Rain

It only rained twice today. Once for four hours and once for eight. We are now in the deep south of england, where people talk funny and the beer tastes strange. The flooding here is awful, on a scale with what Hull experienced recently, but with the added twist that a water treatment station has been put out of action by the rising floods. Which means that people are surrounded by water but have nothing to drink or wash in. Truly horrid. I can't imagine life without running water, it is just one of those things that you never expect to break.

In between showers I did manage to take a few photographs though.

Dunno what they are, but they look nice.

Breakdowns

Headed off down south today for a family visit. I don't know about you, but I'm noticing a lot more broken down cars these days. Time was when during a long-ish journey you would see two or three people stranded forlornly at the side of the road. But until recently you hardly saw any. Nowadays they seem much more frequent. Are cars getting less reliable, or are people not having them serviced as often as they should?

Taking your memories with you

I've been spending some time scanning old photographs and loading them up onto the computer. It helps to pass the time whilst watching dross TV and I've found some gems in amongst the albums. The thing that has impressed me most is the quality of the results though. Using a fairly modest Canon scanner and 6x4 inch prints I've been able to get some very nice looking results, even when viewed on the big screen telly.

Today I used the Vista Media Centre option to burn a whole bunch of pictures onto a DVD. This is wonderful. It gives you a lovely, ever changing slide show of pictures which works in any DVD player. I've been dishing these out to family members, who have been very impressed. Even though the images include one of me wearing shorts.

An Old Man Writes

I'm looking at the world through eyes half a century old. I'm also hearing the world through ears half a century old. And so on. In fact all of me is fifty today. Deeply scary. I never really wanted to grow up, let alone grow old. But there you are.

Defying the weather forecast (which mentioned everything but locusts later in the afternoon) we went out to Dalby Forest for the day. After a drive through the lovely countryside we happen to have around here, we found a quiet spot and set off around the Bridestones. And I took the biggish camera, and loads of pictures.

A walk in the woods

The edge of a stone

View from the top

A "Bridestone"

Flowers and stream

Woods

Geese arrivals

Flowers of some kind

Fair Weather Friends

Had a BBQ today to celebrate my upcoming annual event. Most surprisingly the weather was very good to me, with a break in the rain just long enough for Tim to cook some burgers and sausages, and us to sit in the garden and drink beer whilst solving the problems of the world.

Colourful cutlery

Folks turned up with presents and cards and I was supplied with a special T shirt to wear, celebrating the fact that tomorrow I'm very old. Unfortunately no photographs were taken of this.. Good stuff and thanks to all.

A great time was had, even though I was beaten at Mario Strikers on the Wii by someone less than a seventh of my age...