Busy

I couldnt lay my hands on a suitable photo so here is an old relic from about 1975
Greetings fellow denizens (denizens? Ah well Microsoft seems to have heard of it) of the interweb. I are back.
After my extended and rather damp summer break I feel refreshed and ready to tackle the challenges of what for me represents the new year. As a teacher I regard the onset of September as the start of my cycle through the seasons.
Before that though there are a few challenges to be mopped up along with the August monsoon.
The secret vegetable garden has Pigmies stalking game. The artichokes loom over the whole like razor fanged triffids. Caterpillars will need chemical warfare. She of the townhouse is looking up pickle recipes.
My junk room needs dejunking. Thinks have got to the stage where I need to have a large throw away bonfire on which the top spot will go to the vanities of last years clothing. Some of it last decades indeed. And really I am never going to fit in to ‘those jeans’ again ladies. Honestly I am not, and if I ever show signs that I might wel hell, I will buy a new pair.
Ah yes, then there is the mystery of the medium sized saucepan. If it doesn’t manifest soon I shall be calling upon Ramsay of the yard.
And I need a new school uniform.
The car needs to be certified.
And the Doctor has asked me to help transplant a donated organ.
Then next week I start my first new job in a quarter of a century.
Bloomin heck I don’t know what on earth I am doing talking to you lot!
Must fly, fish to fry…..

A Gentlemans Dilema

Now I am not really a great one for cleaning the car. In fact with this as my opener I can hear various colleagues and sisters going down the snigger and ‘you can say that again’ road. That said I do like to try and empty it before I fill it up again to go on holiday.
My house I like to keep clean and from time to time the garden looks good but my car….well its an agricultural vehicle. Take in to account that She Of The Town House regularly fills it to busting groaning with loads of logs, trees that haven’t been made in to logs yet, scaffolding, tools, cement, spare compost heaps, and second hand anything that takes her fancy. Oh yes, whenever Asbo takes to the road you can bet he will be on top of the pile as well, shedding hair like an Olympic hair shedder preparing for the Olympic hair shedding event in earnest.
So for some weeks now I have been quite pleased that she has promised to give it a good going over. In fact now I think about it, it may even be months since she first dusted off that promise. And there in lies the problem you see. The Hallett annual holiday starts tomorrow with a mad dash to the coast and a ferry connection and so far it is only the promise that has been dusted off and nothing else.
Today I decided, despite loads of important messing about on the net having a list of jobs as long as my arm to sort out, to take the task in hand myself.
Now I hope I haven’t mentioned Augean stables so recently that it is repetitive, but if old Herc had even looked at the state of my car I suspect he would have just shrugged and concluded that walking alone in the desert feeling sorry wasn’t such a bad lot, apologised to the oracle and , told Theseus not to bother looking him up again.
( I see here that Microsoft deems the last sentence unfit and in need of fragmentation. God help PG Wodehouse that’s all I can say)
So I have spent all afternoon hovering, scrubbing and, wiping. Much of it involving over close examination of stuff that may just keep me awake tonight.
Underneath all I have found an earring.
If any of you out there wish to reclaim it before I wave it in front of She Of The Town House I may well be saved a world of trouble. I mean it looks like the one she lost last year…but you never can tell with these things……..

The Holiday? Ah yes, Bordeaux for the next week then a fortnight in Lulworth Cove
Do drop in if you have a mind.
Cheers all.

Red In Tooth And Claw

Every now and then the cats that own me bring me a weasel. This poor chap turned up in the kitchen first thing this morning.
I guess they cant taste very nice as they only ever seem to be killed.
A pity.
My mate Dave always said that carnivores seldom eat other carnivores. I am not sure if this is true?

Cabin Fever

When She Of The Townhouse gets an idea in to her head you had better not stand in the way. All week long I have been suffering from a repetitive strain injury in my right arm.
Ok who sniggered! Don’t jump to mucky conclusions.
The thing is, she has decided that under the trees in the field need an erection.
Right that’s it!
Leave the room if you can’t be sensible. It’s just a word.
Unlike a right thinking and rational being though she has elected to place the aforementioned slap bang in the middle of a swampy patch. Under a tree.
As well as my own lack of firmness.....
Oh look for goodness sake, if you are going to misinterpret everything I say I shall just stop.
...As well as my own lack of demure, I place some of the blame on my little sister. If she hadn’t built a landing stage and a fire pit by the river then I feel sure that the whole shed in a swampy tree thing might have been held in check for a while.
As it is, I have been banging fence posts all weekend (I give in, titter away) and next we are on to the decking.
If she rings you asking for scaffolding planks please say no……

Through The Blue Window

Tum ti tum tum tum me
Tum ti tum tum tum me
Tum ti tum tum dear me
Tum ti tum tum tum me



49....sheesh....:-)

Dastardly Deeds

If forced to hit the nail on the head I would say that Mel next doors owl has blabbed…but lets take a step or two back.

