Personal History – Fraggle's Otherverse

Tales From Fraggle Towers ~ December 2022

December 31, 2022December 30, 2022Posted in hipstamatic, Iphoneography, Personal History, Photography, UncategorizedTagged 2022, 365 project, December, Fraggle, New Year, Photography, thoughts30 Comments

It’s that time of year, where some of us look back on the year that’s been, before jumping in to the year ahead. It seems to me this year in particular the World has become a more turbulent, more unkind and more expensive place to live, but here we must stay, and at least there is music, books, movies, art and some good people still left in it.

At Fraggle Towers we have had some ups and downs, some health issues both for Phil and I, and also for some of our younger family members, and they are still all ongoing, but we’re not dead yet so there’s that!

Work has been much the same, clearing the North East of earwax, and I’m an angel/darlin’/miracle worker or star, depending on the vocabulary of the client, and that’s a nice thing to be at work.

The cats have continued to be their annoying selves. We have always had ‘easy’ cats in the past, and though Lord Vincent is quite sedate and cool, Winnie is a veritable monster at times. She’s mean to Vinnie whenever she comes across him and he doesn’t bat an eyelid. He’s had his quiet revenge though, Winnie used to sleep on our bed, and one day Vincent usurped her position and has kept it ever since.

Winnie then took to sleeping on the radiator downstairs, so I purchased a little bed for her, not really expecting her to be interested in it as she’s so ornery, but two minutes after I put it up…

Christmas was quiet and lovely, just the two of us and we had a chilled out day. I cooked dinner which was yummy and we watched a daft Christmas movie. We did the present thing, a photography book, perfume, earings, a 12″ single and socks for me, books, whisky, a decanter and favourite chocolates for Phil. We’ve both been off work in the week between Chrismas and New Year which is cool. A mini staycation, reading, watching movies, cooking, playing records, nothing new, just lots more of it!

I’ve been thinking about next year, photographically of course. In the past few years, 2016, 2019 and 2021 were all years where I completed a 365, or one-picture-a-day project it’s also called. Well it’s going to be 2023 in 4 days time (as I write) or tomorrow (as you read) and I seem to be mentally gearing up to do another one. Not with the Fuji’s or the film cameras, but using just the Hipstamatic app on the iPhone. There’s some parameters to work out over the next couple of days, and the final decision on whether I do or don’t is yet to be made. If I do I’ll be posting them weekly here and if I don’t, well who knows?

My Contax will be employed for photographic outings with Sophie, and I have a stock of film now which I need to crack on with. The weather is pants, grey rainy cloudy windy and forecast more of the same all week, but I’ve been seeing the weather reports for the USA over the past few days and so my complaining is very quiet and small. I do keep thinking I should make a resolution to go out in the rain with my camera, but I’d break it straight away, I do not like being cold and wet, not even for photography. #wimp

And that’s a wrap for December and 2022, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose and all that, but let’s hope 2023 isn’t as bad as we think it’s going to be! Pink thoughts people, pink thoughts! 🦩

Happy New Year to all, wherever and however you are 😘

📱😊

Tales from Fraggle Towers ~ November 2022

November 30, 2022Posted in abstract, Cat, Christmas, Flowers, Hipstamatic, Iphoneography, Personal History, Photography, Uncategorized, weatherTagged Fraggle, November 2022, Photography, thoughts33 Comments

The end of November is nigh, and I’m noticing more and more Christmas lights up in towns and on peoples houses. Asda are already awash with Christmas tat.

Far too early IMHO, 2 weeks is enough for me! Oh well, to each an apple. November didn’t start too well as I’d really hurt myself at the end of October. I got up from the sofa and twisted so as to trap a nerve in my back, and ended up incapacitated for a week. Couldn’t drive so couldn’t go to work, and sitting down or standing up was quite horrendous. I had planned to visit my lad Ben and Grandson Lewis on the following weekend and really didn’t want to cancel, but by the time it came around I was all better. Big relief. Nurofen and paracetamol combo to the rescue!

Off I went down south and as it was Guy Fawkes night, we went out to Milton Keynes to a Firework display, but first went for dinner at one of the Wagamama restaurants which has Asian fusion food based on Japanese cuisine. I think it’s supposed to be hip and groovy to eat there, but neither Ben or Lewis enjoyed what they ordered though they did their best, and it’s good to try stuff out of your comfort zone. I ordered Pad Thai, which is slap bang in my comfort zone so I was fine 😃.

Of course it was raining on and off so traipsing over to the firework display wasn’t that great as it was in a park and things got a bit muddy. There was a big fairground which was heaving with people and long, long queues for the rides, which none of us fancied doing, but Ben and Lewis wasted some coins in a mini amusement arcade.

We waited in the field for 45 minutes before the fireworks started, and they lasted 20 minutes. They were not all that spectacular but the end bit (you can see below) was pretty. Anyway, getting rain sodden didn’t stop me enjoying being with my boys.

crackley fireworks.

Back home we’ve had nearly 2 months with silly internet. We decided to swap over from Virgin to BT, for various reasons I won’t bore you with but not least because it’s faster and cheaper per month. It has taken 7 visits over 10 weeks, by several teams of internet fixerupperers to get us connected. They’ve had to dig up the path that runs past the front garden, dug holes in our front garden, spent hours on the phone back to base and finally yesterday got us connected and we are back online.

