A day out, a poorly dog and smokers

25 September 2012

No rain today yet but we do have high winds that is bring down a lot of leaves from the trees out the back.  Yesterday I was watching the national weather forecast ready for tomorrow so we could go a run out.  Now the forecast has changed an our run out is set for Thursday.  I was thinking of going to Richmond in N. Yorkshire.  However, the A1 is currently close at Catterick due to flooding so we might not get there anyway.  We'll see ... ... ...

Today's News has a pretty distressing photo and story in it.  The photo is of a very bedraggled spaniel that has a large tumour on its hind leg.  The dog's owner has been to court over it because he hadn't taken the dog to the vets.  He was given 10 year ban on keeping dogs.  On top of that he has to do 200 hours of unpaid community work and ordered to pay costs of £2,180.60 in costs.  But what angers me is that we have never neglected any of our pets and have lost them all one or another.  Now we are in a ground floor flat we are not allowed to have one.  When I see such neglect of any animal I get angry simply because they people just have no idea how lucky they are.

Jan was off making a tea when I looked out the window at the feeders and started to get very excited!  There on the table was a bird I was sure of.  It was a darkish colour and looked to have a white bib or collar.  "Ring Ouzel." I thought, and a life tick too.  "Where's my Collins!"  I looked it up and was deflated to see that it wasn't, Ring Ouzels are of different colourings altogether.  Well, it brightened my day a short time ;-)))

One of our new neighbours has Virgin to their flat. The large junction box is on the lawn outside our flat.  Well, when we had council contractors here dealing with the blocked drainage they managed to damage to Virgin cable as the dug their trench.  So Virgin guys were here today and they had to re-dig part of the hole again and relay the cable for them.  I'm reminded of the old Flanders and Swan song and the gas man calling.         

Have you noticed that since the smoking ban in pubs and the smokers go out for a fag, they always tend to stand around the entry doors.  Here's the Felix Holt in Dorktown ... 

We get sick of trying to get through them while they are there!

A real treat today from the Rochdale Sage ...

The Salvation Army realised that they had never received a donation from the City's most successful lawyer. So a Salvation Army volunteer made an appointment to see him in his lavish office. The volunteer thanked the lawyer for his time and said, "Our research shows that even though your annual income is over three million pounds, you don't give a penny to charity. Wouldn't you like to give something back to your community through the Salvation Army?"
The lawyer thought for a moment and said, "First, did your research also show you that my mother is dying after a long, painful illness and has huge care bills that are far beyond her ability to pay?"
Embarrassed, the Salvation Army volunteer mumbled, "Uh... No, I didn't know that."
"Secondly," said the lawyer, "did it show that my brother, a disabled Afghanistan Veteran, is blind, confined to a wheelchair and is unable to support his wife and six children?"
The stricken volunteer began to stammer an apology, but was cut off again.
"Thirdly", the lawyer said, "did your research also show you that my sister's husband died in a dreadful car accident, leaving her penniless with a mortgage and the burden of supporting three children, one of whom is disabled and another who has learning disabilities requiring an array of private tutors and specialist nurses?"
Completely beaten, the humiliated Salvation Army volunteer said, "I'm so sorry. I had no idea."
The lawyer thought again for a moment and said,
"So, if I don't give any cash to them, what makes you think I'd give any to you?"

The NHS, rip-offs and the perfect man

24 September 2012

Our alarm was set for 7.15 yesterday morning.  It went off OK and on time.  BUT ... I just couldn't move!  I felt so thoroughly drained and exhausted.  The result is we lay in until 9.20, too late for me to get off out and nearly too for Jan to get to church on time.  Even so, I still felt pretty well drained all day.  No idea as to why though.  I feel a lot better today but it's raining buckets right now, and even if it was dry, Jan has a GP this afternoon that I need to take her to.

This morning I decided to catch up with the new Andrew Marr show that   of started last night.  I've enjoyed his earlier ones and this one is going to be the same too.  He made a comment at one point that early human life was a battle with nature, fighting its effect on his as a species.  But that's not changed even now has it?  We still fight with nature over one thing or another, flood defences being one such area effort.  Medical science being another one.  And speaking of that, Marr also mentioned that TB originally passed from cattle to humans.  Can you see where I'm going with this?  The current badger cull is going on, but are the badgers to blame?  If Marr is right, then might cattle have passed it on to badgers and that is why farmers have such a problem on their hands?

