so far so so-so

Hot Chocolate...

Deffo...

(Having been served egg-nogs until they were coming out of my sodding nose by a fellow blogger one yuletide)...

Hot chocolate it has to be...

(And I don't even like hot chocolate...)

But it has to be better than...

*shudders-to-think*

Well...

I haven't found my perfect sunset yet...

Have you found your perfect chord ?

Or poifekt whaattever ?

I will though...

So...

*Blow winds... crack yer cheeks *...

Go 'ed ...

You know (at least you ought to know, for I have often told you so), the view by now...

But WOW!...

And so spookily silent...

The fog eats people and their voices...

Poets, novelists, dog-walkers and journalists...

Beware !...

'Here Boy'....

*Whistlers*

As in the artist..

Not nearly long enough, as it happens...

You're whittled down to your elbows before you realize it's not there anymore...

There is an ancient charcoal-burning site on this Island of Georgina and Timmy-the-Wonderdog...

And so it seems fitting...

Several hundreds of spindly sticks of charcoal (and one hell of a mess later on the Savlon and Elastoplast front)...

It started with a memory of an old photo, and an enthusiasm for background information that I rather wish I hadn't looked into now...

Sadly, I think Ming the panda might have died of starvation (or been destroyed, pending) during the war...

And regarding my uncle (my mums brother)...

A book by Wolfgang Hirschfeld who was in the submarine (U109) that sank the Tacoma Star in February 1942 tells of the sinking and that 5 lifeboats with riding lights were seen after the sinking. However as a hurricane was expected the submarine did not stop to pick up survivors.

(Another story tells that the sub Commander gave the wrong co-ordinates and the lifeboats could not be recovered)...

No debris or person was ever found from the Tacoma Star.

Later in the war (4th May 1943) U 109 was sunk just south of Ireland by a British Liberator aircraft (RAF Squadron 86/P - Pilot Officer JC Green). All the crew of the submarine lost their lives.

In a Dickensian twist...

It's possible that the Liberator was directed by my Mum who worked on aircraft control in N. Ireland at that time...

And the moral of the story is...

Don't ever piss my mum off...

This photo of my uncle with the panda has been in the family for as long as I remember, and I know nothing about the whys and wherefores...

I must try to find out...

(This uncle was lost at sea in the war...and yes, I hope the panda was OK too !)

* I've since found out that this was Ming, she was 7 months old and on her way to London zoo...the first 20th century panda in Britain. She arrived on Christmas eve 1938 and died in 1944.

My uncle was lost at sea aged 25, off Hampton Roads USA when his ship SS Tacoma Star was torpedoed by a U-boat on 1/2/1942.

I'm way past worrying...

Our local 'respect-my-orforiddy' council is planning to close no less than fourteen libraries ...

Some are in the villages
They will have to close...

Have some of that...

(I'm really quite cross now !)

This sodding machine takes 10 minutes to log on to then freezes like a rabbit in my headlights every two minutes...

It falls flat on it's back with it's eyes glazed if I ask it to as much as
glance at 'pictures-moving-too-fast'...

Or videos as I like to call 'em...

It has a delay period of 20 seconds...

BETWEEN...EVERY...LETTER...I...TYPE...

(Would the Beeb care to give my self-regulating hardware a good home before it goes the way of the dysfunctional alarm-clock ?)

C'mon !...

It has to be a good little earner ...

Offers ?

King Kev is collating biometric data, presumably to deter 'undesirables' from visiting the Isle of Kevin... and he wants to know your eye colour...

I have nothing to hide and am determined to keep popping over for a cuppa with Doris...

When I teach portraiture to kids, I arm myself to the teeth with paint charts and ask them to find a match for their eyes, and we talk about the colour : rainy pavement ; melted chocolate ; sharkskin ; extra virgin olive-oil ; dubbin ; green wine-gum ; sky-blue-pink etc...

Anyway, you'd better let him know before he gets his gunboats out...

Eye colour is a psychological mine-field...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eye_color&oldid=253879043

Could be little stints...

They were pretty tame for dunlin...

Can anyone positively ID them despite the woefully inadequate resolution of my didgi ?

I'm buggering up about with acrylics...

This is the kind of view I like in the late winter afternoons, when the light silvers the mudflats...

It looks and smells great on dogs and children too...

They've been tethered in the back garden for a good hosing down many a time...

Tagged by EllieGant

The Rules

1) Link to your tagger and list all these rules in your blog.
2) Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3) Tag 7 people at the end of your post by including links to their blogs
4) Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

7 I'm the only one with blue eyes in my family...

I tag adamantixx alecweston davij eggbod fairplay The_Walrus and soyunperdedor

Giltrap...

Never, EVAH again...

Brilliant guitarist, charming man...

But singularly the most eat-you-own-elbows boring gig I've ever been to...

One accepts that the elderly and the young can be needy, and try to accomodate their requirements with good grace...

But I am getting mightily pissed off with pulling my telepathic tripe out in response to such expectant phrases as...

'I haven't got any bread !'

*glare*

'I've missed my bus !'

*sulk*

'This needs washing !'

*glower*

'Thrice woe, I am cakeless'

*bottom-lip out*

I find myself being deliberately obtuse as I ponder upon these various apparently insurmountable dilemmas while a less-than-sympathetic voice in my head is bellowing

TOUGH TITS...WOULD IT KILL YOU TO SAY IT ? JUST SPIT IT OUT, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD !!!

