Such a wonderful day, i had to sit down after realising it was 16:15hrs and I hadn't complained, about anything!
Need a stiff drink— oh wait, i've stopped drinking...
Bloody binge drinking alcoholics ruining everything. Throwing up in gutters, in bins on you. If they can't handle their alcohol, they should go back to liquor drinking finishing school and start building up to teaspoon sized...
Ah yes the headline grabbing kicker, let met explain.
35% is how much the cost of a good nights sleep has increased by, if you’re dependent on a steady supply of earplugs to keep 22hr noise at bay. So sadly nothing about hotel chains, or the H1 virus affecting the supply of geese or ducks, mortgages or rpi basket which contains most of the things lots of people don’t actually buy, but the simple local supply of earplugs.
Yes that stalwart mainstay of many noise challenged whingers has increased in price by a whopping 35%, in one foul swoop, to an outrageous £2.29p. Which means a years supply has increased from £87.88 to £118.64p. Inflation busting indeed.
A years supply?
Those living in noise blighted environs will know exactly what it is I’m muttering about. The sort of place where no matter the time of morning, afternoon, evening, or night — strangely though excluding christmas day, the noise is sufficient to keep your nerves on permanent 
So what should the headline kicker actually say?
Earplug inflation in a pharmacy somewhere in the uk’s sw2 postal area, is up by 35%. As true and accurate as that is, it just doesn’t have the same bite.
One day you get into a conversation with a complete stranger, and in passing mention that you believe there could be/has been/is/will be, life elsewhere in this universe; life that exists on at least one other planet circling amongst the trillions of stars, within the billions of galaxies expanding ever outwards, in this marvellous expanse of wonder we love to call home; then a high percentage of those complete strangers — on this particular spinning ball of blue-green luminescence which has (over the eons) contained a morass of life, will laugh at you and walk away shaking their heads in disbelief, wondering how anyone could be so foolish.
Very strange.
Before you dismiss their short-sightedness (or my stupid naivety) however, ask as many people as you feel comfortable asking, how many of them wholeheartedly believe in god(s), angels, demons, the devil, a higher force, a lower force or that crock with a pot of gold. Then, once they nod or shout to the rafters that they indeed do believe, ask them how many times they have seen or heard or had two-way communication with 100% certainty, hand on heart, “yes it was” said entity!
If they don’t hesitate before hitting the affirmative, use that special speed-dial number for the sanatorium and watch as their surprise proudly transfigures into spluttering disbelief as they’re carted off for a good long cooling down stretch.
But with potential planets (whether habitable for us or not) probably numbering in the billions, I think there is something out there, whether at the mindless microbial level or the highly millions-of-years-more-advanced-than-us level and we’re actually in a part of the universe they’ve penned off and designated as a zoo; which, for some bizarre reason, is the one idea which fills me with the sort of desire that would have me wheeled off for my own safety, as I start to roll around banging on the floor in hysterics.
Perhaps if more of us looked up at a clear night-time sky and managed to see the spectacular star strewn ribbon of stars that is our own milky-way backyard, maybe then we’d have a greater appreciation that there is more to experience, more to see, more to positively hope for than our normal isolistic, inwardly gazing, navel-centric point of view, usually allows!
If you were party to a nasty vicious attack on your home, your property, your loved ones and you had the money, wouldn’t you go as far as possible to not only find out who perpetuated the crime, but “why?” Then fall savagely onto the next stage finding out what you could have done to prevent it and take action to the fullest extent ensuring it would never ever happen again?
Of course you would.
So you would have have thought that a government would turn heaven and earth (I can see by that glazed expression starting to fog your forehead that you know where this is going), spend huge sums of money finding out exactly what went wrong and doing all the other things an individual would do? Of course they would, except if that could expose to the light of day a potential dirty underside to 9/11.
Let me say again. The greatest act of terrorism ever to be perpetrated on the ‘land of liberty, the land of the free’, merited only $15 million for an open and shut enquiry.
And, to add more petrol to the inferno (if any were needed), there has never in the entire history of recorded catastrophes, with so many mangled bits of wreckage and twisted pieces just waiting to be minutely poured over; been such a rapid dispersal to smeltering plants around the globe, of as much evidence as this. In relative terms, it was quicker than a corpse been hoiked from a murder scene a second after the coroner’s arrived; in case the body decomposes to quickly. Tell that to people and you’ll generally be met with a blank look zipping from one part of their insides to the other, just waiting to connect to a spare none pre-programmed thought, before they roundly denounce you as an agent of all that’s unholy and in league with socialist scum just waiting to bring everyone down to the levels of animals, after you’ve had your wicked way with them! Which is just a little bit to harsh a reaction when all that’s required is full and frank openness. But as we’ve learned over centuries let alone decades, the terms “full”, “frank” and “government” don’t usually inhabit the same orbits.
