Halloween

A lot of people in the UK (England, in particular) decry Halloween as an American import.  In fact it's based on a long tradition.

From wikipedia

In Scotland and Ireland, Guising — children disguised in costume going from door to door for food or coins — is a traditional Halloween custom, and is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895 where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit and money.
 The practise of Guising at Halloween in North America is first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported children going "guising" around the neighborhood.

When I first came to Corby in the early 1980s the local kids would dress up and go round neighbours' houses, saying rhymes like:

I'm an Aberdonian
I come from Aberdeen
I've come all the way to Corby
to get my Halloween 

or

The sky is blue
the grass is green
please may I have
a Halloween?

Now they're more likely just to say 'Trick or treat' but it is really just carrying on a long tradition of children 'begging' at certain times of the year. We always had 'Penny for the Guy' and  used to go carol-singing around neighbours' houses - and not for charity, either.

All generally good fun and a way for neighbours to meet local kids.

I spent Halloween 2007 in Brooklyn - it was delightful to see the elaborate decorations on certain houses, where children were obviously welcomed.

I'm afraid the home-made cats' ears didn't work very well.

The shops on one of the main avenues were nearly all open that evening and handing out candy goodies, and there was a good-natured parade with music.

One of the decorated houses

A store giving out candy

The traffic lights are not part of the costume

She looks a bit spooked? It was getting cold!

And another lovely idea - share or give a scary book!

Autumn

I'm a little puzzled by autumn this year.  It has a shabby feel.  Leaves aren't changing as they often do to bright flames, but seem to be shrinking into dirty green then brown.
I went out to snap some autumn this afternoon, berries are good, Virginia creeper is red, but not a lot of golden.  Maybe I should have patience and wait for autumn-yet-to-come?

Oh, I did spot my first pumpkins in a window!

berries

Virginia creeper looking a little wind-ravaged

some kind of seed pod

poppies flowering in late October

In  our local pocket park

Another tomato post

Here they sit, inside, ripening - I don't want to feel obliged to find too many green tomato recipes!  The round tomatoes are from two plants.  The plum ones are from another two - but not so prolific by a long way.

I heard tell there was a frost last week, but so far, though it has certainly been cold, I haven't seen frost.  Maybe I should get up early?

Updated tomatoes

Doggy bags - go for it.

I enjoyed this article on the Beeb website.

It brought back memories of a lunch with a friend in Brooklyn at the Trattoria Mangia, where I found two large panini a little too much and they insisted I should take one away with me.  I looked for someone hungry - and found one - my daughter, who'd spent the morning with her friends and hadn't eaten.

Welland Valley Art Society Autumn Exhibition until 14 October

We've just been over to the private viewing and opening of the exhibition in Stamford. Harry has four paintings in the show.

Half Dome, Yosemite

Girl in a Hat

Lady with Cat

Then we spent a relaxed afternoon in the sun by the Welland.

Unfortunately, I left my camera card in the computer, so no pics of the ice-cream van, registration F7AKE, nor of all the people enjoying the weather.

A few more garden snaps

This probably illustrates my haphazard approach to tomato cultivation. Plants bought from the local shop at 50p a throw. Planted in a trough, then transplanted into this 'border' - I dug in some home-made compost. Then I cleared off for three weeks or so, and tried the 'two chances' method.  After strong winds, I staked them and tied them up.  I eventually chopped off some leaves and pinched off unwanted flowers.  Now, I'm watching the weather forecast for early frosts! 

I keep chucking banana skins under the plants, hoping they will work their ripening magic - all to do with ethylene gas, I think.

The hydrangea, in a large pot, has recently been allowed more light - I've chopped down the purple clematis as it's finished flowering.

Happy pumpkin month

Happy pumpkin days everyone!

Though it has felt more like mid-summer, and everywhere has been in festive holiday mood, from out-door cafes, to riverside walks and public parks, people are outside, smiling.

Trees are turning golden, but there is lots of green - my tomatoes are ripening, and I keep a weather eye on forecasts - no frost yet.

Edison on opportunity

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

-Thomas Edison

A bit preachy, but it amused and informed me.  Am I in 'self-improvement mode'?

Wirksworth Festival

A day out in Wirksworth, Derbyshire .  Pictures, music in the streets and more.

On the main street near the market square

Greenhill

What a view!

The StarDisc at the top of Stoney Wood

Various people at the StarDisc.






















Clypping (embracing) of the Church

The clergy and choir sing round the church

The congregation join hands 

Inside St Mary's church

The Wirksworth stone

and t'owd man

a lead miner with his pick and 'kibble'


On Wirksworth's rive gauche, or should that be the riviera - Le Mistral

and a cuppa in Linda's kitchen before leaving for home

for Harry's video.

Blackberry heaven

I've been promising myself for two or three weeks that I'd go and pick some blackberries.  Only a panful, but enough for a couple of crumbles, along with apple. They're bubbling gently on the stove now.  Autumn - crab apples , sloes, blackberries - all there to be enjoyed.


I passed two men with metal detectors, scoping a field, saw a couple of buzzards, and finished up walking uphill back to the village, with the chance to look back over the valley in the warm sun. 
Oh, and the crumble was delicious.

