In which I take a photo every day that I'm 50, and post it here on this blog, with a bit of related blurb.
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| life or death |
Another little experiment today...
As I'd arrived home from work some 40 minutes earlier, I'd noticed that the stand of daffodils that bloom every Spring on the verge outside our garden are really opening up now.
We live at the edge of the foothill that runs along the North of Red Horse Vale, with Edge hill running parallel, a couple of miles to the South...I suppose if we lived those couple of miles south, we'd live at the foot of the Edgehill!
(aythengyew, I'm here all week...all year, in fact!)
Fun fact...the opening battle of the English Civil War was fought across the plain we live on the northern slopes of, in 1642. The centre of the battle was a couple of miles away over the fields, but by all accounts it was a bit of a disorganised brawl, with 1,000 soldiers killed and 3,000 more injured - there must have been a few of those up this way!
Bonus fun fact...up on the ridge above us was the old RAF Gaydon, whose airstrip, which runs for 2-3 miles from Gaydon to Kineton, was used at one time as a base for some of Britain's nuclear capable V-Bomber planes in the 50's and 60's...it's now a test-track used by Jaguar/Landrover and Aston Martin.
Anyway, the point is that the cold air seems to fall down the hill from up near the test track, and sits on the two little cottages in the corner of the arable field where we live...it's always a degree or two colder here.
This is borne out by the temperature gauges in our cars, which often show the temperature start to tick up by 0.5C within 100m or so of our little lane, in either direction, and as much as 2C by the time you get to Gaydon.
It's also borne out by the late flowering of our daffodils, which are spread liberally around our garden, and up and down the verge outside our garden too. I've seen daffodils flowering all over the place for a couple of weeks or more, around the rest of Warwickshire, but it's only in the last few days that they've really started to bloom here.
Of course, having noticed them and thought what a nice photo op they'd make, I promptly forgot all about it until getting home from walking Jazz, by which time it was nearly 7pm, and fully dark.
So I thought I'd see how the flowers responded to flash photography, and whether it might make an interesting and unusual shot. This is only about 15-20% of the daffodils that make up this stand, but it is the section that's flowering the most densely.
I like the effect of the colourful flowers against the dark night...I think it looks bright and lively.
Anna, on the other hand, thinks it looks like a cemetery!
This might seem somewhat bleak, on first glance...but this seems entirely a propos, today of all days...
An hour before this photo was taken, I was on the phone to my lil' bro' Jools. Our Big Sister Debs died in 2004, after battling the Big C for a couple of years. Today was her birthday, and she would have been 52.
Jools told me he was just picking up some flowers from both of us, and taking a trip to Debs' grave, in a natural meadow cemetery near Coventry.
So it was very much with Debs and cemetery in mind that I took the photo!
And Anna reads me so eerily well that she managed to glean cemetery from the resulting image, despite the fact that I'd uttered not a single word about any of that to her...spooky!
Still love you and miss you, Debs...
:*-(
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| Zombie Apocalypse?! |
Honestly, people don't make it easy, do they?
Today, as the day was kind of busy, one way or another, I thought I'd try the single-shot tactic again.
My mum had been down to the south coast for a few days to stay with a friend, and I'd arranged to meet up at Gordano Services on the M5 south of Bristol. When I was a few minutes away, my phone rang.
The phone was clasped in a holder on the dashboard, so I couldn't easily pick up. It was raining heavily, windy, and dark. I was in the fast lane of the motorway focussing on picking my way through the glare of myriad lights in the darkness, so I just swiped to answer and hit speakerphone.
Of course, I then couldn't hear anything really, as we both repeated hello loudly at each other a few times. I'm not even sure whether it was Carol or mum that I was talking to. As far as I could tell, they were there already, and would wait for me in the cafe.
Now, I'm trying to avoid posed shots for my blog, so I cunningly hatched a plot to sneak up and take a snap before they'd really realised I was there.
Within minutes I arrived, and fired up my camera app as I walked into the Services building. A quick walk once around the facility failed to locate them, so I went all the way round again, checking more closely this time.
No sign...
I called the number they'd called me from just minutes earlier.
No answer...
My mind began to churn, analysing the options, calculating the odds (and hoping I hadn't completely misunderstood and was supposed to be meeting them in Seaton), when the phone immediately rang back.
It's funny how many different and complex trains of thought your mind can make in a second or two...
Anyway it turned out they were still in the car in the car park, as Carol was trying to teach my 77 year old mum how to use email on her phone. You have to admire the optimism, if not the pragmatism...
I went outside, reenabled my camera, and raised it as they approached, trying to catch them unawares...
Fail!
As soon as they realised I was using my camera, they rushed to pose. I say they, it was Carol with the lightning reflexes, I'm not sure my mum was even aware I took a photo!
I showed her the picture when I dropped her off at home in Coventry, and she said, "Oh, that'll do, two mad ladies!".
So there you are, two mad ladies.
Sometimes I think Mad Ladies is the story of my life...my mum has always been a bit mad, and Carol (surrogate sister, of sorts) certainly is. When I tell you that my sister, Debs, was known to have dressed entirely in orange, out of choice (and with no known affiliation with Hare Krishna), then you will begin to see an emerging theme.
Maybe mad is a little harsh...let's say weird, perhaps, or eccentric.
Don't get me wrong, these are all admirable attributes...infinitely more interesting than normal, or average, or conventional. Bleurgh....
I'm secretly hoping that my daughter Kim will turn out to be similarly weird and/or eccentric...she's got the genes for it, certainly.