“Its OK he’s off the scene!”
As an opening gambit from a woman I find this always raises the Hallett eyebrow a notch. It slightly more than hints at the promise of an interesting diversion.
“I think I must have managed to poison him.”
But by now I am just checking over my shoulder in case. Maybe this is too much revealed at such an early stage in our relationship, for I swear I don’t recall ever having met the woman before. Unless she asked me to move my car or something like that. But we certainly don’t have the relationship that I feel is implied.
“You haven’t a clue what I am talking about have you?”
At last I am given scope for a reply.
“I am afraid you do have me at a loss.” I confess.
“Its just that I heard that you had a gun.”
I thought we were turning back to a slightly more normal tack I am suddenly in the woods again.
“I put it in a note but your son hasn’t given it to you yet.”
Chains of evidence and consequences are running riot. Not last the threat to my position in the Guild.
As she walked away I began to wonder what on earth I had inadvertently let myself in for.

Later I read the note.

Dear Mervyn.
I hope I have got the right name. I have a very troublesome pigeon – I hear you may be able to help me get rid of it. Will you be kind enough to ring me?

It appears that the bird had been dining out on her seedlings but eventually fell foul of slug pellets.

Hair Of The Dog

Asbo is keen to polish his image. As a bit of a hound about town he, like so many, is conscious of the up and coming opportunities to show off dogly physique on the beach.
Like me he is figuring that there are a limited number of days until his summer holiday and the weight loss figures are in fact now stretching along a spectrum ranging through possible, to optimistic, and thence in sight of cloud cuckoo land. I inhabit the latter end of this spectrum and tend to rely on deep breaths and leaning forward slightly as part of my regime.
Asbo however has struck on a novel and possibly unique solution. He has come up with a winning formula that should not only have him in the trim, but may also render him cool for the beach in others ways as well.
His singular take on summer weight loss is to shed hair.
I was cleaning the sitting room at Hallett’s Mountain this very afternoon and can attest to the fact that he is already several pounds lighter.
To give him a further helping paw, and indeed I shall now be constructing his own personal outdoor wooden gymnasium in order that he can maintain his new svelteness.

As you can see he is also busy preparing for Wimbledon.
New balls please!

Good Evening, Good Morning

Sunset 20/06/2008


Sunrise 21/06/2008


Photos of a sunset and a sunrise can be flickred from the little gadget slightly lower down the page to the right.
This post is really aimed at the people that were there. I hope you like the pictures and feel free to grab any you would like for yourself. If, for some reason, you would like a larger version than the ones shown here then drop me a line. Facebook finds me quite easily.

To anyone else out there.
Have a belting solstice....

As Midsummer Approaches

I wrote this a few years ago, 2001 I think. And then I lost it….

“I saw the sunrise on midsummers day!!

Well what a glorious morning it was yesterday.
I awoke ( having thus lain) upon a bed of heather and bilberry. High above Penmaenmawr and close by my favorite druids circle. My watch confirms that the hour is 03.40 and at this longitude the sun will rise in about an hour. Already it is light enough to read by. The cup from my flask beside me can now be used for coffee. Last nights whisky seems to have gone the way of all whisky. I shall also chew on one of these chocolate bars. An unusual breakfast.
Some of the other people around have lit a fire and the smoke from the dying embers gives the air a nice tang.
There are five other people inside the circle. Irfon and two from the North of England are finishing off cider and sweet cigarettes. Lain close round the fires remnant they talk with morning murmurs, occasionally laughing loud. A long haired druid from Rachub and his ladyfriend are sheltering under cloaks and stone.
So I sit and await the sunrise with them.
For the first time in twenty years the cloud is broken and Irfon announces the prospect of a fine day ahead. For the next half hour the gods confound him by shuffling the grey bits more evenly and after a while I notice that the whisky has retired him to his tent.
The sky grows lighter and the spread of pink dawn glow becomes more concentrate in an obvious center. The cloud moves back from the sea again and miles away, Oh high above the faint line of the Penines the light grows steady and stronger.
Skylarks have been awake for some time now.
Am I the only one left awake?
Looking around now I can see several people moving. Early morning visitors. Ones who were unable to keep the watch, or too comfortable in their beds last night, are approaching.
Five , maybe six more are coming up the slope to the druids circle. One dark haired girl attracts my eye for longer than the others and I have a fleeting glimpse of our future.
Then like a light turned on its there, a sudden golden splash seen across a hundred miles. Lighting the sky with its aching beauty and for a second stilling us all. The far away hills turn to fire. And as I have waited so long for this my heart soars with the skylarks.
Sarah, wake up, hey John. Good grief Irfon was up all night and now he’s passed out in his tent!
Photographs , as many as I can take.
Then afterwards I look at the dark haired girl again, dream another dream, and go home to a well earned bacon sandwich.”

