As I’ve written before we have a lovely old non domesticated cat that we inherited with this property. She never enters the house even with all the doors are wide open, she loves the wild and that’s how she lives, I’m sure she is on the title deeds of the house as no one has ever owned her. As I’ve always said she staunchly defends her garden from everything including the foxes of which there are plenty around here. Her name is “Tabs”.
But there is one prickly customer who she has no defence against and that is our hedgehog visitors. When they want food, nothing, including Tabs gets in their way.
Here is a small video as proof, of when I got home this evening, taken through the window after I put some cat biscuits down.
Get out of my way Cat
We are so fortunate to have these visitors, Tabs just sits back and lets them finish their eating, then resumes where she left off.
My role, occasionally requires me getting involved with some old engineering treasures. I sometimes have to go ahead of these trains to areas where there are “pinch points” and ensure that their movements through these areas are without delay or hindrance. The thing is if one of these old girls break down they can cause absolute havoc to timetabled passenger traffic, and passengers, rightly so, don’t take to well to being delayed by what they class as unnecessary big boys toys.
60103 – The flying Scotsman
One such old treasure is the steam train “The flying Scotsman” now I’ve been associated with this train one way or another for many years now, and only recently I was ahead of it as it made its way to a big 200 year train gathering up in Derby. I took the above Picture a few years ago at Tulse Hill station in South London. The bridge at this station is the most frequently hit bridge in the area causing massive delays to trains heading south. Me being there means a bridge exam can be carried out quickly and things can get moving fairly expediently. There is also quite a complex junction nearby, again if points were to fail I could get things running smoothly again, with a small team who work alongside me. This picture has been run through a Matte black mask to give it a vintage type look, it was taken on an old phone and was just snapped whilst I was checking timings with the train crew.
More graffiti- but with humour
Another train hit by the local graffiti artists passed through our patch. Whilst this one was parked up I had to laugh at the message conveyed on an empty stone hopper during the current economic crisis here in the UK . Living La Vida Broke-A! it made me smile.
Wasteland
Just a few months ago this compound next to where I am based was a buzzing hive of activity. Then our government cancelled the electrification of the Midland main line between Leicester and Sheffield, putting an end to the activity in this area. All the men and women laid off, another nail in the coffin of the cities outside of the “One and only London”
This Government really is blinkered and doesn’t really understand that there are communities and businesses north of Watford!
We had a fire close to the railway here in the East Midlands yesterday. Acting as the incident officer I was able to get a couple of good shots off that I think show what a fantastic job our fire service do in very tough conditions.
In the heart of the fire
Sifting through the debris
Graffiti artists hit
For a bank holiday it was a busy day for me, two sizeable fires, Cows on the line and Graffiti artists hitting the trains.
It’s a colloquial term for a flat thin lens assembly that started to emerge from the 60s through to the 80’s, commonly seen in compact SLR cameras of the time. This then developed into a body cap lens, an extreme type of pancake lens that is designed to both protect the camera internals as a body cap normally would, yet still allow the user to take photos. These lenses are manual focus only and generally have no more than a couple of optical lens elements, no image correcting elements, a very-slow fixed aperture, an extremely thin focusing ring (if any at all), and a retractable lens element cover. Due to this compromise in design, body-cap lenses generally suffer from numerous image quality issues such as heavy vignetting and poor image sharpness.
Recently there has been a resurgence in this type of lens culminating in the one that seems extremely popular at this time, a cookie lens.
Cookie lens
It’s not hard to see why it is named so, it looks like a big Oreo cookie, it even looks as if it has the cream between the two biscuit pieces. These current ones are sold as being recycled from old disposable cameras. Original pancake lenses can cost many hundreds of pounds, however these ones are classed as disposable, and are priced at around £30 to £40GBP, being sold by a company called Retropia. But hold it! Don’t waste your money on that one, as they can be purchased for at least half that price from Ali Express of Temu, just make sure you shop around. By looking at the reviews £30 can still be a bit of a hefty outlay for what is basically a cheapo lens out of a disposable camera set in a cookie shaped piece of plastic.
One guys in depth review of the “Cookie” lens
These lenses have risen in popularity, as the new mirror less cameras have become more accessible. This lens allows these cameras to be used as a straight forward point and shoot camera, no focussing or metering. achieving that retro disposable camera look, but in much more modern equipment. It’s a fun item and for an outlay of around £13GBP, which is what I paid for mine, it’s not too big an outlay to do some experimenting with, and if it turns out to be a load of old bilge, then it’s no real loss. Reviews are mixed, but in general it seems people are having fun, and that’s what photography should be.
I’m waiting for mine to arrive, and when it does I shall post some photos below to see how I’ve got on with it. Oh, and I now have a suitable camera to use with this lens and that can be found here Sony A7II Mirrorless camera.
