Oh well, as long as everyone wants to be scared spitless, here's a horror story animation for you. "Happy Meal Horror (with a side of chainsaw)"
Ah... Hallowe'en. A time of ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night. Actually, the only things that go bump are the kids who are going around Trick or Treating. Well, little ones... don't bother coming to this door because you will get short shrift. I first came across "Trick-er-treat" when my Dad was stationed on an RAF base in Germany. English it might have been but there was a fair smattering of Americans on the aerodrome too. This is when I was introduced to this despicable behaviour which is tantamount to begging. Listen, my friends, it might be great for the kids but it isn't what Hallowe'en is all about. It is an Americanized holiday - yet another chance to merchandise, get drunk and get people spending lots of money. It isn't about ghosts at all. All Hallows' Eve falls on 31st October each year, and is the day before All Hallows' Day, also known as All Saints' Day in the Christian calendar. The Church traditionally held a vigil on All Hallows' Eve when worshippers would prepare themselves with prayers and fasting prior to the feast day itself. The name derives from the Old English 'hallowed' meaning holy or sanctified and is now usually contracted to the more familiar word Hallowe'en. So there. None of your carved pumpkins and snotty nosed brats demanding "candy". Actually, kids... we call them sweets. Back to the plot, it is a religious festival. For some strange reason the name of Hallowe'en seems to have become linked to the ancient Gaelic festival of Samhain, marking the end of the light half of the year and the beginning of the dark half. Samhain was in part a sort of harvest festival, when the last crops were gathered in for the winter, and livestock killed and stored. But the pagan Celts also believed it was a time when the walls between our world and the next became thin and porous, allowing spirits to pass through. The practice of wearing spooky costumes may have its roots in that belief; dressing up as a ghost to scare off other ghosts seems to have been the idea but now it's all about making money. Personally, I think that Trick or Treat should be banished. It's a vile habit and shouldn't be encouraged.
Oh well, as long as everyone wants to be scared spitless, here's a horror story animation for you. "Happy Meal Horror (with a side of chainsaw)" It is a long time until dinner time. A very long time. My stomach is starting to gurgle and complain. Donna made it to the West country this morning after an early start and several cancelled trains but she has only left there half an hour late so she should be back home by about nine o'clock tonight. So I have time to kill. Anyone fancy an orgy or something? No? How about if I review a film for you? OK? Oh well, the only newish film that I have seen recently is the Disney animation "Wreck it Ralph". It's an all right sort of film with lots of moralising (cheats not prospering, be happy with your lot etc.) and has about the right mix of twee characters and cuteness. There is insufficient adult humour to keep parents involved but there is enough childish humour to keep the kids amused. It does help if you can remember playing various arcade games in the past because a lot of the characters are from the old eight bit arcade games of yore. There is even a little love interest and something to keep Dads involved in the form (and it is one heck of a form) of a blonde, leggy and large breasted female warrior but apart from a couple of one-liners from this young lady there isn't a lot else to be said for the film. I suppose it can be said to kill a couple of hours of the day though. Oh well. I suppose that I could just go and watch the casserole cook through the glass window in the oven. Those bubbles rising through the gravy are really fascinating and gurgle as much as my stomach. Borborygmus rules OK. How many times have you sat watching a horror film and the monster is behind the actor? Here's one of those supercuts that show some of these scenes. What do you say to someone who is overdoing it? Slow down? You'll kill yourself? Well that is the situation that I am in right at this moment. Donna is doing far too much at work and is steadily taking more work on. Tomorrow for example she has to haul herself across country on a rail network that is already under stress (and that was before the storms) where she will work until late afternoon before coming home again. The office won't pay for overnight accommodation, she is going to be travelling for many hours and will put in a full day's worth of work. I have worked out that she will be putting in a sixteen hour day as a minimum but she won't even get time off in lieu the next day and is expected to put in a full day's work. On top of this there are the other trips to far flung corners of the country where