BT were very good whilst this was all going on and gave us a mini hub that was basically a sim card in a case. It was enough to use the computers but no good for streaming, and it dropped out every now and then and on rebooting had to have a megalong password put in. So annoying (I know, 1st world problems) but they didn’t charge us for it, so I can’t complain really, even though I just did.

Achievement of the month… I made dumplings for the first time ever and they were OK at least. Phil tries to make them quite often and fails dismally everytime, so I volunteered to have a go and ta-daaah!

Work has been as usual, mostly busy though this week it’s dropped off a bit, that happens around this time of year, and this year paying for wax removal might not be a priority. I pulled the longest pair of skin ribbons I’ve done so far out of one ladies ears, one out of each, amazing! They remind me of shedded snake skin.

Phil has been busy repainting the woodwork of the landing doors and skirting boards, as well as upscaling the banister. Looks nice. To celerate we went off to Jarrow and chose a new stair/landing carpet, which will be fitted in a couple of weeks. It’s from the same people who carpeted the house 20 years ago when it was new. Nice to see a local family run firm make it through all the mad stuff.

After all that hard work the past 10 days have been a pain literally for Phil as, not to be left out, he trapped a nerve under his shoulder blade. He’s been fannying on with a tens machine, which did do some good when it worked, but couldn’t sleep too well and finally went to the Docs yesterday and got himself some strong painkillers, which gave him a good nights sleep. He’s doing better today, at least I’m not getting hourly reports of the pain level, and he’s unplugged himself from the tens, so fingers crossed!

I bought an indoor cyclamen back in October, it’s doing well but I can’t get over it liking cold weather and no sunshine. It’s pretty.

Lord Vincent and Winnie have been stuffing their faces since the weather has turned cold, and don’t go out so much when it’s raining, but both are doing OK.

I found this and it made me laugh, so true!

I didn’t do much photography at the beginning of the month, but had a play around trying ICM (intentional camera movement) shots

I love how ICM photographers make artistic work with it, but somehow it just isn’t for me.

Sophie is back for a couple of weeks, and we went out this weekend, so there will be a post on the Universe blog in the near future, though I will wait until the film shots come back as there are not many digitals. Not sure how long that will be as the post office are on strike until Friday. Along with half the country. Good to see people fired up and taking action at last.

So that’s about it for November 2022, the year is nearly over just Christmas to get through and then we can all start again!

Stay tooned!

📷 😊

Tales from Fraggle Towers ~ October 2022

October 31, 2022Posted in Cat, Halloween, Hipstamatic, hipstamatic, Iphoneography, People, Personal History, Photography, UncategorizedTagged family, Fraggle, Halloween, Hipstamatic, iPhone11, October, Photography34 Comments

It’s been a funny old month here at Fraggle Towers with health issues to the fore. Phil had his Corona booster and Flu jab at the beginning of the month and was not well for 3 days, I had mine later on in the month and apart from one day being wierd got through that Ok. But I’ve had a couple of visits to the Doc’s for blood tests and other stuff. Then just this week I twisted somehow getting up from my sofa and did something to my back, with the result that I’m having time off from work. Can’t remember the last time that happened, and if I was able to drive I’d have still gone in. Sigh. Getting old and decrepit is just no fun. I seem to be improving anyway, fingers xt.

Winnie has been to the Vets as she has chronic cystitis they’re trying to get to the bottom of and she’s now on a daily dose of Loxacam which seems to be helping. None of this stops her being as mad as a box of frogs! Out in all weathers and doing a cracking job of rodent disposal.

Lord Vincent is hale and hearty, and in between patrolling the perimeter of our bit of the estate and eating for England, he spends most of his time on the bed ~ not one for rain and cold weather. He can’t even be bothered catching a mouse.

It’s been great having Sophie back in the country and we’ve had a couple of outings which has given me a good bit of fodder for the Universe Blog and for Fraggle film, though I’m still waiting to receive the scans back for that.

Work has been so busy, I’m getting through 40 people a week on average and I only work 2 & 1/2 days, so it’s full on, but I still get 10 minutes here and there to have a bit of lunch or take Teddy for a quick trot around the carpark. He is such a happy little soul and makes me smile.

Tonight is Halloween, and all the Grandkids turned up to go out trick or treating, which really is ‘begging for sweets’ apparently, but most of our estate get involved so I have sweets at the door ready and I get to take pictures, though use my iPhone now as the Fuji freaks people out 🤣. Phil and Shelly went with the kids to do the rounds and I stayed home to answer the door. Liddy and Livvy made a good effort at dressing up! Phil tells me that one house had made a fake cemetary on their front lawn, and another had a spooky figure that spoke to the kids as they got near to it and made them jump. Another had a giant spider across the front of their house. ALl good fun and the kids loved it.

The boys are ‘too old’ to dress up being 11 and 12 (pfft!) but are happy to have the sweets of course! To anyone moaning about copying the USA, or commercialising Halloween, or begging for sweets etc I agree, it’s true and I don’t bliddy care, as having the grandkids round laughing and being happy for a daft evening is fine by me. One day they’ll be in their teens and this will just be a memory.

Some neighbourhood kids

Not sure who he’s supposed to be, ? Pennywise

So that’s the end of the 10th month and we’re going into Outer~Christmas Land now, as people are mad for it up here. I’m off down South at the weekend to visit with Ben and Lewis, fingers crossed my back has recovered as it’s a long old drive, and I’m dreading sitting still in the car for 5 hours doing it in case it sets it off again, but am thinking pink thoughts, like that’ll help.

