Jack Frost

After a long spell of unusually mild weather we have had a sharp frost and fog over the last few days. I am sitting here typing with my gloves on...well not, actually, but I should be. And the Met forecasters say it will get really cold in the new year.

We had a walk in the country with friends on Saturday and it was very foggy until we breasted the Hog's Back, whence there was bright sunshine and sharp, distant views, only for us to descend back into fog. The beginning of our walk was in dense fog with an eerie silence wrapped round us. We soon walked under trees with heavy frost on their bear branches, except that the temperature had risen with the effect that the lumps of frost slid down, showering us as they tinkled to the ground. Weird. On the way back there was a beautiful sunset with a bright red crescent of sun piercing a low flat layer of white fog.

We have noticed that the level of our pond is low, which usually only happens when there is strong evaporation or a leak. However a thirsty, young fox sauntered into view and had a good long drink, as shown in the photo. A more likely explanation is that it is having difficulty finding puddles to drink from.

ARTYJOKE

A thief in Paris decided to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After carefully planning, he got past security, stole the paintings and made it safely to his van.

However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.

When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied: "Monsieur, I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh."

HOUSE STILL TO LET

Ardent readers of this blog - if there are any - will know about our tree house for small birds. It has been in place for some months but there have been no takers. Furthermore, some hooligan squirrels have been abusing it by sitting upright on the roof with their backs to the tree trunk, chewing chestnuts and dropping bits all over it.

What is worse this cheekie chappy decided to preen him/herself by draping on the roof in this vulgar way.



Measures had to be taken to forbid this frightening and vandalistic action and so the property has been extended with a patented ski slope roof extension. Hopefully little birds and bigger bird lovers will strongly approve. And we will get a taker for the property.

Ramblings on the BosWash megalopolis

Weather: it was dry and warm/hot (70s F) over the last week of September and the first fortnight of October in what was supposed to be the Fall in New England. It was hot in Washington (80s F, and 93F once). Hurricane Rita was raging away in Texas, and Montana - in the mid West - had 11 inches of snow! Our climate is meek by comparison.

Ups and Downs: Although the history of westerners arriving in the US is short it has certainly been eventful. The Puritans arriving first in New England (NE) obviously had very hard, simple and short lives. A century later and the immigrants fought for Independence from Britain. They had no navy and so to curb the Brits they gave licences to private shipowners to capture ships and profit from the proceeds. Many privateers in New England became millionaires this way. Later on their prowess at sea led them to trade world wide, and the main income from taxation became customs duties on imported goods. Then came an economic crash. And the Civil War another century later. Now the coast of Massachusetts basks in the genteel affluence financed by tourists from New York.

Transport: How the Washingtonians love their SUVs/MPVs and how they delight in cut-and -thrust driving. But in New England saloons are preferred. Is this a reflection on differences of income? or in status symbols, given DC's dominance by national politicians and power brokers? or what? The DC metro is clean and timely but appears to have a very small share of people movement compared to private motor vehicles.

Traffic: The only way to drive a distance in NE is on a freeway, otherwise your life could dribble away in processional driving through an urban continuum, in which the maps pretend there are towns. There are none - just one lot of traffic lights and shopping centres after another.

TV: We saw a lot of good stuff - Scorcese's film on Bob Dylan; a History prog on magnetism, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Friends, news coverage of US politics (or maybe we just enjoyed Bush's embarassments), weather forecasts. We didn't expect this.

Health time bomb: Forget about Al Quaeda, it is the health of the nation the Americans need to worry about. When you go into a motel breakfast room in NE and all the 20 or so people there are overweight it confirms the picture you see in public places. Just as bad, many middle aged and older people seemed to have stiff postures and hesitant, shuffling walks. There is lots of cheap, unhealthy food around but even the quality food is often served in oversize portions. Europe has similar problems but nothing like the scale of what we encountered. Urban DC was better, perhaps because the people we saw there were generally younger.

Soccer: Kids start playing at 4 years old. They wear all the gear, have a coach/ref, time-outs, neat little goals and small pitches. They need guidance on which direction to kick, and own goals are frequent and celebrated. But when you see a large number of pitches together with youngsters of all ages playing, in hourly time slots and well supported by enthusiastic parents, there is a positive time bomb of the young in place. Give it ten years, or maybe less, and the US will have a world class side.

