Author Archives: essiep

Fifty-five

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14°C, the showers are less heavy than yesterday.*, C=55 miles

This is rain I can live with, it is interrupted by bright sunny spells while the dark clouds brew up on the horizon. Stygian.
I ought to comment on the 19/20 politicians who have been fiddling the books in Parliament and the House of Lords too. It all seems too obviously corrupt to be worth mentioning. I can only hope they are treated in the way we would be if it were us in our jobs doing the same thing. But wait, only a few are suspended pending an investigation.
Cattle: here are the cows that chased Rosie & Bess last week. They look nice enough…

Mynd recce

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14°C, windy & heavy downpours.

Amazed: to have escaped the worst downpours on the Long Mynd today. No off-lead romping for Rosie though- sheep everywhere. It’s a remarkably gorgeous place. We test-walked a route that our Duke Of Edinburgh kids will do soon. The surface is very easy going, even the steep bits, much of it can be run. Read that Wiki article for some interesting geology- this oft missed place has a really interesting pre-history. Nowadays, it is covered with groups performing the DofE marching ritual.

Road-rainbows

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12°C, torrential with thunder

Delta done (just about): You get to know how these oxbow lakes form around kettle-holes after doing this kind of drawing. the KML file is getting too heavy to manage now, so I need to call a halt soon- there are 190 ponds & lakes drawn in to add onto the ones already present.

This printscreen was taken at the current time & weather, the melt is underway leading to the very short summer, but 24hr daylight.
I will probably make this file available on this site until AvSim is recovered.

Soaking drizzle

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14°C, wet.

This rain: cast my mind back to those summer days at school- the ones where I was a youth. I have never really lost that reaction to others getting a soaking. Well, I say others, I meant women- I still get something from seeing women soaked in rain; okay- it’s just so damned schjecksi!.
mmmmh.
FSX:Drawn Tiksi town, plus some kettle-holes near the airfield. there is a hitch- the site I normally upload and distribute the scenery files from has been busted by a hacker. Perhaps they can restore it despite rumours that suggest not.

There Will be blood

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14°C Sun.C20, brisk westerlies (again)

There Will be Blood: on a roll now; two great films in a week. This one was very long, again it’s set in the deserts of the US, but the dark tension came from a different direction. This time there was focus on a character Daniel Plainvew, clues were revealed when the lead wanted to expose them. They were not nice things to see, some were only hints but still ugliness was there in a way that created a a heavy, tense and sinister feel. As dark as the crude oil that he was obsessed with. Stupid me, didn’t realise that the lead was played by Daniel Day-Lewis. Perhaps that is the mark of a great actor, or a viewer who doesn’t have a care about celebrity.
This film is worth watching again.

Marshy Meadow

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18°C, windy, warm & quite humid

Not far from home: it’s possible to escape into what looks like remote countryside, just church spires are visible in the city, poking above the heavy trees.
Plenty in bloom, small delicate flowers, they are tricky to track down in the reference book. The even smaller blue ones are even more intricate and remarkable. Harder to photograph though. This Fuji pocket camera is really quite poor in many ways. Replacement is looking unlikely because of the bizarre trend towards no viewfinder- how are we supposed to take photos in bright sunshine then?

hibiscus; and the darkening above us

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14°C, NW winds, 20 miles

Near dark sky, it’s an oily blue-black up there. But, you know- twenty past nine…
Repotted a plant with a name like a drug; from the hibiscus family. The Acerecae has gold-glitter in the mud, what is that stuff? Looks like mica.
What is summer going to be like: this is farmland in Warwickshire, but it’s early May!

Brief Encounter (with a bun)

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18°C, dark

Kneehigh Theatre: with their version of Brief Encounter, a homage to Noel Coward as much as the original film of 1945. They included "I’m no good at love" (which I’ve included on these pages in the past), along with other songs and passages by him. There was some audience participation, in one scene I was offered a bun, which I ate- it was really quite fresh I should state clearly now. Other nice touches, in the programme, actors’ own brief encounters printed with their shortened CVs.