she has elected to do particular work that she insists nobody else is qualified to do. I put it to her that when the department boots her out next year there will then definitely be nobody who can do it so the department must either train someone else or hire a contractor so it would be kinder if she put her foot down and said "No!" right now. That way the department might just get it through their thick skulls that this is going to happen and happen very shortly! It is also mean of Donna in some respects. If she said "No!" then the issues could be solved at a local level or someone else could be recruited to do the job. Either way, someone else is dipping out. More importantly, with Donna doing longer and longer days again, she is going to burn out. Now that both sets of parents are getting frail, we need both of us to be healthy(ish) and I can't do the job all on my own if Donna burns out. What to do, what to do... Oh well. How about learning a bit about time travel to end teh day? The predicted super storm came over on cue just after midnight and there were torrents of rain and reasonably high winds however, I don't know whether it was just me but it didn't seem to be as bad as was predicted. Certainly we have had heavier rain and we have also had higher and more gusty winds. Anyway, the long and the short of the storm was that we suffered two mishaps. The first of these was that our old television aerial snapped in two, the broken off part swinging wildly in the breeze until, at some point after daylight, it broke away and fell into the garden of Mr and Mrs Nasty-Neighbour. I wrote an apologetic note and posted it this morning and hopefully that will be that, but I get the feeling that they will be writing threatening letters back to us. Let's see what happens, shall we? The other victim of the night was our sleep which was patchy and broken, mostly because of the wind rushing around the eaves and the broken aerial flapping around like a mad thing, beating itself to death against the chimney stack. Sleepless nights always make me tetchy but thankfully there was one unforeseen advantage of the predicted climactic catastrophe. Certain railway companies decided that they would not run any trains until after 09:00 in the morning so Donna was unable to get to work today. That doesn't mean that she hasn't been working because she had the presence of mind to bring some stuff home with her specially and "just in case" so it hasn't been too much of a loss to the Government however I reckon a lot of people won't have done that.
Anyway, we have achieved loads of stuff today and dinner is ready and prepared (the one from Saturday night!) so we are going to have a relaxing evening and an early night. I hope that you weathered the storm OK. Here's an animation for you; "Why do I study physics?" Yesterday was a real rush day (getting a blog entry out) so I apologize for that. First of all, I do hope that we all remembered to put our clocks back because that is Summertime officially wiped out by turning back to Greenwich Mean Time. So... why the Hastings trip? With this photographic thingy I am doing, sometimes folks arrange a get together to meet up and take photographs. It is a big social thing. Well, it should be a big thing but more often than not, it is a much smaller affair as people pull out of turning up. However, I had promised to go to Hastings and so I went. First of all, the weather in Hastings was glorious! Bright sunshine and with a stiff breeze blowing along the beach. Secondly, I had the chance to wear my silly penguin hat (it is easier to be recognised!) and Finally I had the chance to meet two of the nicest ladies out. Enter Sue, small, feisty and vivacious and Linda, taller, softly spoken and more reserved. We had an amazing time drinking coffee, walking and talking and taking photographs. Do you know how fast six hours can go when you are in good company? Too blessed fast. It was a fabulous day of fascinating people, bright sun, stormy waves, salt spray and spindrift, stupid people paddling where they could have been swept out to sea and photography. Most of all, it was fun! It only seemed like seconds had ticked by when I had to make my farewells and return to Cowfold for an interview with the bride (the lass next door) about her wedding photographs. She and her parents (and the new baby) came around for a chat and nibbles last night but we didn't get away to bed until just before midnight when they went home. I fear that we aren't going to be getting much sleep tonight as the so-called "super storm" comes through bringing destruction and chaos in its wake. Wherever you are, I hope that you stay safe. Talking of "safe", have another collection of Russian dashboard camera crash clips... Hastings... what an excellent day out with two of my photographic colleagues - such beautiful ladies... So much to say, no time to say it. Tomorrow... definitely tomorrow...
