Saturday 28 April 2012

A Saturday Saunter


Life (and Blogger again!!)

 Have you noticed that blogger’s new reading facility for following blogs doesn’t show half the photos. So when you get, for example, a note that Dawn Treader has posted an article about Coltsfoot you get a helpful little note saying that her post includes [image: CIMG7863]. Like Wow! How helpful is that. I might resist going to a post with an image numbered 7863 but her Greetings from the Past blog had the much more excitingly numbered [image: 005.2A-001]. I had to go there! 

Life (and eyes again)

Life demands a day or two away from blogging and I come back to find dozens and dozens of blog posts in my (new style- ugh) reading list. How can I catch up with everyone?  The simple answer is not to bother and just to miss a couple of days but I do so enjoy people’s posts and I hate not knowing how everyone is getting on.  I must find some sort of system for doing this.  Either that or invent a Time Machine. 

I would have a lot more time if I didn’t have to go back and correct every sentence I type.  I’m thinking of getting an eye patch for my left eye to wear when I’m typing – that way I would only see one keyboard.  I don’t suppose anyone out there has any experience of wearing one to stop double vision?  I worry a bit about my left eye getting even more lazy and the fact that it doesn’t work properly already has me walking into doors, etc. because of miscalculating distances / angles.


Scottish Wildcat

According to the Cairngorms Wildcat Project previously unknown populations of Scottish wildcats are living in the Cairngorms National Park, conservationists have discovered.  Their habitats have been identified by camera traps which captured images of the animals across the park and beyond. But the species remains under threat because of cross-breeding with domestic and feral cats.  The Scottish wildcat is larger and much fiercer than its domestic cousin.  It is estimated there are only about 400 left in the wild.


This photo was not taken in the wild but at the Chestnut Centre Conservation & Wildlife Park.

In the Garden

The garden has been a delight throughout March and April and I just haven’t had the time to post my photos on my garden blog.  I may manage to do so in the future but in the meantime I thought I’d just put a post on this week to show some of the things that are out just at this moment. 


Mouldy Pot Noodles or the Best Songwriters Ever?

A new music award has been presented in Liverpool to highlight the city's thriving music scene and prove there is more to Liverpool than The Beatles.  The inaugural Get Into This Award, named after a music blog run by writer Peter Guy, went to the delicate and hypnotic four-piece band Loved Ones.  The award has been dubbed the "Scouse Mercury" after the Mercury Music Prize.  That's fine so far but I wasn't overly in accord with Guy's comment that the spirit of The Beatles "hovers over Liverpool like a mouldy Pot Noodle".  Long may the spirit of The Beatles hover over us.  They gave so much to the music scene and while I appreciate the need to celebrate the new I don't see why we have to disrespect the old.

Time for a cup of tea… Bye.


 

10 comments:

  1. It is a truth that familarity breeds contempt.
    "Stone Mountain, why do you go on so about it, it's just down the road from us."
    "Why do you need to protect trees, we have too many of them as it is".
    These are things I have heard but how about this from the Bible: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

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  2. My eyesight causes a lot of mirth at work as I always forget to carry my reading glasses with me.
    The Chestnut Centre is a lovely place to visit John.

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  3. I wonder if you'll have less or more time for blogs when you're down South?!

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  4. Mouldy pot noodle... as my niece used to say far too often, "EEEEWWWW." I agree about the Beatles.

    I do not like the new Blogger dashboard. I found it far easier to find the newest entries of the billion blogs I try to follow, than I do now. I could see everything I wanted at a glance before.

    I am trying to catch up today and tonight, a lovely Saturday evening's wander for me. You were one of the most recent on my list. I find myself editing my published entries half a dozen times in the first 24 hours of posting. My entries are so ridiculously long, it's the only way I can catch them all.

    If I bother. I do not mind typos in other blogs, so sometimes I let go of it all with my own.

    I miss my garden. I will enjoy looking at your garden blog when you have the time to update it. I miss my enormous cottage garden with peonies and iris, lilies of both perennials and bulbs, the daffodils that precede them all. Annuals, perennials, sweeps of changes with the seasons.

    So. I'll live through YOURS instead!

    I hope you are doing pretty well, John. I still look at your blogito ergo sum and laugh. EVERY time. My dad would have loved it. Strange comment, huh. OH, well. Just good to READ for now!

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  5. I agree that it makes no sense disrespecting the old just because one is celebrating the new. Maybe I'm a horse of a different breed, but my mom taught me to appreciate music from the 1920s thru the 1940s alongside the music of my generation, the 1950s. Boo for your attitude, Guy.
    BTW I enjoyed the saunter; I dread going out in the cold rain we're "enjoying" today in Indiana.

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  6. I very much agree - celebrating the new does not mean one can not still celebrate the old, especially when the new owe so much to the old!!

    Speaking of one's reading list - I will be away and offline from tomorrow onwards for a full week, and I suspect I'll have to take another week off after that just so that I can catch up with everyone's posts from that week.

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  7. Hi John! I really enjoyed your blog and I had a nice cup of the while looking at the picture of the fireplace . I am an artist and I was researching Henriette Browne and ended up here and I am glad about it! Continue with the good work. I really enjoyed a project 355 also. Looking forward! Maria

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  8. I just checked and for some inexplicable reason this seems to happen with MY blogs, on both my separate blog accounts/ identities. No pictures show up in the new interface reading lists. (They do show up when using the old interface!) I have sent "feedback" to Blogger reporting it but... Well I suppose you can guess my feelings about how much they are likely to care!
    I like the old interface better for several reasons, just now I keep switching back and forth between them to try and get used to the one I don't like before they force it on me... but I still keep on switching back, especially for the reading list which I too find really super-annoying and unhelpful in the new format.

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  9. Well, CJ, this really is a post upon which to comment. I'll speak separately but having only had one useable eye for most (perhaps all) of my life I have no problems with stationary things like doors only with fast moving things like cricket and tennis balls. I suspect if you covered one eye your brain would quickly adjust and the double vision would, presumably, go.

    Not only is Peter Guy misinformed and incorrect (I prefer to say contemptible but want to be rational about this) in his comments and apart from agreeing with everyone that one should not disrespect the old just because one feels there is no new I would comment that there are a great many bands other than the Beatles from the '60s and the 'old' era.

    I'm not a popular music buff not am I particularly knowledgeable about Liverpool's bands but I can think of the following individuals who and groups which have made significant contributions to the music scene: the great George Melly, Cilla Black, The Merseybeats, The Swinging Bluejeans, The Scaffold, The BJs (or was it the B-Jays?), Elvis Costello, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Dakotas and Billy J Kramer (I'm pretty sure) to name but a few of the oldies. I'm sure there are a myriad of new ones from an era (ie after the '60s about which I know nothing.

    Then, of course, there's the world-class Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in the 'other' music sphere.

    No. Peter Guy's not on my Chrostmas Card list.

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  10. Like mouldy noodles? This guy is definitely in the minority with that description. There are certainly a number of great musicians from Liverpool but no one in modern times has had such a profound effect on music as The Beatles.

    I had no idea there was such a thing as a Scottish Wildcat - what a beautiful animal. It looks a lot more like a domestic feline than our wildcats here in North America do. Thanks for posting that photo.

    I agree that the new blogger design leaves A LOT to be desired - I prefer the old style.

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