BosWash megalopolis?: found the name in Wikepedia; sums up what we saw from the air. Boston, New York, Philadelphia and DC all running into each other.

US holiday 2005

We combined our visit to Gordon and Diana this year with a City holiday in Boston followed by a quick trip through Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire before returning to Washington. Amazingly, our stints in Washington coincided with first Sami's and then Adam's birthday parties. So our visit ended up being a combination of family visiting, many long conversations with G&D and sightseeing. The weather was hot on our first visit, reaching 93F ( 33C) one day.


A selection of pictures (75 of them) is on our Flickr website.

We very much liked G&D's flat which is a haven for hi-tech kitchen equipment, TV and computers. You can breakfast on the roof, tire yourself in the gym and gorge yourself in the Thai restaurant below, before whizzing out of the basement in their MPV to the clatter of an electronic door. Their lounge window overlooks a fascinating street scene and you can see Washington Monument in the distance, day or night when it is clear.

We liked Boston because the centre was very pedestrian friendly and they have some fine old buildings, with a Freedom Trail that takes you through their early history of English Puritan immigrants, the Boston Tea Party, the B Massacre (5 people were killed, the same as on a slow day in Baghdad) and the beginning of the War of Independence (from the Brits). The many early and infant deaths of the English settlers, usually from disease, points up how harsh their lives must have been. The Fine Art Museum has a superb collection of Asian artefacts, the claimed best in the US. Don't mention accommodation costs though.

We than had a week flitting through the small states of Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire in a clockwise circuit, staying at a wide variety of accommodation from the sumptuous Thaddeus Clapp B&B, to the old Coolidge Hotel which did not do breakfast, to a humble motel. The scenery was pleasant but generally low key. We travelled through hills, some quaint old towns, lots of lakes - which are attractive at first but look samey after a while - and finished coming down the eastern coast. The high spots were a Shaker Village, because of their highly organised lifestyles and celibacy (surprise, they have nearly died out); and the old maritime ports of Newburyport, Essex and Salem, which have a history of privateering and world trade. This created millionaires during and after the War of Independence, followed by a deep economic slump and now genteel tourism. The Fall was late and we only saw a few signs of it, but then the weather continued fine and in the 70s F until we flew back to DC.


You have read the book, now see the movie (stills) on flickr.

NEW RELIGION

We have discovered a new religion on our return from the US.

Walking down Regent Street on my birthday singing an apposite Beatles song ("When I get older, when I ...") we passed a very large entrance to a brightly lit hall. To satisfy our curiosity we went in and saw many people wearing black in casual styles, often with a bag or two draped on their shoulder. Most were looking at a picture with a moving display and looks of rapture on their faces. We noticed that their were wires attached to these pictures and many of them had labels beginning with the letter "i". It is uncertain what the letter stands for, but innocent, indolent, intuitive, iconoclastic, interesting, intranced, affluent, yuppie...oops...came to mind.

A broad glass-stepped stairway led us upstairs, where there were little coloured packets attached to a wire and someone with a headset was describing a large display. Some people in the seating in front of the display were listening to him but most had opened file boxes with typewriter keys on their laps and for some reason the words "wi-fi hostpot" or similar came to our minds in a vision. Nobody sang, nobody spoke to us and we were unable to understand why so few people were listening to the preacher, nor why the hymn books were so unusual. We became aware that we were probably aliens because of our great age - or was it the other way round - and left quietly to enjoy a Thai meal in Maddox Street.

If anyone can explain this strange phenomenon we would be pleased to hear from you and will reward you with an apple and a full version of the Beatles song.

London Open Days

We decided to visit the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Department of Culture Media and Sport, Royal Society of Arts and the Wellington in this order on the Sunday. We found that the first two were easily the best, doubtless because they were Government funded.

