Thursday Thirteen

I am going to have a play with the blog called Thursday Thirteen in which one lists thirteen things from the past week or so.  Here goes…

Numero Uno – (if I put the number 1 the paragraph indents!!!) - Blogs

I continue to add blogs to my ‘Blogs to visit’ list on the side of my Blog.  It is totally out of hand but there are just so many great blogs out there.   This week I added Colleen Redman’s ‘LooseLeaf Notes’ and, of course, the Thursday Thirteen.

"A blog is to a writer what a canvas is to an artist." ~ Colleen Redman


My post of the week was Laloofah’s trip to Butte, Montana, as part of her Silver Wedding tour on the blog Mehitable Days. 

Two – Down Memory Lane

On Saturday I met up with three of my former schoolmates (one of whom I hadn’t seen for about forty years) and their wives. 

Only Partner-who-drinks-tea had not been a regular in the Fiveways Pub in Liverpool with us forty odd years ago but all four wives were fed up of ‘in’ jokes from school and tales of the various Liverpool matches we attended together by the time lunch was over.  One of the waitresses kindly took a photo.  (Paul and I don't really go in for wife-swapping!)

Seeking ghosts circa 1965 – yours truly, Paul, (Keith), George and David

The ghosts 2013 – Paul, me, George and David

Well, someone had to bring the old school tie along.

A birthday party of mine - I think it was my fifteenth. Myself, George, Keith, Paul, David. I’m not sure what music the coffee pot achieved!  Only Keith was missing from the reunion. 

The serious stuff- Alison and Chris checking the menu.

 

Not the story about the clockwork mouse again…

 I didn't have a pony-tail at school!

Three – Ivy

Ivy decided to have an argument with something this week and suffered her first injury.  It’s a minor nick out of her ear.  She may have decided that now she is grown up (she becomes a cat and leaves her kitten-ness behind this month) it was time for an ear-ring.  

“The fact that I am wet has nothing to do with the sprinkler.  I wouldn’t be silly enough to investigate it while He was round the corner turning the tap on.  And no, I am not embarrassed.”

“No, that splashing noise was not my back end falling in the pond as I jumped it and no I’m not embarrassed again…”

At least she hasn’t been stuck up a tree for three days which is what happened to this kitten.  

The Fire Brigade couldn’t get her down with the usual ladders so they had to bring in the hydraulic platform, diverting buses, blocking residents from moving their cars for an hour and generally causing chaos.  According to a Freedom on Information request, the fire service has rescued 17,000 animals, including 19 squirrels and a snail in the last three years at an estimated cost of £3.5 million.  A snail!!!  How does a snail need rescuing???

 “I’m just watching the world go by.”

4 – 100 years ago

On Saturday it was the hundredth anniversary of the arrest of, suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst amid scuffles with police after attempting to lead 7,000 Free Speech demonstrators to Downing Street.

5 – Lemon-tree very pretty

Son-who-watches-films has been after a lemon tree for a couple of years now and we managed to find one this week.  It’s a really healthy specimen and has one ripe lemon, some small lemons and lots of flowers.

He looks after the vegetables in the garden and harvested his first of the garlic this week.

Six – Buses

How does the saying go – “You wait hours for a bus and then four come along at once.”

7 – The weather

A few days ago it was hailed as being Britain’s driest July for 247 years.  I think the missing rain all fell this week during violently heavy thunderstorms.   Alternately it has been hot, cool, steamy, thundery, wet, dry…  One of those weeks!  It’s a long time since I sat by a window and stared at the falling rain but I did so this week.  Listening to it bounce back up off the ground and seeing the thickness of the downpour was quite relaxing so logn as one didn’t have to be out in it.

Soaring temperatures were blamed for the 65% rise in questions from couples seeking advice on splitting up from a law firm.

Huit – The Ring o’ Bells

The Childwall Fiveways pub wasn’t the only one I revisited after a forty year gap this last couple of weeks.  Partner-who-drinks-tea-or-coke-in-this-weather and I called in at the Ring o’ Bells a favourite haunt of GB when he lived in West Kirby and a regular haunt of mine (and whoever my current girlfriend was) on a Thursday night.

And they even had proper coke in a bottle instead of just Pepsi on tap.

