In The Pink

We went to visit a very good friend this week and ended up getting together with a few other people for the evening. All good friends, some we knew and some new folk. It was a lovely evening. At one point I asked a few people what their highlights of 2009 had been. There was some groaning and the question was put back to me. I thought it was interesting as I generally think of 2009 as being a bit of a hard year that has ended well. I have had some worries and issues, nothing too huge but enough to stand out as a big thing for me for the year. Anyway they are things I would not discuss casually and so when the question was posed and I thought about it there were instantly several other amazing things that have happened this year. I sold my first photographs, I got a pickup truck, I started up my website, I saw BB King plus some other brilliant live artists, and I had some great moments with good friends and family. After listing them I realised personally 2009 has not been too bad at al

Happy Christmas everyone! Well the big day is over and as we wing our way to 2010 we are already making plans for our first gig! I have just booked tickets for Porcupine Tree at the Royal Albert Hall! We saw them twice this year, that's four times altogether now, and as one of our favourite bands they are always going to be a great night out but the venue is the icing on the cake. I have been before and was down in the front row staring up at the Crash Test Dummies which was very good but PT's sound will suit the venue better and as we have better seats in the boxes it should be amazing. Only 289 days to go! We are also trying to get tickets for Jeff Beck in Birmingham however the tickets are platinum only at present and a little too pricey! We are going to wait for the cheaper seats and take binoculars! Image Credit: Julian Lloyd Webber

I have some dog pampering tips to pass on, well they are less pampering and more methods for dealing with goo and cleaning eyes. I have two large dogs and during play they tend to produce large amounts of sticky saliva which they then smear over each others faces as they ruff and tumble. I say saliva but it is more like industrial strength glue! Have you ever touched a slug? If so you may remember that the goo they left behind on your hand seemed impossible to wash, scrub or scrape off? Well dogs goo is similar! Anyway when they get back to the house it's nice to clean them up, besides if I don't then they come and walk through my legs rubbing it off on my trousers in the deliberate process! So I decided to pinch an idea from Indian restaurants who very kindly provide you with a warmed flannel to wipe your face and hands with after a meal, a custom I greatly appreciate. I run a towel under the hot tap, wring it out, and wipe it over their faces, ears and necks and they seem to

The last Christmas song I posted was Bob Dylan's new song and I love it. It's great to hear a new Christmas tune and heh, it is Bob Dylan! It also reminds me of a childhood game. I have thought about trying to explain which one here but it is not easy to do in text but I am sure you will guess it if you listen to the song. My clue is 'I went to the shop and I bought bananas.' This Christmas song is one of my favourites and never ceases to get me up dancing. I woke up this morning and my first thought was that Terry Wogan is not going to be on the radio in the mornings anymore and it made me sad, Shaky has rescued me from that feeling and made me giggle and sing! I hope he has the same affect on you!

Today marked the last broadcast of Wake up to Wogan . I am currently listening again via the BBC Iplayer as I had to go to work this morning before the show finished. You can listen to the last seven days of shows via the BBC Radio 2 website . Click HERE to listen to todays final broadcast. I have been mentally writing a farewell letter to Terry for many weeks now. In the end many many people wrote in and reflected my thoughts and feelings. So I have decided to save my letter until his new weekly Sunday show starts on Valentines Day 2010 and instead of dwelling on how much I will miss him, put my effort into welcoming him back to the airwaves! My Sunday routine is about to change! In addition to listening to the last few shows you can sign Terry's online card HERE . If like me you feel the need to reach out to the TOGMeister why not leave him a message. In recent years in particular I have become used to this Terry's wonderfully familiar and comforting voice getting me thr

Well it is finally here, the weekend when we are going to put up our decorations! Quite a few people in the village went for it at the beginning of December and the office decorations went up last week. I have to say the office is a little over the top, in fact I think my exact words were 'it looks like Christmas has thrown up in here'! There are individual sets of lights around peoples desks, grotto's in corners, pictures of semi naked girls in Santa outfits and musical turkeys that sing when you press their tummies! I have tried to keep my desk area a little more subtle! And there are no pictures of semi naked chaps in Santa outfits! We have picked out our names for the office secret Santa gifts and I have got a lovely girl who got me for her secret Santa last year. She bought me some lovely candles and a Santa hat which I wore at the Christmas party. She is a huge chocolate fan which makes a gift for her nice and easy although I am not going to make my final decis

