A Wednesday Post of Oddments

It was a bit wild and windy at times on Tuesday and the view down to the gate at the bottom of the croft had a wonderful background of breaking waves which sounded loud and clear up at GB's front door.


Another storm on the way?


Down on the beach.


Fence posts in the mist.

My daily moan involves having a trapped nerve in my knee joint which in turn caused me so much distress in the night I had a bad angina attack. I lost my knee cap in a road accident when I was teenager and just occasionally one of the main nerves seems to get the wrong side of the bones in the joint. Exercising it, which is incredibly painful, seems to be the only way to get it back. The main consolation is that once it slips back the relief is instant. But in the meantime. OW! Hopefully that's my moan for the day out of the way. (I thought if hid it in the middle of the posting it might not be too objectionable!)


Yesterday I tried to make Florentines like they serve in the Woodlands Centre. I didn't succeed. I did make an acceptable creation but they weren't the consistency I was aiming it. So it's back to the drawing board where they are concerned. The consolation being that the trials are edible - sweet and chocolaty, what more could one want?


Another sunset.


Nature-made.


Man-made.


A slug that's lost its satnav.


 

What day is it?

My blog postings are all to pot. I'd like to blame the inability to schedule but that is really only a small part of it. I just cannot get my brain into gear. I am terribly behind with my Hebridean blog and have some lovely days of walks to post about. My books blog is a few books behind. I even still have a couple of posts to do from when I was down in Devon in early May.

So here are a few odd bits to catch up:-

On 20th July Partner-who-loves-tea is coming up to the island to join me for a week and to take me back home. I'm really looking forward to it and my only concern is that she is a midge magnet. That's not too much of a problem at the moment because the midges are generally behaving themselves but I suspect she may also be a cleg magnet and they are really bad this last couple of weeks.


So while I was in Stornoway yesterday I stocked up on half a dozen different repellents and bite cures. That's added £25 to the cost of the holiday but will be well worth it if they do the trick. One thing that Boots didn't have was Avon Skin-so-soft which is supposed to be a good repellent. I went on the web and found a site which said:- "This is an exceptionally good insect and 'mozzy' repellent. It has become infamous through word of mouth. We personally sell in excess of 100 bottles a week." Infamous??? Why infamous? Why not famous? I do wish people would learn to write English on their adverts.


"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man pick up the iron for his friends." (John 15:3 CJE's version) GB has done a lot of ironing for me these last few weeks so it was only fair that I iron the small amount of washing he left this week. But ironing (ugh!) a pink (double ugh!!) polo shirt was a definite demonstration of my love for my brother.





In Stornoway on Monday there was an old Riley (I shall let GB add a comment about the model!). I love old cars and seeing them in use on the road is a real bonus. it is one aspect of New Zealand that I would thoroughly enjoy.



Boats in the harbour on Monday.



At the Woodlands Centre there are a couple of giant chess pieces representing a king and queen from the Lewis Chess set. Originally discovered on the Isle of Lewis, they date from around 1170 and are of Scandinavian origin and form the earliest known European chess set. The originals were carved from ivory and walrus tusk and are now on display in the British Museum. These six foot high models are carved from single blocks of wood.


I preferred them as they were three years ago before they had this coating of wood preservative.

That's today's little ramble over. Have a good day - whatever day it is...


 

It had a long neck.

A couple of weeks ago GB and I were driving the Braighe when we spotted some birds. He thought they were divers, I thought they were Long-tailed Ducks. It matters not what they were (or even if we were looking at the same birds) what was amusing was he said the one he saw had a long neck. I said the one I saw had a short neck. I was reminded of this when I watched a Herring Gull the other day. Here are two photos of the same gull:-



So does the Herring Gull have a long neck or a short neck??

 

Attitude

Yesterday I had a moan. By e-mail to GB. Rather ironic really. There he is, on the mainland having treatment and beginning to suffer the effects of it and I choose him to moan to. Fortunately we know each other well enough for our problems to usually evoke sympathy and not a 'You think you've got problems' competition.

When I thought about it I realised that moaning at anyone I know would be a bit unfair. For example - one friend is having health problems and has just learned she's to have injections for the rest of her life. She is feeling absolutely exhausted and overworked. Another friend is trying , unsuccessfully so far, to sort out house renovations and her partner has been told his job is moving to Australia. Then there is the friend who has been ill all winter and gets tired if she so much as walks uphill. Another friend is in the process of moving house and we all know how stressful that can be. And so it goes on. Few of us are lucky enough to sail through life. It just isn't designed that way.

I often hear folk who are hard up wondering why they can't win the lottery - and I'm among them., At the moment I'm going for the record number of weeks of buying a ticket (62 so far - that's 124 draws) without winning so much as a ten pound note. Such folk look at the lifestyles of the rich and famous and bemoan their lack of money to pay the bills. But how many of the rich and famous are any happier than any of us? They too have their illnesses, their relationship problems and their self-doubt . They too worry about money but instead of concern about this week's grocery bill it's wondering if buying that football club was a good idea or not.

So, if we cannot sail through life, we have to alter our attitude to it. And that's what I'm doing this morning.


Normally I look at flowers and if it's a force 4 breeze I wish they'd stay still to make it easier to photograph them. Today I looked and thought "Gosh, don't they look pretty nodding in the breeze like that!"


 

So now I'm a Spider

Arachnophobes are welcome to ignore this posting....

Fiona - she of the flowers - sent me a photo of a spider she'd spotted. As you can see it is a brilliant photo. She asked what it was.


I haven't got my spider books with me so I went on Google image search for the genus I thought it was - Clubonia. Imagine my surprise when I came up with 7 photos of my own out of the eighteen on the first image search page. It might have been less surprising if any of my photos had been a spider but in fact none of them were!


There was however the one portrait of me that I like (taken eighteen years ago). So now, it seems, I'm a spider!

"Wherever we are, there is likely to be at least one spider within a few feet of us." - Stephen Dalton

Sleep well!