Don't get too excited...

Please don't get too excited but here is a post at long last.  It will be short but maybe it will make you smile...

Lunch Logic

If I were given the choice between my heart's desire and a cheese sandwich, I would definitely choose the cheese sandwich.  After all, nothing is better than your heart's desire, and a cheese sandwich is better than nothing.

Hopefully it won't be as long before I post again.

WORLD RHINO DAY

September 22nd is World Rhino Day.

These are Great One Horned Rhinos I photographed in Chester Zoo ten years ago. 

The Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), also called the greater one-horned rhinoceros and great Indian rhinoceros, is a rhinoceros native to the Indian subcontinent. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, as populations are fragmented and restricted to less than 20,000 km2 (7,700 sq mi). Moreover, the extent and quality of the rhino's most important habitat, alluvial grassland and riverine forest, is considered to be in decline due to human and livestock encroachment. The Indian rhinoceros once ranged throughout the entire stretch of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, but excessive hunting and agricultural development reduced their range drastically to 11 sites in northern India and southern Nepal.    As of 2008, a total of 2,575 mature individuals were estimated to live in the wild.

World Rhino Day is celebrated on September 22 every year! This special day provides the opportunity for cause-related organizations, NGOs, zoos, and members of the public to celebrate rhinos in their own unique ways.

Holiday August 2019 (post number 1)

August was a busy month for me - but only in the sense of enjoyable activities.  First of all GB and I stayed with Anna for a couple of nights in Glasgow then I was with GB for the next two weeks on the Isle of Lewis.  Jo joined me there for the second half of August and at the end of the month, on the way home, we stayed a night at Birnam on the Scottish mainland.

While I was up on Lewis Jo bought a new car and didn't tell me what it was until she arrived off the ferry...

I shall, hopefully, do a few posts about the month's activities.

In Glasgow I was shown around the Necropolis - a massive Victorian cemetery and then we went around the cathedral.

The next day GB and I left Glasgow and went to Ullapool and the ferry via the delightful village of Carrbridge with its packhorse bridge.

The view from GB's garden during one of the few sunny spells.

I did a bit of playing with my photos from GB's kitchen window.  The mainland can be seen in the background, over The Minch..

The regular change from rain (a lot) to sunny spells (a few) meant we had a few rainbows.

This is one of my favourite postboxes.  A lot of my postcards were posted here in August.

Confetti

Lost in transit

As regular readers of Rambles will know I am keen on anything postal.  The periodical Hebevents ( www.hebevents.com) greeted me this week with an appropriate story by journalist and photographer Roz Macaskill from Skye. .  

Lennoxtown

How about this for a wonderful display at the roadside in East Dunbartonshire.

Schrodinger's Cat

(Thanks Canadian Chickadee!)

Father's Day

My father - Morris Edwards - 1907-2001.

Dad always described himself as 'a model husband'  -

and then laughingly pointed out a model was a small imitation of the real thing!

As far as being a Dad was concerned he was very much the real thing. 

My superpower

Keep Calm - or not...

This morning...

Mac Puss c2005 - 17 May 2019

Frog Mad

BRENTRY - I mean BREXIT

Who remembers 14 January 1963 when the President of France, Charles de Gaulle, announced the French veto on Britain's application to join the European Common Market, the forerunner of the European Union.   De Gaulle said the British government lacked 'commitment' to European integration.

Surely not. 

(Ironically almost everyone in Britain objected to the veto and the subsequent one later in the 60s.   .  Those who wanted to join the Common Market were upset at not being allowed to do so.  Those who didn't want to join saw it as typical intervention by the French, and in particular, blamed an 'ungrateful' De Gaulle who should have been thankful for our support during the War when Britain supported the French Resistance, which De Gaulle led.)

Eventually, on 1st January 1973 Britain joined the European Economic Community (EEC).  Britain held a referendum on the matter in 1975, after Harold Wilson renegotiated its terms of entry.  Labour's left, led by Tony Benn (and including a then-unknown Jeremy Corbyn), hated the Common Market, seeing it as a "capitalist club" that would erode British democracy and destroy jobs.  Enoch Powell, the maverick right wing Tory who had just become an Ulster Unionist MP, joined Tony Benn as the loudest voices in the Out campaign.  Nevertheless  67% of those who voted were in favour of staying in the EEC.

The Brexit referendum, took place on 23 June 2016 in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar to ask the electorate if the country should remain a member of, or leave the European Union (EU).  (Can anyone recall why we had the referendum?) The referendum resulted in 51.9% of the votes cast being in favour of leaving the EU.   Legally the referendum is non-binding but the government promised to implement the result, and it initiated the official EU withdrawal process on 29 March 2017, meaning that the UK was due to leave the EU before 11PM on 29 March 2019, UK time, when the two-year period for Brexit negotiations expired.

It's now April.  Does anyone know where we are at???

Broad-bodied Chasers

I've been looking at some of my old natural history photos.  I decided to share some of them with you.  These are Broad-bodied Chaser dragonflies.  The blue one is the male.