...2015...

...happy New Year to all when the time comes...

 

Happy Birthday Alex. Remember to drink deeply, no dribbling!

Henry and I send all love for a very happy birthday Alex and most especially many Happy Returns.  Stay well and see you come summer.  Hugs Babs

MERRY XMAS TO ALL BLOGGERS FROM SUNNY QUEENSLAND DOWN UNDER.

Merry Christmas!

2014 Whooosh recap.Hang in there OLD people.

What the hell did happen this year? Oh yeah it was a cold winter.Mind you when you refer to it with such terms as “Polar Vortex” it cant  be that bad!! I think.The indoor soccer ladies had a great year winning their div playoffs.Continued  colder than normal into march and beyond.Golf bud Joe and I went to Florida for two weeks of lotsagolf,not sweltering heat there either but on checking the temps at home it was great and actually still wore shorts for most of the time.Joe managed to share a hacking cough with me which was probably the only reason he beat me 3 out 4 times.Shortly after our return my little boy married Jennifer Johnson,lovely lady.Wild affair at city hall.Jay and I had coughs and the princess was also sick!! Which dumb old grandpa discovered later to be morning sickness.I did have to look at Parkers(big sister tee shirt )a couple of times to sink in.Did not start our golf season here until well into april and in turn blended into volunteering to coach the local rec ladies soccer.Nice visit from Tom and Mike and better halfs for a weekend.Summer sped by with golf and soccer both local and a Friday night team in London.Get to see my buddy Parker(and her parents)quite often.Early September Gail(aka the warden )and I took a quick trip to the UK to scatter Mum’s ashes alongside the old boy.Crammed a lot of site seeing into a short time and caught up with a few good friends and relatives.Unfortunately had to miss out on many more.End of October brought about one Jace Paul entering into our crazy world,luckily I and other grandparents are close enough to help out .Close enough to go home also.Parker will soon be his mentor as she  has the rest of us well trained.Pretty well brings us up to this joyous occasion formerly known as pigging out season.happy troughing to you all.

one hundred years ago...

http://youtu.be/DSynFlCSeMY

Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby

Been busy making Gingerbread

Think Mrs Bishop - Domestic Science 1966 - would have been proud of me :) Anyone remember the Christmas Cake we used to make to take home?

Happy Christmas Everyone and Health Wealth and Happiness for 2015

Christmas caption competition

                                                              Yes Paul, it is Beverley.

NOT SO SUNNY QUEENSLAND TODAY!

happy birthday...

 

...think we can safely yell out, (now it be the 29th November), "Happy Birthday" to Stormin'!...

Something for the weekend?

 

 

A quiz for the weekend? What links the following:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gt0PRpnShQ

A video now banned because it portrays racial stereotypes. Please do not watch if you are politically correct.

This scenery.

and this painting?

Hard Travellin' VI

With the rise of UKIP and their allegations about Euroland, I have been to investigate Norway which is not a member of the EU, to see if in fact life would be better for us outside the EU.

Certainly my first impression was that people seem to live in the past......

Here you can see embarrassed Germans rush by, shocked at how backward things are in Norway...

Street cleaning is still quite primitive....

Numeracy programs however I'm pleased to say are increasingly widespread.

Eating cabbage in the streets to ward of evil spirits and drunken men is however still quite common....

And while Norway is a member of NATO her defence capabilities remain limited.

So all you UKIP voters this is what Europe looks like outside the EU!

Retired in Oz

And just like that, I don't have a job. At the end of today I turned off the computer, handed in my pass and left the building. Some call it retirement. I call it the time when weekdays stop getting in the way of my weekends. Beers, everyone. I'm planning my future...

My Poppy

My poppy has arrived at Westborough Hall.

Hard Travellin' V

My last quiz proved too much of a breeze for the Blog's history buffs, so herewith a real one just as it came to me....

My companion like most of us is now retired. Her command of English is perfect. Almost too perfect. Sometimes she indulges in a Lancashire accent just to annoy me. (We all know how a Lancashire accent grates on the ears when you are from the other side of the Pennines.) What her job was in the old money I'm not sure, as she is too cute to tell you and far too smart  to have been a translator, or an English professor. Besides she always speaks with great authority, almost ex cathedra when it comes to certain matters, so it's always difficult not too take her seriously.

We were perambulating  recently when she paused and pointed an artistic finger, heavily laden with jewellery of Romanov proportions, at a nearby building and said: 'that's where your spies used to stay!'

Now I know despite the efforts of filmmakers and Ian Fleming that our spies were invariably snobbishly ineffectual public schoolboys who spent most of their lives asleep in men's clubs, but the idea of them staying in a hotel in Russia seemed unlikely even by their dismal standards .

'That's candidly a load of 'b****cks,' I suggested.'

She responded by playfully pushing me with her hip and saying: 'there, I've just given you a clue to one of the world's great secrets and you reward me with profanity.'

