Monthly Archives: Jul 2006

but, head!

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24°C, same again

On apologies that aren’t: "I’m sorry except that I don’t regret it- it was his fault". In a quest to find out how long it takes some men to grow up we can follow the process in a hitherto unheard of french footballer.
He claims his opponant insulted his mother & sister so for now let’s assume that part is true. He rose to the bait and assaulted the italian making the scale & scope of the insult has changed. What was previously only heard by two men on a large field, now is front page news on every newspaper in the world (nearly). Millions, including those two women, know something about it.
Now the Frenchmen is making the most bizzarre form of apology ehre he says he’s sorry but doesn’t regret it. For the record that is not an apology. There is probably some kind of absurd mediteranian macho ethic at play. Pass some cheap comment about a woman you can’t have ever met, know nothing of, and you get the most inflated reaction from those testosterone driven unthinkers. What did the italian say anyway-
"your father was a hamster and your mother smells of elderberries"!
My opinion is low.
Why bother commenting on a sport I care nothing for? There is a bridge with the crime of yesterday – read it.

The hounding

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24°C.Perfect

Unpleasant experience: walking the dogs. I took my camera because the light is just perfect as well  as the cherry trees are ripe with fruit. Then while the dogs were running about one of them came over and said
"are you taking pictures of us? if you are I’m going to take that camera off you"
then it went on. they tried to argue, it’s illegal to take pictures of children,  reply" no it’s not, this is a public place"
The picture is below… the children concerned aren’t even in the same field as me.
 
They followed me home, chanting abuse, obsenities about my mother, paedophiles, wanking. They cicled me as I walked taking pictures with their mobile phones whilst one boy inparticular fired absurd questions at me.
"Does yyour mother know you take pictures of little children and wank over them "
"you’re like Michael Jackson"
 
So what’s happening here:
I guess they are a gang, they are building-up kudos with their peers and enjoying a taste of power that numbers can give. There were about five of them, mostly riding small mountain/bmx bikes.
 
I walked to the nearest phone box and rang the police. Then the boys dissappeared. The police thought that since the gang had gone then it would be safe to go home. My main concern is tha they’s find out where I live. But as I cam out of the phone box, there they were. So I walked to the next phone box which is quite a way off in town.
The police said they would get a patrol car here in about 20 minutes.
that was just over an hour ago.
 
Here are the offending photos, I suppose it needs some contrast adjustment, either to darken the forground trees or to wash out the background. This picture has only been resized, that’s all. The second one is a crop, but since the camera was aimed at the trees, the people in the distance are not clear. the main antagonist is wearing the green tee-shirt

Shostakovich- The Nose

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24°C, beautiful crisp warm clear day.

Opera at the Garrick: A story about Major Kovalyev sawho one day lost his nose one day. Technically iswas faultless but more than that- it was hilarious. The acting, direction sets and the rest were world class. The whole experience left us feeling wide eyed and elated.

Dragon Rapide

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20°C, windy

Yesterday: Duxford- I took a short flight in a biplane. It was a twin with seats for 8 passengers and was built in the 1930s. Although there was only canvas and a wooden frame between us and the engines, the sound wasn’t very  loud, perhaps because the engines were relatively low powered and under the lower wing.
The views over Cambridgeshire was spectacular- the sunlight getting low- longer shadows and mid-summer golden colours.
 
Another bit that amused us was earlier in the day. They’d set up some demonstration tailers for rolls-royce aero engines, two merlins and a griffon. Each had small propellors to drive, and since these engines are run on open exhaust pipes – the noise was tremendous. Each trailer had an engineer controlling the engine ( see picture below)
 
I have shot some video clips which I can post to my photobucket site when they are edited together. so… that means Adobe Premier needs re-installing.
 
My mother’s cousin was there(John) which had lots of interesting stories to tell of our fmaily history, most of which I have no clue about before. Moreover- there were plenty of people to meet , some who’d crossed the atlantic to get there.
excellent and tiring day.

Bus shelter

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Thursday:24°C, thunderous storms

Electrical storm: It doesn’t take long for a big punchy storm to build up. Today’s ones are quite slow moving, slow enough to allow the rain to turn roads into rivers. I hid in a bus-shelter to avoid the lightning strikes- which never came in the end. The bus-stop was across the road from the one I hid in last year to avoid a morning storm.
 
the photos below was part of a series where it was clear how they billow up. When scrolling through the folder of photos the movement is clear- perhaps a project for the weekend.
 

Resentmant and recriminations

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30°C, like yesterday, no storms though.

A game of two halves: Everyone seems to be upset about the football. It ended ina penalty shootout with the English team losing. What a rubbish way to conclude a match, a football game is only an hour & ½, so they had a bit of extra time, scored nothing so had this kind of russian roulette. That’s not a game, it’s just chance. A football game is only short anyway; the Tour de France runs for four to six hours, every day for about three weeks, tennis matches are often over four hours. So let the footbal go on, play until someone scores, I’m sure thay can do it, if not players could do some stamina training.
 
See! I can do the football BS like the best of them. Here’s me never watched a game in my life.
Easy.
 

July, the thrips

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30°C, humid

70.3 miles in the heat. Some places must have been at 40°C, especially near fields of straw. I have that cough referred to in a post a few weeks ago. It’s said to be caused by an ozone haze, but I bet there is straw dust involved too.
Thrips must lead an interesting life, as adults they look like little bits of rubber left after using a pencil rubber. There must be vast numbers of them, they form clouds under trees, and stick to jerseys and car radiators in large numbers. I’m nearly puzzled by them as much as I am by Crane Flys.