I have to confess, even after my last post, I am feeling very festive at the moment. Since waking up to dark mornings in a warm house, which has been going on for the past few weeks now, every day feels like Christmas Day! Well at least for the few minutes before I remember I have to get dressed and go to work! If I had my way the decorations would be up and the Christmas play list my fella and I created a few years back would be playing! And speaking of Christmas songs, the Terry Wogan and Aled Jones Christmas song Silver Bells is now available to download from iTunes, and is also available at other stores for purchase or download. It is all for the very excellent cause of Children in Need and I am hoping that it becomes Christmas Number 1 this year. Aside from supporting the very worth while charity all TOGS (and TYGS) are hopeful that it can be achieved in tribute to the TOGMeister as we approach the end of the Wake up to Wogan show which will be airing for the very last time ever o

I am a little disappointed with the number of posts I have managed this year. I don't think it will be near to or more than last year. I'm not giving myself a hard time about it but a blog can be a fabulous time capsule and trigger the memory of all sorts of small things with a picture or a word. There are a few big chunks out of this years log! I know now that Christmas is not a time for blogging. You are too busy having a wonderful time with friends or family and so is everyone else! And rightly so! I do hope though that next year I will become more frequent in blogging and maybe less demanding on myself in content. A brief word is better than no word right? You may disagree!!

My wonderful fella sent me these at work today. I give you 23 of Tommy Coopers finest! (In case you don't know he was a stand up comedian, sadly departed.) Enjoy! By the way, that's Tommy Cooper, not my fella. 1 . Two blondes walk into a building...........you'd think at least one of them would have seen it. 2. Phone answering machine message - '...If you want to buy marijuana, press the hash key...' 3. A guy walks into the psychiatrist wearing only Clingfilm for shorts. The shrink says, 'Well, I can clearly see you're nuts.' 4. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any. 5. I went to the butchers the other day and I bet him 50 quid that he couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf. He said, 'No, the steaks are too high.' 6. My friend drowned in a bowl of muesli. A strong currant pulled him in. 7 . A man came round in hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, 'Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my

Blimey its been ages! I have not blogged for over a month despite starting several posts in my head over the weeks. None of them ever made it onto my PC. I am however grabbing a bit of time back tonight! Its been busy our end for a while, mostly with great stuff like family visits. We are showing off our recently completed spare room! There has also been a gig (Porcupine Tree)lots of work, more website stuff (it's getting there!) and it's winter and somehow the days seem much shorter! For now though its Friday! The weekend has arrived! The dogs are fed and watered and my fella is on route home. Perfect. I did think about posting this following song for ages and I don't think it is officially autumn anymore but here it is anyway. Enjoy.

I have found rainbows to be very difficult to photograph, but thanks to my Mum pointing out this double rainbow during a recent visit, I got a chance to capture one of them while it was still quite vivid. I've missed Sky Watch Friday, but I have been sky watching. Happy Weekend All! To join Sky Watch or see other participants click here

I run several blogs and have put up a different post for this day on each of them. I wanted to try and reach a balance between being informative and providing a means of taking action. Climate change can affect us in so many ways. It's not all about the global catastrophe that may occur tomorrow or in 500 years as depicted in films such as The Day After Tomorrow, there are very real and small changes occurring all the time, the impact of which may not be realised until it is too late, or until the impacts of multiple events take us too far. The Environment is effected by our current way of life. I am not qualified to state whether the changes to our planet would occur regardless of our presence however I think is it true to say that our actions are acting as a catalyst. The smaller changes we can measure year by year have a very real affect on people around the globe. Food sources are affected, economical resources are over stretched, and diseases are mutating and becoming more sig

I went to see PT last Friday, they were awesome! They played the first disc of The Incident as the first half. It is an amazing album, I feel as if I have know it for years, it is a thing of beauty and I cannot get enough. Here's a bit of it!!

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I have had this song in my head for days. I am desperate for rain and we have not had any significant rain for over 6 weeks now. I have newly planted trees drooping all over and my clients do not want to pay to water them. It is a costly affair but so very vital. Drought stress can cause irreversible damage to a trees ability to photosynthesise, to feed itself. This is one of my favourite albums ever. I love the whole album without exception and think it to be Sting's best. If you are not familiar with it I strongly recommend you give it a listen. Image Credit: Albumy Rock & Metal

