Alphabet Wednesday - T is for Tiger

T is for Tiger. Sadly they are becoming ever more rare.

Siberian Tiger -

Amur Tiger -

Bengal Tiger -

Sumatran Tigers -

For a lot more interpretations of the letter T please visit the ABC linksite.

You've got to laugh - though I don't know why!

Thanks for all the sympathetic comments the other day - much appreciated.  But body's  neurological  fault continues. Currently screaming with pain and frustration but otherwise fine.

i.e. Still sick as a dog, parrot, cat - whatever....

Normal service (whatever that is) will be resumed as soon as possible...

Poorly

Been very yuck. Still yuck (but not very). Hopefully will blog when no longer yuck...

Alphabet Wednesday - Some Spindles

I'd never heard the term Spindles for Dragonflies until I came across this book from 1813 -

I rather like the name  Spindles so I thought I'd use it for my Alphabet Wednesday post.  Since my name is Scriptor Senex I guess I could really post what I liked for today!

And Dragonflies are (or have been) also known in various British dialects as - Silver-pins; Snake-arrows; Spinners; Spinning Jennies; and Stinging Adders.

Broad-bodied Chaser

Golden-ringed Dragonfly

Keeled Skimmer

Southern Hawker

For a lot more interpretations of the letter S please visit the ABC linksite.

Quote - Unquote

No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
-- Edward Abbey

Maybe the fish goes home and brags about the size of the bait he stole.
-- Anon

Doing nothing is very hard to do ... you never know when you're finished.
-- Leslie Nielsen

There are two types of people--those who come into a room and say, 'Well, here I am!' and those who come in and say, 'Ah, there you are.'
-- Frederick L Collins

I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.
-- Jane Austen

It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
-- Tallulah Bankhead

The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.
-- Doug Larson

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
-- George Burns

Every man serves a useful purpose: A miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor.
-- Laurence J. Peter

People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
-- A. J. Liebling

We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
-- W. H. Auden

Indecision may or may not be my problem.
-- Jimmy Buffett

Happy Monday - The Miracle of Toilet Paper

Fresh from my shower, I stand in front of the mirror complaining to my husband that my breasts are too small.

Instead of characteristically telling me it's not so, he uncharacteristically comes up with a suggestion.

'If you want your breasts to grow, then every day take a piece of toilet paper and rub it between them for a few seconds' he says.

Willing to try anything, I fetch a piece of toilet paper and stand in front of the mirror, rubbing it between my breasts.

'How long will this take?' I ask.

'They will grow larger over a period of years' my husband replies.

I stop. 'Do you really think rubbing a piece of toilet paper between my breasts every day will make my breasts larger over the years?' I say.

Without missing a beat he says, "Worked for your bum, didn't it?"

He's still alive and with a great deal of therapy he may even walk again - although he will probably continue to take his meals through a straw.

Stupid, stupid man

Thoughtful Sunday - Butterflies galore

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. ~ Chuang Tzu

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. ~ Richard Bach

 We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. ~ Author Unknown

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever. ~ Carl Sagan

Butterflies are self propelled flowers. ~ Robert Heinlein

 The butterfly is a flying flower, The flower a tethered butterfly. ~ Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun

The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity. ~ Attributed to George Carlin

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

 The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of butterflies in the adjoining meadows. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. ~ Richard Buckminster Fuller

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. ~ Charles Dickens
 

The fluttering of a butterfly's wings can effect climate changes on the other side of the planet. ~ Paul Erlich

And what's a butterfly? At best, He's but a caterpillar, drest. ~ John Grey

(The above are all British butterflies with the exception of the black and yellow cocoon which is a moth - the Magpie moth.)

A P.S. added after Librarian's comment. I should really have named the butterflies but I was afraid of distracting from the quotations. So here they are - in order from the top:-
Comma
Magpie Moth chrysalis
Holly Blue
Common Blue
Small Copper
Orange Tip
Caterpillar of Large White (Cabbage White)
Common Blue
Mating Sliver-studded Blues
Comma caterpillar
Peacock
Small Copper
Red Admiral

Another Ramble

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle 

will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. Buddha

Having sorted ornaments, Partner-who-loves-tea and I are now starting on the hundreds of candle / tea light holders and candles that are around the house.

One of the first we came across was the Wee Willy Winkie one that belonged to my parents.

