All I have time for now is a video. This one is all about austerity measures and the need for additional funds...
I've had a very busy day what with sorting out my finances and then taking a trip over to East Grinstead Museum - heaven preserve me from cycling clubs who meander all over country roads, stopping traffic dead and all the council gangs going around cleaning out gullies. Thanks to the two wheeled brigade, various gully cleaning and tree lopping activities plus ancient fogeys driving huge BMWs and Mercedes at forty mph everywhere, a thirty minute trip took me fifty minutes in the end and I arrived bang on time for my meeting instead of having time to adjust and preapre myself. Sarah, the curator, met me and over a coffee we discussed what she wanted to do and I ended up taking away a list of tasks to perform by the end of June. The compensation for this was that I was given free run of the Guinea Pig Club display cabinets to take what photographs I wanted and similarly there was free access to their catalogue of artefacts and photographs, some of which I was allowed to have copies of for inclusion in my video and slideshows. That is about it for today. I have left little or no time for blog writing today (but I know what I am doing for tomorrow's entry so there's no problem there!). All I have time for now is a video. This one is all about austerity measures and the need for additional funds... Today has been a lovely day. I have skipped various onerous chores (e.g. the ironing) and have indulged myself. First of all, I met up with HH for a smashing walk, talk, coffee and a scone at Nymans gardens and decided that if there was enough pollen in the air that I too can have mild hay fever - well, at least that is what happened when I accidentally tapped a "ripe" pine tree branch and a thick cloud of pollen drifted from it. By thick, I mean enough to coat my hand and turn it greenish yellow followed by a dribbling nose and runny eyes. Yes - that sounds like hay fever all right (and I don't mean the greenish hand - that's more like gangrene I would have thought). After a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours I returned home full of good intentions. You didn't know that Cowfold was Hell did you? You thought it was more like purgatory. Well, the road to Cowfold, like the road to Hell, is paved with good intentions. The road to Hell... wasn't that a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby film with Dorothy Lamour? Well, it should have been. Needless to say, my thoughts of getting anything useful done evaporated in the sunshine so I determined that I would get on with learning something new. Because I am going to be getting involved with creating a video for East Grinstead Museum and seeing that I lacked a suitable bit of video production software or rather the software that I have doesn't allow me to do what I want or need to do, I splashed out on Cyberlink's PowerDirector 10 yesterday. Now all I have to do is learn how to use it. I am reasonably au fait with other video production software but this one has more depth to it and I will need to learn new menu layouts, different terminology and the like. I have started the process and I have also leapt onto trusty YouTube for hints and tips but it is going to be a bit of a slog - this is why my brain hurts. What I want to do is to avoid a special effects fiesta - there are some absolute horrors out there. What I am after is producing reasonable fades and transitions between video clips and also audio clips. You can keep all of the dreadful gimmicks out of it but I must give the customer what they want and if they wish for flames burning from corner to corner in between each scene then that is exactly what they will get. Some years ago, I was asked to produce posters advertising Christmas fare and entertainment for my local pub and the design was left in my hands. I produced half a dozen tasteful designs, clear and easy to read, neat but not gaudy. For a joke, I also produced an absolute screaming horror with little Santa's chasing Christmas tree fairies and Christmas elves doing unspeakable things to Santa's reindeer - you know the sort of things I mean. If it was Christmassy and tasteless I put it in. You can guess which design won, can't you? Yes, the absolute screaming horror - but only if I could squeeze in a picture of Santa flashing his backside somewhere. I duly did this and it was posted around the pub. I barely showed my face all over the festive period because it was too embarrassing. I couldn't believe how many people LIKED the end result, it was that dreadful. It has just made my brain hurt again to think that people have such low expectations and shocking taste. I won't even go into the St Valentine's Day posters I did for the same publican. I'm off for a beer and a huge omelette. Enjoy your evening... and the video... which I am sure I have run before... but it just shows what taste some people don't have. ...and I don't mean that the fish cakes are after revenge either (by the by, they were rather tasty). It's that time of year again. The time when all sorts of