Keeping to the health line for now then, Rip-Off Britain today had the story of a paramedic employed by a private contractor hasn't been paid for two months and his agency has now gone bust.  Yet the manager has opened another agency to do the same job.  The company that actually owns/controls the busted agency says that it is unlikely that owed wages will not be paid.  Beg pardon?  Why not?  Surely they were paid by the local NHS trust to supply the ambulance service so what has happened to that money?  And while I'm at it, why is the NHS using private agencies instead of running their own ambulance service?  Yet another example of the creeping privatisation of the NHS!  That's why!  Damned Tory's every time!

So, time for a photo ... 

This one of a group of fishing boats tied up in a harbour in Northern Ireland.  That sky is very dramatic.

And from the Rochdale Sage ...

A man walks out to the street and catches a taxi just going by. He gets into the taxi, and the Cabbie says, 'Perfect timing. You're just like Frank.'
Passenger: 'Who?'
Cabbie: 'Frank Feldman. He's a guy who did everything right all the time. Like my coming along when you needed a cab, things happened like that to Frank Feldman every single time.'
Passenger: 'There are always a few clouds over everybody.'
Cabbie: Not Frank Feldman. He was a terrific athlete. He could have won the Grand-Slam at tennis. He could golf with the pros. He sang like an opera baritone and danced like a Broadway star and you should have heard him play the piano. He was an amazing guy.
Passenger: Sounds like he was something really special.
Cabbie: 'There's more. He had a memory like a computer. He remembered everybody's birthday. He knew all about wine, which foods to order and which fork to eat them with. He could fix anything. Not like me. I change a fuse, and the whole street blacks out. But Frank Feldman, could do everything right.'
Passenger: 'Wow, some guy then.
Cabbie: 'He always knew the quickest way to go in traffic and avoid traffic jams. Not like me, I always seem to get stuck in them. But Frank, he never made a mistake, and he really knew how to treat a woman and make her feel good. He would never answer her back even if she was in the wrong; and his clothing was always immaculate, shoes highly polished too. He was the perfect man! He never made a mistake. No one could ever measure up to Frank Feldman.
Passenger: An amazing fellow. How did you meet him?
Cabbie: 'Well, I never actually met Frank. He died and I married his bl**by wife."    

Red, Green and a lynching

22 September 2012

I've just got back from a ride into town.  The market is very busy today but the little I saw didn't draw my attention enough to spend any dosh.  The reason for going into town was to visit Waterstones on Queens Road.  I was after an up to date OS map of Dorktown.  The other side of Weddington Road there are a number of pathways that lead to I don't know where.  The idea of the map is look them up.  Besides, I just like maps ;-)))  To my mind they are fascinating.

So what's on today then?  Front page of the Dorktown Telegraph carries  the story of an off-duty pregnant police officer and her hubby taking down and arresting a man threatening drivers with a six inch knife.  That story is very relevant for the whole country considering what happened in Manchester this week.  The two local officers have been given bravery awards for their actions - and I should think so too!

The 'L' word was used a lot during and after the Olympics.  The Walsgrave Hospital is some of the legacy now in their A&E department because of arise in sports related injuries.  I don't think that was they type of legacy they were hoping for though.  The advice from there is that anyone wanting to take up a sport when they haven't been all that active for sometime is to see a GP first.  Makes sense really.

Blackberry users are being hit yet again with another glitch.  Whatever, I still had 3 emails and a text message on mine when I got up this morning.  Maybe we BB users should form a 'lynch-mob' to get them to sort it all out.  Hang on a mo ... where does the term lynch-mob come from.  Ah, well, the Telegraph comes to the rescue again.  Well, it seems that on this day in 1780, a Captain William Lynch issued a proclamation that said that it was OK to take the Law into their own  if they thought that the Law wasn't working properly.  That brought 'lynching' and 'lynch-mob' into the English language.

I'd forgotten about this shot ...   

It's inside the Print Works in Manchester city centre.

Funny time ...