The bit of the FCO we saw was originally part of the old India Office and was full of boastful statues and paintings of the time when we ruled India. No doubt we had rich plunder from there. The rooms were beautifully decorated despite the fact that they had fallen into decay during the early twentieth century. One of the main rooms had been boarded over and used as a furniture store. This was because of the excessive cots of upkeep. The boarding was removed in the 1990s and when the quality of the underlying decoration was recognised a decision was taken to renovate it. This was at the trifling cost of £100 million. The results are astonishing as the photos on the link hopefully show. ( http://www.flickr.com/brainwave/ )

The DCMS is a small Department and occupies a building near to Trafalgar Square. Their office was renovated for them before they occupied it. We were only shown round the Ministers' roomswhichh were furnished with top quality furniture and pictures from the Governments art collection. As you can imagine the DCMS has to showcase the best of British art and craft, but for cost reasons this has to be the work of young artists who are expected to be the best. Nevertheless the collectors have missed the works of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, to name but two. And no photography was allowed.

We liked the office of David Lammy best: he is black and chose the works of Black British artists with the effect that there are as many models as pictures in his office. Richard Caborn is the Minister of Sport and he had numerous sporting pictures including a few based on the London Olympic bid.

One slightly jarring note was that Ministers all had PCs but none of their desks had been designed to conceal the wiring, so that these elegant pieces of furniture in made of rare woods each had a messy trail of wires dangling down their visible backs.

The photo of the statue is of the new one in Trafalgar Square portraying Alison Lapper, an artist who is a thalidomide victim, when she was pregnant. We thought it was fine despite the controversy over it's siting.

The Name Game

There was a recent court case reported in which four members of a family by the name of - Fury - were accused of murdering a man by kicking and stamping him at the wedding of their relative Billy (not the 60s' singer). The victim had the temerity to ask one of the female Furys for a dance. A year afterwards and Billy is suing his wife for divorce.

In the following week's newspaper a case was reported of three girls aged 12, 14 and 15 who were banned from being at large in their housing state beyond something like 9 pm because of their habit of shouting, throwing eggs, etc in the early hours of the morning. Their surname - Spittle!

This week the courts were quiet.

A weekend in the Cotswolds

Rolling chalk hills, picturesque villages with delightful stone buildings often erected during the wool industry boom of the 16th and 17th centuries. Very good walking and sightseeing country. So lots of wealthy people there living in large houses and large grounds, miles from any services other than the local pub. The honeypot towns like Bourton on the Water (top left) are full of tourists on a fine weekend.

The area appeals most to those without accompanying children and so is less busy in the school holidays than in, say, September.





The picture at the bottom features one of our intrepid travellers - bet the bull was scared.

Thai Surrey

We are back into a heatwave again and on the Bank Holiday we went to the bi-annual Thai Festival that is held at Milford on behalf of a Thai charity that keeps Northern Thai girls out of the clutches of the Bangkok "sex industry".

There were tents selling Thai goods, holidays and scrumptious food, as well as dances and combats on stage. The lady aloft kept a very poised posture as she was paraded around the site at the beginning of the proceedings.

The finale involved little floats with a candle on them that were launched on the pond as the light faded.

Surrey's wilderness

We are having two sunny days out of three for the August Bank holiday weekend, a record matched only by England's fine Ashes win yesterday over the Ozzies. We decided to have a longish day out to explore the wilderness knows as Hankley and Thursley Commons. The first of these is a MoD area of swooping heather-clad scenery and distant views (see landscape pictures)and the other is a mainly boggy area with board walks and the widest variety of dragon flies in Britain. It was a beautiful walk of about 5 miles; we helped a woman and daughter who were lost; and when we arrived at the end the pub had a much needed and classy bowl of ham and pea broth. We then wandered round the (interesting) village including a church dating back to 1030, when it was under the control of the then Pope. Unfortunately the batteries of my newly repaired camera failed at this point and, unusually, I did not have charged spares with me.

Hope you like the photos.

Where is the good music?

As I grow older I spend less time listening to music and then occasionally hear something that really grabs me, go out and by a CD by the artist and find I only like one or two of their other numbers. Not an experience one likes to repeat but I gather I am not alone in this.

Borders in Kingston have a system where you can hear (snatches of?) tracks on selected CDs but what I would like to do is to be able to forage across CDs and pick up only those songs which appealed to me. Would visiting Itunes or similar allow me to listen before committing? And without spending unavailable hours to do so or buying an Ipod?

Suggestions gratefully received.