Back next time with a November round up so stay tooned!

Tales from Fraggle Towers ~ Pesky Scots.

October 6, 2022Posted in Personal History, UncategorizedTagged Fraggle, pension, Scottish Widows, thoughts27 Comments

A tale of ups and downs.

“It began as a 1980s government- sponsored pensions revolution: contract out of your company pension to potentially boost returns on your state second pension – a basic pension top-up – by investing in a personal pension. Armies of commission-driven salesmen then went on the rampage to convince the public their valuable final-salary occupational schemes – guaranteeing set sums at retirement – should be ditched in favour of riskier personal pensions based on stockmarket returns. Disaster ensued as vast numbers of people traded generous and safe pensions for riskier alternatives“. From The Guardian June 2009.

Dear reader I was one of those naive people who in 1991 ditched the best pension in the UK, the NHS pension, and signed up with the nice Scottish chap from the Scottish Widows Financial company, who came to visit one day. Eventually it came to light that I was mis-sold the SW pension, and I gave it up and went straight back into the NHS scheme. Apparently you were supposed to get compensation for the mis-selling, but I don’t remember getting any, and it’s a bit late now anyway.

Imagine my surprise, if you can, when earlier this year Scottish Widows tracked me down and asked me to get in touch with them. I did. I had to send my marriage certificate to them to change my last name as I was not with Phil back then, so I did that too.

Imagine my even greater surprise when they sent me a statement telling me what my pension with them is now.

Oh my goodness, some of what I paid in was left behind and hey presto 25 years later I have 38K!! I was a little bit happy as a pig in poo I can tell you! They asked me to think about what to do, take some, take it all, leave it in etc, and Phil and I had some discussions and I decided to take it all out and pay the tax, which would leave me with about 25K and keep it in with our savings, but use half of it to retire at 65 instead of 66. Yipee!!

So I got in touch with them and they organised a phone call with one of their chaps, which duly happened. For 90 minutes! Lots and lots of questions and making sure I knew what I was doing but also information that actually my pension pot was not 38K, but was going to be a wee a bit less,

Oh well, that would still be about 22K in my hand after all the t’s and i’s were crossed and dotted. OK said the guy on the phone, the money will go into your bank in 8 days time.

8 days came, and 8 days went, then the Queen died and the country came to a standstill for 10 days, so I hung on until that went by and phoned to find out what was going on. “I’m sorry all our operators are very busy at this time, you can call back later or stay on hold. The current waiting time for on hold is 40 minutes.’

I held dear reader. Sure enough 47 minutes later I spoke to a nice Scottish lady, explained what was going on and she put me on hold for another 10 minutes while she went to speak to someone else about it. When she came back she told me there’d been some error or somesuch on the amount and someone would give me a call on Monday in office hours between 9 & 5. I told her I’d be at work and not able to answer so leave a message with a number I coud ring back directly on.

Someone rang me on Monday, Tuesday and left a message with the number on. I got round to ringing it today on my day off. “I’m sorry all our operators are very busy at this time, you can call back later or stay on hold. The current waiting time for on hold is 40 minutes.” SIgh.

I held. 47 minutes. Eventually spoke to I think a nice Asian lady, (not Scottish as I’ve got the hang of understanding the Scottish accent now,) who then went off to find me a nice Scottish lady. She then put me on hold for another 5 minutes whilst she went to speak to someone else. It had already struck me after reading an article in The I that maybe something was afoot.

So I’m thinking, hang on, the figures I got, the chat I got with the guy, the 8 days up when the money should be paid in, all happened before the mini-budget when everything changed, they must have known what would happen in the budget so they’ve hung on to mine (and probably others) waiting for this so the payouts could be even less! Greedy corrupt Fat Cats at the top making decisions that stuff the little people.

The nice Scottish lady came back. Yes I’ve got your revise pension pot figures she said, £7,603. Wait what?? I replied. Where’s the rest of it?? Are you telling me this mini budget has wiped £23,000 off my pension?? I didn’t swear dear reader, as it isn’t the nice Scottish ladies fault. But I was quite staggered and informed her of my staggering. Oh no, she said, this is nothing to do with the budget, the initial forecast was a mistake. Someone made a mistake at the outset and I’m very sorry, would you like me to pass it on the complaints department and they’ll get in touch with you? Please just put me through to them I asked, I don’t want to go through the rigmarole of them phoning me to no avail, and me being on hold for another 47 minutes 3 days later getting nowhere. Oh sorry again, the Scottish lady apologised, the complaints department doesn’t have a phone number, we do it all by email. I kid you not dear reader, my staggeredness was off the charts at this point.

I gave up. And now a few hours have passed and I can’t help laughing. This wasn’t down to FatCat sneakybeaks, but to a monumental cock-up by some pesky twit who needs a bloody calculator for Christmas in the add-up-the-numbers-department of Scottish Widows.

Pesky Scots.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🤣

Tales from Fraggle Towers ~ Sept 2022

September 30, 2022Posted in Cat, Personal History, Photography, UncategorizedTagged Fraggle, thoughts27 Comments

Into Autumn now, the tree leaves are beginning to furl and change colour in places, though nowhere near photographic delight yet. Sophie is back (I think) for a while, but has family health issues to contend with now, involving her spending a lot of free time in London with her Mum, so we won’t be doing many photo outings because obviously priorities!! Hopefully this weekend though, weather permitting.