Because I am off to Hastings tomorrow to meet up with some more photographic colleagues and because I am meeting with my neighbours and their shortly to be wed daughter to talk about wedding photographs tomorrow evening, today has been a welter of housework with cleaning and hoovering going on. To top it off, with the Meteorological Office forecasting a severe storm on Monday night I had to tackle a job that I have been putting off for a while now. The Indian bean tree in the front garden has been getting a bit big for a while and even though I clip it back away from the electricity and phone cables once in a while, I decided that I was going to hit it hard before the storm passes over us. So armed with saws, ladders, croppers and loppers I climbed into the tree and started to thin it out and shorten it. It is a fairly sturdy tree and I know that no matter how hard I prune it, it will recover fairly rapidly. The reason for cutting it back is that the wood is a bit like Elder; it is fairly brittle and snaps very easily so with the possibility of a windspeed up to eighty miles per hour I wanted to make sure that this wasn't going to damage the tree. Now... some of the branches spread over the path at the front of the property and some of them even reach into the road so you can imagine that I was keeping an eye on passing traffic and pedestrians and timing when I could drop a branch and then retrieve it. I had my usual audience of slack jawed and drooling locals in the bus shelter opposite keeping an eye on me but one middle aged lady stopped me in my tracks. She could see that I was sawing branches off the tree from some distance away. As she drew closer, she slowed down to a crawl and then stopped right under where I was halfway through sawing a branch and casually looked around whilst she lit up a cigarette. Then she stood there smoking her damned gasper, enveloping me in clouds of foul smelling cheap tobacco smoke whilst I tried to stop the branch from cracking off and dropping on her. In the end, in amidst coughs, I asked her if she could move to one side so that I could let the branch go and the filthy look she gave me was just indescribable! Some people have no common sense, do they? Anyway, the job has been done, I have chopped everything into smaller chunks and taken a carload of ex-tree over to the local tip so it is a job well done. I hope that you have a great Friday and a smashing weekend. I will be late posting tomorrow (if at all) because of my commitments. I spoke of no sense of self preservation. These folks have the same lack! (NSFW - language is a bit "salty" at times) Are DVDs such a good thing? What I mean to say is do you remember the good old days when you would go to the cinema to see a long awaited film, thoroughly enjoy it and then wonder when you would get the chance to see that film again? If ever... or would you forget the film totally in expectation of the next Hollywood blockbuster to come along? Would you be happy to wait several months or even years for the film to be re-shown or maybe it would appear at Christmas time only as a special on the television? Then there came the magic of video tape when one could either record one's favourite films or nip down to the local video store (or in some cases even the local petrol station!) and hire your favourite film which you could then watch again and again. This has progressed to the advent of DVDs and now digital media such as MP4 and DivX files so one can watch one's favourite films over and over again without the loss of quality associated with video tape. Then all of a sudden, favourite films start to lose their edge. I used to think that I could watch Star Wars endlessly without getting bored however I find myself wondering why I ever bothered with buying them in the first place. Have I amused myself to death with them? This afternoon I was re-watching the original Matrix film and wondering again why was I bothering. New films are being turned out all the time so there really shouldn't be a need to watch and re-watch old favourites. Then I found something magical. People have been turning out their DVD collections and putting them into the charity shops and some of these DVDs are superb. One week there was a surge in old black and white cowboy films. Films like "The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance" with James Stewart and John Wayne. Then there was a collection of not quite so old colour cowboy films like "Shalako" starring Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot. Suddenly my shelve have burgeoned with delightful old films that have stood the test of time and I have realised that it isn't the quality of the films that is at fault here. What is missing is the diversity of films. True some of the films of a particular genre and period are shot in the most excruciating style ("The Mechanic" starring Charles Bronson is so 1970s it is unbelievable) but having a quantity and diversity of films means that you never have to watch a film until it palls. Recently we have managed to pick up several volumes of Jack Hargreaves' "Out of Town" television series which are delightful. We are ploughing our way through the complete "The Saint" TV series starring Roger Moore. Apart from the nostalgia burst, it is stopping us having to re-visit the Inspector Morse series. Now we can spread the viewing of these lovely series over a longer period before having to re-start the