House to let

Suitable for blue tits or similar small birds. Guaranteed waterproof, with nice round port hole of north west facing aspect. Note that the port hole itself is not painted so no chance of being poisoned if you peck it. Beautifully clean inside, no nasty splinters to pierce the feathers, and golden paint outside. Probably squirrel proof too. Would suit a pair of birds shortly to be in need of more space.

No need to apply, just take possession before other birds do.

SUPERWOMAN LIVES

... in London. Li Yan has 10 grade A passes at A level. She got her first at 16, another a year later and this year - by now she was 18 - she studied and passed four at school and - in her own time - another four. One of the latter was law, which she devoted a whole month to studying to achieve her A grade.(What does this say about A level Law?)

Her hobbies and interest are not stated, but eating and sleeping could be on the agenda.

She is going to Trinity College next.

Bet she will become an academic and not a homebuilder.

Not fiction! It is on the education part of the BBC news site, but I could not paste in the link.

SUPERMAN LIVES

... in Sydney.

He works like a dervish, cycles rather than drives, reads 800+ page books, watches consecutive episodes of 24 Hours every day, runs to Bondi Beach to spot the volleyball players, keeps up a blog, tears up telephone directories and lights pot belly stoves with his hands tied behind his back.

Beat that!

TV PASS-ONS

About 16 years ago my Dad bought a portable TV and after he died we took it over (TVD1) for a while and then gave it to Grandma (activity TVD2).

Gordon bought a TV from a former colleague (TVG1) a few years ago but handed it on to us when he left for DC (TVG2 - got the coding now have you?). We offered our previous telly to Si and he swopped it (TVBB1 and TVS2) for one he had bought (TVS1) in Hong Kong. However he could not link TVBB to his hi-fi and so we swopped this (TVBB2) for Gordon's (TVG3). Si then arranged to go to Sydney and decided that the Hong Kong telly would work best there, and so we took back Gordon's TV (TVG4) for his (TVS3).

Alas, TVBB seemed surplus to requirements - until today. It has now found a new home with Grandma (TVBB3). And in the meantime Gordon and Diana have bought a US TV (TVGD1).

My Dad's TV - are you still with me? - has found it's way upstairs at Grandma's - how should we code this??? And what is the next move - no smart answers please about plasma screens??

Digital depression

My...er, our...digital camera has been back with the manufacturers for repair for a few weeks because of a missing mode dial. Olympus wnated to charge me £120 to replace it - the dial, not the camera - and so I sent them a dissenting letter. Very polite and diplomatic.

In the meantime we decided to escape to the Purbeck peninsula for a couple of days and terror gripped me. What, without the camera???!! Certainly not!

After thought-provoking discussion and intense counselling, I was persuaded to go and to take my trusty Canon SLR. I soon used up the remaining film. Grief, only 18 shots over two days. How did we cope before digital wonderland? There were compenstions though. Like noticing our aches and pains from walking; the marvellous views unfiltered by a camera lens; etc

And the pictures took only 24 hours to come back. The Purbeck views were decidedly less lively than their digital equivalents would have been. But there was a hidden treasure. A photo of the immediate family celebrating their engagement with Gordon and Diana nearly two years' ago.

Today I rang up Olympus to remind them that they had not replied to my letter of two weeks' ago. After some checking they rang me back to say the mode dial would be replaced - free of charge. No argument necessary.

Wheeee!

(Sample photos to follow, when I have the patience to scan them.)

Grey beards

Have you noticed how many older men have beards?

Why do they grow them - they hide their facial features, prevent others from seeing the nuances of their expressions and generally mask about half of their face. Most have failing sight too and glasses add to the mask. Worse still, many wear peaked caps on sunny days so there is little more to see than their eyes through lenses, noses and ears. How defensive and boring.

Is it to compensate for a bald head? Do they think that a beard adds gravitas? Are they worried about their looks?

Come on chaps, get them off and face the world. Years will drop off your perceived age, and people will respond to your warm smiles.

Us on a good day

The B of the Bang!

We are off on another sons-driven hi-tech venture into the unknown. To scale the heights of our intelligence, plunge into the depths of our imaginations, delve into the broad experience of our lives....and try not to be too boring.