What about the uk? We have more cctv’s dotted around taking videos and pictures than any other country on the planet — including the repressive, dictatorial ones. You would have thought with all that surveillance, as well as beat walkers, car drivers, bike riders, special constable dispensers that the crime detection and arrest figures would have made dixon of dock green spin like a dynamo with pride and terrorists arrested within a whisper of breathing a few molecules of c4. Strangely there’s been nothing of the sort. Even on the 6th may 2009 when a question in parliament was asked…
“Mr. Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) arrests, (b) prosecutions and(c) convictions have been made under the (i) Terrorism Act 2000 and (ii) Terrorism Act 2006 in each year since their implementation. [272196]”
the reply came back.
“Mr. Coaker: The information requested is not currently available…”
Which for a government so caught up with league tables, spin tables, finding the best day to camouflage the worst news, is akin to finding out that one of your ancient school diner ladies, really doesn’t know how to cook lumpity custard!
Because you know that if they had 100% cast-iron, irrefutable evidence, it would have been cawed from the apex of parliaments rafters about how wonderfully successful the many rafted citizen reducing anti-terrorism barrage measures have been. But it’s been somewhat silent on that general topic; either that or i have simply been looking in all the wrong pages.
So what about other measures?
There are now over 500,000 communication (phone and email) intercepts by various uk authorities on the country’s citizens every year, just in case some of those bad apples are thinking disturbing and disruptive thoughts before putting a brick through a window, or stoop to nicking (thefting) a chocolate bar (worth 50p) so forcing the heavies to spend £20,000 in costs, bringing the case to court!
People who diddle the welfare state out of £2,000 are fined and given a record (as they should), diddle over £10,000 and they're more likely to be clamped in irons for half a year if not longer and their assets seized — as they should be. But work in the city and cock something up in the name of trying to make a whopping profit, and not only are you more likely to keep your all-gotten gains (unless you really push the boat out and swindle for two-fingered billions), you'll be head-hunted to repeat the trick of bankrupting your company or at the very least working your way to a position of bringing the nation, the nation’s economy and if you can feasibly help it, the global financial system, crashing to the ground. If that fails, and you just don’t have what it takes, there's always a post in a quango waiting to be filled, so cushioning the hardship of the feral world outside.
In 2008, 1,125 people in the world were worth an estimated $4.4 trillion. Of those, the top 50 had 18% of all those lovely noughts, or just a bit over $792 billion (with the top 3 at about $114 billion). In comparison, the bottom 1,000,000,000 had a net worth of about $365 billion. Or, to put it another way, 1 billion people on the planet were (by 2008 market valuations) worth less than half the accumulated wealth of the worlds richest 50 people. Who said free markets don’t work? They’ve been working perfectly and doing the job they were meant to, for years.
And so, onto…
Hm, climate change! Does it really matter if we've caused it or we’re just helping along a natural process? At the end of the day we'll still be affected. We'll still need some effective way to alleviate effect the entire gamut of change will have. How many of us — apart from the tin-foilers — have food to last more than a week, who have enough food to last for years, let alone months?
When transportation systems, routes, food production areas, are severely disrupted or even 
The arctic is acidifying and is now (according to estimates from the university of alaska) 25% more acidic than 300 years ago, as coastal living inuits start abandoning villages as their land transforms into mushifrost.
Things are happening.
Indeed things always happen, it just depends on the rate of change. With this (so far) not been on the scale of the fictional piece “the day after tomorrow”, which if things were to occur at that pace would — for a while anyway — have lasered all our attention; but drip-by-drip, all around the world, lots of record-breaking weathery events just keep on occurring. Whilst each and every minute of each and every passing day, we continue to generously pump more and more of the environment changing stuff into the atmosphere, worlds oceans and seas.
Yes things are changing, let’s hope our ability to adapt changes just as swiftly, so avoiding a seamless calamity of homosapien proportions.
For those whose knowledge of science is stretched by the “mint in a coke bottle” experiment, believe whatever you want to believe, but always try to ascertain evidence on your physical plane that bears it out, bearing in mind that experiencing something outside of your cumulative experience will immediately be coloured by what you know, what you think you know, your beliefs, your mindset and even by what your peers believe.
