About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Westonbirt - The National Arboretum

I Took my Mother to Westonbirt Arboretum on Thursday, and the display was stunning, I'll put a load of images up here in a day or five, but need to sort them out properly, in the mean time, here's a taster...

Above shots taken looking through the Japanese Maple/Acer glade, the colours are quite breathtaking and will still be well worth a view tomorrow if you have a few hours to kill, the display this year is better than normal and a once in a blue-moon thing, so go if you can. I'd imagine the show will 'go-over' mid-week, a few had already lost their leaves, but most were still in full show.

J17 off the M4, or map-read from the Midlands!! I saw a sign for Chipping-torybury so it can't be too far from J's 9-12 of the M40?

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Autumn

Well, just left the court for what was hopefully the last time and - due to the other party hopelessly compromising the out of court settlement - all will be revealed, but not on here first, I'll let the New Agency dealing with the case disseminate it all and make some sense of it!

Anyway, should be less of a bear with a sore head going forwards, but still a few weeks stress moving house and sorting files!

In the meantime here are some pretty pictures of one of the best Autumns I can remember, the late trees seem early, the early trees seem late and they've all caught the Oaks, so the colours out there are stunning...

Victoria Park, Newbury, Berkshire about two weeks ago, the limes just on the turn and in direct sunlight seconds before the heavens opened! The grey storm-clouds providing the studio drapery.

Fleet, Hampshire, on the Ancelles Farm commercial park, is it my imagination or do the young trees turn a week or two early? Less capacity to store water?...

A corporate HQ in Basingstoke the same day, a truly yellow one; apart from the odd red yellow or pink 'turn', when you go up to them and study autumn trees, you find most of them are some shade of brown, but it's the way they go over, or interact with the others around them of in the background that makes the display. The Hazels - as an example - currently have mostly green leaves, with a Florida-tan brown edge to them and a yellow zone between the brown and the green.

A hillside on the edge of Salisbury Plain on Monday, a few miles short of Luggershall on the Hampshire/Wiltshire boarder. I was on the way to an interview for a retards course, now I'm officially a retard (don't worry, it'll all come out in the next few weeks...), and had to pull over for this burning hillside. The Andover road up toward Wayhill had some stunning vistas but I couldn't stop to shoot them.

This is the hill down into Newbury from the big retail-park up at Wash Common, yesterday, just loved the dull maroon in among paling greens.

Pheasants congregating in the first wisps of the first mists about a week ago, the mist was changing as fast as the pheasants woke to my presence and despite taking a dozen or so shots this was the only usable one, and it's hardly a pro-shot...Doh!