official letters start to fall through the letter box. You know the sort of things, end of tax year stuff (P60s and the like), how badly my pension funds are faring (yep - I am going to be a pauper all my life) and house contents insurance details. The latter of these is purely because it is getting close to the twentieth anniversary of when we moved into this back end of Sussex village. Anyway, I opened the thick wedge of letter that came through the letter box and... blah de blah... more expensive... blah de blah... we'll take the money from your account blah-de-blah... of - there's some good news, they have found a reputable company who will give us the same cover for less (heavens! An insurance agency doing it's job and trying to find me a better deal). What's this? Oh it's a booklet detailing changes to my existing policy should I care to remain. Let's see... Cheap Yak bite insurance guaranteed to pay out unless I live in Tibet or work in an zoo.... Cheap earthquake insurance San Francisco or some other earthquake ridden place... Aha! Here's the meat of it. Those things that they have changed since last year. Hmmm. Ohmygod! What do these people know and expect that we don't know and expect? Under the restrictions of Acts of War they have added "mutiny" and "military uprising"! RUN FOR THE HILLS! Insurers don't normally make policy changes unless there is good reason so to do. So why should my house contents insurance no longer cover me in case of military uprising or mutiny? Is there a risk that in this great country of ours, during a Jubilee year, that we are to expect some such happening? Come on lad, this is Great Britain. The military are too stupid to rise up against parliamet and rip their way through the contents of the houses of the middle classes! We aren't some third world country you know (well... we are economically speaking...). If the military got upset they would probably make a joke out of it and send it via email and fax to everyone, You can't stir the working classes out of the pubs and the middle classes off their asses to save this country at best! No. I am going to go for the cheaper insurance option because they offer me more for less and you can mutiny all you like but I am covered! See you tomorrow. Talking of insurance and mutiny, do you remember this from MOnty Python's "Meaning of Life"? The Crimson Permanent Assurance (it's in two parts, the song is in the second bit...) Poor Donna. She still hasn't arrived yet. As I write this she has about two more hours flying if everything has gone smoothly. By now they should be in range of the Falklands and a fast jet interceptor will have been dispatched to "meet" them. There is nothing particularly sinister about this, it is just very good practice for the pilots and ground crews to arrange a meeting in mid air. When I went with Donna the last time (way back in January 2006) we were met by a Tornado GR4 which did a very close fly by, accompanied us closely on the port side and then executed a perfect barrel roll under our aircraft and "posed" on the starboard side before returning to base. These days I believe that they use Typhoons to perform the same task. Maybe Donna will get some photographs, I don't know... Anyway, with Donna away I am effectively a bachelor again which means that I have to fend for myself. This means cooking. I am a reasonably accomplished chef but the bachelor mindset quickly comes into play. This amounts to "I can't be bothered to go to a lot of fuss just for one person" so Donna wisely provided me with a variety of meals that can be taken out of a packet and plonked either in the oven or the microwave - you know the sort of things, faggots, pies, pasties and the like. Now I have been naughty in the past and not eaten what has been provided and in this case it was a pack of fish cakes that has remained in the freezer for the past three or four times that Donna has been absent on business. So last night I thought "Let's surprise her. Get the fish cakes out and cook them!". I rummaged around and extracted the box. Being an inveterate instruction reader, I looked for the cooking instructions and having chipped off some of the permafrost I found them. Hmmm. Oven temperature of 250 degrees. Ours doesn't go that high so I will have to adjust the time... Best cooked from frozen - well that's a relief then! So out came a baking tray and I lightly oiled it, as suggested (not that it ever works - they still stick like billy-ho!). I tore the packet open and then went back to the freezer for something else (in this case faggots). I know that the instructions say "best cooked from frozen" but I don't think that they meant "best cooked when encased in ice". Obviously the freezer has been a bit vicious and over the past few months has embedded them in ice resembling something that looks like it has been dredged from a 1950s Hollywood Science Fiction film! The faggots were fine and the fish cakes will probably be all right tonight once they have defrosted in the fridge. If you don't hear from me tomorrow it will be because the creature from the black lagoon has crept out of the fridge