viewing process. It is marvellous. It still doesn't stop me from wanting to see films when they come out nor does it stop me wanting to buy the DVD of the film when it is launched but it has returned the enjoyment of sitting in front of a screen to be entertained once more. Here's a rather stunning timelapse film of La Palma. El Cielo de La Palma from Daniel López on Vimeo. After last night's excellent talk, it was a real pleasure to have a lie in today. Donna had elected to work from home partly because we had a bit of a late night last night and partly because her IT system at work is so far out of date that some of the things she needed to do won't work there so she had to do it from home. Now... when you consider a professional department the size of the Health and Safety Executive you would rather expect that any free software "offering" that they made available on their website (a) would come with instructions and (b) would work, wouldn't you? Donna had some surveys that she wanted to collate information from and she asked me to read out the results of the survey whilst she typed the answers into an Excel spreadsheet. This all sounded easy so I started reading the results to her; basically a numerical score against each question asked. It wasn't until I got to the end of the second paper that I noticed the first anomaly. Instead of going from one to five ("Never" to "Often" or "Strongly Agree" to "Strongly Disagree") some answers went from a scale of one to five whilst others were scored five down to one. So we started again. After a little while we had got into a swing and apart from some people ticking two boxes in one question or totally ignoring some questions it all got typed in and saved (save regularly to avoid disappointment!). That is when the problems really started because the spreadsheet was meant to display meaningful statistics based on the numbers you had provided except that it didn't. No amount of cajoling and checking would produce anything. In the end I got Donna to send the spreadsheet to me by email and I had a look on my PC. On my PC some things worked whilst other things didn't so I could only assume that where Donna's PC has an older version of Excel on it, the spreadsheet had been developed on a newer version of Excel which was part of the problem. I sweated cobs on the spreadsheet and pulled my hair out. I read the almost non-existent instructions from the HSE and it wasn't until I tried one of the almost "throwaway" options mentioned that I noticed something happening. I quickly threw some data into one of the spare columns and "Bingo!"up popped charts and analyses. After that it was plain sailing but if I was Donna I would be telling the HSE to buck their ideas up because not everyone is tech savvy. A nice set of idiot resistant instructions wouldn't go amiss. Nor would a warning that a version of Excel greater than xyz is needed! Come on HSE - get your act together and can you cough up for a wig to replace the hair I tore out please? Either that or you could give me a job and I would do it properly for you!
Animation time. Mac 'n Cheese. A very short entry indeed today because we have been to, and just returned from, the Prince Consort Library in Aldershot. Why? Yet another one of those book talks for the Military Book of the Year competition. This time it was given by Paddy Ashdown (former MP, now a lord and an author) on his new book, the title of which is the title for today's blog entry. It was all about "Operation Frankton" which most people know better as the attack on Bordeaux harbour by "The Cockleshell Heroes" during World War Two. I will say this for Paddy. He is a very human and friendly sort of chap and his talk was riveting and very entertaining. Have you ever seen a complete audience of people get up after a talk and queue to buy a book and have it signed by the author? I don't just mean a handful of people, but the entire audience. I was at the head of the queue for my signed copy (paperback only - no hardbacks were available) but I reckon that there would have been a good thirty to forty minutes wait fir all one hundred and thirty seven people to get their copy. Anyway, I am looking forward to reading this definitive work on the raid. Thankfully we don't have to get up early tomorrow because Donna is working from home so that means another couple of hours lie in for once! Enjoy your Wednesday. Now, how about some guilty dogs to end the day? It is going to be yet another swift entry today because everything has gone mad today! First of all, the cold is departing so I had lots of extra energy to do some of the things that I needed to do last week but couldn't due to feeling grotty. I have been to town, posted parcels, done things around the house, kept the cats amused and... been to get my diabetic results. Guess who has a huge grin on his face? That's right! I am. Despite being made to wait because the computerised check in system lost me, the results of my diabetic tests are spectacular to say the least. Everything is down on last year (Hba1C, cholesterol, triglycerides, weight, blood pressure) and my diabetic nurse is so pleased that she is going to take me off one of my drugs. WOOHOO! RESULT!!! So that means tonight there is going to be a minor celebration in the Everest household. A naughty glass of wine is called for! So that's the blog for today - not a lot but I am a happy bunny for once so that has got to be good!