I am not sure what to think of it now.
A few secretly smiled that they were the dark haired girl.
Including She Of The Town House.

If you click the picture you can find a larger version should you wish. It is the view from my house on the day before midsummers morning (1999 I think).

Pond Life

I spent a little of the afternoon photographing dragonflies over at the pond today. This creature had just emerged, crawling out of the skin of it nymph form, and was drying its wings out in the sunshine.

Testing Times

It’s the end of the Key Stage in the workplace. Now if that makes no sense to you then believe me you are probably better off.
Teachers all over the country are busy turning persons in to numbers and reporting them onwards to people who will grind statistical mills, reducing data to provide the next terms seasoning of information.
Many of us feel very dubious about the process but it’s the law and we have to do it. We are only following orders.
In pursuit of this end today one of my classes was completing a test provided over the internet by a company revelling in the name of yacapaca.com.
After a briefer than usual period of retrieving passwords and retyping links my class is settled and engaged by the chirpy little fellow dancing around options a, b, or c. Flash animations are used to pretend that this is something more than a multiple tick test and is in fact interesting. Not many of us are fooled.
As this is the fifth time in a week that I have sat through the earnest clicking of thirty mice I begin to daydream.Thinking back to a rather good party on the weekend. Mulling over the prospects for tea. Trying to……
*Crash*
The all too familiar sound of every key on the board being assaulted is followed by a wail. Someone isn’t pleased.
I always find that understatement is best so look over the top of the glasses. I raise my best Roger Moore eyebrow in question.
“ They haven’t given enough time to answer the questions! I keep getting zero!!” Close to weeping tears of frustration.
I am not sure that it is possible to be full of mild concern but I still think that the muted response will cause the least escalation.
“Let me check your machine a moment, it should be giving you a minute to read each question and answer it”
“A minute, A MINUTE !! OH SURE THAT IS SO CRAP. IT STARTS WITH SIXTY SECONDS AND COUNTS DOWN AND I CANT READ THE ……..”
The student next to the one in question holds his head in his hands and closes his eyes. Several others rock with mirth.
I had to turn away.

In other news. She Of The Townhouse still hasn’t noticed my new glasses. Oh well, at least she hasn’t sat on them.

Small Worlds

Taking pictures of the night sky has been a little frustrating so far this year. OH I am always up for a snapshot of the moon or a constellation but my real targets this year have been deep space objects, the things that you just cant see very well unless you have a most improbable set of circumstances stacked together, and a great deal of luck. I want to chase down a few galaxies. The odd nebula. Reflections an illuminations that take a great deal of luck to get as well as a lot of planning. The trouble is that the skies have been a little unkind and maybe I have been a little lazy. Anyway things are not really going to happen now until mid August at the earliest. The skies are just too light.
So I have decided to have a bash at the other end of the scale. Now this is a new field to me. I am waving an early effort at you today. Not I hasten to add because I think it is a particularly good picture. I am not being falsely modest here. What I need is some decent advice on how to improve. I want to get more depth of field I guess but if I reduce aperture I lose brightness or the time is so great that the beetle blurs. I don’t really want to nail him down. Do I have to use a flash? Also I seem to have failed to capture the iridescent blue of this little beetle. How do you get a fast macro photo with a good depth of field at extreme zoom in natural light? A tall order?
Any thoughts gratefully received.

Undercrackers

I am , dear reader, a worried man. The hole in the centre of the universe had been busy again. Recently it has developed a completely inexplicable appetite for my skiddies (col, male undergarment).
Hallett’s Mountain is now down to a rotation of the final two pairs in my possession. That’s one pair that I am wearing and one pair being washed and dried out! A mere eight days worth [( forward, backward, inside out forward, inside out backward) X 2]. And that precludes accidents! If I am run over by a bus then there is going to be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth, especially from concerned female companions.
I swear that last Christmas I had at least ten pairs. So where on earth have they all gone.
I have checked several of the seamier internet sites that sell second hand underwear. Had my eyes opened to sights no man should ever have to contemplate. Yet despite extensive research and following of even the most tenuous links I can find nothing resembling my own.
A couple of days ago I tackled She Of The Townhouse on the matter. I mean I know women can be funny about personal items of sentimental value and perhaps she has been taking them away with her to hotels and stuff….I even considered liberating a pair of hers in return, though God only knows what they are expected to cover. I have seen string with more body that some of her efforts.
When threatened, the only thing she had to offer was that perhaps The Boy had been caught short again and maybe I could look in his room. Well there is no way I am going there.
So. Commando until my birthday it seems. Oh pants!