How many of us are going to visit alaska over a twenty year period to monitor and see the results for ourselves? Or take out a trusty little chem-kit to test for changing ph levels of seawater, or even regularly monitor the air we breathe — freely flowing around our own back yards?
Maybe cod and haddock fish stocks aren't in major decline after all and we can continue fishing them like there is no tomorrow. I’d so prefer that scenario, as after trying pollock, i’d rather eat slices of old shoe leather that had remained mouldering at the bottom of a compost heap for an epoch; before having another bite of those chewy offerings.
Maybe buildings could incorporate tower high aquariums with 200m+ drops — full to the brim of lovely tasty fish, all ready for frying and eating — whilst acting as giant recycling & solar filtration facilities.
It seems the only other living things which appear to be adapting and contentedly thriving (from reports and statements), are seagulls, jellyfish, cockroaches, mice, rats, feral cats, feral dogs, mrsa, e-coli, salmonella, feral children and lastly cows, pigs, chickens or sheep because we eat or use them for food or clothing.
Many of us have forgotten that there really is more to life than the treadmill of the headlines. We've been so successfully conditioned into what to believe that the treadmill is the only thing many of us accept as real, and will even willingly give our lives for.
When the last person on the planet becomes superfluous to employability, as machines capable of doing everything take over; what alternative will there be for the 9+ billion inhabitants of bipedal earth caught on the endless cusp of a commercial, political, go-getting, “work is your life” productivity mantra; when the last meaningful jigsaw of hour grabbing necessity is finally handed over to never-weary, 100% self-repairing, bio-mechanical ai’s, leaving the masses with nothing more concrete than a life of dreamful idleness; what will become of the species?
Easy, nannybot will not only take care of little jill & jo — without molesting them, but also look after the needs and welfare of grandpa jack & grandma josephine, whilst making dinner, vacuuming, ensuring the fridge is fully stocked, all home repairs don— damn those jetsons!
It’s been a while since last I put thought to fingers and onto keyboard, the realm of sleep kept accosting me and telling me it’s a good thing to enjoy, that and you’ll miss the utter madness that supposedly passes for city living.
It would have been wonderful to write and mean that, instead it’s been a nightmare of wakefulness tangoing with the latest heavy chemical induced beats, with bus drivers who seem to think it’s a good job to test how loud their horns are whilst revving their engines as they’ve obviously just started their shift after just watching saint clarky. Yes not impressed with the academy, or arriva bus drivers or arriva or tfl for that matter, in the slightest.
But now, at this precise moment i’m more sanguine, slightly less heated than normal, my blood pressure back down to only imminently-dangerous levels, i’ve even managed to put finishing touches to a slightly longer, more rambling bit of text that’ll be popping up later.
Till then, keep chuckling.
Lots of blundering ‘ofs’ with rheumy eyes, triple-calcified joints, and a short-sightedness that brings a whole new term to dystopic-malfunctioning.
Ofgem, that toothless parrot of quangos squawks again, and in response energy companies do their usual two fingered dance.
Good to see markets are working.
And a whole new range is born with the strap-line, "made, produced, delivered and consumed, free* of carbon - guaranteed!"
Research conducted by martin evans and lewis williams in the department of social policy and social work at the university of oxford that compares the effects of taxes & benefits over time from 1979, 1997 and 2008, has concluded that the rich are indeed richer, the middle class about the same, and the poor even with relatively (although not special) taken into consideration, poorer in 2008.
A summary can be viewed here.
Tired of having shows trailed for new season airings, only to see that the "big-tits" have decided in their usual way that people in a different country/continent can't watch, as they’re still waiting for the electronic transfer from the highest bidder there to flag up.
It’s so reminiscent of that region 0-5 thing that handicapped (for two weeks) dvd players, that worked out so well. Sort of telling people for years that “of course dvd’s cost $20 to produce, it’s an expensive process.” Yes, expensive on their livers.
Have they learnt? Of course not, but despite the “trillions” they're losing every year due to global piracy and talent draining from the industry, they still have enough billions to spend on films, hundreds of millions on star salaries, have the most lavish parties, awards, hire teams of lawyers, teams of judges, even teams of politicians - scrub that last bit, as we know anything over 1,000 (put your denomination here) is enough to start rubbing that particular shaft of political jiggery-pokery.