and throttled me. Keep your fingers crossed... Have some fails from the month of May to keep you amused (every time those folks face plant themselves or fall off bicycles I wince!) I'm not a happy bunny at the moment. Donna has been whisked away for a short but intense trip to the South Atlantic (leaves tonight, returns next Saturday); just some small islands that have been in the news again recently. It's not so much that I didn't get the chance to go; after all, someone has to look after the cats plus I do have a lot of things to do this week. It is more a case of me not being happy with Donna being away; we don't like to be parted. Now I know a lot of chaps who would be quite excited at the prospect of having their other halves out of the way for a week - it means nights out drinking with the lads, a week's worth of washing up piling up, eating nothing but take away meals however, I am not one of them. I find it best to keep my mind occupied; it helps immensely. So whilst we were out taking a walk today (a lovely day for it too) I came across a bit of a conundrum. Why is it that barbed wire seems to exist in two states only? There is the brand new, galvanised state and the altogether rusty state. I can't ever recall seeing barbed wire in any position in between. It must 'age' and corrode at night when you don't see it. Does anyone have any ideas why this might be? I wonder if razor wire does the same although I believe that you can get plastic variants which do not corrode and that you can even get coloured versions. Blood red so that real blood doesn't show perhaps? Or maybe bright green to announce its presence? I suppose it is a little sad that we need to have the likes of barbed wire and razor wire in the first place but it does serve a purpose. It's like the old practice of lining the top of a wall with jagged and broken glass. Perhaps it is just the sight of it that deters would be malefactors from attempting to do something stupid. Perhaps that is the reason for barbed wire going rusty overnight. Not only is it a visual deterrent because of the spiky bits but rusty barbs would probably harbour something nastier, something to make you more prone to blood poisoning or tetanus. So is rusty barbed wire a design flaw or perhaps it is planned obsolescence. Anyway, that's a morbid thought and doesn't help me to forget that Donna is away from home. I think that I will go and hug a hot cat and drink a cold beer. That might cheer me up a bit. Have a documentary about Rockhopper penguins on the South Atlantic islands that Donna is offf to. Oh yes! The weather is a little bit on the warm side but I, unlike many folks, am not going to complain about it. After a miserable April (the wettest in one hundred years I believe) and a massive electricity bill for having to continue heating the house (in particular the cats room) I have been waiting for this hot spell to arrive. Just the sight of blue skies and sunshine makes me feel more cheerful and it appears that it does the same for a lot of other folks too. That wasn't what I wanted to talk about today though. No; the reason for my warm feeling was that I found a book that I read just over a couple of years ago in a charity shop today. Is there something particularly special about this book? Well, yes and no. First of all it is the definitive work on American submarine espionage during the Cold War, secondly when I managed to get hold of a copy, it had to be procured from the MoD library and I had less than four days to read it and thirdly, I couldn't find it in the UK anywhere. It is freely available in the United States where it can be found at silly prices but then the postage and packaging would bump up the cost dramatically. However, in the St Catherine's Hospice shop, there it was, sitting there as bold as brass in an almost new condition (I doubt if it has been read - the pictures might have been looked at) in hardback, complete with dustcover for a mere £1.50 - now that really gives me a warm feeling! Actually, it was a good day for books for me so I cannot complain apart from having to enter them into my my book database. The reason I do that is so that I can keep tabs on what I have bought so if I see a copy of a book in a charity shop, I can refer to the database via my smartphone and dropbox cloud services. I only do this because I am a forgetful old fart and I probably drink too much as well - that is good for killing brain cells. It isn't unknown for me to buy duplicates but the money all goes to worthwhile charities. Actually, this dropbox service is well worth it. All the photographs I take on my smartphone get automatically uploaded to this cloud server and at the drop of a hat I can reach them from any PC or other smartphone even if I delete them from my phone. I originally found it of use when doing some work for Niki in South Africa. She had some photographs of rhinoceros that needed work however her Internet Service Provider wouldn't let her upload a massive picture file via email. So she uploaded it to dropbox, shared the folder with me and I had instant access to these pictures. I did the required