The lens has arrivedLens installed
It’s such a simple thing. It turns a complex camera into a quite basic point and shoot disposable, lomography type of camera. Perfect for street photography and just everyday randomness, yep kind of like you’d now find on your mobile phone. However this is more fun and you actually have a camera into your hand, Perfect.
The lens is 32mm, and the CCD in the camera is full 35mm so there is a kind of small vignette around the edges of each shot, but that just adds to the basic rawness of the lens. it’s a bit of fun.
Angles in the living room
Garden pub
Rusty chair
Across the kitchen early morning
Above are a small selection of some of the scenes around home, taken quite randomly and all I have done in the post process is added some vintage presets. The light has been so poor lately that to be honest this already added to the vintage effect. If we see any sun I suspect the results would be very similar to the hazy 70s effect that the disposables always managed to achieve. Don’t expect too much from these lenses, they are just fun to experiment with, and that’s just what photography should be. Fun.
This is an interesting question to comment on, especially as I live on the edge of what is most likely, one of the filthiest and dirty, worst run cities within the Uk, Leicester.
Extreme, but you get my drift?
Like all cities they seem to attract a population of people who really don’t care that much about themselves or anyone else to be fair, and they accept no responsibility for their respective actions. We have a mixing pot of cultures who don’t mix, hence we have a city of micro cities with each respective micro city closing itself off from the other parts of the city, and that’s where we have issues. All cities worldwide seem to have similar issues. Current city structures do not work, unless you are in the minority, super wealthy category, where life is wonderful and there is no issue. What issues? It’s great having a blinkered view of the world.
City centres are normally fine, it’s when you look at the fringes that you find the down trodden, the chancers and criminal fraternities that feed on the citizens like a white blood cell attacking a virus, the virus being the everyday individual just wanting to make a living for themselves and their family. It’s tough.
I speak from experience that the air around the city is foul. The amount of cars are increasing day on day and the air quality is decreasing as a result. In the last 5 years there has been a marked deterioration in air quality, and being an asthmatic who also has bronchial issues I can vouch for this and that is why we are looking at moving out further into the countryside.
Planners need to get involved and stop owners digging up perfectly good grassed driveways so they can concrete them to allow 8 cars to park on them. I kid you not when I say one house near me has 11 cars and vans on its drive, it is a 4 bedroom house and has three families living within, how is that even possible? This is not a rarity, it is more of a norm for this city as landlords are fleecing individuals by renting out sub standard accommodation to those who can barely afford to live within the laws of the land. The curse of the HMO, (Home of multiple occupancy), take a bow UK government, you should hang your head in shame.
To improve a city you have to clean it up, put rules in place that the occupants also have to maintain their spaces, try to inject some self pride and ownership back into people life’s. The last time that ever occurred was after the last world war, and I’m not suggesting in any way that we have another one, but where has the comradeship gone since then? The little independent micro cities need to be addressed and all communities need to be put back into that melting pot and spread wide throughout the city areas, good luck with that one as I don’t ever see that happening. And then the air needs to be cleaned up, it’s vile up here but 5 minutes to the east of the city is a different cleaner environment. It’s the magnet of the city that seems to pull communities in, maybe there needs to be an engine size limit to cars, who knows? It’s been tried in bigger cities but does it really work?
I don’t think you can design a city of the future. Yes wearing the rose tinted glasses we can all say how we want it to be but in the end it’s down to the individuals who live there. If they don’t want to integrate, if they don’t want to commit to take part in caring for their environment, if they don’t give a toss or don’t care for anyone else, then what hope is there of improving any community or instigating plans for a better futuristic city.
People make a city not buildings or big corporate entities. Change people’s mindsets and you might have a chance. But until then it’s business as usual, the rot has already set in, and I don’t see it getting any better, any time soon. It’s a generational issue, I live in hope that future generations will overcome the issues and learn from all the mistakes we have all made in the past. I wish them well. As currently we as a society have failed miserably.
Yep. The estate agent tourism palaver has concluded. Two days ago they contacted us to state a viewer (one of the few that were actually interested) had made an offer and we then willingly accepted.
Sold
We have sold.
However, I cannot bring myself to be excited at this point as knowing just how inept our agents have been, I expect it all to fall flat at any moment. My trust is at an all time low.
At least we are now able to explore the markets for our next move. So both my wife and I are looking at available housing in our chosen area of preference. My wife, bless her has done a great job in getting us on the market, now it’s my turn to deal with the reams of paperwork from the solicitors that has now become my responsibility. I tell her she has done the dirty work and now it’s up to me to clean it all up, this rightly, earns me a clip around the ear hole. I deserved that. Don’t do it again. I won’t.
I just dislike intensely the whole buying and selling process as to be honest, we are just making the wealthy a lot more wealthy, ie the Taxman, the legal guys and all their cohorts.
