Wending our way

An icy bright day and we decided on one of our favourite local walks, through the city orchard and along the canal to the Water Witch for Sunday lunch.

Oh yes ... and the Christmas tree is now up!

Floating through the internet ether

Another week of transcription and once again my head is full of other people's words.  In procrastination mode I have taken a bit of a wander. It started with reading a review of a book about scientists and their tattoos. Having an interest in biology and maths, this led me to consider what I might choose were I brave/foolhardy enough to get a tattoo. 

 I have found that declaring myself as being interested in, and actually ENJOYING maths often results in glazed looks which at best are of puzzlement, or at worst looks of undisguised horror. So, to have an equation leaping off various parts of my anatomy would perhaps not be such a good idea as it would advertise my seemingly strange love of numbers and maths quirkiness to all and sundry.

So, a combination of both biology and maths would seem to be the solution and this took me on an internet journey to find some connections. 

Barnsley's Fern

Barnsley's Fern seemed a good starting off point, a fractal fern the mathematician Michael Barnsley developed which resembles  Black Spleenwort. The beauty of ferns, fractals and maths all in one go!

Black spleenwort

But then I got caught up in Wolfram and found:

lobster polyiamond

flower snark

caterpillar

centipede graphs

banana graphs

daisy spirals

House renovation

Two weeks ago a new boiler and radiators were installed, this week it's been windows and patio doors

Time on our hands

It was suggested that A Start Must Be Made, so we wended our way first to the local brewery for lunch; our excuse was that the Lancaster brewed beer would make good Christmas presents. Bargains were to be had, and  enough beer was bought so that we could do some consumer testing to ensure that it tasted good. The bulk of it has been put in the shed in the hope that it will not go the same way as the chocolates I used to buy for the children's Christmas stockings. Said chocolate had to be bought several times over before it actually made it to Christmas Eve.

From there a photographic foray into the nearby antiques market; another plethora of delight before the buying of the Christmas tree.

 Far too early in my opinion, but considering that last year's search entailed a 100 mile round trip to find what seemed like the last Christmas tree in the land it was deemed necessary that we should plan earlier this year. So, a tree was chosen and again dispatched to the shed (with the beer) until a more sensible time for putting it up i.e. Christmas Eve!



Sunday, and another photographic wander into town and to a lovely little coffee shop we've just discovered. Coffee and cakes set us up for the battle of the Christmas shopping madness.

The comfortable chairs set me to looking for Australian coffee

An avalanche of words

Things have been hectic and so I've not had the chance to post for a while. It’s not that I haven’t been typing; the reality is that thousands of words have travelled from my keyboard to screen in the last week. Not my words alas, but those transcribed from recordings of interviews, seminars and lectures that I have been typing up for work. So, my head is awash with snippets from other people’s lives, opinions and lively, enthusiastic discussion from the seminar room and, in addition, I've learnt about the intricacies of  Much ado about nothing. 

Leighton Moss - Static - things that don't fly off

Yummy!

Though a degree of patience is required methinks.

Leighton Moss

An outing to the RSPB reserve at Leighton Moss on Saturday, a glorious day for us to attempt to hone our bird watching skills. First stop however, the coffee shop in order to gather our strength to make attempts to mingle in with the experts. We don't need giant L plates on our backs, our junior status as budding birders is evident from our lack of state of the art and enormous equipment; cameras and spotting scopes with lenses so large that we would require sherpas if we were to cope. Some of the camoflauged equipment toted around looks as if it comes with its own built in hide and tea making facilities. 

After coffee we make off to the feeder area. A great spot for children, and fantastic for us as we can learn by osmosis as birds at the feeders are identified by knowledgeable parents. This experience can become heightened when rather large rats encroach on the rejected seeds tossed out by the birds. Though yesterday, no rats, just some rather self satisfied looking pheasants and ducks scrabbling about.

Then onwards to one of the many hides in the reserve and a slow meander through trees and a glimpse of a coal tit.

Wandering along the reed beds as the camera shy bittern totally eluded us, a robin willing to pose and, importantly, sit still, came to the rescue.

Into a hide and a quick recce to determine the best bench for least disturbance. Finding one next to a window already open is always a plus, otherwise you risk crashing the hinged window at that crucial moment when some exceedingly rare bird is being watched by those aficionados with the mega lenses. (Oh... and do remember to switch that mobile phone off....)

