There's always something to say

If you're so busy doing boring work all day that nothing worth blogging about happens, what do you do? If you've been paying attention to the outside world you can comment on current affairs or politics, or the neighbours' affairs, but apart from dog- and cat-watching I've not seen anything worth commenting on.

Well, you could try picking a photo at random from your 2018 pics on Flickr and commenting on that. (Two thousand and eighteen photos? Can this be true? And the ones on Flickr are only about 10% of my actual stash of photos taken since I got my first digital camera, which can't be more than about 5 years ago. And then there are the boxes and boxes of slides and prints and dageurrotypes and hand-tinted sepia-toned Victorian photos, and the little black & white snaps taken by my mother on her Voigtlander during her Indian travels, and the hundreds of prints made by my father while cooped up in his smoke-filled darkroom, and my grandfather's collection of prints of engineering works in India, taken on a home-made camera on hand-made film, and the pictures of various ancestors, posed formally in a succession of professional photographers' studios from Blairgowrie to Darjeeling, and the stereoscopic pairs, also created by my grandfather, showing views across fragile rope bridges spanning precipitous Indian gorges, and many many others.)

OK - random photo coming up. Well, not completely random - it had to be something vaguely interesting.



So, what's this about? I took this photo on 15th December last year, just after I'd parked my car in the big car park in Carlisle, just under the castle. Glanced into the cab of a white van as I passed it, and realised the smiling old man was only the face of a smiling old man.

Is it a mask? Did someone wear it while committing a crime? Was it for a fancy-dress party? Is it a copy of the actual face of an actual person, or is it an invented face? (It does look sort of like a real person, doesn't it? Even in its hollowed-out state.)

Why did the owner leave it so conspicuously on the headrest? Is it to deter car thieves? Is it to provoke controversy?

Or . . . was it a real man, whose insides and torso have been sucked out and consumed by hungry aliens/vampires/monsters? You know, the sort of hungry aliens/vampires/monsters that can eat anything and everything apart from elderly people's faces? They know from experience that this sort of thing is likely to make them sick. (Well, would you want to eat an old man's face? You can't blame them really, now, can you?)

Now, if you happen to be the owner of that van and that face, and you're reading this PLEASE talk to me!

Today's News

COCKERMOUTH
Castlegate is closed at the moment so that they can resurface the road. It's a very narrow street - I mean VERY narrow - and they seem to be making the pavements wider, which makes me wonder if they're planning to make it one-way. But if they do, where will the traffic going the other way go? Perhaps they're going to install traffic lights? Nice fancy new paving stones going down. Causing temporary chaos for people wanting to drive up to the school or the Leisure Centre though, as they have to go away up Market Place to the top end of town and then back down past the school. Half of Market Place itself is also being re-done, though I'm assured it will all be finished in time for the Georgian Fair in May. It'd better be.

DEAD HORSES
I'm horrified after hearing about the RSPCA going into a Buckinghamshire farm and finding 32 dead horses lying around, and another 80-odd that had to be rescued. A few of these were in such bad shape they had to be put down.

PIPING HOT
Our first get-together after the festive season, and now we're starting to plan our programme for the Georgian Fair. Five of us present, which is enough for the moment, although by the time the concert comes round Helen will be gone, as she's selling her house and moving down south. We played through some JC Bach, a Mozart horn concerto (no, not the Flanders & Swann one!) and some Dowland almains and a galliard, all of which are possibles for May. We also ran through Limelight which caused much merriment as it's not as easy as it looks. Amazingly, despite growing up in Leftpondia, Rachel had never heard it before. She had also never heard Autumn Leaves before, leaving me believing the poor girl, despite appearances to the contrary, must have had a deprived childhood.

FIRE
Steve lit the fire in the living room. We don't do this very often, but it's really nice, and makes you want to just sit there in front of it and do nothing. Shame my computer is in a completely different part of the house. The cats don't seem to have noticed it yet - I don't think they realise the joys of an open fire, but once they do . . .

I hate bookkeeping

It's not that it's difficult -it's just mindnumbingly boring. So I leave it to the last minute, when the deadline for the tax return is looming, and consequently January ends up being the worst month of the year. Every year I vow to keep up to date with it, and I usually get a certain amount done before January, but never enough.

There are so many things I'd rather be doing. Like standing outside in the garden in the dark and the rain and the cold getting wet for example, or sitting quietly downstairs while the cats practise their nibbling techniques on my hands.

A very nerdy video and a bit of morrising

Making a triode valve from scratch! As someone on the newsgroup where I found a link to this commented, ". . . absolutely astonishing - I had no idea anyone had attempted that since about
1905!" It's completely riveting.

BELFAGAN
Back to normal Mondays again - nothing like a bit of North West morris to strengthen up the leg muscles. And to give you sore feet, if it's a while since you've done it. Two new girls tonight - Thelma and Beryl - wonderful names - I don't think I've ever met a real Thelma or a real Beryl in my entire life, and here's one of each at the same time! Better still, they both seemed to be picking up the dancing at an amazingly fast rate, so let us hope they keep coming back. We could do with some new blood . . . (Cue Count Duckula theme.)