Salad Days

Its that time of year again. Earlier in the week Axeman, The Boy, and I were alarmed. Smoke alarmed in fact. She Of The Townhouse had broken in to the fridge and was cooking salad again. Its an annual ritual sparked off, as always, by the warm weather.
She starts off with the shorts and the T-shirt on the first really warm sunny weekend of the year but by tea time has become a little black cloud with an enormous bum.
Now I think her bum is very nice indeed, but my perspective is usually perceived wrong in these matters. For a week or two now its going to be nothing but lettuce and lean grilled meat. No dumplings in a hearty stew, no cakes, no soup with a generous dob of cream. Pork with salty crackling? Forget it. Chips?? Off limits. And a cold beer after work…….
People please. Send us a pie will you? But not a word to whassname.

Blue Belle

Sally forth anywhere on Hallett’s Mountain over the next week or two and you have the spectacle of Bluebells dusting the hillside like spilled powder paint. I look forward to the early summer flush of colour that these bring. They race up with the sunshine until the bracken overtakes them. My new mower has let me cut an easy path round the acre at the back of the house. This is how they look under the trees.

I remember reading some bloke years ago banging on about Daffodils. But then, what are words worth.
*grins*

Bring On More Men In Black

Yesterday I served as a representative at the workplace beyond normal opening hours. I returned on a sultry evening to the townhouse for my tea ( a very nice roast pork dinner by the way) but after parking my car on the High Street I found myself drawn to the doors of the pub.
The lure of a cold one in their back yard just proved too tempting.
Now usually when I go in there it is the weekend and I am in jeans and a T. Just occasionally it amuses me to wear the workplace uniform, suit and tie with shiny shoes. People don’t say much round these parts but a raised eyebrow speaks volumes.
The thing is, yesterday I walked in and every man jack was in a pretty much identical suit. I had a strange sense of displacement and for a brief moment felt that the door might be some dimensional portal. Something leading to an identical world save in the aspect of dress. I was eyed up and down like I was late. Weird.
“What’s all this about?” I asked one of the drinkers at the bar.
“It’s me dad’s funeral, thanks for coming…..”

Cuckoo

All day long she has been laughing at me.
It seems there is more to this nature photography lark than meets the eye.

A Gog

The title is not spelled in error but is a rather obscure reference.
This week I have seen the return of an old friend. A friend back from Africa. I have been holding out on you, dear reader, in the hope of a photo but my friend is proving elusive. On the evening of May the 2nd the cukoo returned to Hallett’s Mountain.
For me the cuckoo sings the song of summer.
For my old mate Dave it sings the song of “HEY ARE THERE ANY OTHER CUCKOOS OUT THERE LOOKING FOR A ‘GOOD TIME’” and here I am being a little coy as I am aware that I have a few younger readers. His version of the Cuckoo had a little more of the Anglo Saxon four letter vernacular. Added to this his best Terry Thomas impression.
I have been recording in Old Soak’s nature notes since 1997 of this birds arrival and this is the latest I have ever heard it. The earliest is the 17th of April.
Apart from that I have been very busy. At this time of year I have a huge wodge of coursework to mark and I will have to keep my nose down to the grindstone for a couple more weeks.

For those of you who were kind enough to indulge my last post and wonder why the song was so important to me. I guess the first assumption might be some unrequited love but not at all. In 1974 my French exchange partner introduced me to it. He sang it every day for a month!

Between The Sheets / Between The Lines

“What’s that you are reading then?”
For the third time in ten minutes my eye is dragged from the words, and once again I know that I shall probably start all over at the top of the page. She Of The Townhouse has an impish gleam in her eye.
“It is a tale about a chap whose girlfriend wouldn’t get up and make a cup of tea on Sunday morning!”
“Oooh! Romance or murder mystery?”
Darkly. “I can’t say for certain yet I haven’t got to the end……”

Now then, hastily exiting the Hallett Boudoir I find myself among the growing ranks of youtube viewers. Often I feel the resort of a lazy blogger to flag up things and merely add ‘look at this’ or LOL as their only contribution for the day. Nevertheless I did stumble across a real gem this week. It started on Wednesday evening when Mike Harding played ‘On again’ By Jake Thakeray on radio two. A treat for me. The next day I looked it up in the workplace and was led on via a Gorilla to Georges Brassens and thence to Jaques Brel.
If you have the time and the inclination I recommend that you watch this all the way through. And then if perchance you enjoy it, then look up the others. I promise you wont be disappointed.
Back in the seventies this song meant a lot to me.

Happy Birthday Izzy
XXX

Raise Your Glasses

It would be a foolish chap who would comment on the size of his paramour’s arse. Especially on his blog.
Butt you see someone has sat upon my glasses.
Again!