The first week of September was just quiet but then in the second week our Queen died (which if you haven’t been living under a rock you couldn’t fail to know). I think everyone except ardent royalists were fed up to the back teeth of all the relentless radio, newspaper and TV coverage, which wiped football out (haha, tee hee, sorry, not sorry) I imagine soap operas and other things were cancelled as well but I wouldn’t know about those as we don’t do much TV. More annoying was any news about anything else going on in the world was completely ignored. Even more annoying was having my blood work appointment cancelled when they decided to Bank Holliday the funeral. I didn’t even get a free day off work as that was my holiday week! Pfft!

We have been entertaining the troops Chéz Nous, firstly we had Cal and Liddy for a sleepover

Liddy saw this on our dining room ceiling and wanted to know what it was

it’s possibly a Daddy Long Legs spider or a Harvestman spider, not sure and I don’t really care so long as it”s gone!

We also had Paul and Lorraine over for dinner, a Persian banquet, which I hadn’t tried doing before, but it all came together quite well. The Ottoman Puffs went down extremely well, and whilst they may resemble sausage rolls, really they are not. In spite of having sausage meat in them.

It was a good night, good food, plenty of liquid refreshment, a lot of laughing and music. Phil entertained us with his bass playing, but Paul let the side down by forgetting his guitar.

We had our trip to Scotland which I posted about a few days ago, click HERE if you missed it (looking at you Dix) and Phil has a brand new car which I drove to get us there. So much tech in new cars! There’s a huge screen on the front dashboard with buttons under it for Sat Nav, audio, and other stuff I didn’t bother with. It has automatic straightening if it senses you veering off the road (!) and beeps at you for this, that and the other. It’s a Nissan Juke and so quite big but only has a 1L engine, so you would think it slow to drag the weight of it about, but you would think wrong, it goes like the proverbial poo from a spade. It was a nice comfy drive, 6 gears no less, but I wouldn’t swap my 500 for it, it has no character. It was a sunnyish day so I took the scenic route up the A697 through Coldstream. Glorious scenery the whole way, passing by lush green hills and rolling fields of crop type things. Or grass. Whatever, it was totally green. Our hotel, The Murrayfield is only a long stones throw away from the stadium and was very nice. It’s restaurant ‘The Bothy’ was quite pricey, which we wouldn’t have minded if there’d been anything on the menu we’d really fancied, but there wasn’t, it all sounded a bit Masterchefy so we wandered down the road and got some good Scottish fare from Tang’s Take Away.

We snuck it back into the hotel and had it with some vino delecto and watched Andor, a Star Warsy series on Disney + that was much better than I thought it would be.

The cats are still assassinating the local rodent population and when we got back from Scotland on the Saturday evening there was a fair amount of bird poop to clear up as Winnie had a lady blackbird trapped in the conservatory. It was a bugger to get it to escape as she kept dashing into the big umbrella plant we have in there, and behind the furnitures, and the whole performance would probably suffice as a Youtube comedy sketch had anyone filmed it.

Of course I have cat pictures…

Winnie has taken to coming in to my study when I’m blogging and I have to quickly shift the keyboard so she can lie down for tickles. Her claws get stuck in the mat I have down to stabilise the keyboard so I’ve replaced it with some beautiful patchwork placemats (that I hadn’t been using as I don’t want to spoil them) that my friend Connie from the Adventures in every day life blog kindly sent me from over the pond, and Winnie is happy with them, and I get to enjoy them every day now.

Lord Vincent does not like the rainy weather, and spends most of his time asleep!

So September is just about over, and it’s chucking it down with a hoolie of a wind going on whilst I’m writing this. I was going to write about the sad and horrendous state of government here in the UK, but this chap says it so much better. There are 2 swear words in it so if you’re a puritanical type you’ve been warned. He’s a comedian ostensibly, but this isn’t funny, and it’s the truth of things here.

And so, on to October, fingers crossed for some sunny autumn days with lovely colours to photograph, preferably not on days when I’m at work!

Stay tooned dear reader!

Tales from Fraggle Towers ~ August 2022

August 29, 2022Posted in Hipstamatic, Iphoneography, Personal History, Photography, UncategorizedTagged Fraggle, FujiX-T2, Hipstamatic, iPhone11, movies, Northumberland Zoo, Photography21 Comments

The end of August is nigh, and the official the end of summer. According to meteorological seasons, the first day of autumn arrives on 1 September and then according to the astronomical calendar, autumn will begin on Friday 23. Oddly, The Meteorological Office, which forecasts our weather (or tries to anway) uses the astronomical calendar. 🤷‍♀️

My autumn begins when the green leaves turn gold/red/brown and that isn’t happening yet, so I’m still in Summer, albeit the latter stages. August has been full of the drought, and then torrential downpours which did nothing to alleviate the problems drought is causing. Up here we haven’t had too bad a time of it, no hosepipe bans, and the crops and fields look healthy when I’m driving about anyway, though ponds have dried up across the way.

I got the results of the lung screening back, and whilst I haven’t got lung cancer, there’s a different issue shown up which has to be addressed, and is being. My hedonistic past catching up with me 🙂 . I may, or may not write more about it later, but it’s all a bit new at the minute, anyway I’m not at death’s door so yay!

Work has been mad busy as always, there’s a lot of ear wax in this world! I’ve got a week off coming in September which I’ll be glad for, it will be a staycation as no-one sensible would try and look after our cats, but we’re having a night in Edinburgh as the Scale Scotland Model show is on and it’s one of Phil’s faves. We’re only staying for one night and our lovely next door neighbour Cheryl will come in and put food down for them.

