Mobile phones are wonderful

And not just for making calls. (Click on a picture for a full size version.)

Note: this is a promotional exercise to convince Andrew that he should get a mobile phone.

It's an ancient Nokia 6230, candy bar sized. It's always with me. Saturday 9th September, Ceppy and I went out walking with friends. No phone calls - what sort of walk would that have been? But I did take two snaps with its silly little camera. One of them is very impressive despite its poor technical quality. Can I say that myself? Anyway, it is now my desktop background - and I'm not saying that because I am scared she will hit me otherwise! Ouch! ouch!!

And mobile phones are wonderful because they are always at hand, robust, reliable, ready to point and shoot. I know these would have been much better pictures from a proper camera - but the chances to capture moments of beauty for ever, how often do they pop up?

My wife has caught the bug...

and started her own blog: Topsail

as in most things she is much better at it than me!

Second day of no coff zzz zzz zzzzzzz....

Coffee withdrawal

I began to feel a bit jittery so today I started one of my periodic sessions without caffeine. No tea, no coffee, zzzzz, zzzz, zzzzz.....

Uh!! What was that? What did you say?

My active desktop.

The virtual one that is. Especially for Ann - she wants to know about the weather. Along the bottom you see four active desktop items. They all come from the Met Office web site. (In case you are new to blogger you can click on the picture to display a larger version)

How to create them?

The slow, methodical, "let's understand what we are doing" way:

Right click on your desktop, choose Properties/desktop/customize desktop/web then New.

Create new desktop items with the following URLs:
http://www.meto.gov.uk/datafiles/flat3ani.gif, http://www.meto.gov.uk/datafiles/composite2.gif, http://www.metoffice.com/satpics/latest_uk_vis.jpg,
http://www.meto.gov.uk/satpics/latest_vis.jpg

The quick and cheap way:
Right click on a link above and "open in new window". Right click on the picture that appears. Choose "Set as desktop item". Bingo! Note: you can do this with any picture from any web page.

When you have gone through all those you will find four small windows on your deskop. That is they are on your desktop, but are behind all the icons and other things. Move the mouse over one of the windows, near its top edge, and a ghostly title bar appears - use it to drag the little window somewhere convenient. Move the mouse to an edge of the little window and resize it to your desires.

Of course that tiny little window is not a lot of use so move the mouse near its top edge again and see four icons, the down arrow at the left edge and three others at the right hand side of the title bar: Counting from the left number two is best - it covers your desktop with the picture. Number one gives you a list of options - "make available offline" is good, as is "Synchronize" (Number three will seriously mess your desktop as it pushes all the icons around.)

When you cover the desktop like this you can get it back by moving the mouse to the top right hand side of the screen where you will see the little icons appear again. Choose the third from the right to shrink it back to the small window. You will then see your normal desktop background picture again. (You can see my background picture described here!)

The Met Office satellite pictures are updated every hour. You can either set a schedule to refresh them automatically (number one icon, synchronize/setup/scheduled) or just right click anywhere on your desktop and select "Refresh" when you want to see the latest.

Read more about active desktops at Microsoft.

Kate's Book Blog: Andrew O'Hagan on Robert Burns

Kate's Book Blog: Andrew O'Hagan on Robert Burns

These reflections on Burns are so close to my experience of learning to love him that they are well worth repeating:

"I ... fell in love, not only with the mind-warpingly beautiful lines in those poems, but with him - his life and his voice and his spirit travelling through time."

O'Hagan learned Burns' rythms by "typing his words"; for me it is singing his songs (in the car, alone) or in our social evenings.

Lately, learning to play the tunes on the tin-whistle evokes something very deep.

The warehouse at Burscough at twilight

This was taken in late June on a walk with friends. It wasn't smoke from the chimney but a jet trail across the sky that just happened to coincide with the chimney stack.

Why so late posting this? I just "happened" across the picture after installing Picasa - now at last I can get to grips with my digital picture collection. If only it could furtle round in my room and scan the several thousand 35mm colour slides I took over the last 30 years... Still, it's a handy little utility.

The Skylark flies at last!!

Skylark Fine Art
At last! Janet has launched the web site that I have been working on over the last six months. It is a shop and gallery for prints that she wants to sell. Some by herself, others by her father and more to come.

She has worked hard to make it look terrific (so have I) and it works on just about everything except the dreaded IE5 for Mac.

Take a look, and if you really enjoy good pictures, make sure you switch your browser to work in full screen mode - most likely you do that by pressing the F11 key. Pressing it again will take you back to normal mode.

Enjoy - and buy one or two for Christmas presents.

Brunch on Hampstead Heath

there we were, Caroline, Ruth, Ian, Viv and me. From 11am till 3:30pm - the longest brunch I have ever had. In the patio restaurant at Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath. At times it rained, at times it shone brightly. When it rained we sort of managed under the table parasols.