Ask nicely and ye might receive...

I didn't forage this year...

What, with the weather being inclement and me (despite my short shins ) not being a total Neantherthal...

And with Sainsbury's just up the road with their seductive cranberry confections, what are you meant to do ?...

However, I just rediscovered a jar of sloe-cheese that I made last year...

Last year it sucked... you'd have died of tannin poisoning on the spot...

If I had been Lindow man, I'd have been begging to be relieved of my misery too...

It might not have been the bog that preserved him after all...

'Jeez, just kill me why dontcha ?'...

'OK Pete, you should see your face though !'

(They weren't great on sarcasm, bless )...

But now it is transformed...

It's sticky and sour-sweet and yummy...

Oh, the alchemy of time...

I declare a hedgerow triumph !

I've been getting hundreds of non-readable (possibly picture) messages to my non-camera mobile and it's driving me nuts...

It might be the same message on autopilot, but I can't stop it...I've texted 'stop' but I can't contact or identify the number it's coming from, nor can I block it...

It's a 14 digit number beginning 888...

Will I have to change my number?

*grrr*

How can I sing this in choir without resorting to ripping the plush seating out...?

(And how can you call that 'plush' without a blush, you Kapital Kultchurist cheap-skates ?)

I continue..

*ahem*

Every little girl would like to be
The fairy on the Christmas tree
Up above the party, dressed in white
Shining in the candlelight...

Black wooly togs... (spotted the deliberate mistake here ?)
Wee wooly dogs...
Big beautiful bears !...

Give me strength !

My Mum was 88 today...

Bless her black heart !...

If she were 20 years younger the world would be one musical director less...

(C'mon mum... one last time...

Do it for the chilrren !)

Next song : Do Ya Wanna Be In My Gang ? by that well-loved childrens entertainer Gary Glitter...

Ginger-beer, heather-beds, villainous smugglers ...

'Blahblahblah...'

*smack on the wrist*...

(Just grow-the-fuck-up Roobs !)

Make me !...

BBC 2...you just missed it...

I'm not sure how I should be feeling now, other than wrung out...

You might believe that if you join the military you are contracted to die (It's in the job description)...

I might be able to write more fully about it another day...

At the moment I'm just too...

Haunted...

A great anti-war piece by your favourite auntie...

There is nowt more entertaining

Than bloggers who remaining

Are offended

And up-ended by

A bit of banter

Off on a rantah !

Photo-finish at the gate...

Statistic points they postulate...

The lappy is being wrested away from me by ...

Godzilla/Eddison/Dalek/Teen...

It was busy down there this morning...

The knots have arrived from the Arctic to feed-up prior to their long flight to South Africa, and there were thousands of them rippling around in convulated whisps...(fingers crossed for the little guys)...

Of course they were accompanied by an entourage of twitchers with cameras as long as your arm...

And the lifeboat had been called out, so the shoreline was bristling with tractors and trailers and crew...

It's been dismissed as whimsical that the knot was named for Cnut, but they are so doughty, sitting out all the commotion with an equinamity more timid birds would fly a mile to get away from, that one wonders...

Something in particular...

I dunno...

(Foliates will do at at a pinch...)

Trees...

Sneaky li'l bastids, aren't they ?...

Creeping up on you like that !...

He deserved to go in a rocket, blue-paper touched by Johnny Deppe...

(What's the collective noun/sin for coveting other people's funerals ?)

I'm so glad I've got this out of my system...

Nearly ready !...

*hops up and down*

(The boat is in there somewhere...

As is our fence !)

x

I've just clopped back from seeing Pete Postlethwaite as King Lear...

I went on my Bill, as everyman had plans for bonny-night, the morbid celebration of the execution of the converted Catholic who wished "To blow you Scotch beggars back to your own native mountains!" in order to protect Rome...

While he is afforded anti-hero status these days, we should bear in mind that the Inquisition wasn't a good thing...

The politics of power is ugly and brutal...

Good Luck with that, Obama....

Anyhooo...

Posing as press I got a free program and glass of wine during one of those interminable 10 minute intermissions over the three-hour production...

(Which was nice great bloody necessary !)

Don't know if I can wait that long....

...anyone seen my slippers ?

We hardly ever go out, because we generally have to pay in taxi fares and buckets of blood...

We're on first-name terms with the local constabulary, standing at the door bearing one or other of our little darlings by the scruff of their thick-skinned unwashed necks...

Yes, I blame the parents too...

Notwithstanding which...

We left Firstborn and Sinister at home with their mates with all the trappings of a damn anarchic fine time...

Horror movies, boxes of matches, combustible soft furnishings, pizza...

(I assumed they'd shoplift their own cider)...

You name it, we irresponsibly left them to it in our bid for freedom...

We came home expecting to find the curtains on fire or one of them in the tumble-dryer at the very least...

But nooooooo

They is all comfy on the sofa with cocoa watching Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please......

When I asked them to behave sensibly while we were out...

I meant within reason...

Jeeeez !

Did anyone listen to The Fourth, the Fifth, the Minor Fail on Radio 2 earlier ?

Elbow's Guy Garvey analysed Cohen's classic song, talking to artists who have covered it (or about them in Jeff Buckley's case) and slowly constructing a touchingly insightful montage of the hows and whys Hallelujah does what it does...

Also this evening on BBC 2 Palin presented The Last Day of WW1 :Timewatch...

Now this is what I happily pay my licence-fee for...

We only do it for the kids...

*ahem*