Persistent

Bugger!

Something interesting happened to me today and I thought, HEY! that will make a great blog.
But now I have spent the evening watching Stardust and drinking a whole bottle of wine and I can't remember what it was.
Oh well...at least you lot are (possibly) as intrigued as I am now.
HeH!

I feel a conversion coming on...

In fact I have been converted.

For a while now I have been getting really tired of Windows. Having worked in senior IT roles I have seen the evolution on Windows from 3.0 to present day and along the way we have had some real disasters (think Millenium and now Vista)
I have seen Vista running its slow and clunky way on a few laptops and I have given up.
I am tired of virus threats
I am tired of high prices
I am really tired of my OS asking me if I really really want to do a thing and that it really needs my permission to do it thrice and so does my much needed anti virus and firewall.
And I am really realy really sicvk and tired of everyone telling me that I have to have Windows in order to survive.
SO....
For the past few days, in my loft a spare PC has been happily clunking away using Freespire. It runs all the drivers that my PC runs in Windows without having to go to special websites. It comes with Open Office. I use Mozilla Thunderbird and Firefox anyway so no problem there.
It is fast, it is efficiant, it has the same control as XP so it is very easy to use as my first step into a Linux based OS.
and IT IS FREE
I love it. I am going to put it on all but one PC up here and I don't thinkl that I will ever go back. If this proves to be a mistake  I will let you know, but for now it seems like a great Idea.

Three days, and I have not had to reboot once, I have not had a screen jam up, I have not had to wait ten minutes for a thing to close because it is argueing over resources with another thing.

Conversations at a Haagan Daas Ice Cream bar

"Would you like any nuts or sauce on this sir?"
"Possibly but before I do I need to ask you if I have a food/nut allergy?"
"Pardon"
"Do I have a food/nut allergy"
" I don't know sir"
"You don't know?"
"No"
"Then how can you help?"
"What?"
"Why did you want me to ask?"
" I don't want you to ask"
"Yes you do, you've put a sign here"

Broken!

It's no secret that I am your typical mid 40's overweight bloke. The diet has been going well and I have all but stopped the evening snacking and eat at mealtimes only.
But what has ben lacking is the excersise. I have been wanting to make use of the bikes that we got earlier, but dark nights a lack of reflective safety gear and the inability for my fat legs to pedal me out of trouble sort of put me off.
But today it wasn't raining, I have no children to watch while Rebecca is working and really no excuses, so I blew the tyres up and decided to do a gentle 5 mile round trip to Lynemouth and back. It's not much, but it costs less than a gym and gives me the opportunity to take some photo's. Which you also can't do at the gym, again, fat legs, getting out of trouble etc...
I noticed yesterday that they had knocked down Church farm which used to be on the way into the village. It's a shame, this place cpould do with an arts centre and Church Farm would have been excellent. But property developers...money...same old story.
All that is left now are the outbuildings (which probably wont last long) and the front gate which still bears the name.

Just a pile of bricks I thought, broken. And that sort of became the theme for photo's this morning.

Part of a Hawthrone hedge which has just been pushed aside by a vehicle of some sort. Broken.
I once read somewhere that there is an organisation that tries to protect ancient hedgerows as these used to be markers for lands and in some cases county boundries.
I wonder if they used to have arguments over whose job it was to trim them and if that is where the old idea of 'you can cut it back on your side but you have to give the cuttings back to the owner' thing came from. Hedges are prolific, a small county like Rutland could just become a tangle of fronds in a few years without a small army of pruners.
Anyway, this bush isn't getting up again. Perhaps in some corner of a room someone is shedding a tear over its demise. maybe once it marked the ancient way by which Lord Percival of Ponteland came forth and did interesting things unto the peasants with a sword, but now it is the vegetation victim of a Road Traffic Accident.
I'm not sure about broken on this one. It's certainly the local windmill but 'disused' seems to be more of a correct term for it.
The problem with Windmills is that we imagine them in the middle ages, huge clunky things that are just...old. This one is made from nicely cut stone blocks, It's just too new it has a feel of modern about it and I always imagine it as being a bad business decision. Local businessman builds windmill. "Nice isn't it, I just spent all my money on it whats that you got, steam engine eh...whats that do then?"
On the way back I passed Woodhorn church, it struck me how busy people were in the modern end of the
graveyard putting down fresh flowers, washing and cleaning the shiny stones.
Not far away not just this one but lots of tumbled and broken stones. Children and grandchildren long gone. The only future interest probably coming from someone tracing their family tree and then more interested in the records than in the last resting place.
The bird never moved while the camera clicked away, hopped round and looked at me once or twice maybe making sure I got his best side.