So as they still decide that we can watch when they feel we can, or listen to things only when they deem fit, I and I'm sure many others have decided that once that "cannot be viewed or listened to in your country" caption pops up, then on the block list it goes.
"Aren't you just cutting off your nose to spite your face," I hear you ask.
If it's working for the media-tits then there must be something to it.
So when not wasting my time no longer listening or watching much, where does it all go....
Now where have i mislaid my billions?
Why are we so happy in raising the flag of 'cracy, when all of them are happy allowing billions to be wasted on the growing, wastage and destruction of food, when billions in the world are starving?
Perhaps the fbi director should look into the great big rendition waving, abuse documented, water-boarding beams that infested the denying eyes and ears of some of his collegial fellow organisations before moaning that not every one subscribes to his "execute them regardless" brand of humanity.
Maybe the decision did have something to do with trade, or maybe, just maybe it was nothing more than a humanitarian gesture to a dying man who may have been the murderer of so many, if the latter then at least there are candles of hope left in the gathering dark after all.
You kill me, my relatives kill you, everyone hates everyone until the end of time. A good thing that mentality's been working so well for the middle-east.
If we're supposed to be so much better, why is it so easy to stoop so low?
"Boss its SP!"
"Crap, what does she want?"
"She's got a truckload of hooker moms carrying placards. One of them's even got one saying 'no to death pumps'."
"No, to what?"
"No to death pumps."
"Don't you mean death camps?"
"No, apparently her pumps are really killing her, and it's all your fault!"
"Let the poor go to the dogs!"
"Sorry sir, but the dogs have already eaten the poor."
"Well let dogs have the middle classes and once they've finished with them, we can take back their lands. The ones we haven't bankrupted!"
"Sorry sir, but the middle classes are now the new poor."
"Well, what do you want?"
"As all your assets chased the derivatives market - for the high factor return Sir, I'm here to give you to the dogs."
Why, with all that’s sane are we told that once more we will be gouged, but as it happens to be aimed towards the wonderful rainbow of reducing greenhouse gases by embracing renewable boundless sources; we’re to accept it – or else!
Tax airline fuel. That might help levelling out the carbon expenditure playing field; adding that little bit extra to the greenhouse-gases-plant-a-tree-reduction pot.
Subsidise self-generation by having long term (and that's greater than four years for politicians and one year for bankers) plans:
All those billions made by energy companies could instead be used by politicians to ensure their constituents (all of them) have life's which are contentedly happy, enjoyably fulfilled and fulsomely long. Although after experiencing ‘hi-jinks’ on the way home from a good cinematic experience - but they’re poor kids so relabelled ‘ferals’, some would probably call for life shortening not extending.
Instead of spending trillions on armaments, governments could spend trillions on radically improving the education, the health, the well-being of their citizens. Ensuring "everyone" is fed, educated, and housed; there'd be no need to see people on street corners homeless. But that, no doubt, to the many unadulterated believers out there could be deemed to be the most cardinal of sins - socialism! Gasp, horror, shock. Where is that soft spot waiting to catch me should I fall! Well if that's so, so be it. Because unfettered capitalism's gotten us precisely where exactly?
But it's neither socialism nor communism because they too have proven to be busted flushes – those leading the charge strangely having a remarkably materially contented lives whilst the many governed queued for hours for loafs of mouldy bread, wizened carrots and if it happened to be their lucky day a slightly moist dried prune. All 'isms' have proved wanting, as all ‘isms’ failed.
Now that little rant’s over, back to solar pains.
We should be well beyond that. Most major cities - within seven years - should be able to produce as much energy as they consume, if it’s done correctly they could even be net exporters of energy. 30%+ food sufficiency - that'd help with jobs, cut down debt and make people feel more communal without the need to emigrate or immigrate. Already companies around the world, have developed or close to independently developing thin film solar modules and constantly improving on the 10% conversion factor; which although poor is, considering the short time in production still quite a feat, which can only get better especially with current prices 30% cheaper than ordinary models in the wild.
After briefly hearing, whilst in the dozing position, about companies banding together to build solar power plants in the sahara which would provide all the power europe needed, my first thought was “what's taken you so long?” My second was, “oh really?” Then before i realised it, a timeline popped up.
Not long after a couple more thoughts drifted before finally deciding to coalesce. This then set me wondering how the spatial availability of flat-roofs would look like over London. So with the aid of google earth, and bits of shady green, a few ideas for further imagery dumped themselves into my cell.
