Hibernation

For one reason or another I think I have to send the blog to sleep for a bit.

Real life issues have raised their decidedly ugly heads and got in the way, I have got video evidence, but am holding it back pending the return of the newly-weds.....

In the meantime, save any pictures that you might actually like, because I suspect this might be the time to call it a day. I won't rush into that decision, it has after all been fun, but lets face it, who cares what I think about stuff?


Happy blogging the rest of you.

Sleepy time.....


ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzZzzzzzzz

The Spill

(Source here)

Just a quickie. There are (probably) zillions of music related blogs out there, and some are top, some are not. "The Spill" though is one of the most eclectic that I've stumbled across, and so I thought it worth a mention.

I added it to my Google Reader a week or two ago, and have picked up one or two fabulous tracks along the way....I was stopped in my tracks today though by their "Songs About Battles And Suchlike"

Especially the song that Mac sings, "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda"...sung note-perfect (By June Tabor, apparently, though I don't know her work, I will try to find out more.) and as moving as I ever heard it, well nearly, when you're in the midst of a big sing and half-full of beer some things can be a whole lot more human and moving than just sitting in your room listening....Just sheer magic, and if it doesn't prick your soul, at least just a bit then go & don't come back, sorry, no matter, you're just not someone I want to sit & have a drink with my friend.

Proof that Men Have Better Friends...

Another one of Melvin's.....

Proof that Men Have Better Friends...

Friendship among Women:

A woman didn't come home one night. The next morning

she told her husband that she had slept over at a

friend's house. The man called his wife's 10 best

friends. None of them knew anything about it.

Friendship among Men:

A man didn't come home one night. The next morning he

told his wife that he had slept over at a friend's

house. The woman called her husband's 10 best friends.

Eight confirmed that he had slept over, and two said he was still there.

and another....

One or Two Vids Jonny sent me....

These guys have serious cojones....


Steve McClure climbing Kilnsey Crag, North Yorkshire...



Fred Rouhling climbing somewhere or other...



"A Gritstone Year" (A bit longer at 10.33, but still educational if you've got the time...)



and lastly "Dreamcatcher"




Rather than simply reposting some random videos and sort of reflecting in the second or third hand glory of bringing them to your attention, as if there is any, but you do see it all the time....These are Jonny's pick. He sent me the links a while ago, and for one reason or another I never got around to watching them, but I have now.....

As the more observant may have spotted they are all of climbing. Now that is so not my thing, but I have tons of admiration (and wonderment too at their sanity) for the guys who do it. Terra Firma is my friend.

Sure I like the high places, the tops & sides of fells for example, miles from anywhere, with nature & the views for company, even better if you throw a pack of hounds into the mix! But if there's a high stone ledge, or cliff edge, then I'll be the one backing slowly but surely away from it, with my knees shaking....

Me 'at's orf to climbers though, mad mad fools!


PS I forgot to mention that Jonny is an 18 year old, poised to go off to University this autumn, and suffering from the urge to go place his body on cliff faces, rock piles, and other places that no sane person would even consider....This interest in climbing is growing, and I wish him nothing but success in his new sport, but want nothing to do with it myself!

Little Update: (Worth bumping this post for at any rate)

Alain Robert the "Real Spiderman" and he is so welcome to that title based on the bits I've seen & read....

Check his videos on the link above, and his Wiki entry HERE.

Me, I'd rather eat glass, but it's a free world...(supposedly.)("Yew haff your papers?")

80s? Bah, We Were There!

You youngsters have no musical respect....!

Go find out what the fuss was all about at "80's Music Videos" & don't come back until you have got to either Red Red Wine, or Vienna....



I tell you, in my day all this was fields.....

Back to the Lakes (Pub Tour!)

Important (& thirsty!) stuff travelling, even if it's not as common an occurrence as either of us would like...

Sitting outside "The Sun" at Crook, near Staveley, and only about 5 miles from Bowness...

