Catching The Rain

Charity calendars

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Scilly’s Future calendar - seehttp://www.scillywebcam.com/calendar.htm

Here’s a quick Christmas present suggestion (from the king of festive shopping - not!). Charity calendars are not exactly new, after all the WI having been baring all for years and I now see that even a bunch of British female athletes have jumped on the bandwaggon with their own supposedly saucy version. But here’s something a bit different; something with real appeal and a unique, special touch.

I’m talking about the Scilly’s Future 2006 Calendar, being sold in aid of the St Mary’s playgroup.

For those who may not know, the Isles of Scilly is the name given to a small group of islands about 25 miles off Lands End, itself the south-west tip of mainland Britain. I was there for a couple of days in October, mainly visiting the main island of St Mary’s and the famous gardens in Tresco.

Anyway, the local playgroup came upon the idea of dressing up the kids in the ‘uniforms’ of their parents and photographing them at their place of work. So we find ourselves looking at tiny firemen, lifeboatmen, fishermen, artists, gardeners, and even the most wonderful 3- or 4-year-old land steward, complete with tweed jacket.

There’s only one catch to writing about all this, and that is that I can’t point you to a site where you can buy the calendar or even just see some of the pictures. Not as far as I know, anyway. I’ve even tried searching eBay. So now I’ll email the person listed as the designer for it and see if I can find out more, or at least get permission to reproduce the cover here to give you a flavour of what it’s all about. It’s far too good to be kept to just those who live on or have visited those lovely islands.

Update 1 December: I’ve just heard back from Jenny Nightingale, the designer of the calendar (it turns out she is an illustrator by trade, and a very talented one too) , and Francis Hosken, who took a lot of the pictures. There are only about a hundred calendars left, and you can get one for £8.50 inc p&p (UK). See Francis’s site at www.scillywebcam.com/calendar.htm for full details.

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Amusing signs

Danger, Cliff Edge (in case you hadn’t noticed!)

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There I was thinking somehow I was unique. So I’ve jumped on the blogging bandwaggon, I own a nice digital camera (and think I know how to use it), and I write such complete drivel - but everyone is doing that. No, I really thought my eclectic fascination with strange signs, particularly the ones with humerous connotations, was something unique to me. But how wrong could I be? A quick google search and I find I am, once again, just plain old mainstream - there’s this site, this site, and even a BBC web gallery of the blimin things.

But it won’t stop me collecting them when I see them, and sticking them in a gallery, even if I’m the only person who ever looks at them. Grrrrr.

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Yellow Crab Spider

Yellow crab spider catching a bee on field scabious

It has been so drab over the last few days that I have had to trawl through this year’s archives to find an image of interest. Back in late May we stopped by the roadside near the town of Sancerre in France. Seeing a bee perched on a field scabious I thought I would take some macro shots. The bee seemed remarkably still, and then I realised it had actually been caught by a crab spider. The first in this series can be found here.

You can find out more about crab spiders, and particularly the one native British species, on the excellent Arkive site.

Some more pictures of insects (OK, I appreciate spiders are not strictly insects) can be found in my insects photo gallery.

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Other people’s rants….

Second only to having a good rant yourself, reading other people’s rants is always uplifting.

The trials a tribulations of Disgruntled commuter provide just such a cathartic experience.

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Somerfield woes

My first blog rant is only a small one, but I guess the whole point of rants is that are all small really, they just don’t seem it at the time!

Don’t get me wrong, I like my local Somerfield store. They generally have lots of stock, by and large the staff are very friendly, and the highlight of it all is that they are usually very quiet, so no traffic jams in the aisles, and no horrendous queues at the checkouts.

As ever though, there’s just one member of staff who spoils it all. Last night I got to the checkout with just a small basket of bits and pieces. No friendly smile, just a vague grunt. Then she began (she being the 50-something, dyed-red haired ‘lady’ behind the checkout) what can only be described as a grab-beep-throw manoevre, so quick I was left hoping that some of the stuff, particularly the bottle of port, had actually not been entered into the till at all. No hope, as said bottle came flying down the slippery polished steel slope and crashing into the wall at the end, knocking everything in my already half-filled bag flying.

With a disgruntled ‘keep up’ sort of look (she certainly put the ‘grunt’ into ‘disgruntled’!) I was asked commanded to hand over my Savacard and Switch card, and then in a flash the next person’s shopping is flying through, the results being like a multi-vehicle pile-up on the motorway. And in amongst all this my switch card and receipt had been dumped down on the aforementioned polished metal slope making it near impossible to pick up. Part of me almost wished it was on a rubber conveyor belt running at breakneck speed, and there was a bonus prize if you managed to grab it without losing your fingers before it vanished under the serrated, razor-sharp metal edge at the end.

Now then, where was I? Don’t know. But I feel better.

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London Bloggers

London Bloggers is a seemingly simple site which allows people to list and promote their London-based blogs. Nothing remarkable there, but the real beauty is the way they have structured the site, based on the London tube map. If you’ve seen previous posts on this blog, or browsed through some of the photo galleries, you’ll have a fair idea that I’m based in West London - Hanwell W7 to be more precise. Click on the logo here and you’ll see other blog sites in and around Hanwell, Boston Manor & Northfields stations. Of course you can also choose any other station you like. Sweet.

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