Annie Doppelganger!

 

So I was watching the latest series of Master of Photography on Sky Arts this week and the assignment was to photograph a series on images portraying transgender. Each entrant was allocated a subject to follow around, and this particular subject had this dog as his pet... I took one look at the TV screen and thought - that looks EXACTLY like Annie 🐶

How totally bizarre is that?? Given that even in this country she is a rare combination of breeds, bred by the Guide Dog Association to pacify those wanting a GSD as a guide dog, they breed a GSD/Golden Retriever Cross and this is what Annie is and what this dog looks like.

Essentially the combination makes just as poor a guide dog as a pure GSD would, their intelligence is too independent and they are not a dog who does things to please it's owner. Unlike the pure bred Golden Retriever.

Still if Annie hadn't failed abysmally then we wouldn't have had the amazing opportunity to rehome her - every cloud...

Tedster's 6th Birthday!

 

So Tedster is 6 years old today, he came into being when I bought him at a touristy type stall on a Wellness Works trip to Windsor. I can never resist a teddy-bear and Julia and I had thought about buying a bear to take with us on my 50th birthday holiday visit to the Isle of Wight to replicate the "Teddy Does the Isle of Wight" book idea that we'd purchased on an early trip to the island.

The little book had been written by two ladies who whilst both being keen photographers didn't want to appear in their photos of places around the island. So they bought an Isle of Wight bear and he appeared in various places, including having his lunch and what not at pubs and venues.

So Tedster was "born" and he came with us for that holiday trip and has been my photo companion ever since. Tucked in the chest strap of my rucksack he accompanies me on my photo days out and appears in my pictures. He helps me to not feel so alone when I'm out and about, I don't have to worry about where he's wandered off to and he doesn't talk back 🤣 On the odd holiday that I have taken away from home he also helps people to remember who I am and he's quite the ice breaker when people stop to ask about him. I've also learnt that I'm not the only one who has a travel bear, apparently they are more prevalent than you'd realise!

So HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY TEDSTER 🎂 🎉 🎁

Back to The Yard!

 

So Tedster and I ventured back to The Yard this Saturday, given the weather was supposed to be heaps better than our first visit a few weeks ago. And indeed it was sunny, mainly, and warm enough for just a t-shirt, no coat required!

Being 3wks on from my second jab I'm feeling a tad more confident to get out and about but went upstairs on the bus to avoid the queues from busses not turning up and some nutter who'd been shouting his mouth off whilst we were queuing at the bus stop.

At least at the Dockyard it is wide open spaces and easy to spend the day without mixing with people, perfect for me. The downside to this visit being that the day before I'd worn some new wellies which had left my foot feeling sore so trying to walk in my shoes proved to be very uncomfortable at times, not conducive to feeling particularly creative in my photography.

Still we had a good few hours wandering around, the garden looked amazing and I was happy with the images I did manage to take. 

A little example of the creative views you can find around the Yard if you look hard enough...

Father's Day 2021 Part 2

 

Spent Father's Day over at my Dad's with my brother and his family. Good to catch up with them as we've been parted more or less for most of the Lockdown since last year apart from the recent funeral for our Step-Mum.

Having called into Dockside after my 2nd Covid-19 jab I saw this amazing metal garden bi-plane that you can see in the photo above. Given I had no better ideas for my Dad for Father's Day I thought he'd like something in the garden that was a bit more "boy toy"!

This is after he and my 'bro assembled it and Dad came outside to test drive the propellers being blown around. Works amazingly well :-)

This is me in between my Dad and 'bro, taken by Joanne in the garden. Thought it would be good to get a snap of the three of us as we'd already done another image of the "Letley's" - Dad, Darren (my 'bro) and his boys George & William. Last image taken was many years ago when I think William was only little.

Happy days and good to spend some family time together in what has been a really weird and lonely fourteen months whilst the pandemic has been keeping families apart.

Mote Park - Father's Day 2021

 So despite it being a quite cool and overcast day we set off to Mote Park as planned to celebrate a slightly early Father's Day. Dad, James, Julia, Annie and me had a good walk around first - just in case we got rained off - and then had our picnic before heading back home to warm up.

Irritating that I've sat in too hot temperatures all bloody week at work and yet once again when it gets to the weekend and some time off the weather decides that is the right time to totally change. Yesterday we had wall to wall rain all day - total washout for getting anything useful done outside and today whilst it's stayed dry in the main the temps have been low and uninspiring.

Still Dad & I took our cameras along as usual and took a few snaps and in this particular shot Julia chucked a stone into the water to create the splash you see here to add some interest to the still water.