For me Sunday is the best day of the weekend. I am used to a more relaxed routine, the chores for the weekend have been taken care of on Saturday and there is little left to do other than the things I want to do. We have leisurely walks with the dogs, walks around the garden with sporadic bouts of weeding, I get to visit blogs I treasure and post some things myself, and in the afternoon I cook. I really like the kitchen in my house. It is reasonably big and the afternoon sun streams in through the window. I like to cook something special for a Sunday lunch and am usually joined by the dogs. By the afternoon they have had enough exercise to warrant an afternoon kip but they like to be around the nice smells and close enough to see if it is going to be roast chicken, a meal from which they always benefit! I think that it is also reminiscent for me of childhood weekends, the smells and routine reminding me of my family. My Mum is a wonderful cook and the house at the weekend in particular

I visited the local reservoir again yesterday to enjoy the strong winds we had by the waters edge, and to see how many birds were there still. There were not many! However these little chaps seem to be there all year round. They are so graceful in flight and remind me of bats. They are however shy and I had to try and sneak up on them to get some shots. The pictures in flight were taken with my big lens without tripod on multi exposure setting. I took just short of 200 shots in all and probably only got about 10 that were good and in focus however it was worth the effort, and thanks to the joys of digital photography an extravagance that I can afford. I had a few more to post but have had trouble all day uploading pictures and am just happy to have managed these two! I hope to be abot to upload a few more the next time! To join in or see other participants in Camera Critters click here !

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I have been planning my Blog Action Day posts for the 15th October as I want a different post for each of my blogs. The post for this blog is done and I am quite excited about getting it out there! I have an idea for The Green Man and have also started on my post for Evolved . It's been a very thought provoking process. I want the posts to reflect the purpose of each blog. The blog register for the day itself has increased by over 200 blogs since this time yesterday. Here is a little more information about the event.

I visited a local nature reserve a while back and got these shots of the Canada Geese that reside there for the summer. It was a great afternoon. Now that autumn has arrived the Geese are massing for their migration. They fly over our house in ever growing numbers collecting at the larger water holes to prepare for the off, and as usual I find myself wishing I was going with them. I love all four seasons for different reasons. Autumn displays stunning colours, fruit and leaf fall, and brings the sunrise back to the time of day when I am going out with the dogs for their morning walk. But I also yearn to follow the sun to warmer climates and longer daylight hours, and the birds will be missed during the winter. To join in or see other participants in Camera Critters click here !

The 15th October 2009 is Blog Action Day , powered by Change.org. In their words: ‘Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.’ I have taken part in Blog Action Day for a couple of years now along with my Sister and Mum and it really is an amazing event. This year’s topic is climate change. I have begun to notice over the past few years while attending seminars and courses that we can be very good at getting together, uniting to a cause and planning action however a period of time elapses, nothing happens and then before you know it we are all sitting there again discussing the same issues and noticing that we didn’t actually take any action . This day to me is a day of communicating the wish for chang

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These are the views we had of the church spire yesterday while hurtling parachute sporting teddy's off the roof! The tiles are made of wood which is quite common for old churches, something I did not know until yesterday. The black dots you can see are flies which were swarming around the steeple.

I have been looking at some old holiday snaps from the beginning of the Millennium, in particular shots of our old and first dogs. The brown dog is Pink, the black and white one is Mojo. When my fella and I first met we had a dog each. My fella got Mojo as a puppy. He exchanged a box of vegetables for him with a local farmer. I found Pink in Greece. I lived there for a year. Pink was a stray hanging out with the gang around the marina. She came over to the camper the first day I arrived in town and just sat with me. I decided to adopt her after that and the rest is history. Although things are considerably different in Greece now at the time strays did not have a great life and Pink, not being a very dominant dog, was hungry, thirsty and bullied by the other dogs. She took to adoption very well. When I moved on and eventually returned to the UK I of course brought her with me. The dogs were 5 years old when I met my fella and after a few initial grumbles when we moved in

My fella and I helped out at a fund raising event today for a local play group. We launched 50 teddy bears off the church roof, all sporting parachutes! As tree folk we have harnesses and ropes which were needed to access the roof. The event went really well and we had a beautiful day for it. All in all £80 was raised from this one event! Here are some of the hero's of the day. (No teddy's were harmed during the event!)

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I have recently re-discovered Olbas Oil , an ointment that we used to use as children when we had colds. Inhaling it unblocks your nose. I bought some a while back when I had a cold and kept putting a few drops on my collar, since then I use it most days as it helps me breath easier all the time and smells really nice. I love all thinks minty and fresh. Olbas is eucalyptus, juniper berry, levomenthol, dementholised mint oil and wintergreen. I also put a few drops on my pillow each night and it helps me breath clearly. A few drops in the bath is also very relaxing. Finally it can help relieve migraines as it has a cooling action if rubbed on the skin, however do not get it in your eyes or a migraine will be the least of your worries!