It can be hard . . .

. . . to think of something new to say each day. Hmm . . . well, it's been Sunday, and a fairly sunny Sunday, at that, though some would say it was a bit chilly. (Oh dear, I've sunk to the level of talking about the weather.)

Above - the Shadow People
Took dogs down to Rose Ghyll, which I usually do on a Sunday lunchtime. Bit muddy down there, but not as muddy as last week. Must get new walking boots: either my old ones have shrunk or my feet are still growing. Whatever the reason, they are now too tight and my feet hurt in them. Unfortunately they are my only waterproof pair.

Above: Rose Gill (left) and Cowfield Burn (right) its tributary.
Our local river, the Ellen, flows through the field down there. Nice, minor river - I like it. It enters the sea at Maryport, and never gets particularly big, though it's big enough at its mouth. Down at Roseghyll, though, it's overhung with trees, and in summer a great place for dogs to swim. At this time of year I worry about them getting washed away in the torrent, though, so I direct them to its smaller tributary, the Rose Gill. Until recently I thought this little burn was unnamed, and tended to refer to it as the Cowfield Burn for obvious reasons. However, I have now recycled this name to refer to the even smaller tributary of the Rose Gill, which doesn't even seem to be marked on the large scale map.

Watching the printer . . .

. . . is mindnumbing. I'm printing out 2 copies of each of the 5 parts of Limelight, plus 2 copies of the score, which I've promised to the rest of the gang, even though we haven't actually settled on the date of our next practice. You sit and watch it going chugga chugga chugga, page after page, and start wishing you had one of those mythical printers that never goes wrong, so that you can go away and make a cup of tea while it's working. That, of course, as we know, is a recipe for disaster.

This time I'm using a nice gold coloured foolscap, from Sharon's stash that she left me before decamping for Kiwi-land. PH are used to it by now, but I love the puzzled look that appears on people's faces the first time I hand them something printed on foolscap.

Now, talk of the devil, as they say (well, talk of the minister's wife, actually . . .) just as I was typing her name, Sharon appeared on Skype, so I'm typing this and having a conversation with her at the same time, hearing about her hot and sunny NZ Christmas. Funny old world.

WORKINGTON DOCKS

Having been chatting with my mate Russell on UKLC about Workington's industrial heritage, I decided to take a quicky shufty round the docks area this afternoon before venturing to Tesco. Lovely wild and stormy day to be in an area like this - wish I'd worn the same gear I had on my photographic tour of the Maryport coastline last week.

I get the feeling that a lot more went on in the old days. Everything looks delapidated and rusted. This curious little building in the photo is a tide-watcher's building where, as Russell tells me, " . . . he would, ahem, raise or lower his balls to warn mariners of the state of the tides." All the doors and windows are bricked up, presumably to prevent unspeakable things from happening inside.

The next thing is to investigate the mill stream, which was cut from the Yearl or weir further up the Derwent, and crosses the Mill Field where it used to power a water wheel at the mill (now converted to a dwelling house). This artificial watercourse flows in a deep channel in front of Tesco's, and I've always just referred to it as The Stank, not knowing what it was. It re-enters the Derwent just before the river flows into the sea, at the point where I photographed the moored boats the other day - at that point it's wide and tidal, but the rest of it's narrow.

Depending on your interests, gentle reader, this is either fascinating or deeply boring.

Working

Not much else to do on grey days like this, apart from work. Finished the bamboo chair with its Danish cord seat. Normally I'd have taken it outside to photograph it, but I don't think the owner would thank me for taking it outside into the rain/sleet/hail that was going on at the time, so it remains, for now, unphotographed.

Spent some time attempting to get the bookkeeping up to date. Every year I have a failed new year resolution which goes something like this: This year I shall keep my bookkeeping up to date. Never works. Depressing, isn't it?

Decided to start practising the alto sax in preparation for Roz' Sax Day in about 10 days' time. The funny thing is, when I'm playing my C-melody, all I play is folk music, but the minute I get an alto in my hands I want to play jazz. NB - I want to play jazz. I don't think I really can play jazz, but at least the desire to try it is there.

When Roz holds a Sax Day, she ropes in Steve to be the Sax Doctor, doing running repairs and tweaks for her students who come along, en masse, to play together for a day. And if Steve's there, so am I, as I am his loyal chauffeuse, and if I am there, I might as well join in the fun, even though I am not, as yet, one of Roz' students. Well, it was fun last time.

Playing my C-melody for Belfagan in Keswick a few years back.

A few resolutions for 2008:
1) Practise the sax.
2) Get bookkeeping up to date.
3) Get more exercise.
4) Don't leave sarcastic comments on poor fragile son's blog.