work and then put the reworked photographs back into her dropbox folder and Robert is your father / mother's brother as they say (or Bob's your uncle if you weren't able to work that one out.). I would recommend anyone needing to move chunks of data about, or who needs to access it from other computers, to click on the dropbox link above, watch the video and then download and install the product. Well worth it. Anyway, to celebrate the hot weather and my "find" this morning I am going to kill some more brain cells with a nice cold beer. Enjoy your evening. My poor head... Not that I drank a lot last night (a glass of wine, beer, sherry and a G&T over the course of the evening) - well, not a lot by my standards - my head was feeling particularly grotty this morning. OK, ok, I shouldn't have been drinking on a Thursday as we tend to eschew alcohol on all days and nights except Friday and Saturday these days but both of us felt that last night felt like a Friday so we had a little tipple or two. In times gone by I might have had double that in a day as a matter of course and then gone on binges at the weekend - at least I could justify a hangover then. You see... alcohol has always been my one big failing. The reason for this is that alcohol does the job it was meant to do on me; i.e. it gets me drunk with all of the exhilaration beforehand and all the embarrassment afterwards. Other chemical substances that I have tried that seem to give others a buzz just leave me cold. My biochemistry just doesn't react or it reacts in an adverse way. That's why some of the drugs I take for my diabetes and other issues are the more esoteric ones because the normal ones just don't work. Alcohol does work. Nicotine used to work but that was really damaging. I looked back at my University days and it was rare that we didn't end up in some pub or other at least five nights a week. This date in 1978 one of my friends, Steve, completed his last two finals exams and that called for a celebration. We drove out to an obscure little pub, the Hog and Donkey, near Boyden Gate and quaffed lots of ale following which I drove people home, slept like a log and didn't wake up feeling any adverse affects at all (at least that is what the diary says!). That's why I was a trifle surprised to find that I felt distinctly jaded this morning. It just doesn't seem fair that even this little pleasure seems to be drifting away from me. Worst of all... I can't go out and drown my sorrows for fear of the after effects. Oh well, I never was one for learning a lesson easily so I am going to go and get me a nice cold beer whilst I ponder on what I can do about it! Have a great weekend. I might be a bit busy so I am not sure when (or if) there will be a blog entry. There is a reason which I might divulge to you (or not as the case might be!). Finally, if you are planning on having fun this weekend then don't forget the condoms! There were two sorts of tears here though. Tears of joy and tears of sorrow. Let's start with the happy tears, shall we? I flashed up my old PC again and started the slowish process of going through the forty or so old floppy disks that I have still lying around. What's a floppy disk? For the benefit of the youngsters amongst us, read this. Now perhaps you will realise why the floppy disk icon is used as the "Save" icon in programs like Microsoft's Word for Windows... It was, as I mentioned, a long haul and by the end I hadn't found the missing story that has plagued me for the last couple of days. I ran some recovery software on the hard disk but still came up with no results. So as a last resort I ran the recovery software on each floppy disk. Guess what? The very first disk came up with about forty chapters even if the first part was corrupted but by a stroke of luck, I found fifty four perfect chapters on another disk AND two of the specials that I wrote. Deep joy and tears of happiness all round. I don't know if it is of any value as I filched a few ideas from other authors but a lot of it is still original Paul Everest stuff. Having extracted a lot of useful stuff from the floppy disks, I kept a couple of them for old times sake but what to do with the rest? That is where the tears of sadness come in. With the data extracted, these disks had no more use. I dismantled them into whatever could be recycled, shredded the magnetic data portion and junked the plastic. As I sat there taking them to pieces, I got quite maudlin. I can remember when floppy disks were huge (eight inches square) before the more compact five inch models came along. The first PC I ever used needed to be booted from a five inch floppy disk because this is where the operating system was held (good old fashioned DOS). In fact this was in the days before hard disks were installed in PCs! If you were really lucky, you had two floppy disk drives so that if you wanted to copy something from disk to disk, you could do it directly from one drive to the other, otherwise you would copy stuff from one disk into memory and then copy it back out onto a fresh disk. Then again, we didn't use as much data then as we do now. You