The original text of 1841 was written in Scots but by 1844 there was an English version:-

Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,
Up stairs and down stairs in his night-gown,
Tapping at the window, crying at the lock,
Are the children in their bed, for it's past ten o'clock?

I’ve just been purchasing a DVD recorder. The main reasons are to transfer stuff that is clogging up Rich’s Sky’s hard drive because he wants to keep it, family videos and Rich’s camera tapes onto DVD. Having settled on what seemed , by the Idiot’s Guide description, to fit the bill I turned to the more technical data. The first sentence read “By interpolating video data using proprietary algorithms, SD format data is up-converted to 1080 x 1920p HD format video data.” Duh! I’m just hoping the Idiot’s Guide was adequate to take the decision.

 While sorting the loft I investigated all the pictures that were up there.  One of them got brought down to be displayed - Picasso's Sleeping Woman.  It needed cleaning up so I took it out of the frame and behind it I found a picture I'd been seeking for ages.  I thought we must have got rid if it and yet I knew I wouldn't have done so intentionally. 

It was done by a student at one of the Liverpool colleges or schools and Jo bought it from them for charity.  The artist was Sarah Jones and I think it's fantastic. We had it on the wall when we lived in a big Victorian house with tons of wall space for pictures but somehow it then got hidden behind Picasso.  For the moment it has gone back there but I aim to have it out soon.


We are not fans of Tesco but I called in there the other morning because I fancied a cake and I wondered what they had.

I found they had doughnuts. Much as I dislike extolling the virtues of  They’re-Taking-Over-the-World-Tesco, the doughnut was wonderful. It reminded me of the doughnuts that used to be made by the Doughnut Shop at the end of my parents’ road. The only difference being that those from the Doughnut Shop were freshly made and still warm.

 And if that hasn't made your mouth water how about this (with apologies to Helen and Ian and other veggies).

Rich sometimes makes me a dinner.  This one was worthy of any Michelin star restaurtant.  The sauce was made with saffron, chillies, leeks and all sorts of exotic ingredients.  It infiltrated the chicken skin and was so delicate yet tasty.  The roasted garlic was super and the roast potatoes were to die for.    I think the carrot and swede was one I made earlier taken out of the freezer so I can take a tiny bit of credit for it... Just looking at that photo makes me want it again. Where are you, Rich?

A Ramble - or maybe a Rumble...

I would have done a Friday My Town Shoot-out post today but for two reasons – Firstly, I’m on strike, and secondly I couldn’t think of anything symmetrical apart from the doors of the Fire Brigade house and I ain’t up to travelling into Heswall today. So I’m doing this as a scheduled post on Thursday.

It’s been a week of sitting at the computer and going up the loft ladder. Alternately. I’ve visited lots of blogs and done some blogging myself but most of my computer time has been spent uploading programs to the new laptop of Partner-who-loves-tea. Nearly a week was spent trying to sort out why it couldn’t connect to the Internet first time of starting. In the process of working on it I managed to make it even worse at one stage and am pleased to have at least got it back to where it was. It’s frustrating having to start it twice but at least it always works second time around. Weird.

Going up the loft came to an abrupt end on Wednesday when I was foolish enough to open the door of the sideboard cupboard. Yes, you did read that correctly. I was looking to insert a new battery in a lock so I turned round to open the door of the sideboard cupboard where the batteries are kept. In the process I went dizzzzy. I know there aren’t really four ‘z’s in dizzy but it seemed like there were at the time. Somehow I managed to fall over, bang my knee (the bad one, of course) bang my head on something very hard – I’m assuming it was the sideboard – twist my left knee and put my back out. I already had a headache so I thought ‘B*****r it’ and went to bed for the rest of the day. For those whose first reaction was the same as Partner-who-loves-tea – the sideboard was not damaged in the process. In fairness she didn’t say anything like that but she did take a quick glance at it as I was telling the story.

The boxes that were on the landing waiting to go in the loft will now stay there for a while (it takes both Rich and I to get them in there so I can’t even rely on him to do it on his own). And the loft was so near being completed. I had even taken the camera upstairs ready to photograph it. Not that you could tell much difference but at least I now have a twenty page Word Doc. listing where everything is in there.

So, on Thursday morning, aching like I hadn’t done since I last climbed a Lakeland Fell, I decided it was time to have a few days off. I am, after all, supposed to be retired on ill health grounds so it’s about time I put my feet up and read a book or two. Madame Bovary, here I come…

Helen's wish

I doubt Helen's wishes have changed that much since she was six...