Pointy Cow

Read more...

tree

It is wonderfully freeing to be allowed to invent our own personal truth. Clearly, the ancient Japanese visited the windswept uplands of NW England ...and thus was the art of bonsai born. I wonder if they also brought the hippopotamus bones to our local caves.

Read more...

B&W

Probably no one has noticed, but, as well as a cow phase, I have also been having a minor black and white phase...
The two phases can sometimes be combined to make a true masterpiece!

Maybe I shouldn't have given up the day job after all... oh well, too late now! :-) Moooo.

Read more...

chateau

After working too hard on our paper on Sunday morning, in the afternoon James went for a run, and at last I had an hour to take a walk around some of the grounds of the chateau in which we are staying at Gif-sur-Yvette.

Here's the chateau itself.
And here's the pond at the bottom of the garden.
Lots of mushroomy things grow under the trees.
The autumn colours are quite nice - this might be some sort of chestnuttish tree?
Some of its leaves are almost black!

Read more...

Travels

But where?!

It is a place where people have been known to lose their heads

And not just on the roads

Where bicycles are very important. (Although you actually see more of them being ridden in London).

Where the building that should be the opera house is actually the stock exchange

Where they have taken the Boris Bicycle concept several stages further...?

And where the picktur blogger is permanently drunk due to the local beverage coming in too large bottles; please scuse typos.

Read more...

"Quit your jobs"

Seen from the platform at Pangbourne railway station, the graffiti on the fence in the background is probably aimed at the Thames Valley London commuters. But be careful of you do quit your jobs - you might end up like these two!

Read more...

falling water

As well as ocean swell, there are other after effects of storms. One is the amount of water falling in the water falls. I actually didn't know we live near a waterfall until this week. It is Scaleber Foss, and only 1.3 miles from our house (although up a stupidly steep hill). I learned later that it is a top photography spot, so it is lucky that James encouraged me to take my camera along just in case there was something to see.

This photo was taken at the same place, looking downstream,

Read more...

Autumn colours

Another storm yesterday, and the autumn colours are not going to last much longer. Better blog them while I still can.

Read more...

ocean #3

The calm after the storm...

Read more...

ocean #2

The fun thing about the ocean, is that the waves can come quite a while after the weather. So, while the storm had blown over the day before, the sea was just getting going.

Read more...

ocean #1

Some rain stopped us mountain biking on the way over to Scotland's east coast, but it had stopped by the time we got to the seaside.

Read more...

autumn

My memories of autumn from when I were a lass are of slipping about on mushy brown leaves on the ground, and of wind, rain and days so dark you can barely see across the school hall. There must have been some climate change because we now have some sunny days with little hints of yellow and orange on many of the trees. It's nothing like Japan, obviously (many more degrees of climate change to go before we get there), but still...

Read more...

running man

In light of recent events, it seems appropriate to post these pickturs.

Spot the marathon man...

The second photo shows James running towards our house, with Settle and Giggleswick in the middle distance, the two metropolises have merged together into one big conurbation, like Tokyo and Yokohama. And Ingleborough hill, like Fuji-san, lies further beyond. Perhaps I was hallucinating. At this point I was in a world of pain, having fallen off my bicycle about 40 minutes earlier. I carried on riding, as I decided that, as I was going to be in pain anyway, I could distract myself with a nice bike ride in the sunshine. The worst thing about falling over on gravel is the bath afterwards where you have to scrub the dust out of the wounds. The best part is the rolling about on the loose stuff which means that many parts of the body absorb the impact. So today everything hurts, but nothing too much.

Read more...

Pen-y-ghent

Not sure whether to go backwards, forwards, or randomly in time with my backlog of unblogged photos.

This one was taken yesterday.

Sun continues unabated. Well, OK, so there is the occasional heavy rainstorm, but this is upland Britain for goodness sake... Sunday is the 3 peaks cyclocross race, traditionally a cold and rainy mudfest. After the driest September in forever, perhaps it will be a pleasant roll over the hills. This is the third peak - Pen-y-ghent - as seen yesterday, from the back of a high-speed tandem.