August is when the schools shut for summer, and I had Cal and Liddy to stay and took them out for a trip to the Northumberland Zoo whilst their Mum went to a funeral.

Liddy loves horses and has riding lessons everyweek, but on bigger ones than this chap.

They loved the marmasets and Cal turned his camera round so the little guy could see himself! 🥴

This is a Scottish Wildcat, and the first time I’ve managed to see it as it hasn’t appeared on the other occasions I’ve been, it’s usually hiding, which is pesky, surprise surprise. Caught it at feeding time though.

The café at the zoo is pants, so I took them to Northhumberlandia which has a nice one, and hadn’t expected it to have 300 Harley Davison riders in it’s grounds. I got chatting to one of them in the café queue and he was telling me that most weekends, chapters of the riding groups meet up and go riding to places together. Their next event was the following weekend in Scotland, which is apparently the most anticipated and best of the year.

Angels of Hell, (and Scotland and Wales).

It was nice to spend some time with the kids and they had a sleepover.

Winnie and Lord Vincent have been enjoying the nice weather

also their assassination rates have gone up somewhat. Winnie has brought home 3 shrews and a rat and left them on our dining room floor mat to be admired, her modus operandi is unknown as they are always perfectly intact with no sign of damage.

Lord Vincent is a different matter. He has caught two small mice which he announced by mewing loudly so we’d come and look, but he wouldn’t give them up and ate them 🥴. Sigh. Vinnie also caught a small bird, parts of which we found one morning in the living room along with copious amounts of feathers. I don’t mind about the rodents really, they’re not endangered species, (well maybe to Winnie and Vinnie), but I hate it when one of them gets a bird. What can you do? They both have noisy bells on their collars at least or it would be a massacre out there.

It was my birthday last week and I got taken out to dinner, to an Italian Restaurant over the train tracks in Pelaw. It’s called the Olive Verde and is above a rough and tumble pub in the main street, it does a small but very nice menu, has friendly staff and the food is good quality and (so far) is reasonably priced.

The big plus is it’s only a 10 minute walk from home and we were treated to a little sunset over the metro station on the way home.

I haven’t done much with my Fuji, and Sophie has only been home for the Raby weekend but I’ve been employing the iPhone camera and hipstamatic app when necessary, and am still taking my Contax Aria in hand, with a film sent off and one on the go. But I do belong to The Scavenger Hunt group on Flickr where there are 50 items to shoot within a year’s timeframe. I particularly liked my attempt at ‘Spices’.

I’ve watched a few films this month,

The Gray Man starring Ryan Gosling.~ Netflix. A so-so action movie, a good review HERE by Dix/Eddie/the Pesky Scot, delete as applicable.
Samaritan starring Silvester Stallone. The reviews I read liked it better than I did- nicely filmed, minimal CGI but hokey script and acting veering between OTT and wooden. Still, it’s Sly, so there’s that.
Dog starring a wonderful dog, and Channing Tatum. Highly recommend it, did I mention the wonderful dog? She is fab, Tatum does OK too. Eddie has an excellent review HERE.
The Railway Man starring Colin Firth, Jeremy Irvine and Nicole Kidman. A true story about a chap called Eric Lomax who becomes a POW in a Japanese POW camp in Singapore and has to work on the Thai-Burma railway. In spite of being tortured for a spurious offence, he manages to survive the war, but suffers PTSD for a long while after, until there’s a reconciliation at the end. (Trying not to do a spoiler but it’s a true story so that doesn’t matter really 🙄). Phil had read the book, and felt though it was told in a different way than the autobiography the movie was based on, it was all there, the flashback sequences being particularly good. Definitely recommend. Eddie wasn’t as keen so for a different POV his review is HERE.

So that’s about it, I’ll be back when September ends, so stay tooned.

Tales from Fraggle Towers ~June 2022

July 26, 2022Posted in Personal History, UncategorizedTagged Fraggle, Photography22 Comments

Life has been somewhat eventful at Fraggle Towers over the past couple of months. To start with in the first week of June we had a new visitor to the Happy Easter tree

He was very good at getting the peanuts.

He only visited for 2 weeks, don’t know what happened to him, hope not road kill. There’s lots of greenery and trees across the way from us so I’m thinking he went back there.

I had some time off and went to Leighton Buzzard to be in charge of my grandson whilst his Dad and girlfriend went off to the Isle of Wight festival. It was cool to spend some time with Lewis and we had a fair few laughs along the week. Of course I had to take a million more pictures of him playing football.

I wish there were a few kids his age around where he lives, but the ones that play footy on the green are a fair bit older and intimidating.

I was amazed at how many Red Kites were flying above the park, and in fact all over the south on my journey down and around. They are gorgeous to watch in flight.

One of the neighbourhood cats has adopted Ben’s house, and so I’ve had Mrs.Miaow-Miaow (🙄) to feed as well. She belonged to one of the neighbours but got chucked out for some reason that’s beyond me.

Although we’ve all been banging on about our 2 day heatwave, the week I was at Ben’s was really hot, so much that other than taking Louie to school, I didn’t go out much for the first couple of days, but sat outside in the shade and made the most of it. On the Monday before I came home I got to walk along the canal (Grand Union) and took the contax with me for some shooting, I’ll do a film friday post with those.