I wondered if there was any chance of running into "Vic" or Jonathan, whose surname I don't think I ever knew...The first (more or less) person I met on my first night at Swansea Uni. I had just returned from a Holme Valley Beagles trip to this area, say 1986 or maybe 87 I'm not sure now...and had been to The Sun at some point, which turned out to be his local...some several hundred miles away from Swansea...I wonder what he's doing now?


As we passed a chilly hour or two over a pint, or two, other people came & went...One I thought looked sort of familiar, but after he'd walked past us & sat down with his pals, when we started talking again, he jumped up & looked straight at me.

"James?"

"Simon?"

Wow, after some 15 years or so I had run into a former house mate, from our time at Sheffield, brilliant! Proper bizarre, and what a nice way to start the weekend off.

Cheers Simon, good to see you again!

Changing the subject just slightly...That first night we ate at "The Brown Horse" (No website unfortunately)
Good home cooked food, if a tad on the pricey side for my empty pockets...slightly disappointing chips, but you can't have everything....


After our marathon hike on Saturday we popped in to the "Eagle & Child" for a refresher or two...Back in the days with the HVB we used to visit here regularly, it was really the base of our operations in fact. Boy how it's changed. They've knocked the building around until it's virtually unrecognisable...and added a mass of "Faux antique oddities" which as far as I'm concerned may well have their place in some pubs, but simply looked out of place here....More like what the tourist industry think the tourists expect an old English Pub to look like....FAKE...and, where have all the drinkers gone? It was nothing but wall to wall diners, more like a transport cafe than a pub, sad sad sad. Good beer though!


Saturday we ate well, in Bowness, though I can't remember the name of it....Oops..and ended up with a pint or two at "The Hole In't Wall"...A lively, if predominantly younger end atmosphere....




The very wet Sunday saw us do a leisurely drive around one or two tourist traps, including Grasmere, which I have been past many times before but never visited....Won't be going back again, unless to the famous "Grasmere Sports"...

Our quest then turned to seeking out the Betty Fold Gallery (Some proper hunting pictures on there!)



Sadly though I hadn't heeded the Coniston Huntsman's advice that the proprietor Neil, would be almost certainly at their Terrier Show that afternoon...Doh! So it was closed....Instead we went for a fab lunch at the "Drunken Duck", near Hawkshead...

None of the pictures in this post are mine, but lifted from the respective links...or a Google Image search.

There was just one more, "The Royal Oak" at Spark Bridge...but we only went as we had to see a man about a dog....So didn't eat, or really have time to get a proper impression of it....

An empty late Sunday lunchtime isn't probably the best time to get a proper impression to be fair.....

Of course there was walking, window shopping and other stuff thrown in too, I wouldn't want anyone to think that we spent the whole weekend in the pub...!

Cheers!

A Bit More Puppy Goodness

I know, I know, I so get tired of dropping on those blogs that are all sickly sweet & twee and "This is my Fluffy bunny, isn't he/she just the cutest??"

BARF!

But.....
She is!
...and so going to be pals with the Resident Evil cross-eyed cat!

New Project

I wonder if at a massive 5 posts long...it might be time to link in to my

Kenya project?

Bandwagonning

Seeing as how the buzz seems to be "Chrome" coloured...(I know, there's a built in oxymoron there somewhere...) I thought I'd jump right on and mention the Lifehacker article on the subject...

There, I've mentioned it.

I never got the hang of Opera, in spite of trying to, really I did...and Maxthon2, and...and...so stuck it out with the Fox.

While playing with Opera though I quite liked the whole "Speed-dial" thing, even if it might have just been it's then originality I liked. Go grab a FF3 version here though....play with it, then after a week or so decide that you can, or can't live without it.

It's hour one here, so I haven't decided yet.....

I'm so turning into a wannabe geek.....Someone slap me please!

(Image nicked off Liam ages ago, just waited for an opportunity to use it!)

Biblical Stuff

Well, one of my slow-burning projects has more or less been shelved through lack of time, though will remain a pet peeve of mine until the day I start munching on the roots of those daisies that they talk about people pushing up.....