Go on, submit an entry

http://peacharse.blogspot.com/2008/02/youre-not-only-one_10.html

You can submit one of your blog entries and it may go into a book

Everyone should know if they're a Roundy or a Squary

Roger Hargreaves wrote the wonderful Mr Men books which those of us in the UK will forever associate with the voice of Arthur Lowe.

Another set of books that he wrote but which never recieved the same recognition were the Roundy and Squary books. Are you a Roundy or a Squary? and many others.
I loved these books and used to read them to my sister when she was very small. I would have read them to my son too but they were out of print for so long. But then I discovered that my Mum had been hoarding these books all the time and they had been read to youngest after all. A quick job by my Dad to photograph the pages and here we are.

EVERYONE needs to know if they are a Roundy or a Squary so here is your chance to find out. And if you love them as much as I do here is a link to a .pdf Download roundy_or_squary.pdf   so you can have your own.
I am Somewhat Squary, but I have a round heart. Let me know in comments what you are.

ARE YOU A ROUNDY or A SQUARY?

Crisp

Yes thats a good word for it.
This morning was a bit
up here in the cold cold north.

Even the car seemed to be feeling it a little.

And when i started it up I saw why.

-5 degrees and 7am what a combination for a happy morning.
Brrrrr
But tonight is Poker night wheee

I am not a number, I am a free man...

Oh...no wait a minute, I am a number. My number is 268 of 2008.
It would appear that 267 people have been through this in Newcastle before me. And I met 269 as well, she seemed to be quite resigned to things too.
It must be in the air.
I seem to have the tremors!

Dry Dock

Every winter the crab fishermen of Seahouses take their boats out of the water.
All winter I have been wanting to get some pictures of them and I noticed last week that they were starting to patch them up ready to go back to work.
Sadly there is no more fish brought in to Seahouses. Crab boats, diving boats and tourist runs out to the Farne Islands to look at the puffins is as far as it goes now.

There was one boat, now nameless that has been sitting since last winter, it seems all the more sad that other boats are being fussed over while she just sits and decays.

Across the harbour everyone is hard at work, it is still close to freezing but these people seem to be used to a lot worse.
It is fairly obvious that many of the boats are still family run, I caught this man cleaning off and sanding the hull of Cuthbert II and Cuthbert III.

While he was busy a younger version of himself was busy in the cabin and a toddler ( I assume generation 3) ran around on the deck of Cuthbert II.
He was sanding and scraping by hand and it looked like both boats were nearing completion. "It takes about a week for each one" he volunteered, almost like he was used to being asked the question. " A bit longer if it's rainin"
"Why's that" I asked, "I would have thought that boats are ok with water"
"Nah, it's me that dun't like to get wet" he replied and carried on. Scrape, sand, scrape, sand.

A little further on and all 5 of the "Glad Tidings" fleet were sitting being worked on.

This had a different feel, a string of boats in one colour Glad Tidings 1 through to 5. But no younger sons, no children running around on deck finding their sea legs on dry land.
This was more industrious, contractors with vans doing the repairs. The sound of machines rather than the scrape and rub of a loving hand on the bow.

For some reason Glad Tidings didn't seem to hold my attention and I found myself turning to shoot the back of Cuthbert II and III again.

Jeanz

Earlier this week Rebecca managed to get a single splash of bleach on her jeans, it looked like this.

A single splash is no good at all. So Rebecca (without removing said jeans) set to with more bleach and a steady hand.
In the end we had this.

I'm just glad the doig stayed away from it all.