I've every faith in her, I think she's got what it takes to pull it off convincingly - and authenticity is a key characteristic of the most interesting weird people...
Anyway, the signs are pretty good so far...so come on Pin Snot, make me proud - you can do it!*
;-)
* You always do...
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| Suburban nightscape |
I've had the craziest day...super busy at work all day, no break, no rest, no time to eat, and some challenging situations to deal with. Pretty full on...
Straight from work, I went to see my friend who's in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. My work challenges pale into insignificance beside the challenging symptoms he's having to suffer. And despite being in there for 10 days now, we still seem to be no nearer a diagnosis, without which it's very difficult to see a way forward.
He will really struggle to look after himself if there's no improvement, let alone to work to support himself. He doesn't have a wide support network, and I fear he will fall through the cracks of a broken system.
So I'm trying to support him as best I can, as are two or three of his other friends and colleagues - one of us is managing to visit him every day so far.
He is on a lovely ward, in a modern, clean hospital. The view from his (single) room looks South West across Bourneville (home of Cadbury's, and a visually distinctive place).
During the several visits I've made there over the last 10 days, I've been blessed with a selection of fascinating and even beautiful vista's;
On a sunny Winter's day, the city looked very green, and very clean, and the hills in the distance faded in the soft, hazy light.
In an afternoon storm, lightning flashed across the murky gloom, as sleet and rain whipped horizontally from the West, and the wind howled eerily through the cracks around the unlatched windows.
Tonight's view was an oddly peaceful nightscape across the suburbs, with a little light left in the sky where there was a break in the dark clouds. The city looked warm and not too crowded, and (as in all these cases) clashed with my internal conception of Birmingham...I might need to open my mind a little on this...
How disturbing! Eek!
Anyway I got home just after 8pm, after which I needed to eat, write a handful of mails around a complicated system I'm trying to develop to make it easy to arrange lifts for my mum, and catch up with a few people checking up on our hospitalised friend.
And of course, write this blog!
Now I have to go and dig out guitar cases, amps, cables etc, as I'm off for a jam session tomorrow night, for the first time in years...
It's going to be loud and it's going to be raw...and I'm hoping it's going to be at least a little musical.
I'm also hoping we can rig up some sort of p.a. system for bass and vocals, else it's all going to be somewhat imbalanced...too many guitarists - you just know how that goes!
Anywho, I think it might be time to adopt a new motto/catchphrase;
"Am I too loud enough yet?!"
Oh, one last thing, every time I visit the hospital, I see this sign, and it makes me giggle like an idiot.
Surely this can't be a coincidence?!
:-D
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| Schindler's lift... |
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| Lunacy... |
The animals are all weird at the moment. They're each behaving a little strangely, in their own apparently random ways.
Loz has taken to charging round the house at all hours, rushing up and down the stairs, and acting completely over-surprised whenever she sees anyone. She'll screech to a halt, then dash off in the opposite direction.
Then she might repeatedly scratch the stair carpet (or any other carpet) with her claws.
She won't eat properly either, begging for food constantly but utterly disinterested when you give her some.
Jazz has been mostly much more lively over the last few days (for reasons I may go into in a later blog), which has been nice.
But this evening when we went out he just dawdled and dragged on the lead, and seemed almost unable to walk easily. We turned for home, and the nearer we got, the more comfortable and interested he seemed.
Last night, he went upstairs on his own (which he almost never does), and then stood at the top of the stairs panting at me. I couldn't fathom what he seemed to want.
We've been for a climb this evening, and part of his greeting my return consisted of rolling about on his back like a lunatic and panting with exuberant excitement (see previous posts).
Last night, Maisie didn't appear when we came home, most unusual. She has a bed upstairs that's like a little cave. When I carefully put my hand in to see if she was there, and upon finding her, gently stroked her back, she hissed and bit me.
She then got up and came out, and accepted a chin-rub, but wouldn't purr...really most unlike her.
Maisie also won't eat properly. Both cats seem to be unpredictably reluctant to eat from particular bowls, or when the bowls are in particular places.
Overall, for the last couple of days, Anna and I have both found ourselves frowning and scratching our chins and saying "what on Earth is up with this animal?!" about each of them.
Coincidentally, as we went out for a pre-climb walk with Jazz, I was planning on trying to catch a photo of the full moon, which had looked spectacular on my drive home.
Of course, it was nearer to the horizon then, and thus looked much larger (as it does). By the time we were out with Jazz, it had risen a bit, and cloud had developed, so options were a little limited.
I tried a few different settings, and to catch a gap in the clouds. It wasn't brilliantly successful, but I was quite pleased with the picture above.
As we got back to the house and were discussing Jazz's odd behaviour, it suddenly clicked...full moon!
It seems to me that it's at least possible that tonight's full moon is what has provoked all the oddness of the last few days.
Jazz really was writhing on his back like a lunatic!
The science is a little mixed on this, I will concede...mostly (although not exclusively) the current theory is "little to no correlation" between animal behaviour and fullness of moon.
However, recent studies have found levels of injuries amongst cats and dogs around 25% higher around a full moon, and other studies have found behaviour changes apparently relating to the lunar cycle in several other species.
The argument here is whether it's caused by the moon in some way, or is actually (and more simply - Occam would approve!) related to lighter nights or some such.
Personally, I remain open to the idea that the moon does indeed exert some sort of influence, to greater or lesser degree in some species or individuals.
I generally feel that open mindedness is the most rational position to take on many things.
Anyway, you must excuse me, I'm suddenly feeling an inexplicable and inescapable urge to go outside and how-ooooooooooooooooooooooooooh-oooooooooh-oohl...