Ideally, it is best to have the place to yourself, that way you can misidentify birds with aplomb and bring out your I Spy Birds book without fear of derision.

I think my Dad would have been a blogger

I spent the weekend at my mother's and during the course of conversation and reminiscences about my father who died nearly 11 years ago she gave me some of his notebooks.

My Dad was a great one for notebooks; I remember he always had a 'Commonplace book' on the go which he would fill with all manner of information and trivia. He was a very keen cross stitcher and was always on the look out for pithy sayings and  aphorisms to use in the samplers he made.

He had a love of words, their derivations and meanings and enjoyed puns, and had a wicked sense of humour enjoying those that might have slightly risque connotations. But he also collected a huge variety of bits and pieces, be it tombstone epitaphs, names of plants, small ads which hadn't been properly proof read,  reminders about a piece of music he had heard on the radio, recipes, dates of friend's birthdays (these he would have transferred into his 'Birthday book' which he would later then use to amaze said friends when they had a birthday - 'but how did you know that?' they would say, little knowing that they had let slip in a previous conversation of when their birthday was and that he had squirrelled away for later use!

There is a mine of information there, each page giving some idea of my father's rather idiosyncratic nature as he flitted about from one thing to another. He was a great one for starting stuff. Often he had lots of pieces of cross stitch not quite finished as in his enthusiasm he had seen another project to start. Similarly with his arts projects, my long suffering mother coped with a lot of clearing up from his forays into decorating blown hens's eggs for Easter or with his experiments with clay. Somehow he always managed to create a lovely end product but with huge amounts of mess in the creation which he wasn't quite so enthusiastic about clearing up!

I am sure he would have taken on the challenge of the computer and created his commonplace blog, filling the posts with the plethora of information that caught his fancy.

The other books I came back with were little sketch books. He invariably carried one in his pocket which he would take out and draw in at any opportunity.

Waking up to a wonderful blue skied morning with the sun blazing on "our" building was such a change after all the drear of rain and grey of recent days and weeks.The idea was to go out for a bike ride, but this was thwarted by a fun run event. The thought of having to negotiate jolly joggers while cycling did not have much appeal so we decided to go for a walk along the river and canal.

Autumn was reflected in the water and the colours of leaves were amazing, though the rather delapidated view point provided as much photographic entertainment as the views.





A slow meander up to the aqueduct and a photographic foray underneath to try and capture stalactites in the making as water dripped, but never at the right click of the camera button.

Then onwards and upwards onto the canal towpath and a leisurely walk into town, stopping off for a drink before wending our way home.

Bike ride to Halton

Yesterday, finally, the weather allowed a bike ride on rusty steed. My bike computer informed me I covered 10.7 miles averaging 9.3mph,  though the read out of maximum speed of 75.9 mph leaves me wondering just how accurate it all is, unless, of course, I entered into some random quantum universe en route.

It's always good going to Halton as there is the welcome knowledge that a spicy bean burger and mug of tea  can be enjoyed together with the view over the Lune.

I always stop on the bridge in the hope that I will see the kingfisher I first saw on my first foray on this route. Alas this time, no sighting though I did see and hear two skeins of geese pass overhead and en route passed three or four goldfinches (a charmlet?)


Spiders had been busy between the metal work of the bridge but the intricacy of the design weaved into the autumn reflections behind could not be captured.

The knock on effect of blogging

A comment on today's picture on Happenstance  set me off on a Google search to find out what this glass is called.

Glass blocks apparently.










From there I was led on the trail to the Maison de Verre in Paris,

to the Crown fountain in Chicago.

and to the  Hermes store in Tokyo.

A meander of knowledge across the world.

Time travel

A visit recently to an antiques centre begged the questions of where all the sundry stuff had come from, and possibly more puzzling, where would much of it end up. Who buys this stuff? Are there people out there squirrelling away in the hope that minimalism and decluttering will become things of the past?

Kendal museum

On the way home we stopped off in Kendal and paid a second visit to the museum. A strange combination of old style museum with sad, moth eaten stuffed animals, birds' egg collections together with a more modern outlook to museum display.

Spark Bridge

Gas meter relocation and associated garden rearrangement spurred us to leave a day early for a break in the Lake District. A last minute booking enabled us to have three nights instead of two away. This last minute booking proved a better venue than the second, though finding it challenged both our senses of direction (and my sense of humour apparently!).

A fantastic find was the Threlkeld quarry and mining museum.