Conversation was wide ranging - life in South Africa (Ian is South African and Ruth spent a few months there on her gap year learning to sail). The law (both Caroline and Ruth, our daughter, are trainee lawyers and Ian's father is a judge!), finding houses and the right sort of place to live (Viv is moving back to London). Lots more too but I have forgotten it all as I didn't write it down at the time.

Coffee was never ending - thanks to the very variable weather the restaurant was not busy so refills were easily obtained. Though why they should cost so much is a mystery.

Vince Lucker's birthday

.
Vince's birthday - Roger, Vince, Andrew, Viv and I had an evening out in Southport. A pleasant walk along the pier. We watched the BMX cyclists in the skateboard park, walked the pier again, bought bags of chips and disgusting ice-cream, discussed restaurants, bumped into Irene and Con, and failed spectacularly to find somewhere to have coffee. We tried to order hot drinks in the sitting room/lobby area of a swish hotel but were looked at as though strangers from outer space.

Eventually we found an interesting mixed tapas and turkish (mezze) bar and had a large selection, lots of delicious coffee (mostly decaffinated) and a birthday cake with candles.

Happy birthday Vince!

Red-haired, silver-tongued, Aunt Flo

This is Scott. He is my first cousin twice removed. This was our first meeting. I taught him how to catch a ball ("keep your eye on the ball!") The big shadow is me.

It was the occasion of Aunt Flo's wake at her son Richard's house. Richard is my cousin and the grandfather of Scott. Aunt Flo died aged 85 two weeks ago and her funeral was today.

While visiting my parents in late January I had met her again after a fifteen year absence. That was a difficult time of my life and I was a long way through writing a big poem about the events surrounding me and the effects they were having. The poem is a diary of sorts called "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. 30 January to 5 Feb 2006. " and was written while it was happening - on those days.

This is from the chapter "Sunday: honesty after the food poisoning", a small part of the poem relates my first meeting with Aunt Flo after so long apart:

"The black and white
on the page
Interrupt the smooth flow
of space and time
and create
voices-—

Longer thoughts slow echoing voices

Auntie Flo in hospital
Dad’s older sister
in her youth I adored her with flaming red hair
and a musical low pitched voice
with silvery tinkling overtones
strong Norfolk schoolmistress accent

Now eighty-five near blind, golden gray with patches still of red
we recognised each other after fifteen years apart
this poem I related the miracle of voices
pushing their own way in
the place of her voice in my childhood still the same

She blushed bright pink and flustered
hands fluttering over her face
and was very pleased

Voices memories heartbroken souls all know
how soon after wakening
the ache returns
meters the pain tells us how far there is to go."

I saw her several times after that but she quickly deteriorated and lost her ability to speak or communicate. Indeed the last time I visited in the Wisbech care home, though out of bed, she did not wake up at all.

This is a picture of her in hospital taken on 11th February - see the red still in her hair.

In memory of Florence Maud Simmons, née Hite, born 8th November 1920, died 29th June 2006.

Antony Gormley's "Another Place"

On a balmy evening, Sunday 2nd July: another of many visits to this brilliant installation. It was almost low tide so everything was visible.

But look at the photo! what has gone wrong? Apart from me not being in it :-(

Could we win a prize for "Another Yawn"?

See more at the Sefton Coast web site and evocative pictures of the installation elsewhere on Antony Gormley's own site.

If you plan on visiting - and you should do so soon because the installation is not permanent - then you might want to check on the tide times. You can find tidal data at the excellent NTSLF web site run by the University of Liverpool. It is good to visit at various stages of the tide.

Two impractical spiky things

Here's a hedgehog I met on the path on the way home from the Dome one evening. I don't think it was very well so I pushed it into the hedge.


And here is a motorbike, can only be described as "gothic" that we met at the Ship Inn at Burscough. It had the same spiky effect on me as the hedgehog - but I didn't push this into the hedge. The handgrips and everything except the seat seemed to be made of chromed steel. As for the skull on the gearbox case - ugh! It is a Big Bear Chopper and not to be recommended if your relatives or friends are faint-hearted.

Bob Glover's headstone

Here is Bob's headstone. Welsh slate: with a natural cut. Hand lettered and carved by Teucer Wilson. It is very attractive and quite fitting to Bob. I helped lower it into the hole.

The engraved picture is a copy of the rose from Bob's lute, a mediaeval design.

About twenty people turned up on this sunny day to help erect it and put flowers on the grave. Nina seemed quite pleased.

Ho-Hum birthday blues

Mum's birthday tomorrow - no point sending her anything except a card. Anything else she will forget as soon as it arrives. At least a card on the table with our names in big writing will be something she can remember.

And now it's time to walk up the hill to St Michael and All Angels, the church in Dalton. Bob Glover, a friend of around 22 years was buried there last year and today his headstone is being erected, at an auspicious time.

On Saturday, at 10 am I went there with some other friends to dig the hole for it. An enjoyable morning and I hope that today will have the same atmosphere.