All in all it was just really good to spend some quality time together especially as last year I had to get gifts/cards posted to Dad as Covid-19 prevented all of us from meeting up as usual. 

At least with most of us jabbed twice and Julia & James having had one shot at least we are definitely getting there.

And it was good to wander around the park and see how much it has changed since last summer which was my last visit. The new café is being built, the dam (?) work has completed and generally the park is looking good. Maybe now that I've had both of my jabs I'll feel a bit more confident to bus over there for a proper mooch around. It used to be one of my many haunts pre-Covid-19.

Evening "Entertainment"

 

On Wednesday evening whilst cooking dinner I heard an almighty bang and having rushed to the porch window saw this green car had hit the lamp-post and almost ended up in the fields whilst trying to avoid another car coming up the road which had ended up on the same side of the road whilst they went around a couple of parked cars :-(

After presumably exchanging details the other car drove away and the owner of this green car put the hazard lights on and left...

Some time later the ladies who owned the cars parked outside rocked up and were on their phones for a while, some time after all this we had a low-loader and three police cars out front with six officers - no wonder there's never a policeman around when you need one. Not sure why it warranted so many - perhaps they were bored 🤣 

Anyhoo, one police car stayed until quite late, parked up behind this green car with it's blue lights flashing, all very annoying as I was about to head off to bed. As I was getting ready for bed a large lorry arrived equipped with a crane type device and proceeded to lift the green car off the lamp-post and onto the back of the lorry. Amidst the car alarm sounding the lorry drove the car away followed promptly by the police.

So I thought, whilst the lamp-post is askew, at least it's still working and so I got in bed. Then the council rocked up and at quarter to midnight set about taking the lamp-post down with what sounded like an angle-grinder.

So much for getting some much needed sleep for work the next morning 😴

Talk about dinner and a show ;-)

Wild Flowers Walk

 

Me and my Dad had a mooch just up to Horsted Park late this morning to go look at the wild flowers that grow up there. An abundance of grasses, poppies, love in the mist, daisies, dog roses et al and all provided lots of worthy subjects to point our cameras at.

A bit warmer outside than we'd anticipated, although when the breeze blew it was most welcome.

The areas have been left to do their own thing, within reason, and these wild flowers create a bee friendly environment as well as a riot of colours. The red poppies were especially gorgeous even if the cameras are less enamoured by the colour red!

This is one of several favourites from the hour or so we spent mooching around. It was good to get outside for a walk in the fresh air, good to spend some time with my Dad and good to stretch the legs after spending all day yesterday gardening and waking up feeling as stiff as a board ;-)

Decking Lights

 

Purchased some more decking lights whilst I was in town getting jabbed up, the lanterns to replace something similar that had finally run out of battery (non-replaceable battery) and the two large lightbulbs because I'd bought them first to replace the old lanterns just in case I couldn't see anything else.

So this is the first night switched on after approx. 3 days charging up as directed.

Shot on the Galaxy S20 in night mode, although it wasn't as dark as the mode is normally used for, but it takes an awesome night picture although you do have to try and stand still whilst it's shooting it, but it produces an amazingly crisp and vibrant image post some sort of built-in processing.

Anyhoo, really pleased with the lights and hopefully these will last as long as the others did :-)

Dumb Or What???

 

Google's definition of severed:

So maybe Mr Hancock should actually consult a dictionary before he puts pen to paper or comes out with such a crap sentence such as the first image above. Either the vaccines have severed/broken the link between Covid-19 and hospital admissions or they haven't, but it cannot be one without the other.

Shocking to think that these people are running our country, even BoJo struggles to put a coherent sentence together that everyone can understand. It's no wonder most of Joe Public are confused about what information we're being fed here about Covid-19. Half of it doesn't even make sense from a linguistic point of view let alone anything else.

Between them they have to be the most shocking group of barely understandable politicians I have ever had the misfortune to come across whilst perusing the news. Normally, Covid-19 aside I'm not an avid news person preferring to remain blissfully ignorant of the depressing information going on around the UK and indeed the world.

But the advent of Covid-19 changed all that, now the need to at least be relatively informed seems paramount. The downside to this being having to try and decipher the crap that comes out of No 10.

And I can't even bare to watch most of them on any little video clips, Hancock is an irritating little tw*t that I just want to slap and knock the constant smirk off his face and BoJo is simply embarrassing. Where were they when literacy was being taught in school? Probably behind the bike sheds having a sneaky fag ;-)

And don't even get me started on the discovery vs disclosure debate. I'd like to think they were ready to disclose their thoughts on the next Step 4 and whether we're likely to be on or off. Sadly I think we'll be stuck waiting until next week, having heard the regular mantra that "there's nothing in the data to suggest we need to delay - yet", before discovering that actually they've been leaning towards delays/caveats for ages. Not quite sure on what they would base the delays - yes there are cases but hospital admissions are amongst those yet to be jabbed, an ever decreasing number of the population as the vaccine rollout continues it's momentum. What about the areas where we have hardly any cases, of any variant? What about those who've had all their jabs? When are they just going to suck it up and let us live with this rather than keep hiding from it?