could get "Elite", a very good space shoot 'em up, on one disk (that's about one Megabyte). Then came, joy of joys, the three and a half inch, 1.44Mb, double sided, double density floppy disk like the ones I was using today. In fact they were quite rigid, being held firmly in a plastic casing. I used to be geeky enough to carry a couple around in my shirt pocket (one with my CV on and one as a DOS boot disk) in much the same way that I now carry USB memory sticks around. Can you imagine how it felt for me to be destroying these links with the past? I got quite maudlin and tearful thinking of all the good times that floppy disks and I used to have together... Anyway, having gone on about this wretched story for three days now, I have included one of the chapters for your amusement / indignation / boredom. The main characters are George and Pet, two likeable barbarian wenches named for Jo and Helen my two lady friends, who were quite accurately reflected characterwise in the story; I play the part of a twisted but benevolent deity with an eye for the ladies. There is also a singing sword... I hope that you think it was worth all the pain of searching that I had to do. Thankfully it is short (who said "mercifully"?) Episode 13 (I am NOT superstitious OK?) – Sing if you are glad to be…
“It’s not a jukebox, it’s this damned sword that I took off the barbarian!” said Pet. “Well shut it up now or get it to sing something else” said George drawing a small crossbow and loading it with what looked like a small sweetie scoop with a bit of string attached. She quickly wound the loose end of the string around the crossbow handle and filled the scoop with a hand full of hazelnuts conveniently placed in a dish on one of the tables. The soldiery looked nervously at their fallen comrades “I’m the kind of guy that never settles down…” sang the sword pommel “I suppose that is a bit better” mumbled George looking at the slowing advancing mini army. “Right then ladies” said one who was obviously in command “Just come along quietly and we won’t ravage and kill you too many times. “Here comes the sun…” George thought on this and fired the crossbow at the shelf behind the bar, the hazelnuts shattering the row of bottles and the mirror and liberally making holes in the canvas picture of a buxom lass in a state of ‘dishabille’ (that’s foreign for being in the being in the naughty naked nude). These sorts of pictures seem to ‘hang around’ all low class drinking establishments. The landlord, who had ducked behind the counter, could be heard whimpering at the loss of his assets. The soldiers stopped dead in their tracks. George reloaded swiftly. “It’s like grapeshot” she said “but I call it ‘nutshot’” and carefully depressed the end of her crossbow to bring it to just short of waist level. “You are wondering whether there is enough shot here to damage more than one of you. Do I have you attention gentlemen?” “Come on Eileen…” She had their undivided attention as the nuts poured out of the scoop onto the floor. “Oh shit.” said George. “That’s always happening. When it comes to men, I always aim too low” The soldiers rushed them and I decided that enough was enough. I clicked my fingers and performed a minor miracle. I put a time stasis field on the whole group. I wasn’t going to watch my two girls getting another mauling by some roughy, toughy soldiers – once a night should be enough for any man. But then, to be fair, I couldn’t let them have it all their own way so I decided that a one on one was suitable. I touched the girls on the shoulder and they slowly popped out of stasis. “ABC!” said Pet. “Thanks for bailing us out” “Whoa! Steady now,” I said. “To maintain equilibrium I have to set two of them free as well so you are going to have to fight regardless. Which two do you want?” “Who’s the smallest?” asked George “Ever practical. Well, that small runt of a man over there, the one with a weasel face, is ‘Mad Sausage’ so called because (a) he is mad and (b) he has made sausage meat out of five barbarian warriors in his twenty years service” I said “Five isn’t that many,” said George “I have maimed more than that” “I’m sure you have, my deadly little bonbon. But all your victims have been found and counted. In Mad’s case we are not sure how many have been counted or double counted or just not found. I would suggest that you think carefully because the stasis won’t last forever and you might need to have made a friend or at least a lasting impression on someone.” “In which case can we have the officer and that big grizzly bast*rd over there” asked Pet. “What an excellent choice” I said, touching each of the chosen victims gently. “You are the wind beneath my wings…” wailed the sword. “What about another small miracle just for me? How do I shut this thing off?” asked Pet “Just put it back in the scabbard” “Mmmf grmph palumphfm grffm…” muttered the sword tunelessly. “Ah!” I said, “The hilt is alive with the sound of music? Just my little joke. Your boyfriends are coming round now – I’ll leave you to it” I said, thinning into the air and disappearing. George faced the officer who started to move “Wakey, wakey sunshine” she said deftly smacking his face and holding a very sharp knife to his throat. “In a moment we are going to have a nice little talk” Meanwhile Pet had watched her huge assailant start to move. “Stand up straight! Do you call yourself a soldier? You big mummy’s boy! If you want to fight me you are going to have to learn the proper way. Now, take the stance like this!” she said opening her legs about a foot apart. Agog, he followed suit. “Now I want you to watch me very carefully because you will have to do this if you want to fight me”. She weaved and stalked up to the giant of a man and with swift viciousness she kicked him right in the fork. His eyes crossed and he started to tumble, Pet made a pistol out of her thumb and forefinger and ‘shot’ him. He collapsed onto the floor. Pet blew down the imaginary smoking barrel. “You are getting a taste for doing that aren’t you?” said George. “I had a good teacher” she replied. “Now let’s see what all of this is about” she said as the rest of the soldiers fell out of stasis back into real time to see their biggest colleague lying in a small pool of great agony and their officer with a knife to his throat. I could curse. I really could. Do you recall that yesterday I mentioned my Science Fantasy story that I wrote for my lady friends (Hi Helen and Jo, wherever you may be now)? Well, I decided that I would scout around and see if I could find it, or at least the chapters that I know I had kept. I set to with a will last night but rather strangely, I couldn't find them on my PC. "Not to worry," I thought, "I have an external drive, they are bound to be on there." and I left it until this morning. A quick check on the external drive showed that during one of my periodic housekeeping sessions, I must have deleted them. Damn and blast it! Then I recalled... I have an older external drive with a lot of older stuff on it. So I plugged that in and did a check. No; I couldn't find the files on there either. Drat and double drat! Then I had a positive brainwave. What about my old PC? It has sat around untouched for just over two years (I can't bring myself to throw it away yet). I had no idea of whether it was going to work or not but a bit of jiggery pokery and swapping around cables and there it was, running nicely. So I did a check on that PC and... no... they weren't there. Desperation had started to sink in. Not that the story is worth a great deal but it does constitute a happy memory and much as I hate to say it, I wrote some fairly good and humorous stuff. Then I had an absolute brainwave! I have several bits of software that can recover deleted files. So swapping back to my main PC, I ran some of this software. No joy. I could feel the tears at the back of my eyes but nil desperandum I would try some other software and a deep scan. Three hours later, there were the files. Yes! YES! YES!! I could have danced with joy. Unfortunately, the contents of all of these files are corrupt and there isn't a word that can be read in any form or fashion. I have now tried several bits of software and always the same result and I can feel my body about to be racked with sobs. I now have two hopes, both of which are forlorn. The first is for me to run the recovery software on my old PC and see if that works. The second is even more desperate. I have a box of floppy disks which MIGHT have disks with some of the episodes on board but that will mean flashing up the old PC once again as that is the only box that has a floppy disk drive on it (when was the last time you used a floppy?). Following that I have to hope for a miracle... it's a long shot but it might just work! A sad story isn't it? Here's a happy story though. Just two days ago, YouTube celebrated its seventh birthday. Happy Birthday YouTube! Back in 2002 when I was working for a major bank, I was starting to get myself a bit of a reputation as an author. Only as far as I was able to type away at work on an ongoing story for two of the ladies. I gave them a chapter or two a week, where a chapter was little more than a page or two of A4. On high days and holidays they would get a 'special' which could be anything up to twenty pages. Now, the story wasn't anything grand, it was sort of a Science Fantasy and I made up the plot as I went along and it kept me (and the ladies) amused for just about a year before redundancy crept in and I got thrown out. I'm sorry to say that I haven't managed to keep all of the story (there are some missing chapters) but I did have fun with some of the concepts. One of the weapons I devised was a wicked little device that would disintegrate anything man made but nothing natural. I used it in an audacious jailbreak where the guards were unable to keep up because all the buttons on their uniforms disappeared; one chap even lost his false leg because of it. I only mention it because it sprang, unbidden, to my mind today. So I fell to thinking... just what would happen if there was some disaster, let's say a rogue bacterium, that meant that everything man made would be digested or made to disappear. Just how tough would life be? It