Life Observed

Moles are a pesky nuisance and need a firm hand if they are to be kept under control.  Here we see the Her Majesty the Queen's Mounted Mole Police in action. This hand picked band are in demand across the southern counties I can tell you. You need speed, cunning, a good eye and a stern  command of the situation to rid a field of moles.

"Be honest old man. Does my horse look big in this?"

So: Water. It goes round and round. Sea, sky, rain, river. Our weather is driven by the physics of water and the rotation of the Earth. It wears away our mountains and dumps the result in the oceans. There's a lot of water around. If you sneak up on our planet from the correct direction all you can see is sea. So, where did all this water come from?  Did it really all arrive in comets from space? All that water came from space. Really? Why did it not all boil away again into space?

Water is a good thing, but then again you can have too much of a good thing. In fact we spend a lot of time keeping water out of our lives. We close the windows and make sure the rain doesn't get in. We wouldn't want the water tank in the loft to split. Oh no. Equally we expect it to be there when we turn on the tap.

Funny stuff water. It appears to be essential for life. It evaporates from the sea, condenses into clouds, rains on the land and ends up back in the sea. Round and round it goes and it never gets bored.  You think it would have a bit more attitude being as it contains all those Oxygen atoms, which is one of the nastiest elements you can get. Today's picture, courtesy of Kodachrome, dates from 1974.

Look what happens when folkists invade your pub. They are all over the place making music in the nooks and crannies .  You even find them on the floor playing Mandolin.

In the market square on Saturday.  The weekly handkerchief sale is going well.  The synchronised demonstration team capture the attention of the audience and before you know it, the shelves are emptied.

Yes, it's a bunch of musicians playing folk jigs in a pub, all in sepia.  I'm told this is where you go to get the Crack. Apparently. How would I know?  I have never done anything harder than blues.

Oi  ! Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps please. I've got all the right money...

This huge and battered chunk of Basalt makes its orbit silently each month. It has been up there so long that it has given up all rotational effort. It bears the marks of each impact undiminshed my time and season. Some of the craters are thought to be two billion years old. Apparently it still gains new craters. NASA keep a watch on the moon for new impact events and they do occasionally happen. So what came before this peppering? The theory is all the planets and their moons suffered the Late Heavy Bombardment. As you may imagine from the name it is best that we don't go there. Click on picture for larger view

Waiting for something to happen. A very British trait, waiting.  Let's wait and see... Wait a bit longer. Something is going to happen There it was. No, you missed it didn't you

Here we have light and shade while in the grip of the National Trust.  The NT are very careful to preserve what they have, and tend to keep the daylight out of the house if at all possible. As a result many of the properties are quite gloomy inside. Photographs now permitted, but no flash. Oh, and another thing I have noticed while perambulating around NT properties: For some reason the National Trust seem to like sitting on fir cones . That is a very strange obsession. There you go...

Lurking among the innocent Bovril bottles is deadly blue poison.  There is "Not To Be Taken" embossed on the side. Who knows what it once contained: You were able to buy Arsenic at the chemist early last century.  As a child I was given liquid Mercury to play with in a Physics lesson. How cool is that eh? Erm, where was I? I've forgotten.

Once upon a time everything was either Beige or Cream. There were other colours of course. You could always have black or grey, but by comparison cream was so much more exciting. Here we are gathered round the cream fire eating a cream tea.  Afterwards we would listen to the Navy Lark on the Light Programme . This, like many other features of BBC entertainment output, was broadcast entirely in beige.