Read more...

High Street

Decided to go shopping so yesterday we headed for the High Street near Ullswater in Cumbria.

Getting there was a bit harder than expected, as there was no railway station, and it involved a 700m climb from the car park. Views were nice though.

Finally got there only to discover that the Vikings had torn down all the shops in the centuries after the Romans had left. The other shoppers seemed almost as lost (see their little silhouettes on that rocky outcrop!). Germanic and Australian accents asked us if we were "doing the coast to coast". Just a day trip we answered. It was surprisingly pleasant especially considering that this High Street is so far from those more desirable parts of the UK. Here, James is looking for the Apple Store. Sure it was supposed to be here somewhere... The street side planters were flowering nicely. This is heather, probably imported from the soon to be foreign country of Scotland. We never did find Harvey Nicks, but a couple of hours later we were in Patterdale (named after St Patrick Patterdale) where there are pubs that serve food and beer all day long. hicc. Best High Street ever.

Read more...

The Thames Valley

Londinium has, to me, always seemed alien to the rest of the UK, but the Thames Valley has become another country too. It is so polished that it seems more like a theme park than a real place.

Palaces and pleasure boating...

Perfect bijou gardening...
Hand-knitted designer bricking and flinting...
For those who don't know their UK geography, the Thames is the big river that runs right through Londinium. Thus, anywhere along its banks are the most sought after places to live, as you can easily commute in to the city.

Read more...

Londinium

We used to tell our Japanese friends that certain things were Better in Britain. One such myth we accidentally perpetuated was the value of stricter planning regulations. Japanese cities are, on the whole, an awful jumble of buildings. Not so in the UK, we told our friends. We clearly misunderstood completely. During our decade long sojourn overseas, Londinium has been reinventing itself as a poor replica of some chaotic south east asian mega-city.

On the other hand, one myth the British choose to believe is that working conditions in places like Tokyo are undesirable. And yet here you can see all the little Londoners toiling away in their open plan glass skyscrapers. hmmm... This one is perhaps not quite as bad on the eye, but still, it could be anywhere... I don't see the point of all the planning people, if the result is just a boring version of one of the less exciting bits of Yokohama.

Read more...

The Holy Church of St Bicycles

A new religion has taken hold of the town of Skipton. It is the yellow faith of St Bicycles.

But - could it be that one or two remain skeptical - both to the power of St Kickball and St Bicycles?! Despite being quite religious ourselves - we sit upon 2 unicycles, 4 single bicycles and 3 tandems - we have somehow managed to be away for the big event and tomorrow we will be heading down to the grim south, to give seminars in Reading and London!

Read more...

ocean

Went to the seaside for the wedding anniversary. It would have been very nice had not the sellers of the house we are trying to buy pulled out of the sale the day before. The sale is, apparently, now back on again, although actually no progress at all has been made for the last month or so. Buying houses is rubbish, at least it is the way it is done in England. At the PMIP meeting I asked a few of my friends how it is done in foreign. Somehow they all seemed better than the English system where no commitment is made for months after the price is agreed. In France you have to sign a contract to agree to the sale (subject to caveats like not getting a mortgage) when the price is agreed; in Japan there are no teams of solicitors on each side - the estate agent does the whole thing; in Sydney you usually buy instantly at auction. Not sure the last one is very sensible (buy in haste repent at leisure comes to mind), but at least it is over quickly!

Read more...

Feeding the birds #2

The question of exactly what is being fed by our garden bird feeders remains as much a live topic as ever.
The squirrel school is going very well. They have trained James to make gradually more difficult puzzles. Each new one can be completed after about a day of hard thought. Then James has to think up a new, more difficult challenge for them. This step by step progression is ideal for honing the problem solving abilities of both James and the squirrels.

And here's WOL, sat waiting by the possibly squirrel proof suet ball feeder. Do WOLs eat blue tits? Alternatively he or she might have been hoping to catch the mousey thing that we have seen burrowing under the house. Either way, I was astonished to see a wild owl only about 2 metres away (through the window).

Read more...