Were to start? How much space? I quickly decided on a patch of london roof not to far away, drew a border with yellow lines & red squares and used that as my base roof.
The measurement for that particular patch (not forgetting this is done using a satellite imagery, dodgy mouse and googles earth measurement tool) came out to 103.9 meters, which - with some bad basic mathematics – gives a potential coverable area of around 860m².
I’m estimating 18 flats for this particular block. Namely three floors, each comprising of six flats.
So far, not to bad.
Before zooming out (and i’m sure that some clever person will write an algorithm that works out - in an instant, those areas which are flat or south-facing slanted roofs and not roads, nor parks, nor oceans, and create layers in either google or bing) we can see how many flat roofs are in the image by giving them a slight green tint, like…
Which brings the flat surface area of the roofs of a small number of properties to a little over 3,472.5m². If that 3,472m² was covered with panels of only 10% efficiency, it would provide about 138.88 kW/hr. My average daily usage per month (with washing machine, dishwasher, fridge, computer etc.,) is 4.6321 kW/day. Which means, that taking a potentially totally sunny blue-skied six hour period that the installation would be chugging away for, could provide 833.28 kW. Or, using my usage as a benchmark, the installation could sluice through enough power to juice 180 flats, let alone the miserly 72 which are indicated in the picture above. If, my sums are correct.
Things look even more amazing at a height of 488m,
at 805m,
at 1.63km,
and look at all those empty flat roofs, doing empty flat nothings, not even including slanted roofs with south facing exposures. Just imagine whether its water or electricity how much could be saved. But no, lets build really out of the way huge windmills at the cost of billions and not really bother about the estate immediately usable on our doorstep – well rooftops.
Then at 3.23km,
Finally way up and out there at the dizzying distance of 71.360km (or from here to calais), the little red dot is all that remains of those roof tops in the expanse that is greater london.
Just imagine how much energy could be generated and how much money saved by residents and businesses alike, if a 10th of those roofs had some sort of solar, wind or - if over westminster - hot air capture!
On a slightly different note, mid-july has now louched past, and all seven horse-chestnut saplings are still growing and growing strongly.
With a couple hopefully headed for open prairies over the next few weeks, all that’s now required is to divide and replant the remainder into individual pots; some gift wrapping and the perfect instant environmental present that provides years of conkers or roasted fun is only four short months away, unless the blight finally gets them.
The pak choi sliced top I saved and stuffed into water then soil, has brightly flowered (or bolted), and will hopefully produce some seeds since i undertook bee duty using a cocktail stick; and increase my self-sufficiency levels to a full 0.01% approx. Sadly the thyme twig (which can just be seen on the far left) seems to have mimicked the bonsai, turning into a dead dried twig, which will see the bin in a couple of weeks if its still minus growth shoots.
For those who find themselves in particular situations seemingly stuck, unable to put one step forward without retracting ten, it doesn’t last forever; nothing lasts forever!
So when this morning i found myself in an exceptionally foul mood, my thoughts alighted on a greg bear character from songs of earth & power - a damned good read. The one who sloughs off the nastiness bubbling through his being, onto as many of those susceptible all around him. This (with another missive waiting to fling itself from the wings) strangely lifted my sourness, leaving me in a slightly better mood after I whipped off a couple of emails in complaint.
Obviously, after three years living in an an area that has become disagreeable, its time to spread wings and soar to pastures that are new, relaxing, recuperative, relished by the conscience replacing dud batteries recharging the soul.
update 14:04 — perhaps a dose of hrt & laser precision probing might affect a similar rebalancing?
"Confess."
"Never."
"Confess!"
"You'll have to pull my eyes out first!"
"Eye puller. Where is that dammed eye-puller!"
"I am here, your great-superfluousness," the eye puller breathes, slithering from the shadows and causing both men in the cell to jump. "How can I help?"
"Don't pull my eyes out, I confess," the prisoner screams, shying away from the horror sliding into his field of vision, confronting all he held holy. "I confess!"
It's wonderful having friends in differing economic strata's, cultures, faiths… walks of life; as there’s a sundry of differing obsessions, afflictions, things strange and quirky that affects them (and so many others) that I can’t help, rofl (rolling on the(it used to be rotfl but the ‘t’ tends to be silent in its abbreviated form and not mentioned, except by tits) floor laughing).
From one who's idea of happiness is to be up at 6am and finish working around 9pm, to another who is unable to jam a giant foot anywhere, without it first passing – and usually at speed, through his mouth.