Life has at this moment very quickly changed. Everything is now being packed away, everything going on at this moment in time is now being put on hold, I probably won’t catch up with any of my camera projects for a few months now, until we are safely ensconced in our new residence, wherever that may be in the world.
I’ll keep on posting on here, as I’ve always said this blog is very much my journal and I need this to help maintain my sanity, so I will continue to post pictures, answer those prompts and post whatever dross comes to my mind within this moment in time. It’s just that the repair / technical stuff will be taking a temporary back seat, it will return. It has to.
So, the next few weeks for me involve filling out paperwork, making boxes, filling boxes, and moving boxes, as well as making the not so good, good again.
This really will be the last time I do this. Our next home will truly be our forever home.
As I’ve probably stated many times previously, I don’t watch a great deal of television or cinema. The last time I went to a cinema was on my 50th and that’s getting on for ten years ago now.
Most of the films I rate were what I viewed in my childhood and a number were influenced by what my parents liked to watch. As a sixties child a lot of those films were “War” based films as the 2nd World war had only ceased some 19 yrs before my arrival on the scene.
So here are 10 films (I may struggle to get that many) that feature in my top ten but in no particular order:
The Dam Busters
The great escape
The Glenn Miller story
Robin and the seven hoods
Priscilla Queen of the desert
The exorcist
American werewolf in London
Jaws
Close encounters of the third kind
Saturday night fever
Quite a range I’d say, and pretty much nothing falling within the last 20 years or so reflecting the fall from personal grace of this entertainment medium, in my personal point of view.
Now… make that a question about radio and I can go on, and on, and on….you get it 😂
A year ago today we lost our little dog Alf. It’s been a tough year and I must say time has not been a good healer, it’s as tough now as it was back then and he’s left a massive void in our family structure.
I’d say now that if you aren’t an animal lover then read no further. You wouldn’t understand.
However if you have a modicum of appreciation for a species that loves another being, unconditionally, then please read on.
Planning goals, now there is a conundrum if ever I heard one. If I really want / require / need something then there is a modicum of thought and planning that goes into it, otherwise most of my goals are on the fly as they say, whimsical to many and probably with no planning at all.
Things like holidays and breaks away are the wife’s domain and she does that most competently, I just pass some money her way when she needs it, so I don’t really get involved there.
Work
Personal goals for me are pretty much medium to long term and I don’t go over the top in achieving them according to any time scale. If they occur then that’s good, if not I’m not really that bothered. I have nothing planned that’s life changing or affirming, to be honest, I’m quite happy with my lot.
The only goal I’m really spending some time in planning is my pending retirement. It’s been on the cards for a couple of years now and will probably be a few more years yet, unless Lady Luck intervenes and allows me to close that door and enter through a new one any time soon. But even here I have no time scale, it will happen when it happens.
I guess this is why I am not a planner for my company as timelines and schedules are not really my thing as they say.
Things such as days out are always off the cuff, last minute, and here I am pretty good at putting together a last minute schedule. This is something I am good at, and ties in with my work. At work I’m always responding to issues that occur on the rail network and have to have a plan in place out of reactive necessity, not really having the pleasure of being able to draft a plan in advance of such a set of events.
Failed trains
That’s where i can excel, I guess that’s why I’ve been in this role for the last 25+ years, we have planners for the proactive stuff and I’m there for the reactive stuff, applying the big Elastoplast if you like. However, you always learn from these incidents and therefore fine tune activities accordingly, so if they ever occur again you can apply a different sticking plaster if you like. You learn and adapt, reactive response allows you to do that, you are not working to someone else’s plan, a plan that is just put together to satisfy auditors, and has not even been prepared by an experienced individual in the first place. Railway management is good at doing this, incompetence reigns supreme!
So in a nutshell my goals are pretty much reactive and get put into place as they occur. This is the same in my life outside of work and I guess this is a result of how I am at work. It can’t be all that bad as it seems to work well with me across all areas of my life.
So I’m not going to change just now, am I?
Here’s to that impending retirement, roll on I say.
Those who have read some of my past ramblings will know the issues we’ve had with our estate agents whilst our place is up for sale. Most of the time they are tour guides showing people around our home, these people having not the funds or any intention of purchasing. We’ve pulled them up on a number of occasions even threatening to talk to their governing body as they are so non-compliant in a number of ways that they conduct their business.
Today it has hit a comedic level.
“You might have a better chance of selling if you remove a sign from a shed in the garden”
I despair
I think they mean the shooting one that was brought by a friend when they went to Canada, however it could be the Leicester one, but that’s our local team.
Needless to say I have just completed a thoroughly enjoyable phone call, where in layman’s terms I’ve “Kicked their arses” a few times.
They are here doing another guided tour later today, and I’ve just been out and polished the sign so it really stands out 😂
They have also been given their two weeks notice of cancellation as to be honest, they are about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.
Foxes Den 
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