Sparrows looking for somewhere to hide for the winter iunder our eaves. Last year they found a tiny hole and nested inside our loft. We don't have a header tank in there so it is not much of a problem. They just crapped down the side of an old bookcase and chucked dry grass all over a box of books.  
Without a 1000th of a second exposure I had no chance of catching the one in flight.

I've been looking at the scenes of floods and damage in Keswick, it's worse when you know the place. It's terrible to imagine that the cafe where we waited 30 minutes for a toasted bacon and cheese ciabatta and then got a cheese and tomato sarnie, has been totally inundated by flood water.
Hands up all those who have been to the pencil museum in Keswick?
Okay that's 5 of you.
Unless you are one of those divvies with a red face, Berghaus rucksack that gets in the bloody way in shops, hiking boots and blue caghoul, Keswick is one of those places where you will wander round on a typical Lake District rainy day, find there is nothing to do, nowhere to go and invariably end up in the pencil museum. It's really good if you want to know the history of pencils.
I would imagine even the hardiest of tourists gave that unmissable spectacle a miss yesterday.

I was going to go to Birmingham tomorrow to see the last F1 stockcar meeting of 2009 then I saw the weather forecast. Rain, rain and rain with a spot of rain in between showers. So thats it, no more stockcars 'til March 2010. It's chucking it down now outside, the poorly cat is sat in the doorway watching it and I'm getting cold with the flipping door open....she likes it, she hasn't got long to live so I try to keep her happy even though she doesn't know the medical facts of her terminal illness.

So, my Saturday plans will now involve going to SpecSavers as I've discovered my left eye is not as good as my right one and I need reading glasses. I really would prefer to read words the same size with both eyes. I'm sure that is how people get headaches. My normal vision is as good as ever but reading has become gradually more difficult. Well I've outlasted my Mum who needed glasses at 30 but my Dad didn't need them 'til he was 60. Or maybe he did but didn't tell us, 'cos he used to read the Sun when he was working! I spent all my working career looking at figures (the numeric kind) without specs until the last year and then I used some of those £1 spex-in-a-tube things + 1.25.
It is an exact art, I tried some + 1.25, + 1.5 and + 2.0 on yesterday, the +1.25 were the best, the + 1.5 were best for my left eye but with the + 2.0 couldn't see sod all, so my eyes are not that bad, just a little tweaking round the edges I reckon.
I'm sure SpecSavers will sort me out. At a cost.

We all know the American idea of hunting is to find an animal that is standing still then blow the poor bastard to smithereens. Very big, very brave, very macho...NOT. Just very stupidly American. They even have organised tours to South Africa where they can shoot big game whilst they are drinking water peacefully at a waterhole. Some poor Onyx or Elan whose only aggression is ripping out tufts of grass from a barren land, gets a 45 in the neck for nothing from a big, fat, brainless yank, whilst merely trying to survive.
They have now been exposed as being even lower than that by undercover reporters in Alabama, where a small pig is put in a pen with a pit bull and the whole family, small kids and all, sit around watching it whilst eating popcorn and drinking cola. The poor pig is torn to shreds by the dog. What the hell these kids are going to grow up like is alarming to say the least. Maybe if one of the kids inadvertently got in the pen and was mauled to death, the obviously irresponsible and retarded parents might think different? On second thoughts, given the low education level of millions of America's poor, they would probably not see the tragic irony.
As for the actual use of pitbull terriers on planet Earth, as far as I can see, nobody apart from these backward peasants in Alabama, would complain if the whole disgusting species was eradicated.
What the fuck is wrong with Americans? They castigate the Chinese, Turks and Pakistanis and rightly so, for their pathetic animal rights record then this happens in their own filthy corrupt land.

The film A Bridge Too Far was filmed in Deventer, Holland. This is where my better half Astrid used to live. Some of the scenes were filmed in the locality and these two were right outside her house.
The first one is when the British make a break for it but one officer was shot by the Germans. He fell dramatically, but in reality he slipped in some dogshit and lay there in it until the scene was cut.  
The second shot was of him being dragged by Gen. Robert Urquart (Sean Connery, on the right) and another officer to safety. Note red beret back on again! More importantly, the crocheted diamond in the shed window was made by Astrid, infact it was their shed at the bottom of their garden. 
Later in the week the scene where the Brummie and the Taffy blow up a munitions shed on the bridge was filmed and half the city turned out at midnight to watch the pyrotechnics show. We have some original photos from that time somewhere.

