delightfully flexible about so many rules but when it goes off at a tangent, then "Wow!" does it do so with a vengeance. The old "'i' before 'e' except after 'c' bit for instance. There are in fact more words where there is an 'i' before 'e' after a 'c' but never mind (species, science, sufficient for instance) and other words such as 'neighbour' and 'sleigh' where there is a definite lack of an 'i' before 'e'. Then there is the multiplicity of pronunciations of 'ough' in and at the end of a word. All these exceptions have to be learned throughout life or rather they used to be learned; kids these days can't spell 'losing' without making it 'loosing' instead. Anyway, as I trolled up to Horsham a couple of weeks back I noticed a sign outside a garden centre that was offering a good deal on a "Veg Trug" with a picture of a vegetable filled trug. Now, being British and knowing that we often shorten the word vegetable to 'veg' I realised that it is pronounced "Vej Trug" with a soft 'g' at the end of the first word and a hard 'g' at the end of the second but if you weren't a knowledgeable English speaker or alternatively if you were a child in the current English education system you may not know this. Perhaps the 'g' at the end of the words are both hard (as in the ending of 'pig') or maybe they are both soft thus making it a "vej truj". Yes, One could imagine a foreigner (or dim witted child) asking for it in this fashion. I know that I harp on about the lack of education in our youth today but I do feel that they aren't being taught the right things and I doubt if many of them eat vegetables or even know how to spell the word. It's a sad fakt of lyfe these days, I yam afrayd. I'm a big fan of GoPro video cameras and have showcased several videos made using them here on my blog. Someone has had terrific fun making this video of Superman using one. Speakers on for the dubstep music. I can feel it in my bones. The creative urge is so strong, in so many areas, that I am stagnating. I really want to take my photography to a new level but I have other things that I need and want to do as well. This is cramping my style just a tiny, weensy bit and making me doubt whether I am capable of doing everything that I want to do (or anything, if it really comes down to it). Therefore, I am not sure if I should take a break from my photography before it becomes ever "darker" and more consuming. I want to have a go at video production and am geared up for it but it is a case of sitting down and scripting what I want to get out of it and what I want to do to get my message across and how I am going to portray that message. I want to think about writing too (once again!) but everything seems to be getting in the way. Once Donna retires then maybe that will be a good time to settle down and "do" something whether it is preparation or execution. Whatever happens, I want some quality relaxation time with my darling wife first. "Time out" is my middle name. We had a wonderful time in St Mary-de-Haura, Shoreham last night listening to the Brighton Consort singing works by Palestrina and his contemporaries but it did mean a late night, a later meal and then not so much of a lie in this morning. However the weather was totally beautiful and it would have been a shame to have wasted it. Temperatures rose to the low twenties Celsius and it seemed like a darned good idea to go for a walk at RSPB Pulborough Brooks. This time last year it was cold and miserable and we had several more weeks of it too. Today could not have been more different. We caught sight of Grass snakes and Snipe although the adders were not basking as they usually would have been - probably it was so warm that they had no need of any extra sunshine. The weather has been so good that Donna has even got the garden furniture out of storage and given it the first coating of Teak Oil and I have managed to give the grass a good cut (such as is left amongst all of the moss). Apart from that? Not a lot. Have a good week ahead, watch out for St Patrick's Day tomorrow and stay clear of all of the drunks that it seems to engender. Here's a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon to further lift you spirits. So I didn't do a blog yesterday... did anyone notice, I wonder? I do have an excuse for it, should you wish to know. I had to visit the dentist yesterday afternoon and as always I got more pain and discomfort than I would like. The long and short of the trip was that two of my teeth are now so loose and wobbly that they are going to have to come out next Friday so despite the shedloads of money I have spent with dentists and hygienists over the years and despite all the care and attention, I am now losing teeth at a slow but steady rate. Not that these two teeth have been any good for doing anything with for the past six months so it won't be any great loss should they come out, apart from making chewing certain foods next to impossible. Apparently in six months time I can have a plate fitted should I so choose. Anyway, straight after that, I didn't feel much like blog writing and I had a photographic assignment to fulfil so Donna and I drove up to the South Downs at Rackham and went for a walk so I could shoot some starry night shots ostensibly. However, on arriving at the car park at Rackham, there was sufficient mist to hide the stars but it did leave sufficient moonlight for me to shoot an atmospheric picture... when the night time cyclists weren't zooming past and leaving light trails that is. Once we got home, I didn't even want to process the shots. All I wanted was a beer and a meal and to go to bed. Today has been much of the same and this evening Donna and I are off to see and hear the Brighton Consort at St Mary's in Shoreham. Now... have you ever had any close calls? Dices with death? Here is a compilation of close calls and some of them really are very close indeed. |
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May 2015
AuthorPaul Everest - Shining wit (at least that is what I think they said) |