I was in the Tufty club and the Bimbo blub, and have a Bimbo badge to prove it.
I digress. This morning we scraped the ice off the windscreen for the first time since April.
Then I went on my daily walk and Mr Squirrel duly obliged today for a change. Normally when I take the camera they are conspicuous by their absence.
I have set up a small photo webpage called The South Riding. There couldn't be a south riding as there was already a north, east and west and a riding was a third part. But if there was a south riding, that is where we would live.
In time I'll be adding more pages and more photos from my archives.
I might even put up a Sheffield city page. 600,000 people live in Britain's greenest city. It is not half as bad a people think.

Click on the photo below to go to the webpage.
If you don't want to read about the South Riding just click on either of the images on the homepage to go straight to the photos.
cheers

I'm watching a brilliant programme on iPlayer. It was on Saturday night. The Secret Life of the Berlin Wall. The narrative is balanced, the musical score perfect for the occasion, the whole programme tells the story as people lived it.
This is the BBC at it's very best.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nx0y6/The_Secret_Life_of_the_Berlin_Wall/

If you fancy watching it.

It was a beautiful morning, the mist was hanging in the valley and the sun was trying to get through. Now it is overcast, no sun and not beautiful anymore.
A woman was at the Co-op cash dispenser in front of me. After an age pressing buttons, she swore under her breath, I heard something like "shit", then she walked away to the Co-op. I stuck my card in, put my number in and it said "Temporarily out of order". So I took my card out and said to the woman behind me "It's out of order duck". She grunted and went to the dispenser anyway. Whilst I was getting into the car I heard another grunt, then another "shit" and she walked away.
Where is common decency these days? 
The first woman could have told me it was out of order, it might have taken a few seconds but it would have been nice to hear, maybe saved me wasting my time and the second woman could have said "thankyou love" as normal people would do.
But no, two grunting bitches with not an ounce of common decency between them.
And we wonder why the kids of today can't communicate properly.
With mothers like that, the reasons are quite clear. 

I went for my daily walk armed only with my crappy mobile. As usual every squirrel, heron, duck, jay, pheasant and green tree creeper knew this and decided to put in an appearance. Anyway, in the absence of a half devent camera with a zoom lens, this was the sum total of my photo exploits. Before the rain. But we did get a nice rainbow. Normally the water in the reservoir is up to the base of the tree in the middle of the shot, so we do need the rain as the levels are getting quite low.  


 

The moon popped over the hill last night but was shy, trying to hide behind the telegraph wires.

I'm not happy today. It's because my cat is dying and I'm trying to come to terms with not seeing it around in the future.

When I have an internet connection problem, how come TalkTalk always say it is a problem with MY connection. Why don't they ever tell me when THEIR servers are down or have a fault? My webspace server (Wiserhosting) does, so why not the big providers? Why don't they send all Talktalk customers an email like "We are experiencing difficulties, please bear with us", this would be far more polite than "You have a plug out, it's your fault".

And why do vets charge so bloody much. My animal is dying and the bastard wants to charge £50 for 10 minutes consultation. I did 5 (well, 2 years but I changed course and had to start again...) years apprenticeship for my job as well and I never charged £300 an hour just to have a chat. Bastards! Even my Sherriff of Nottingham solicitor only charged £120 an hour and he could talk the bollocks off a neutered cat and he actually helped us. Vets prey on emotion. I hate vets with a vengeance second to none.

Brisbane is 28°c, Deventer (Holland) 12°c and Sheffield is a surprisingly unseasonal 12°c also.
Guess where I'd sooner be?
Nooooo, you duckegg...Brisbane of course!
We have invariably had the first frosts by now and of course there is the mandatory rain on 5th November.
I'm not sure whether I should be cutting back the apple tree yet as it's growing new buds and the top branches are reaching for the sky and sprouting new leaves. Crazy. It is supposed to be done from December to February but with the seasons seemingly a month in front I'm not sure.
If I leave it, it won't bear fruit and if I cut it back too early it won't bear fruit, damn temperamental things.
We need a cold snap but it's going to get up to 16°c over the weekend with rain Saturday.

It's just not on all this strange weather.

Are the Post Office fucking me about because they are strike happy?

On Monday I got a little red card through the letterbox informing me that 2 packages were too big for the letterbox and needed signing for, they were taken back to the Post Office but I couldn't pick them up for two days instead of the normal 24 hours, (probably due to the self inflicted backlog).

So off I went to the Post Office this morning, only to find 3 packages, all which would have easily fitted through our letter box, but with a large elastic band round them. I didn't need to sign for them either as none were recorded delivery, neither did I get asked for proof of identity today or even a signature to say I had collected them. Bloody sloppy.

So what is the hard bit about taking elastic bands off and posting each package individually?
Whilst the posties may be in "strike happy" mood, is there any need for them to be pedantic and downright bloody difficult?

Now the weather is getting colder, I shall wedge a brick under their automatic door next time I go, which will force them to get up off their idle backsides and close it. I also can be bloody difficult when I want to be.

What is it with the BBC, why are almost all of their front line presenters so bloody annoying? Apart from Paul somebody or other -Lily Savage on ITV, whose voice is like Cilla's but  60 Woodbine's a day worse, all the other most annoying TV personalities are on BBC. I don't watch it much these days, tending to watch Dutch TV and finding I am slowly beginning to build up a hate list of annoying Dutch TV personalities now. Paul de Leeuw got on my tits when he was the Eurovision Song contest presenter for Holland who started chatting up the Sebian bloke live on air, making smutty innuendos. Yes he is gay, nothing against gay people but "live" gay flirting in TV is not my cup of Douwe Egberts. Then there is the big fat cigar smoking chef Herman den Blijke, (too many of them on TV now, no wonder you can't get a good meal these days for less than €50 in Holland.) Well, I'm picking spots for the sake of it, by and large Dutch TV is similar to UK TV except I find the presenters less "me, me, me and a tad less extrovert than their British counterparts.

But for the ultimate in annoyingness, the BBC win all the prizes. Hands up their arse if they like any of these: Alan Titchmarsh (gardener) Graham Norton (perverted leprechaun) Cilla Black (singer gone wrong) Ann Robinson (sarcastic journalist) Dale Winton (a total nothing) Dermot Murnaghan (supercillious Welsh bastard) and last but not least, Nicky Cambell (know it all) Kay Burley should be on BBC as well, she is a really bloody annoying bitch. Oh, and Uri Geller (fraud) Ha! Rant over, but the bastards still want me to pay for a licence so they can pay these overhyped icons.

This what I want to say to the BBC....

Images from the annual Sheffield "Fright Night".
The city centre becomes a mass of people out to enjoy themselves on this Sheffield Shitty council approved event. It's really sod all to do with them, but as usual they have jumped on the band wagon of a major social success. Okay, they let us "use" OUR city centre for an evening, close the roads, employ street cleaners, dress up the streets, put pretty lights up, provide the security and give planning permission for trading. But what else have the council EVER done for us. Sorry, got carried away on a Monty Python routine there.... 

Top and bottom of it is, it's a brilliant atmosphere, everyone enjoying themselves from grown up kids to little lads and lasses and even some miserable gits like me. I really did enjoy it. Next year I am going to get an ugly mask although ah lass reckons I don't need one.  
Loads to eat and drink, plenty of the usual fairground attractions as well as the Sheffield Wheel which we shall be enjoying in daylight this coming Wednesday all being well.