I came home feeling a bit naff today. It's Monday for a start but also, in the words of another hero of mine, work is 'a bit of a bark' at the moment. (Del Boy - Only Fools and Horses) Anyway, there's no good being in a bad mood with no good reason so I sort out some classic comedy moments from some heros of mine to put things right. I hope that you enjoy seeing them, and that they bring as much joy to you.

Hot damn I love the internet! I have, thanks to my search for The Impossible Dream come across Reel Classics, a website dedicated to classic movies that has loads of MP3 files of classic songs. There is a whole heap of other stuff too so if you are a classic movie fan I recommend it! If you have a moment check it out here.

I have had this song in my head for a few days, I find it very moving. I know lots of versions of it and have been looking on You Tube this evening; there's Matt Monroe, Elvis, Andy Williams of course and then Peter O'Toole. (I would have posted the version from the Honda advert which is brilliant however they miss out some of the lyrics which is annoying.) I did not know that this song came from a musical and have since been learning all about The Man of La Mancha. I first heard a version of this song by Roger Whittaker. Anyway I could not decide on a version to post and so have opted for posting the lyrics however if you click on the title link below you can here Peter O'Toole singing it. "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA (1972) music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe To bear with unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go To right the unrightable wrong, to love pure and chast

As promised here is the answer to the identity of my subject matter for this weeks Sky Watch Friday. Although I would like to say, as suggested by T-Bone Travis , that it is can can dancers, I am afraid it is not and the actual answer is much less interesting! Just for a laugh though here is the image rotated...it really does look like dancing girls, with very well formed calf muscles! The picture is of a communications tower which had a vertical line of red lights. I tried to take a night shot of it without the aid of a tripod and this was the result. Anyway my thanks again to everyone for their comments and having a guess. Happy Sky Watch everyone and see you next week!

I have just responded to a comment from Eileen in MD posted on my Camera Critters shot below and went to investigate her blog. I came across these amazing shots of a Bald Eagle and wanted to send any visitors coming here her way as they are just stunning. Pop over and click on the images to enlarge, it is really worth it!

I grabbed this shot one day on our camping trip. The buzzard was a regular visitor to the field and had just delighted me with a close fly over. He hovered over my head for ages and I allowed myself the pleasure of just watching before I decided it was worth a mad dash for my camera and a quick lens change. My big lens takes better shots from the tripod as the small movements of my hand and breathing make for blurred images but I was pleased to be able to get this anyway. To join in or see other participants in Camera Critters click here !

It is with a heavy heart that I comment on the recently announced news that as of 18th December this year Terry Wogan will be retiring from the breakfast show 'Wake up to Wogan' on BBC Radio 2. Radio 2 is a big part of my day and I listen to much of the daily shows. In addition, like many, many people nationwide Terry Wogan has been part of my life since childhood. My parents used to have him on in the mornings as I was getting ready for school. He has in recent years brought a smile to my face on many mornings with his melodic, baritone voice and calming demeanor. I am absolutely gutted that he is going and find myself concerned about what I will listen to during my morning journey. I do not approve of the chosen replacement of Chris Evans. Although his success with the drivetime show is a tribute to him and the Radio 2 team I can only take him in small doses and cannot face the thought of him in the mornings. I have no doubt that he will make it a success and build his own mo

Well as it is a lovely sunny day outside, and Saturday to boot, I don't think I have got it in me to sit here and make all the changes necessary to revert back to my old custom blog template so I have played about and found this one! I made a couple of text colour changes but thought I would cast aside my usual and favoured black and give this template and colour scheme ago. First impressions...its a lot easier to read!

Damn! Only hours after commenting to my good friend Kylita that I liked her recently changed blog format but was reluctant to change mine after my previous error which took me days to fix I have done it again! As I infrequently change my blog format now, I have become unfamiliar with the results of pressing one button. Actually I think I did the exact same thing again! I pressed save template on the change template page expecting to be able to save my current settings before I started editing and instead it saved the format to the selected style which has undone all of my personalised settings! Well that's my job for the day then! I will make the most of this opportunity to make a few changes while trying to regain my previous layout!

Ok, you may not believe me but this really is a Sky shot, taken at night, in Wales. I thought it might be fun to see what people guess it to be before I reveal the answer. Happy Sky Watch Everyone!! To join Sky Watch or see other participants click here