Life Observed

Close your eyes, feel the hot sun on your back. Smell the roses in the garden. Aaah. Lovely. A picture from last year, in the garden on a clear summer's day? No. Alas. Sainsbury's roses in a vase in our sitting room in the dark in January. Sunlight courtesy of off camera flash . Tamron SP90 old school lens, and the Olympus E-M5 of course.

Sometimes the only way is monochrome. We managed quite well when all you could get was black and white. Why does everything have to be so colourful these days? Hmm?

This was one of those scenes that make you stop the car on the way to work to get the picture before it vanishes.  I was much taken by the almost graphic nature of the scene. The black and white of the snow on the tree trunks caused by the cold Easterly winds we've had recently.  This narrow stand of trees are thinned and maintained regularly, so I suppose they are some sort of habitat. Click on the picture for a larger version. Farming seems to include a lot of habitat these days. When I was young it included a lot of mud.

Catching the Easterly gales, this little cottage weathers the cold snap with some style: I've never had a thatched cottage. I wonder if they are actually that warm. Furthermore, the idea that the expensive and inflammable roof is home to all sorts of flora and fauna is a little disturbing.  You have to admit, they do look nice however.

Here is a favourite view of mine. For the past three years I have seen this view on the way to work each morning. Sometimes the spire is outlined against a blue sky, sometimes it is shrouded in mist. Every now and then, the churchyard is rendered white by the winter snow. Lovely. I shall miss our little village. BTW Blogger. There's nothing wrong with the word favourite. Stop underlining it.

This floats down from the sky and gently coats our land in nice white fluffy stuff, and causes untold chaos and disorder. I mean, would it would cause more chaos if it arrived compacted into two foot cubes? 

No, this is not another attack on the Periodic Table , today we focus on ice, snow and driving. Part of the reason we seem to do so badly when the weather turns properly cold is the nasty driving conditions. Everyone drives these days because we destroyed our public transport system in the past fifty years courtesy of strikes, management inefficiency, government dithering and over pricing. So along comes the unexpected snow, we get into our cars and slide all over the place, blocking the roads and preventing the gritting lorries getting through. They laugh at us on the continent because we are so poor at this. Well, they should try driving on ice with worn out summer tyres. Let's see how they do eh? sdf

This is the horse paddock in winter. The copse of trees in the middle of the paddock is surrounded with a basic wooden fence. I wonder why? The fence won't keep deer or rabbits out. Perhaps it's supposed to keep the horses out. Do horses eat trees? Answers on a ten pound note please.

Here's a nice minimalist image made possible by the recent snowfall. This strange tree lives outside our house and produces strings of these single bladed winged seeds. They stay there all winter and most of the next year for that matter. At this season they are quite visible as the new leaves have not yet appeared.  I've never had a decent picture of them because the fussy background would ruin the shot. Here, the undisturbed snow has created a nice clean backdrop and a cool counterpoint for the warm colours of the seeds.

A cold snap, and an appropriate time for some more basic Physics theory my friends: Let us speak of the science of Thermodynamics.  The Universe is full of cold, and when we look up on a cloudless day we can sense some of all this cold. That, obviously, is why the sky is blue. The Cosmos spends its time trying to push all this cold onto mother Earth as she spins through space, with varying success depending on season and circumstance.  Clearly there must be other factors at play, or we would all be frozen stiff by lunchtime. We are indeed fortunate that the Sun is determined to suck cold into itself (where it is destroyed by the solar fires). If it were not for the Sun tirelessly sucking the cold away every day, things would be dire for us, for an excess of cold causes miasmas to arise and strong men can be brought low by a flux of the vapours. So, here we have an honest tiled roof that has been attacked by a sudden fall of cold from space. It awaits the therapeutic

H for Help, I is confused. I always thought these rolled steel joists were called I beams , but it seems we should be calling them H beams.. Still, you have to love the moss, growing on cold hard steel.. .

Yesterday the weather made the news. I struggled to work though snowdrifts as deep as a couple of millimeters. Fortunately the journey was completed with success and a normal working day ensued. Who knows what today will bring? It is close to freezing this morning. This strange coldness that we experience at the turn of each year is quite a mystery. If only we could predict it somehow.

Oh, timeless image of an old country church on a Winter afternoon. Is this an old church? Yes, most certainly, it dates from the Saxon era with long and short work. So, is this an old wall? No, I'm sure it's not as old as the church.  Well is the window old? Hmm. The masonry looks quite old. The version on the other side of the church is so crisp that it must have been replaced or restored. On that basis I guess it might be medieval. What about the leaded glass then? No, I'm sure that's Victorian. So, the old oil lamp... I suspect it's fake. It has been converted to electricity or perhaps it never was an oil lamp.  And the nice glow of an incandescent bulb? No, I'm afraid that is one of those new CFL lamps  Oh dear, nothing is as it seems, it seems.

While feeling around in an old tool box I came across this strange set of screwdrivers. They must be jolly old. Some of them were so thin they had gone all bendy, so I snapped them off and threw them away.  The thicker ones were OK, but they were all round at the end so I spent a while filing them square and flat.  Why do folks let stuff get in such a condition? Now they look just great and ready for action.

After twenty years off for good behaviour I found myself working on the car again.  Ah, those lost weekends changing the clutch, fixing the rattling exhaust, changing plugs and points. These days the contents of the engine compartment are far too complex to tinker with. However I think I can still change anti-roll bar bushes with the best of them. Strange though: My perfectly good Whitworth spanners don't fit these modern cars very well.

After three days, here is my first picture of 2013. Well after sunset, the solitary yard light shines in the fog and someone is keeping a look out.