All sorts

27 May  

I have no idea what is going around here right now. The roof is finished over the way but the walls haven’t been touched. And yet the roofers are looking at starting the roof on our side now, or at least, it looks like it. The scaffolders are working out the front but it’s not the crew who were here last week. It all seems a bit confused to me. Whatever, it’s a lot noisier out there today with two lots working, one at the front, one at the back. Ah well … … …

Have you been watching Jonathon Strange and Mr Norell? We have and although we are enjoying it, we’re also a bit confused by it too. I should think that the book it is from is a good read, I shall be looking for it later, but as to read it, well, I don’t know. I have so many books to read as it is without adding to the pile. Some of the comments on Facebook though are related to TBR book piles and it seems that I am not the only reader with one. I can 21 on the bookcase beside my desk and there’s another ten in the bedroom, and I’m sure there’s another smaller pile in our walk-in cupboard. And isn’t counting those on my kindle either.

I finally got to sort out my photos from Saturday last week and I’ve got 7 decent shots from them. Digital Camera mag has an idea about using just a 50mm prime lens for a day to see what you do with it. It means you have to look a lot harder to get you shots and most snappers perhaps should be doing that anyway. I do fancy giving it a go but the 50mm lens for my Nikon is fairly limited. I didn’t understand the names and lettering of the lens when I bought. That lens has to set at f22 for it to work on my D5200; not good really. But I do have a Sony 50mm f1.4 here too which I have occasionally used before. It’s a very good lens, even if it is manual focus. My choice now is whether to use the A350 or the A330 we have here. We’ll see soon enough.

Last Saturday I made a real cock-up with our scooters. I managed to mix up the drive motors on them. Now the one on mine is stuck solid and we have to try to get it off. It’s happened before on the old ones but I wasn’t expecting to happen with the new ones. The last time I bought some small crow-bars and they worked fine (although I was always worried in case a copper saw them and thought I was looking to break in to some place). So yet another on the ‘to be done’ list.

So today’s photo then is … 

A grey heron.

And today’s funny …

There's a raging fire at a chemical plant that's burning out of control. The city fire department are called and start to attack the fire, but it's too much for them and they have to pull back. They call for aid from a neighbouring city, which sends its fire fighters to help, but when they arrive the fire proves too much for them too. Other cities send aid, but none are successful, and the mayor of the town offers a $1m reward to the fire fighters who can quench the blaze. Only one small, rural fire department in the area remains, and they are called. When they arrive in an old, beaten up truck they scream past all the waiting people, and the media circus, and hurtle straight into the fire, where they jump out and attack it, finally putting it out. The mayor rushes over gushing with praise, and says: "Well done, you guys are heroes! What are you going to spend the £1m reward on?" And the rural fire chief replies: "Well, the first thing we'll do is to fix the brakes on that fire truck."