Silliness

I'm not entirely sure why, but there's something about the sky and the colours that makes me think of tall ships, instead of . . .

. . .

In the space between 
perception and reality
lies imagination

sea or sky
canvas or steel
escape or everyday

Depth of field . . .

My son-in-law would be proud of me?  All photos taken with 75-300mm lens.

The first one fully automatic settings - Shutter speed  1/200; Aperture 5.6. Foreground with mini-crab apples in focus, the rest blurry.

For the second picture I used the Av (aperture priority) setting at 8. Shutter speed set by camera at 1/125.

Giving greater depth of field, though foreground slightly blurred.

For the third one I set the aperture at 10, the shutter speed was 1/100.  Even more depth of field.


Not entirely comparable, since I changed the shot slightly each time, but maybe I'm beginning to learn something.  I like the third one best here, because you can see the whole height of the wall in the bottom left corner.


And - I should probably carry the smaller lens with me.  

This phalaenopsis orchid thrives on the kitchen windowsill - north-facing, never too cold or too hot.

Feeding the addictions

How much coffee do they think I need? 

Well . . . I guess they know me too well. 


As for the other addiction,   last Friday the boots held out ok in the serious all-day wet weather, though some damp came in from above.  They'll get another application of wax before I go out again.  

Since last week I've had two wonderful walks in dry weather wearing the shoes - comfortable.

Walking in the wet

My new under-thirty-quid walking shoes are definitely dry-weather affairs.  They seem to soak up the water from all directions. Not for many a moon have my feet been quite so wet.
To be fair to them, nor had the rest of me, supposedly waterproof clothing notwithstanding.  Time to revamp my walking wardrobe - I've been lulled into a false sense of good weather security.  Lucky that they could sunbathe and dry out today.


Back to boots when rain threatens . . .

The shoes have been sprayed, the boots have been waxed, fingers are crossed . . . who says women are obsessed with shoes? 

The rain gods - are they with me or agin me?

I go to hang some washing out . . . spots of rain . . . so I think maybe I'll make a start on clearing the shed . . .and I just heave a load of stuff on to the lawn, and it pours. . . back to old faithful computer, and lo! the skies are clearing.   Maybe it's time for a coffee and a scone?  And even better - Harry's just volunteered to make it!

At the risk of rabbiting on about nothing to a greater extent than usual - yay, I cleaned out the shed, and stuck two loads of washing out, and had scones with clotted cream at coffee time.

And I managed to take a carful of wood, plastic and metal rubbish to the recycling centre - local tip.

Another random entry:

Written as part of an article about self-editing for the aborted WD mag.

'A poem is never finished', said Paul Valéry, 'only abandoned.' This is the current abandoned version. To be fair the whole enterprise this was planned for was abandoned too!

How do you get your poem to scan?
Do you bang with a spoon on the base of a pan?
Do you count all your words or just hope that they flow
Do you edit, fuhgeddit, or let it all blow?

Do you sing words along to the tune of a song?
Do you bounce rubber balls or yourself off the walls?
Whatever you do keep it up if it works,
Make poetry fun with these physical jerks.

Do you let raw emotion roar out on the page
or force the caged tiger to swallow his rage?
Do you prune out the clichés with merciless knife
and throw out excess words that drain it of life?

Can you rhyme all the time or is rhyming too pat?
Do you scour the thesaurus, or do without that?
Sometimes you may find that a word from a book
can lead you up roads where you’d not thought to look.

March 08

The original was more fun, because the mechanism was visible.

Lynn Knight - book about Chesterfield, and a family with three adoptions

I caught this on Radio 4 early this morning - I guess it was the mention of Chesterfield and in particular Whittington Moor which caught my ear. So, I've ordered it.

Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue.

Turns out Lynn Knight used to be an editor at Virago, too.

There's a lot of background social history of Chesterfield in the book as well.

From car boot to Mozart

A varied day - sunshine blessed the car boot sale, and then we went to Stamford to see the film of Glyndebourne's performance of Don Giovanni from 2010.


Shame they had to break the atmosphere up with interviews at the beginning of the second half of the film - we went back, all ready and eager to be plunged into the story again - and lo! analysis and explanation . . . I thought these guys were supposed to know about dramatic tension.

Photos and walks

I used to carry my mini-digital-Fujifilm A303 everywhere. I loved it. It was tiny, and went into pockets, handbags, bumbags without protest. It got me into the habit of snapping wildly.  It slowed down - the zoom lens wouldn't move.  I forced it - it lived on for a few more months. Then it stopped altogether, and neither tenderness nor violence would bring it back to life.  For several months I was cameraless in the world.


Now I take my Canon dslr most places, but I tend to carry only one lens with me when out walking.  Too much baggage otherwise.  But I always wish I had the lens I left behind.  Sod's law, and self-delusion, I suppose, along with the desire to do two things at once.

Yesterday I tried to catch a hovering tern with the telephoto. The result was, frankly, rubbish.  I think it was a combination of lack of time/patience, probable need for a tripod, and not very good light.  I'll post when/if I get a good result.