So it was interesting listening to the travails of one of them, whose current energy supplier - edf (one of so many megalothipsaurs), was transferring them from a pre-payment “isn’t that going down faster than it should” meter, to a normal everyday happily whirring away to itself unit, the next.
Easy!
The dawning age of computerisation promised paperless offices and a life of complex free ease! If they’d truly ever realised how things would have turned out, I wonder if they’d have smashed those initial transistors and chased the scientists out of town.
Every mechanic/engineer or, in todays five second buzz-wind, ‘customer presentable problem solver’; seems to be umbilically attached to a small electronic recorder come note-taker, especially when working for one of the aforementioned megas. This wonderful little device makes everything easy and straightforward. Ensuring every job is efficiently undertaken with laser smooth precision. Calls with queries to the mothership are made before, during and after installation. But in this current reality it firmly falls into the arena of comic cock-ups, and descends through the human half of the cybernetically twisted union into an epic fail.
But back to them.
Wishing to keep on top of things, they’ve gone down the path of automatically doing weekly readings, which are spreadsheet’d on and offline. So when they received a card requesting meter readings, it was with unbridled joy that they filled them in. Called. Only to find out that according to the computer, and rude representative, they apparently owed £500.
They assured the representative there must be some error, and that couldn't be the case. The representative assured them that was the case, as that is what computer said.
Not sure why but, images of little britain
Oh yes it does… Oh no it doesn’t…
But then, apparently, friends’ phone packed up and they had to reconnect. This time to a different representative. Who put them on hold.
Moments later the new representative was back on. Apparently, representative one had eventually gotten through and found out there was no debt.
I took a sip of tea.
“A what gesture,” my friend asked surprised. “Oh right, a goodwill gesture. You’ll credit my account, with one pound!”
Bubbling tea sputtered into my saucer. After which, despite my best efforts not to, I had to burst out laughing.
Well it's always nice to know what a big megalothipsaur thinks of its charges, when they have to admit to a right royal cock-up their end; and hence avoid.
Will friends’ change supplier?
Apparently, ohhhh yesssss!
Listening to some of the nonsense spouted by some of those who have watched Transformers 2, you'd think they were expecting to see something else.
For those who don't remember the premise of the Transformer cartoon series (and please feel free to correct me), if memory serves me correct its about;
a) a bunch of good robots, trying to defend/protect something/one from,
b) a bunch of bad nasty minded robots intent on domination.
Which - regardless how you skitter it, doesn’t really get beyond the series staple whilst faithfully hoisting aloft its spirit; a staple encompassing (c) bad robots trying to take something over, destroy something and (d) good robots trying to stop them. This invariably ended up in things been blown up and destroyed, seemingly with gleeful meaningless at regular and frequent intervals.
If they expected to see Transformabambi, or something really deep and meaningful, as I mentioned before, its (a) about a bunch of robots...
In a few months time many will and some wont be giving a hearty welcome to the new look tubbytory bench. Yes with as much experience as a newly formed winkytinky grasping after that bar of pure gold, you know they'll have rights and liberties at the forefront of their collective minds.
After they've checked the gold price, stock price and 2nd flipping house price. Laughing all the way with their newly found ex-new-labour-trough friends, and grategull fawning swanking city execs, to collect on their winnings from the accounts of sold-on-the-cheap high street casinos.
Aren't we back to burning bankers yet for plunging a few hundred million (global here) into the disquietude lap of impecunious?
Oh well, whilst we're at it, we might as well welcome in the age of the gnat.
At last, it’s been a while since i was actually there at the right time with a camera in hand; but this time, the camera was a couple of feet away when my eyes caught a sudden movement, an arrest?
Yes a possible arrest, with the guy appearing to be immobilised and one of the officers checking his hands every now and then. But then another car appeared soon after this photo was taken with four other officers, a total of eight for one guy who hadn’t even twitched in the minutes i was looking.
Obviously all was well as soon after the newly arrived departed, but not before some kids just - out of nappies, gave the departing officers some sort of grief. Birching’s too good for them. But, strange how my mood soon started to lift, I just need a nearby lighting strike from the gathering darkening clouds, then i’ll be really happy.
The seven horse-chestnuts are thriving, apart from one which might soon be sucking on ethereal sap over the next couple of weeks.
And, although i’m hoping that its just in hibernation – even though it’s summer, the bonsai lost its last leaf and is looking a bit sparse.
And then, blow me down, the weeing of screeching sirens brought me careering back for this final snap…