Once there was a beautiful woman who loved to work in her vegetable garden, but no matter what she did, she couldn't get her tomatoes to ripen. Admiring her neighbour's garden, which had beautiful bright red tomatoes, she went one day and inquired of him his secret.
"It's really quite simple," the old man explained. "Twice each day, in the morning and in the evening, I expose myself in front of the tomatoes and they turn red with embarrassment."
Desperate for the perfect garden, she tried his advice and proceeded to expose herself to her plants twice daily. Two weeks passed and her neighbour stopped by to check her progress. "So," he asked, "Any luck with your tomatoes?"
"No," she replied excitedly..."But you should see the size of my cucumbers!"       

Writing, fly-tipping and an A99?

21 September 2012

Oh dear, rain today.  We still went out for a ride round in the car.  A visit to Focus Optics for some bird seed is always good visit to make.  Using their feeders today were both great and blue tits, birds we haven't seen for some now.  However, yesterday afternoon Jan count 13 goldfinches on our sunflower heart feeders with loads more in the tree getting impatient for their turn.  It's the first time we have had so many regular gold finches on our feeders.  We had the odd one of two but never the amount we now have.

Fly-tipping is still ongoing with the borough, just as it is all over the country I'm sure.  We used to get it happening when we lived in Bed'th too.  Our bungalow was on the end of row of bungalows but a road went past our place and round to what used to be a garage area.  They were demolished leaving the whole area open for fly-tippers.  Before the garages were demolished we watched one flat bed truck go by with a wrecked car in the back.  He drove round there, open up an unused garage and dumped the car in there.  I took his registration and was standing by the front door as he drove by while I was talking to the cops about it.  We never saw him again.  We did likewise to an number of other fly-tippers too, including one who dumped a huge great pile of glass just off the pathway.  It took a year or two but the word soon got out that someone was taking reg numbers and reporting them and it eventually stopped happening.

On the way home we called in to the Greyhound pub at Hawkesbury Junction.     The car park was full, how full the pub was we didn't know or try to find out.  We left straight away and called in to the Crows Nest instead.  It's not a bad pub and my pint of Pedigree was very nice.  I can see going there again one day.  Jan has a fancy for an ice cream Sundae they do there.  It's a sharer job so I'm not sure what I will be drinking that time.

Oh to be a decent writer!  "It was a blonde.  A blonde to make a bishop lick a while in a stained glass window."  The word of Raymond Chandler.  Oh to be able to string words together like that; to be as successful as Chandler was with just seven novels to his name.  Right now I look at the last words of Photo Finish I typed and my mind goes blank.  Sadly story ideas can't be bought from a writers supply shop or a supermarket can they?  How good would be to go be able to ask for, "A pound of ideas please."  See, I didn't make that bit up either.  They are from Jeffery Archer in a TV interview.  One day, some day, there will come a day ... ... ...

Today's photo is this ... 

a river flowing through Lincoln.  Why should I post this?  Well, in this week's AP there is a full page ad for London Camera Exchange who are holding a Sony Demo Day on 29 September.  I may be able to get to that.  I'd love to have a play with the new Sony Alpha 99 that has just been announced.  At £2500 only though, it's far much for me, but I can but dream eh;-)))

And now it's funny time ...

A man is driving down a deserted stretch of highway when he notices a sign out of the corner of his eye.....It reads:
SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS
HOUSE OF PROSTITUTION
10 MILES
He thinks it was a figment of his imagination and drives on without a second thought......Soon he sees another sign, which says:
SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS
HOUSE OF PROSTITUTION
5 MILES
Suddenly, he begins to realize that these signs are for real....Then he drives past a third sign saying:
SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS
HOUSE OF PROSTITUTION
NEXT RIGHT
His curiosity gets the best of him and he pulls into the drive....On the side of the parking lot is a stone building with a small sign next to the door reading:
SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS
He climbs the steps and rings the bell.... The door is answered by a nun in a long black habit who asks, What may we do for you, my son?
He answers, I saw your signs along the highway, and was interested in  possibly doing business......
Very well my son. Please follow me.
He is led through many winding passages and is soon quite disoriented....The nun stops at a closed door and instructs him to place $100 in a cup then go through the door. He gets $100 out of his wallet and places it in the cup.....
He trots eagerly through the door, pulling it shut behind him........
As the door locks behind him, he finds himself back in the parking lot,
facing another small sign:
~ GO IN PEACE ~
YOU HAVE JUST BEEN SCREWED BY THE SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS.
SERVES YOU RIGHT, YOU SINNER -:)