What could be better than a good shake apart from a slow motion shake? Again this is going to be mercifully short and sweet because I am STILL feeling a bit crook. We took advantage of a break in the weather this morning and took a walk down to the main pond in Nymans woods to feed the remains of our last loaf of bread to feed the ducks. Nit that I know what we have against the poor little beggars - the loaf failed to rise properly during the making and baking of it so it was a bit like a brick anyway. The ducks seemed to be quite happy with it and didn't seem to be floating any deeper in the water after eating it. We returned to the car because I suddenly felt very weary and after returning home, I managed my time travel trick in the blink of an eye once again. I can honestly say that I have had enough of this cold. When I see the diabetic nurse tomorrow, I might see if I can get a doctor's appointment about this cold as well and try to kill two birds with one stone. So I hope that you have a good week ahead of you and I will leave you with this strangely satisfying video of a lady making a pair of shoes with colourings that resemble geological deposits. At least it is more satisfying than watching Steven Spielberg's old film "Gremlins" which we did last night. I can't see why it held any appeal at all when it was first released many moons ago. Geology of Shoes from Petr Krejčí on Vimeo. I know that it is possible because I did it just this afternoon. I'm still feeling the wrong side of "Yuck!" and distinctly shoddy and just when I thought I was getting better too. Anyway, we went and did our usual trawl around Horsham but by about midday I was done in and I had only been up for about three hours. So we came home, I sat down and blinked my eyes and it was four hours later. Time travel is an unpleasant business because I woke up with a really nasty taste in my mouth. How's that for time travel? Forwards of course. I haven't yet worked out how to do it backwards just yet. Anyway, merely a couple of hours after losing four hours of my life I am wilting again. I am going to eat something before turning in for the night. Dear cold. I am going to go to sleep and when I wake up, I want you to be long gone please. Thank you. Dogs and vacuum cleaners. What more needs to be said? I know that I have written similar articles before anf that I shouldn't harp on about it because I am not the world's best driver but there are two things that really bug the heck out of me. The first is the inability of people to stick to speed limits UNLESS there is a car in front that is doing it. I'll give you a clue as to who is sticking to speed limits these days, particularly through small towns and villages. Picture the scene. I am tootling along at a nice fifty to fifty-five mph on an A road when I come across a forty mph sign for a reasonably lengthy ribbon settlement village. So I slow down to the speed limit. Notice that this is the "upper limit", it isn't as if I am doing thirty or thirty-five mph. In the distance behind me appears a car or cars. Invariably I find that before I have reached the end of the forty mph limit, I will have a queue of traffic behind me all sedately doing forty mph. The fact that they are right behind me tells me that they have been exceeding the speed limit in order to get to me. If I am very naughty and start to increase my speed above and beyond the legal limit, I will still have this tailback of traffic which has steadfastly stuck to whatever speed I am doing. These people aren't adhering to a speed restriction, they are just blindly following what the car in front does. Which brings me on to my second point. I have started to count the number of times that people indicate when they should do and also the number of times when they indicate incorrectly. I find that the majority of people just don't bother to indicate. That means that they never indicate correctly but they never indicate incorrectly either. Surprisingly these people are easier to cope with than those that indicate when they feel like it. These folks will steadfastly refuse to indicate left or right turns for miles and then suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue, they will do it for one turning or roundabout before continuing a lack of flashing orange lights until the next random act or Highway Code adherence. Once again, I find that it helps if, as the car in front, I do the indicating. For some reason then the people behind will often indicate appropriately. Another slavish act of following the car in front? Of course both of these types of drivers do make the occasional effort to be good. Normally when there is a brightly coloured Police car in the area. Perhaps we need more Police cars then... As I say, I shouldn't hold my hand up as a paragon of virtue but I don't think that I would have any trouble passing a driving test again should I ever have to do so.
Here's a nice little bit of time lapse photography for you. Have a great weekend. It's true. Photographers don't like to have their photographs taken but if you are dead sneaky then you can normally get at least one shot. The delicious six foot brunette on the left is Johanna and she was the reason for getting together today because she was in London briefly. The gorgeous lady in the middle is Emily. You couldn't fail to love a woman who wears earrings with David Bowie on them and the chap on the right is "Padlock" (I'll use his moniker rather than his real name). We had a fab time, walking, talking, shooting, laughing, eating, drinking and all too soon the day was over - well it was for me at least because I needed to be home for six this evening for another appointment. Sorry for the short entry today - still feeling like death warmed up. Here's something that is even shorter. An animation called "It's paper" It's paper from Pingo van der Brinkloev on Vimeo. |
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May 2015
AuthorPaul Everest - Shining wit (at least that is what I think they said) |