Category: hipstamatic

Tales from Fraggle Towers ~ October 2022

Posted in Cat, Halloween, Hipstamatic, hipstamatic, Iphoneography, People, Personal History, Photography, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , 34 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.

Winnie Up.

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.

Lord Vincent

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.

Teddy, my BFF

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.

Liddy ~ a dead bride 🤣
Livvy ~ zombie schoolgirl (I think!)

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
???
another Pennywise I think
who knows?
Jail bait. 😄

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 ~ March 2022

Posted in Cat, Hipstamatic, hipstamatic, Iphoneography, Personal History, Photography, UncategorizedTagged , , , 32 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.

stripper
paperer

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

job done

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

ogling
more ogling

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

River Tees

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

LV

and Winnie has been bonkers

Boxed Winnie

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

let me in!

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.

Birthday girl

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.

The Happy Eater Tree

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.

Incoming!

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.

Day 321

Posted in 365, B&W, Hipstamatic, hipstamatic, PhotographyTagged , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Had a busy day, this morning sorting kids out, and this evening preparing a book of my visit to Tuscany this year. So am making do here with my Sunday challenge shot, the theme of which was -something worn (as in old and knackered).

I chose Phils boot, as it’s 15 years old and has bits missing 🙂

Day 321 ~ worn out

Day 208 & Tales from Fraggle Towers ~ heatwave edition

Posted in 365, B&W, flowers, FujiX-T2, Hipstamatic, hipstamatic, Iphoneography, nature, People, PhotographyTagged , , , , , , 23 Comments

Our heatwave is well and truly over, not that it waved that much up here. In fact our wave started at 8am Thursday morning and finished at 6.15pm Thursday night. It was still uncomfortably warm, but I don’t call raining in hot weather a heat wave. After a glorious blue sky day we decided to BBQ for our evening meal. The weather forecast said thundery stuff would happen at 8pm so we figured we’d still have a nice ODEE (outdoor eating experience). But as mentioned, come 6.10 pm…

ODEE rained off.

We went indoors, and finished everything off in the microwave! :/

It has continued to rain ever since, with the odd break here and there. But back to heatwave day, whilst I was photographing my G&T for my daily shot, I felt a little prickle on my arm, but was so engrossed in photographing that it kind of didn’t register properly in my brain and I ignored it. Eventually it became a really sharp pain and I stopped to look and saw a strange black thing where the pain was. I brushed it off me and saw a teeny tiny red bite mark, but thought no more about it. Today – 2 days later, the area around the bite has swollen up, hurts to touch and is unbearably itchy.

bug bite

all day I’ve been alternating rubbing in Savlon, Germolene and wrapping it in an ice pack, fingers xt it’s better tomorrow :/ I haven’t seen another bug like it, but that’s a vicious slow release poison that ought to be harnessed by the military!

You may remember on day 200 I posted a shot of my brand new glorious sunflower. I put it in the sunniest position in the garden as instructed by the little ticket that came with it ,kept it watered and it’s been doing really well. Apparently though, I appear to have purchased the only sunflower in the world that cannot cope with one day of sun! and by the end of Thursday…

fried sunflower. :/

To add insult to injury, the sunflower leaves have been eaten as if by a giant vegetarian, but when I examined it closely I found…

any snail ~ voracious appetite!

But it’s not all doom and gloom, today saw the arrival of my new lens, a 16mm f2.8 and if it ever stops raining I’ll go out and take some pictures with it!

day 208 ~ new lens!

Stuff I’ve seen since the last Towers Tales ~ Captain Marvel! That was a cool movie and Brie Larson unexpectedly did a great job, even Phil liked it. A bit.

We’ve been watching Catch 22, the last episode in the series was on Heatwave day and what a great series it’s been. Notoriously difficult to convert from the book to a movie.. (it was actually the 8th most successful movie at the U.S. box office in 1970 in spite of being considered a flop)… the series is beautifully filmed in vintage tones resembling Kodakchrome film it’s funny and dark, and everyone in it is acting their socks off.

Talking of funny and dark, I started watching the new Amazon series ‘The Boys’ last night on Amazon Prime. I’d read it was about superheroes and as Mr.Fraggle is on night shift I sat myself down with a glass of wine prepared for acts of derring doo as per Marvel. Boy was I in for a shock! Gone are the high minded ethics of Captain Marvel and his crew, here we have cocaine snorting, orgy partaking, sexual coercion making ‘Supes’ as they are called, and there are so many that there’s a corporation, “Voight” (headed up by actress Elizabeth Shue (who is excellent and leaking breast milk 😀 ) with the top 7 Supes being the crew all other Supes want to be part of. ‘The Boys’ refers to the disparate group of vigilantes who want to take the corrupt Supes down. The script is funny, dark and clever and the actors are knocking it out of the park. I think this will appeal to all those who are fed up with or don’t like the overload of superhero movies we are currently undergoing, as well as those of us that are Marvel/ DC fans. Incidentally it is based on a comic book series published in 2006.

3 hrs later. There’ll be a part 2 tomorrow as I had a weird computer thang happen before I’d finished this post!