This damn near took our roof off. If anyone knows who the driver of this vehicle is, I would be obliged. I got his registration.
cheers

Went to my normal haunt for a walk and it was flooded.
Mobile pics.
From the car window....lol
I've never seen it at this spot flowing down the hillside but some bright spark has built an access road to their house and I imagine up on the top of the banking there would be a lake. If it REALLY rains like it did 2 years ago I foresee a landslip and we'll all know why. This is the problem with giving rich people money, they spend it on things they don't understand. It doesn't look much but the photo can't capture the force of the water coming down the hill.

This is my mate's latest Facebook entry, it creased me up....

His and hers diary:
Page one Sunday.
HERS: He was quite subdued, just not himself something was wrong, he hasn't kissed me all night, I think it's another woman. I went to bed and cried, he followed me up later. He lay still, eventually we made love and fell asleep in each other's arm's.
HIS: United lost at home again, fuckin' gutted but got a root though........

Saturday night used to be either film night or Morcambe and Wise, Black and White Minstrel Show, Cilla Black, Val Doonican or Charlie Drake etc.
Thankfully, given the seachange in humour and entertainment, that lot has finished. Personal opinion of course.

It's very rare I watch a film on UK terrestrial TV, and I don't have SKY because it would be false economy, so we tend to watch Dutch TV as there is far more diversity. However, I just fancied a Saturday evening film on UK TV for a change. Let me see....
BBC1: Strictly Come Dancing and Casualty. Bruce Forsyth breaks a leg limbo dancing and has to go to casualty.
BBC2: Porridge, Berlin & What is Beauty. (simple, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so thats a waste of taxpayers money) Berlin might be interesting, at least it's new but I'll probably watch it on iViewer later.
ITV: X-Factor......I can't bring myself to write it without adding "Simon Cowell is a twat". There. I've gone and done it again. Oh and Piers Morgan interviewing ex-bollock squeezing soccer thug and now hardman actor Vinnie Jones. Entertaining...? Educational? No.
CH4: When Boris (Johnson) met Dave (Cameron)...and this is entertainment? On yer bike. You're 'avin' a laarf! There is one film, 4 Weddings and a Funeral, which has been on nearly as many times as Where Eagles Dare.
Richard Burton radios in: "Danny Boweee, Danny Boweee, come in Danny Boweee....over!"
Michael Hordern in London replies "We hear you Danny Boy, loud and clear, even though you are in the middle of a Bavarian mountain range 700 miles away and we only have crap crystal set short wave radios...over."
"Never mind that, it's bloody cold here, can you send some blankets..over"

CH5: CIS New York, NCIS, CINS, NICS, INSC, SNI bloody C, INXS and CIS flamin' Manchester.

So its 4 Weedings and a Femeral or nothing!

So, thats it then, Dutch TV it is: Met Paul, Ushi en Dushi, Anaconda, Judge Dredd and the The Long Weekend. Er....

On second thoughts....a bottle of wine, the iPod, a good book and an early night might be a better proposition.

Picture the scene if you dare. We went for a walk around Cannon Hall grounds and gardens, a late 19th century house belonging the Spencer-Stanhope family. It's a beautiful place. Half way round I needed a pee, so I went into the gents.

There was one long stainless steel urinal and one normal-ish looking bloke with a beard wearing a M & S type jacket also having a pee. As you do, I went as far to the other end as possible. As soon as I'd released "Eric" from the Calvin Kleins, normal-ish looking bloke with beard wearing M & S jacket immediately looked round and focussed on my old man. What the hell? Why do some blokes do that? Was it a case of "Oooh, what our lass would do for one like that?" or "Ha ha, call that a cock?" I suppose I'll never know. But why the hell did he want to look at another man's penis in the first place? The dirty bearded bastard.

I looked him squarely in the eye trying to look as nasty as possible but he just looked away as though it was perfectly normal. He put whatever he'd been fiddling about with, back in his trousers and walked out without washing his hands. Not only was he a piss voyeur, he was also a dirty bastard. No matter whether I washed my hands or not, I still had to open the door using the same handle that dirty git had used to open it with with the same hand he'd been groping around in his underpants with. And I bet he was walking hand in hand with his dearly beloved as well, and then she made the salad at home without washing her hands and they both got salmonella poisoning and wondered why. Amen.

I washed my hands, used the Made in USA hand drier, which would probably struggle to reach 1 on the Beaufort Scale, then used a tissue to open the door then chucked it the lollipop bin outside.
Why DO some blokes look at other bloke's genitals? And when they are having a pee as well? Are there more perverts and George Michael style banana benders around than originally thought or is it jealousy by prostate sufferers that you manage to finish your pee before they've even started theirs and they need to see the evidence?

I wonder what his wife would have said if I'd hit him with "Why were you staring at my cock in the gents?"