On the Sunday when Louie was off school, I took him up to Milton Keynes and the big indoor play area there

We also went to visit with my friend I haven’t seen in ages, Helen, who lives in Biggleswade and we went out for lunch in the Conservative Club of which Helen is somehow a member without being a Tory supporter. Apparently they’re not allowed to ask you which party you support when you apply to join, it makes parking in town dead easy and the lunches are really good! 🤣

There was a fair on in the town centre and Lewis went on a flight simulator and the ghost train ~ I don’t think he was impressed with the latter.

Then I came home, to my cats

Phil’s giant tank was coming along, it’s nearly fully built.

I’ll finish with two life lessons, the first being, if you need a heavy doorstopper, bake a loaf of bread and ~~forget~~ deliberatley leave out the yeast.

the second, if you suffer from old-person weak grip and like a glass of sparkly, long nose pliers are your friend.

Hopefully I’ll get July done this week. Maybe.

Tales from Fraggle Towers ~ April/May 2022

June 3, 2022Posted in Cat, Hipstamatic, Iphoneography, Personal History, Photography, UncategorizedTagged cats, Fraggle, Hipstamatic, iPhone11, Photography18 Comments

I’ve been rubbish at keeping up the monthly Fraggle Towers posts, but hey-ho, life and all that. Anyway here is a potted update on our doings.

April saw Phil and I attend our first gig since the Covid thing began, and we went into Newcastle and met up with Phil’s son Carl and his Missis Karly, to see the band Stone Broken, which I’m sure you’ve all heard of 🤣. Phil and I started out in our regular pub Rafferty’s on Pink Lane, which has cheap alcohol and a floor your feet stick to.

The venue was The Riverside, which is beside the river Tyne (not being funny, we have a Lakeside pub that’s nowhere near a lake 🙄) a small venue which gets packed. I must admit to a certain amount of trepidation at being stuck in a room with a few hundred people, none wearing masks. I had one on, but it seemed overwhelmingly pointless as I had to remove it to have a drink so ended up maskless too.

Newcastle at night is lush for photos

The Band were great

and a good time was had by all, plus we didn’t get Covid and die, so result!

Phil and I went back there in May to see a brilliant American Southern Rock/Soul band, Robert Jon and the Wreck and they were fantastic.

We’ve been checking out a couple of local restaurants we hadn’t been to before, the first one was pretty poor food-wise, though a nice looking pub, in a lovely setting near our wildlife reserve. It was cheap, which was probably why we got oven chips and frozen veg with our main course, Phil had a microwaved pie (soggy pastry) and I got away with scampi which it’s hard to ruin really. Won’t be going back.

The other one is called Le Olive Verdi and is a lovely Italian restaurant on the top floor of The Pelaw Inn, had a fab dinner, steak in 3 peppercorn sauce and it came with fresh veg, not cheap, but worth the money, and we can walk there so it’s all good and we will be returning.

The cats:- Lord Vincent has been his usual zen self, eating, sleeping, sitting under bushes and plodding about.

WInnie has been on a killing spree. I came downstairs one morning to find a dead mouse on our dining room mat, it wasn’t mauled, just looked like it was asleep. A few days later Phil found a dead blackbird in the TV room. Then one day whilst Phil was at work she came running past me with something in her mouth, I chased her upstairs to the bedroom where she had something under the bed which was tweeting. It must have got free from her and hid as she came charging around to the other side of the bed whereby I picked her up and evicted her. I couldn’t see anything under the bed and it’s too heavy for me to move so I shut the door and left as I had to go out for a couple of hours. When I came back I could hear a constant tweeting from behind the bedroom door. I opened it and something ran very quickly under a chest of drawers, so I left it alone again. Still could hear the tweeting. I tried again a couple of hours later and this time it ran into the bathroom.

I shut the door and waited for Phil to come home. Phil managed to pick him up and gently carried him into the bushes over the road, where, we hoped forlornly, his mother would hear him and come and fetch him, but Lord Vincent had sneakily followed Phil outside and as soon as Phil’s back was turned, well, need I go on?

Finally I came downstairs one day and saw

which was a bit of a shock. I couldn’t believe Winnie had managed to catch this big magpie and get him through the catflap without a sound or feathers being every where and thought he must have managed to get himself in through it. But then when I checked our hedgehog camera, well… you need to set it to a slow playback speed to see it as she’s fast as fek! Keep your eyes on the top right corner right at the beginning.

So she dropped it through the catflap and it must have got away from her pretty quickly. Her ambition is boundless and I dread the day she decides Woody the wood pigeon is her next victim.

Even though she’s lethal, she’s still cute.

and also makes us laugh

Work is still full on, and I’m busy as a tree. Little Teddy is worming is way into my affections and I take him out for a walk when ever I have 10 mins spare, which is about twice a day. He mainly sits with Lynn our office manager barricaded in as he’s apt to escape.

Phil’s Giant Tank is coming along, and this weekend is his clubs model show, so I’ll be attending on Sunday to photograph the competition tables and winners for the club’s Facebook page.

Entertainment-wise I haven’t seen any movies I’d recommend, maybe The Contractor as it has a good cast- Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Kiefer Doodah. It’s a serviceable action movie, but nothing new. Bird Box with Sandra Bullock started out well, and she was great all the way through but there were too many good coincidences at the end. Phil wanted to re-watch Oblivion with Tom Cruise as he got the blueray but we gave up before the end as we’d had wine/whisky and couldnt get our heads around what the fek was going on. I’ll wiki it one day. 😃

TV has been better, we got through to the end of Ozarks and are currently in the last season of Better Call Saul, both have been outstanding. We are now rewatching the first 2 seasons of Das Boot as the 3rd one is out and we forgot a lot of 1 & 2 as it was a couple of years ago, looking forward to seeing the 3rd, it is excellent.