9 - In the garden

We have two new hanging baskets planted.

We have had a Gatekeeper butterfly around for a couple of weeks now – on one occasion it decided to flutter into the conservatory where I photographed it before ushering it out of the window.

"Did I just see a butterfly come out of here?"

A female Southern Hawker dragonfly (thanks to Daughter-who-takes-photos for the species identification) pictured below was in the garden at one stage. A male has been around for much of the week as well but he is a bit shy about posing for photos. 

A young Robin that was just losing its spotted breast and gaining its red one came to investigate our feet on the patio.

10 – Pollyanna Pickering

We went to the National Wildlife Artists Exhibition at one of our local nurseries again this year.   

There were some unbelievably good examples of wildlife art there and we could also meet some of the artists.

I was thrilled that the delightful Pollyanna Pickering and her daughter and business partner, Anna Louise, were there.  

The print that Anna Louise is holding is one that Daughter-who-takes-photos gave me and which is displayed on our stairs.

Pollyanna Pickering is a world-renowned artist and whilst these sort of attendances are necessary for her profile and sales they must be a bore (especially as the marquee was about 40°C and even too hot for Jo) but she showed no signs of that and really seemed pleased to meet a fan of hers.

Eleven – The Octopus that wasn’t an Octopus

Schoolgirl Areti Hydras proudly poses with an octopus her father caught on holiday in Greece.  The family cooked it and ate it. 

Picture from Daily Mail

It was only afterwards the engineer from Washington DC  discovered they had eaten what was only the second hexapus ever found.  The first was found five years ago off the North Wales coast and called Henry.  Why Henry?  After Henry VIII and his six wives, of courser.

Twelve -Books (or things on my Tablet)

I haven’t mentioned the books I’ve read for ages.  I do have a list of them and some comments so I shall blog about them at some stage but at the moment I am in the middle of the Inspector Lynley series by Elizabeth George.  I'm reading the books on my Asus tablet, usually in bed

Elizabeth George, born in Warren, Ohio, in 1949, is the American author of highly acclaimed mystery noevls set in England.  Her first novel, 'A Great Deliverance', was honoured with the Anthony and Agatha Best First Novel awards in America and received the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in France; 'Well-schooled in Murder' was awarded the prestigious German prize for international mystery fiction, the MIMI '1990'. Eleven of her novels have now been adapted for television by the BBC as the Inspector Lynley Mysteries. An Edgar and Macavity Nominee as well as an international bestselling author, Elizabeth George lives on Whidbey Island in the state of Washington.

What I like about the Inspector Lynley series is that the main characters are developed as the series progresses.  It’s not just a case of having the same people in each book.  They are all believable and have real lives outside of each individual investigation and they age and marry (or not as the case may be) and suffer the trials and tribulations we all go through at some time or another.

In addition the plots are well-crafted and the stories well-written.  I reckon there is one new word for my vocabulary in each book which is a fair average so far as I’m concerned.  

Inspector Lynley is an officer of Scotland Yard and so far there have been about half a dozen slip ups when the American background of the author peeps through and her English advisers have missed translating the Americanisms for her.  One example is the use of the word pavement when she means the road surface as opposed to the sidewalk (our interpretation if pavement). In another she put a lay-by on a motorway – we don’t have any lay-bys on Motorways.  Bur these are rare examples and I’m just being picky.

The series began with ‘A Great Deliverance’ in 1988 and so far is up to number eighteen ‘Just one Evil Act’ (2013).  I have read up to Number 9 ‘Deception in his Mind’ (1997) so far and cannot imagine me reading any other fiction until I’ve finished the series.  If you are after some cosy crime with a bit of depth and good writing I can thoroughly recommend this series.

And the last one – 13  - 165 mph 

That is the speed Shiad Mahmoon clocked up on the M57 motorway (which has the UK's national maximum speed limit of 70mph).  In his Audi R8 Spyder the 24 year old matched the speed a passenger jet takes off at and eclipsed the 120 mph average with which F1 driver Lewis Hamilton clinched pole position at last weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix.  Mahmoon, from Oldham, received a three year ban from driving, had to pay £515 costs and fines, and will be rewuired to take a driving test before being allowed on the road again.  

 If you want to see other Thursday Thirteens they can be found here.