But, your own spiritual security blanket is your business after all, whether you believe in the moon goddess, the spirits of the hills & rivers, or YAHWEH & his legions, or Epona or the whole Norse Pantheon....

Or none.

Mine is a bit public/private after all, just add more of the amber nectar, the 40% proof (Sometimes Single Malt, sometimes I can quite go for a nice "blended") one(s) that is, to find out exactly how self-contradicting my explanations of them all are!

But, in the meantime, here are two totally mad sites to test your own mythologies on....

God-Checker

and the brilliant (Whether you're pro- anti- or agno....)


BibleGateway.com

Leviticus 22:27

27 "When a calf, a lamb or a goat is born, it is to remain with its mother for seven days. From the eighth day on, it will be acceptable as an offering made to the LORD by fire.

I should think so too, what God in his/her right mind is going to accept an infant calf/lamb/goat if it's not had chance to grow a bit of flavouring....? You just can't get the Gods like you used to can you?

Search many different versions of the "good book" by any term whatsoever....The permutations are enough to create hours of entertainment....(ok, so you could go switch the TV on instead, but you know what I'm getting at...)

But..."By FIRE"? Fab! BBQ time everyone!



As for the project, go read your own English Koran/Qu'Ran, Bible etc and find your own inconsistencies....Or dig out Isaac Asimov's 2 Volume "Guide to the Bible"

As for me, it's not the message that I have a problem with...just a lot of the messengers......


"Controversy..is that you? Yes? Good, care to go out for a drink sometime?"

Borrowed image from "About Christianity" and if they don't like it I'll take it down....

Vicars huh...

Timely, or what? Spotted on Neatorama after the initial post....

Hubble Image (Video) of Perspective...

From The Daily Galaxy via Here

I realise the narration is a little naff, but still give it 6.38 minutes of your time....

Awesome stuff, especially if you really do believe that we're all alone.....

Fell Ponies at Large

After several hours wandering around the hills in search of nothing in particular... As we turned to sort of head back downhill we spotted some of Bob & Ty's kin happily grazing away....Magic!



Some time spent stalking them, as quietly and carefully as possible, wasn't necessarily wasted, but they did turn out to be way more affable than flighty......








In fact this mare wouldn't leave Helen alone.....


Magic stuff, but I won't be telling you where we went.....

Fell Ponies at Home...

An oil painting of Bob, bought from "Alia" on eBay.....

Before posting some of the pics of Fell Ponies out of the hills....I thought I'd re-visit "Bob". Out on the fells until 9 years old, then "cut" (gelded) and broken to ride...Bob had issues though, or rather "has"...(Why was he so late in "coming in"? We haven't found out yet, but suspect that there's a story there somewhere...)

Currently "turned away" for a few months, primarily for having a loose screw, these two videos at least partially explain why....An agoraphobic Fell Pony? I don't think so, but it's something along those lines...

The omitted scenes from the 2nd video simply involved tethering him to the gate-post, and his unhappy reaction to that....but unfortunately in spite of the initial seeming success, it wasn't enough....Time will tell if he's any calmer now.....

Butter wouldn't melt.....

The Lake Artists

Ok, so we did a bit of the tourist thing on Sunday...including this:


Thoroughly recommended:

The Lake Artists Site.

Well worth a £1.00 of anybody's money.....

Time Out!

Uh-oh, double trouble.....

Looking at the scenery....The art....

The colours....

The wildlife...

Oh deer....

My honeycub....

The weather....

The wildlife.....(Ponies! So much more to come on that subject..!)

The way to heaven.....

Ok, so we've had a couple of days away.....and the majority of our time out shall remain exactly that....but, without naming exactly where we went, I'd only go as far as to say it was the southern end of Cumbria......It stayed dry, but warm & hazy, but not the August weather it could have been....Hey, it was time out.

Me & my Foxy sticking two fingers up at the world for a couple of days.....with ponies & hounds & art, & beer & top food.....in a top place.....