Reading, well I’ve read all 47 of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series twice, and am starting again at the beginning, I just love these books. I have bought other books in the meantime, but as yet I can’t let go of Wolfe to read them instead. A strange addiction!

That’s all folks. More tales from Fraggle Towers to come, eventually. If/when I remember!

📷 😊

Tales from Fraggle Towers ~ March 2022

April 2, 2022Posted in Cat, Hipstamatic, hipstamatic, Iphoneography, Personal History, Photography, UncategorizedTagged cats, Fraggle, Photography, Stuff32 Comments

Yep I’m a couple of days late with a ‘tales’ post for March, but c’est la vie. March has been a busy month for us with Phil doing a make-over of our dining room.

We had a new floor done too, I can’t remember why but I like it so not to worry.

New music equipment was purchased at the beginning of the month, well not new, Phil rarely buys new as it’s mega bucks for what he wants, he waits until new stuff comes in and then buys stock that’s getting sold at a bargain price in order to make room for the next things. We went off to Stockton on the River Tees for his latest aquisitions, a phono cartridge pre-amp and a regulated power supply. He tries to explain to me what these things do but I just can’t. Anyways we got lost getting there or rather we didn’t but just couldn’t see it, as the building entrance faced the river and the car park didn’t. We spent some time ogling the amazing music systems they had in their upstairrs showroom

and I took a couple of pictures out of the window,

The cats have been their usual selves, Lord Vincent has been loving the sunshine we had last week

and Winnie has been bonkers

WInnie has learned how to get up on top of our conservatory roof, and the other morning I woke up at 7.30am to her meowing. Couldn’t see her in the room but when I opened my curtains

there she was shouting to come in. Not best pleased as I wasn’t going to work that day so getting up at 7.30 hadn’t been the plan. Sigh.

Talking of sunshine, it’s been a mad month for the weather. Last week was like summer, and then this week we got snow and sleet in between some sunny bits. I’ve been out walking a few times with the Contax Aria, with Sophie away a lot more than she used to be there are now several weeks in between our outings, so walking out into the nature bits around where I live is a substitute. Not a great one, but better than nothing.

Phil’s sister Annette had her 70th Birthday last weekend and 13 of us went out to a local restaurant, The Lakeside (there’s no lake anywhere near it) where she had booked us in for a celebratory meal. When we arrived they had no record of the booking. That was a shock and Annette told them she’d spoken to a chap but didn’t know his name. The place was really busy too. Have to applaud the manager and her staff though, they apologised profusely and went straight into action, managed to find enough tables to cobble together for us to sit at and we were sorted and our orders taken within 15 minutes. Not a bad meal either which Annette’s husband Brian paid for which was lovely of him. Afterwards we went to their house for cups of tea and some birthday cake.

Annette rang us the next day to tell us that she’s booked another local restaurant, The Green, for Brian’s birthday meal in a couple of weeks time. They asked her why we hadn’t shown up for the booking she made for the day before. 🤣🤣

My Happy Eater tree is in full bloom now, it’s strange to see the bees buzzing about on it in the middle of a snow shower.

Unfortunately we seem to have aquired a herd of Magpies who are going through the bird food at a fast pace. I’ve counted 7 of them, ‘seven for a secret never to be told’, which I won’t because I don’t know what it is. Anyway I’m not keen on them but everything needs to eat so I keep topping it up. Sadly the cats are no deterent as Winnie barks at them from the windowsill and Vinnie sits under the tree but they know he’s there and wait until he goes indoors.

I drove over to the coast at South Shields the other day, managed to photograph the sea with a weather front coming in.

My boss was off sick with Covid last week, the guy who works for her the 2 days I don’t had picked it up and then, as he stays over at Brendas when he works for us (he lives in Scotland) she was the next in line. So far I haven’t had it, nor our office manager, we dodged a bullet there as they say.

Well that’s about it for March, I’m glad we’re into April now and looking forward to Spring springing and getting out more.

Tales from Fraggle Towers ~ Feb 22

February 28, 2022February 28, 2022Posted in Cat, Iphoneography, Personal History, UncategorizedTagged cats, family, February2022, Fraggle, Photography28 Comments

Most of my photography is being done on film, but I’ve still managed a few iPhone shots, mostly of the cats.

Winnie has a thing for sticks of any description, and apparently spaghetti is in that classification. 🙄

Winnie and Lord Vincent don’t really get on, Vinnie is quite cool and doesn’t bother with her, but she hisses at him and sometimes jumps on him when she’s going past him, but the conservatory seems to be a no-mans land, or at least there’s a truce for there. Yep I know the windows need cleaning!

Another picture of Teddy from work, he’s ao adorably cute but SO yappy, which I’m not too keen on.

He’s a cross between a Pomeranian and a Pappilon, whatever they are, and won’t get much bigger than he is.

I took some time out from work towards the end of the month and travelled south to see Ben, Lewis & Charlotte. It was Lewis’s 12th birthday last week but he was on half term the week before when I visited so I could spend more time with him.