'What secret is that Masha?' I asked naively.

She laughed in that way that women do when they have a secret and have no intention of telling you. Seeing I was visibly taken aback, she added. 'From our point of view revealing the secret is bad for the business model, as we make a lot of money out the myth we pedal. And your lot keep it a secret... well because as usual it would put you British in a poor light.. Besides' she added cryptically, 'some myths just refuse to die.' With that she laughed and made it clear  that that was the end of the conversation.

I fired off a quick snap as an aide-mémoire, determined to investigate. I suppose I should mention I was in Russia's finest city, but other than that you have all I had in solving the puzzle.

Hard Travellin' IV

It seems high time we had some hardcore man porn. As we men know there's nothing more alluring than that special something women bring to the workplace.

The trick however is getting women to pose .... it's like herding cats....maybe I've lost my charm?

Can anyone guess which country harbours such industrious women?

Chicken song

Get practising.. this is the dance we will all be doing at Christmas apparently..

why women have handbags

I am tired

 

Chief cook and general handyman Tuesday to Friday.The little gaffer was tongue tied so we had to have the upper part cut with a laser and scissors for the lower part.Hopefully it will ease the breastfeeding agony my little girl has been going through the last three weeks.Hurts to pump but have been doing a few feeds with bottle.Tough to watch her pain.Big sister doing a good job of comforting mum.

 

 

 

 

 

                           

Weekend Quiz

A old plantation office miles from anywhere, loving tended by the American Park Service. A railway runs nearby and once the place was a hive of activity but now it sits forlornly in a sea of waving grass. There are no hedges here, or even stone walls just a few scrubby trees, nothing to give a clue as to the place this area has in history. What does this building commemorate? Further clues provided if required.

Hard Travellin' III

 

Our Colonial cousins have a great sense of history. Perhaps that stems from having so little of it? Certainly knowing when your history started and who kicked it off has many advantages in setting out national narrative. However, like most nations with a predilection for causing trouble today, you don't have to go back to far to find vestiges of British involvement. Unfortunately we gave the Americans guns and as the world now knows this blossomed into a full blown love affair. They of course learnt to solve their first problems using them and since then.... well it's just become habit forming. A small price for freedom we're told.

I asked for the Brown Bess back as it's clearly marked as ours but unfortunately the American sense of humour didn't extend that far.

Happy birthday Carol

Carol in Cyprus, killer that early morning start.

Carol in San Merino, cheers!

Have a good day... I did contemplate the swimsuit one but I would need your permission so will wait.

happy birthday...

 

 

                        ...to Carol...

Hard Travellin' II

Continuing with my theme of capturing the essence of a place or a people using photography, some aspects of American life can prove difficult. For something uniquely American,  the country's sole  superpower status usually comes quickly to mind. Capturing a sense of that however can be difficult. Getting near modern military technology isn't easy and if you can it often isn't that visually impressive, leastways it gives little hint of its awesome destructive capability.

Eventually I came across the USS North Carolina.  She's an old girl now, but she still manages to get the message across that she can whup some serious ass.

Hard Travellin'

For us 'old uns'  it's easy to see the advent of the smart phone has created  an enormous resurgence of interest in photography. The camera whatever form it comes in is a wonderful instrument of record in terms of preserving the moment - a sunset, a holiday location etc. For the younger generation it has even managed to bring narcissism to whole new levels through the ubiquitous 'selfie,' although I recognise some readers better preserved than myself are also heavily into selfies. However, as a sometime country correspondent I would respectfully suggest that with luck the camera can also be a wonderful way of capturing the essence of something. I say luck because as somebody who rarely uses mobile phones it requires having a camera somewhere about the person. This summer while wandering about a small American town waiting for a puncture to be repaired I captured the above shot. - In my view not only a wonderful juxtaposition of so much that is America, but also small town America during a recession. It makes me smile. I hope it has the same affect on you.

Northumberland Fusiliers

What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
To hazards whence no tears can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away?

 

Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye
Who watch us stepping by,
With doubt and dolorous sigh?
Can much pondering so hoodwink you!
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye?

 

Nay. We see well what we are doing,
Though some may not see –
Dalliers as they be –
England’s need are we;
Her distress would leave us rueing:
Nay. We well see what we are doing,
Though some may not see!

 

In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just,
And that braggarts must
Surely bite the dust,
Press we to the field ungrieving,
In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just.

 

Hence the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
Leaving all that here can win us;
Hence the faith and fire within us
Men who march away.

 

Thomas Hardy, 5 September 1914

And now, THIS

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=WR8tIjTykbE&feature=youtu.be

They fell with their faces to the foe

Drone footage

Link to drone footage of poppies

Back from the Tower

Huge crowds over the weekend. This was 11am Saturday morning.

I saw the Poppies