would be interesting even as far as clothing goes. My pullover is a man made fleece for instance. I would be OK shirt wise because I'm wearing linen but there wouldn't be any buttons though. Trousers - they're OK - denim but once again the metal buttons and zip would disappear. Socks could be interesting as I am wearing a man made fibre and cotton mix so they would get thinner. The soles of my shoes would drop off! OK. So what else? Well, the house would disintegrate around me as the bricks would all disappear and the glass would be gone from the windows. My poor old Fiat would be next to nothing. I don't think that they use real rubber in tyres any more - it's all synthetic. That's all right though because the roads would disappear and become muddy tracks. The cats would be alive still but would have to eat out of something different because their bowls are either pressed metal or plastic depending on what day of the week it was. I wouldn't have a filling in my teeth and my spectacles, mobile phone and MP3 player would be long gone. It's a bit of a horrible thought really, isn't it? On the other hand though, you wouldn't have to read my blog because you wouldn't have a PC to read it and I wouldn't have a computer to type it on! So we should all be thankful for small mercies, eh? Seeing as today has been so nice, weather wise, I thought that a swimming pool animation would be in order. Watch out for the twist at the end! ![]() Frogmore statue. Click for a larger picture ...with purple dots on. It's peculiar how little things stick in the mind. When I was a very young child, if I asked my father too many times what colour something was he might well have replied in exasperation "it's sky blue pink with purple dots on" which was an attempt (and quite successful it was too) to confuse me. As time marched ever onwards that innocuous little phrase took on a whole new meaning. Being inquisitive, I might stick my nose into an adult conversation and ask what was being talked about and then my father would have replied "nothing for you to bother about - it's sky blue pink with purple dots on" which by then had acquired the meaning "stop being so nosy!" and that would have been an end to the matter. Even as a child, I learned that my father was very capable of sarcasm and irony if he wished to be. One of the earliest examples of this being the time when I had just finished listening to one of Simon and Garfunkel's best known tunes on the radio and I asked my father, who was reading his newspaper at the time, whether or not he liked the "Sound of Silence". He looked up from his Guardian, fixed me with his steely blue eyes and said in an ironic tone "I certainly do" and then turned instantly back to his newspaper. That would have been 1964 when I was between the ages of six and seven. It wasn't until a few years later that I realised quite what he had said and why he had said it. Now isn't that peculiar? My father would tell us off and make mildly sarcastic comments to my sister and I but I can only remember once being smacked by him. My mother on the other hand never spoke in tones that should be used by an adult yet she was quite free with the hand that would whistle out of nowhere and land on the back of the legs or on your backside - not without fair warning first though - apart from once when I spilled some modelling paint down a brand new jumper and then hid it at the bottom of the jumper drawer hoping that it wouldn't be found; a slender chance that didn't pay off. The "hand of retribution" appeared out of the blue and caught me an absolute cracker and also taught me a lesson I never forgot (don't try and hide things form Mum)! Not that I think that it has made me a bad person overall. One thing's for sure. If I ask my father why he did it that way he will probably tell me that "it's sky blue pink..." Here's a nice little animation for you. ![]() "Singin' in the Rain" in London. Click for a larger picture Yesterday I mentioned the brain being a strange organ and it certainly is. Little things tip the scales of memory and sights and sounds of the past just roar back into your mind as if they had never really gone away. As I walked around in Horsham today I got the faintest whiff of Castrol R and it whisked me right back to my University days and how, being bored one evening, several of us decided to go to the local Speedway track - Castrol-R was a petrol additive frequently used in those days and it has a very distinctive smell. It was a Saturday evening in May (May the 20th 1978 to be precise!) and The home team, the Canterbury Crusaders, were taking on the Sheffield Tigers. It was an amazing evening's worth of racing with all of the thrills and spills and fun of the fair. I recall that one chap had his throttle stick open on him so he got off his motorbike at about fifty mph, leaving it to crash into the safety barriers. Someone else, exhilarated by winning his race, popped a wheelie and lost control of his machine which promptly slid along the track and scythed another speedway bike from under another competitor. I was fascinated at the level of support that the