No wonder most of us are scared to death of going out and mixing with people - we've been constantly bombarded with all manner of conflicting information from scientists who cannot even agree with each other within a single institute let alone among different institutes. They are like clocks - have enough of them around and you'll never know the truth. Quite frankly it's all getting somewhat tedious now and I suspect that the public's penchant for sticking to the rules is wearing pretty thin by now. Especially as most of us were initially led to believe that life would be returning to normal around Easter when we were still in the back end of last year and looking for some glimmer of hope.

Now we've been in this weirdness for approx. 15 months and the reality is that despite EVERYTHING we could end up falling at the last hurdle. There will always be new variants, there will be 2nd jabs to deliver and boosters too. Always some excuse not to fully open up.

We were sold the idea that a vaccine would be our exit strategy - and we have numerous ones which work, amazingly well, and we've done the impossible and blasted our way through millions of doses for millions of people. Time to cut us loose and relegate Covid-19 to the back benches where it belongs.

All Jabbed Up!

 

So Saturday saw round two of the Covid-19 vaccine administration. Rocked up @ The Pentagon Centre at 15:30 or just before and astoundingly I was in and out in around 20mins flat 😱 Totally better than last time although maybe there's less of us to be getting through now in the Medway Towns?

So this is my card, two doses of the Oxford jab thanks very muchly, 3wks from now I'll be fitting fit against the Covid-19 lurgy. Not that I really venture out much anyway working from home as I do, and indeed have been since March 2020.

Hoping to feel more confident now I'm Fully Vaccinated, I think my continued isolation at home has cultivated a somewhat wary and anxious version of me that is struggling to find the confidence to just get out there. Plus I hate wearing a face covering although I have to say that Julia was right about the Pacamask being one of the more comfortable to wear.

Wearing or not wearing one is kind of a double edged sword depending on where I am. On a bus I'd probably feel better continuing to wear it even if I didn't have to. But general shopping, as we did yesterday before/after my jab leaves me wondering why it is necessary. Especially when some people insist on leaving theirs under their chin - how is that supposed to help?? These shopping malls have air coming in all the time, and it's not like you get close to people at all really so again it begs the question of why are they needed? Most tills have staff behind a screen and they are probably the closest you get to anyone and even then it's not for long. How does being allowed to sit at a table in a café without wearing one balance out having to put it back on when you get up to walk around in what is essentially the same space??

Gonna be interesting to see what is announced on the 14th June ahead of the possible Step 4 date of the 21st June. Whether it really will be Freedom Day or some half baked version instead which in reality won't be too different from what we have already.

And I think they are right that we are going to have to learn to live with this, vaccines tweaked for new variants, boosters where necessary and the ones we have, have broken the link between cases and hospital admissions which is always what this has all been about - Saving the NHS.

We cannot put our lives on hold indefinitely waiting for this virus to go away, we have to bite the bullet and open up again and come out of our protective shells that we have built around ourselves borne of the fear that "we're all gonna die" - which in many respects has been piled on us from an overprotective government led by a team of scientists who want to carry on sitting on the fence rather than make any kind of decision.

Rain Stops Play :-(

 

So, Friday was our first trip back to the Yard since it reopened on the 17th May post some of the Covid-19 shite. And having spent all week at the work laptop watching the glorious sunshine out of the window I wondered how hot it would be for our day out...

Shouldn't have worried, not only was it cooler but it pissed down all day ☔ Managed to spend a little while there but didn't want to spend all my time indoors masked up and outside I'd have been struggling to use the camera whilst holding onto my brolly.

So promptly gave up and caught the bus home - total washout and really annoyed that Mother Nature saw fit to order a day of complete crap weather for my day off. Yes there will be other visits but why can't it rain when I have to stay indoors and work? Instead of me having to watch everyone else enjoying the sunshine???

Can't say I enjoyed the Grain Estuary soundscape exhibition either that is currently residing in Slip 3. It's a loud cacophony of sounds and voices which for me spoils the whole usual peacefulness that the "BIG SPACE" provides. I see no merit to the voices as they blur into white noise. As far as I'm concerned the sooner it packs up the better :-( If it had been simply water noises that might have made more sense but it isn't. It's totally bizarre.