Friday 29 May 2009

Summer's afternoon

After the dismal weather of Wednesday and the slightly uncertain weather of Thursday, Summer made a comeback this afternoon.

I spent a happy hour or so sharing the garden with assorted wildlife (domestic and wild) enjoying the sunshine and taking a dose of Vitamin D (well that is my excuse, anyway).

Big fat pigeon waiting for some lunch

Some of the smaller birds enjoy their lunch

A frog sits in the shade of the frog pond

A squirrel stops for lunch on the lawn furniture

Bumble-bee gathering nectar

Neighbour's cat keeps an eye on proceedings!

Well, not all of the local birds came down to join in!

Monday 25 May 2009

Frog Chorus

"Old Croaker" as he has become known has been sitting amongst the reeds and lily pads in the fish pond calling out for all his amphibian friends. Yesterday evening I found a whole heap of clichés as there were several frogs sat on lily pads... I suppose that they are clichés for a reason!

"Dum-dum-dum.... we all stand together"


My little piranhas!

The shoal of fish in the pond seem to love the sunny weather, swimming around in little shoals doing fishy things... until they hear my voice at which point they all congregate near the side of the pond to wait for dinner, whereupon the water bubbles with snapping jaws... just like a bunch of piranhas!

Awards

My chaotic busy week last week kept me from wandering the web much and my lazy sleepy weekend meant that I have been remiss in my blogging the last week or so.

First some awards, many apologies (again) that is taken me so long to get around to this!

From Herrad:


In turn I award this to:


And from Amelia:


In turn this award goes to:

Choosing only ten blogs was pretty hard work! I hope you'll visit some of my favourite reads.

Sunday 17 May 2009

Eurovision

Last night exponents of good taste and music... switched channels. Yes, it was that time of year again... the Eurovision. Actually that isn't fair, the music was mostly pretty good... and for a change even the UK had a good entry which actually got points and never looked in danger of the dreaded 'null points'.

The show in Moscow certainly was a good spectacle, and the loss of Terry Wogan commentating was covered very ably by Graham Norton - who managed just the right mix of irony and confusion.

The new system this year of half juding panel and half phone in vote seemed to achieve the end to which it had been instigated, that is the end of the geographic 'block voting'. The winners were a happy pop song from Norway... although it was somewhat dissapointing that there was no real 'novelty' act this year.

Monday 11 May 2009

Thievery!

This afternoon I was disturbed to receive an automated call purporting to be from my bank. I don't trust people that call me when I haven't called them, and always hang up on them and call them back. So, I tried to hang up the call (it kept itself connected anyway) and then eventually rang my bank. Ah yes, if it was Fraud Prevention that had called me I was told (after much button pushing and waiting) then that is a different number.

So I called a different number. Yes, it turned out; the call had originated with them. They had declined a payment on my account of over £1,000. They wanted to check if I had made this payment. No I told them. I'm not likely to be spending such a large portion of my monthly wages in one transaction. So, criminals had somehow managed to get hold of my card details. It puzzles me as to how. The new frugal regime means that I hardly ever use the card either in a shop or over the internet.

Rather irritatingly I've now had to cancel the card, and it will be 3-5 days before I get a new one. Bring back cheque books... cheque books and cash. I don't trust all this chip-and-pin nonsense. All I can say is thank goodness for my bank and their utter vigilance. Now I suppose I'll have to get a statement and make sure there aren't any other dodgy transactions. What a complete nuisance... the criminal justice system in most of the world today has a lot to answer for.

Early morning activity

I was already awake at ten past eight this morning when I heard a knock at the front door (why will nobody ring the damn bell?). Thinking it was probably the postman I made haste down the stairs to answer the door. To my surprise it was not the postman with today's mail but rather an officer of the law!

The policeman asked me if I knew who owned the silver VW parked in the street (such a strange assumption to think that everyone can identify car by make or model). Yes I told him, it belongs to some neighbours several doors down on this side of the street... although I couldn't be certain of which house exactly. Yes, but, the policeman pointed out, there were two silver VWs. Ah well, I don't know then, I had to admit. I left him to his investigations... I heard him ring our neighbour's bell (yes, see that is what doorbells are for!).

Sometime later out of curiousity I looked out of the Pink Room window, the police car was still parked over the road. As I watched however, a large flat bed truck drew up (and blocked the street). It proceeded to load the offending car onto the truck. It would appear that the car in question had been parked across the driveway of number 5 (or maybe number 7). Nice to know there is remedy apart from writing notes and sticking them under the windscreen.

The truck left with the car on board, followed by the police. What particularly amused me about th entire incident was that the car was removed for parking over a driveway... whilst all of this was going on the police car itself had stopped on the opposite side of the road... in front of two driveways - even though there was a bay free on this side of the road. Perhaps that bay was not free when they arrived? I'm increasingly thinking that we should rent out our off street parking space when we aren't using it!

Saturday 9 May 2009

Strange Internet Behaviour

Every so often strange little 'easter eggs' appear on web sites. Are the developers testing their skills or just amusing themselves? Several friends alerted me to this one on Facebook.

1) Scroll to the bottom of your Facebook page. 2) On the bottom left corner, click English: UK (or whatever you're set to). 3) When the language selection appears, click English: Pirate

Friday 8 May 2009

Skywatch Friday (11)


My favourite Skywatch view... the ever changing sky over Canary Wharf

Wednesday 6 May 2009

Vroom!

Today was the grand opening of the new Ferrari store on Regents Street. I missed the event (which was apparently the legend that is Kimi Raikkonen) - but I did get to see some beautiful cars parked up in Conduit Street just round the corner.

Saturday 2 May 2009

All the little fish

 
Hard to believe that we were worried that the heron had eaten all our fish! Conservative estimates are around sixty fish of various sizes and colours (although no all gold fish). This is feeding time at the zoo - the water literally boils as the fish do their best to impersonate hungry piranhas!

Friday 1 May 2009

Spotted this week


The good thing about being a woman in a man's world (yes, the construction industry is sill a man's world) is that you get your own personal toilet when you are on site. My site visit on Wednesday found a delightful (very clean) toilet with the sign above written on the door. A long way from my first experience of a site toilet which was something like you'd expect to find at a music festival... and about as clean.


I take the yellow sign spotted on the main road near my house to mean that Thames Water are nearly finished 'replacing London's Victorian water mains' in the Charlton area. I'd like to think that the Council wouldn't waste time reconstructing the carriageway if they were going to dig it up again. Mind you, they did resurface our road about six months before Thames Water dug it up, so you never can tell.

Skywatch Friday (10)


Not the best quality photo (taken with my phone not my camera) but I had to have this shot of the sun going down behind Canary Wharf almost hidden behind a rather dramatic cloud.