They have been adopted by a cat who lives in their neighbourhood, Mrs. Miaow~miaow.

It was nice to spend some time with them, but the driving there and back was a nightmare in the bad storms. I stay in a little annexe to a converted chapel as Ben’s house only has 2 bedrooms and I like my own room and bathroom and managed this time to mix up my leaving day, so I was turfed out on Wednesday afternoon when I thought I was staying until Thursday. 🙄 I ended up just driving home from 9pm and getting in for 1am.

We’ve only done 2 movies this month, Spenser Confidential, Mark Whalberg, which was a good action romp for a Saturday night, and The Counsellor with Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz. Directed by Ridley Scott we were expecting great things, but it was a bit of a damp squib really.

Phil has started on the redecoration of the dining room, and though it isn’t a huge room, it’s where the cabinets with CD’s, model tanks and a few preciouses live, so they have all had to be emptied and packed away. Steaming off the wallpaper starts tomorrow, thankfully I’ll be at work!

The weather has been fairly abominable, Storms Eunice, Franklin were mega~windy and rainy, I did my night drive up the country whilst Franklin was doing it’s thing, and I think we were supposed to have a Gladys too and we might have but if so it got lost in the news about Putin invading Ukraine. It’s been a sunny couple of days this weekend though so there’s that. But yes, Ukraine. Scary times and it seems to be escalating god knows where. Nothing to do but wait and see, but it’s hard to think about anything else. So that’s how February ends.

Corona Chronicles ~ 8

June 24, 2020Posted in Corona Chronicles, FujiX-T2, Personal History, WildlifeTagged bluetit, Corona Chronicles, Fraggle, FujiX-T2, iPhone1126 Comments

I’ve been back at work 3 weeks now, the first two weeks I did full time hours to clear the backlog of people wanting wax removal. When I returned for my first day my clinic room had been completely revamped!

New flooring, new furniture, everything very minimal and easy to clean. Over the past 3 weeks I’ve de-waxed 146 people. We provide them masks and hand sanitiser before they come in to see me and I am gloved aproned and masked!

The goggles are magnifying loupes with a head light, but I am getting a fancy-pants new one on a headband soon as this one is past it’s sell-by date! So far it all seems to be working well, but I am booked solid every day now so knackered by the end of the shift. I was quite worried when I first went back and didn’t sleep too well wondering if I was going to be infected with the damned plague, but I seem to be OK (so far) and I’m all ‘que sera sera’ now. Have done my best to minimise risk for me and the patient, and that’s all I can do.

In total, 1,415 people who had tested positive for coronavirus have died across the North East’s hospital trusts according to data released by NHS England today. According to the latest figures released by Public Health England yesterday there are 10,535 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the North East – a rise of 7 from Monday, June 22. Still sneaking up.

Our bonkers Prime Minister has loosened the lockdown yet again so people can go to pubs and the hairdressers, which is good for all the people in danger of losing their jobs, but not so good for those that will catch the plague from enjoying this new freedom.The North East where I live is very pub-centric, yes you get a few wine bars in Newcastle but the towns and villages have proper pubs, and Mackem men in particular are known for spending Sunday afternoons down the pub while wifey cooks a Sunday roast so I imagine it won’t be long until the 2nd wave kicks off up here. I can’t see them wearing masks whilst having a beer with their buddies!

Anyway I’m taking no notice of BoJo, will keep at 2 meters or more from everyone and I didn’t go to pubs anyway so they are not on my radar. Not done much photography of late though I keep up with my weekly challenge shots , HERE.

Our wildlife are still entertaining us, Halfmags is still hopping around our front and back gardens, but getting a picture of him now is difficult as he runs like the wind if he gets a sniff of the camera. Hedgehogs are still coming most nights and we’ve 2 trail cameras on the go now for the front and back gardens. They tailed off after the rains started, so presume they were finding bugs and the like more easily with the ground being so wet, but we still get a visitor or two most nights. Sparrows, Blackbirds and Bluetits have all had chicks, and I caught this one having a rest in our empty bird food jar.

He stayed there quite a while having a little snooze 🙂

Phil’s hospital has resumed doing routine operations on non-covid people so there’s a let up for Phil, he doesn’t have to wear the full astronaut gear when he’s doing those, so saying he sent me a text at work today he was doing a covid patient not only dressed up in full gear but also having to wear a heavy lead apron throughout as X-rays were done all through the operation. I can vouch that even wearing aprons, gloves and a mask makes you hot & sweaty so he must have been melting under all that.

The weather is hot here today, and likely to be again for tomorrow, but only for two days with more rain predicted for the weekend, saves me watering the plants I suppose! So that’s all from Fraggle Towers.

D-Day

June 6, 2020Posted in France, Fuji X100F, History, Personal History, Photography, travel, UncategorizedTagged Arromanches, D-Day, Fraggle, France, Fujifilm X100F, History, Mont-Saint-Michel, travel, WW216 Comments

Today is 6th June and 76 years ago the D~Day landings happened, and it is seen as the beginning of the end of WW2. Back in May last year Phil and I went to France and as well as Mont Saint Michel and Conde, we visited some of the places, museums and cemeteries around the Normandy Beaches. Whilst I’ve been off work die to the Corona thing, I’ve been compiling a book of our travels there, and got it finished this week. I’ve uploaded the PDF version here. A couple of the pages are double spread pictures which get broken up for single page viewing, but the rest are OK. Feel free to have a scroll through!

Click to access france2019.pdf