local team had but I have since found out that it was due to the local residents complaining about the noise so all of the fans were pulling together to try and stop the track from being closed down. There were certainly no shortage of young ladies who were awestruck by the riders! I believe that the track has now been closed down although it did get used for greyhound racing when the speedway team lost their licence to ride there. Happy memories of almost twenty five years ago. What struck me the most was the wonderful warm weather that we were having at the time. I can remember standing around in my T-shirt, watching the sun go down. I did take a few photographs of the setting sun, one or two of which are even stuck in my student photograph album / scrapbook. Sunny days in the company of good friends. What could be better? What was that? Some nice chocolate chip cookies? Right you are then! ![]() The business end of an Aeolian harp. The brain is a strange thing. It complains all day that it is tired and wants to go to sleep however, once it gets the chance, it spends the night churning away trying its damnedest to keep you awake! My brain did that last night but it did pose me a question to which we should know the answer but probably don't. Accepting the fact that the humble zebra crossing is white stripes on a black background or white on whatever shade of black or grey that your road appears to be (the original ones back in 1949 were white on blue apparently) can you tell me what colour stripe comes first as you approach from the kerbside at a zebra crossing? Is it white or black? I asked the question of Donna who instantly responded that she thought that it should be white so that you could delineate the edge of the kerb. This sounds like common sense but then what happens when (as in London) there is white writing on the road that says "Pedestrians Look left"? You could hardly have white on white could you? So does that mean that the zebra crossing commences with a black strip first? That is the sort of nonsense that my mind keeps me awake with at night. So... are there rules and regulations as to what constitutes a properly painted zebra crossing? Are the stripes a set width and then you try to fit as many of those widths into the road or could you get away with something with bands so narrow that it resembles like a barcode? OK, given the fact that roads are notoriously made in different widths, I am prepared to say that there must be some latitude in stripe size and maybe the order of stripe placement at the kerb is up to the individual contractor. So answer me this then. What colour is the pole for a Belisha beacon? Does that start with white at the bottom or black? Come on! You probably see these things all the time in your daily perambulations or do you take these things for granted? Or do you even care? Don't you even worry that I don't sleep at night wondering about things like this? Actually the last question is easy. They are always black at the bottom but I'll wager that the next time you go to a zebra crossing that you will be checking it all out to make sure that I am not lying to you! Have a nice animation to round off Saturday. "ØstersØen" I'm a bit pig sick because I have just typed up a blog entry only to watch the whole thing fizzle into the ether thanks to some new layouts from weebly. Happy bunny I am not. I am afraid that this is going to be the extent of the new entry because I am not going to type up a few hundred words once again just to watch it all disappear. Have a good weekend.
P.S. It has just taken me two attempts to get this entry up! I've been on the go all day. Up early, cut the grass (before it rains), hoover the car (before it rains), wash and polish the car (before it rains). Why the urge to wash and hoover the car? Well, Marco (my trusty Fiat) is going for his MoT tomorrow and if there is one thing that I have found it is that grubby cars tend to fail more MoT tests than looked after cars. I think the mechanics take one look and say "Yuck!" and they are ill disposed towards them. Blah, blah, blah... So what else has been happening? Donna and I went to Frogmore House today. It was as part of a military charity day and we had the chance to have a tour of the house and gardens so it was well worth it. A very swift drive up to Windsor and the opportunity to park on the Long Drive (not normally allowed for plebs like us) and then a fine afternoon walking around the gardens and house. Wonderful - just wonderful. The weather was a bit suspect at first but later it became rather more spring like with blue skies at times. Then we faced the long haul home with concomitant stop-start traffic on the M25 as far as Chertsey. Now it is time for a glass of beer and a meal. Tomorrow I am off to London with Donna - anything to pass the time whilst my poor little Fiat gets probed and prodded and (hopefully) comes away with a clean bill of health for another year. Just time for a quick slideshow for you. |
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May 2015
AuthorPaul Everest - Shining wit (at least that is what I think they said) |