Thanks, Frosty!

Mine and LL's attempt at this years Halloween lantern.

Nose supplied by the snowman LOL.












Have a spooky night everyone.

Earthtongue

The other day, I noticed some things on the lawn, near to the rotary clothes dryer. I thought perhaps they were blackened pieces of newspaper blown from somebody's garden bonfire or maybe feathers evidencing a cat's dawn assault on some unsuspecting blackbird. Returning from my digging expedition, I observed that the stuff was still there. This time I crouched down and quickly realised that I was looking at strange black fungi spears poking through the turf. I'd never seen such a fungi before - or maybe I had seen it but just didn't take the time to notice it.

As we all know, autumn is the best time for fungi. In forests, on rotting trunks, in meadows and on lawns, toadstools and mushrooms quietly appear poking their strange little heads at the sky. One day you don't see them and the next day you do. Mostly we expect them to have little stems supporting heads of different hues with little gills beneath. Unless we are fungi foragers or botanists specialising in the field we don't expect fungi to look like the odd black growth shown in the photograph above.

There must have been at least thirty of the little black spears within about a square metre of lawn. They were all between half an inch and two inches tall.

Internet research tells me that not only are there over 100,000 different types of known fungus in the world with thousands more still to be catalogued but it also tells me that the little black spears are commonly known as "Earthtongues". However, there are many different sorts of "Earthtongue" and ours may be either "geoglossum cookieanum" (as in the photo) or "geoglossum fallax". In reality, I think it would take an expert with a microscope to say for sure.

I come to realise that it would be possible to spend a lifetime simply studying "Earthtongue", recording its geographical distribution and the characteristics of the many different types. Apparently, this odd fungus can be found in many parts of the world but until Thursday morning I had no idea of its existence. And it wasn't in the Serengeti or the wilds of Alaska - it was just outside our back door.

Music Healing !!!!!!!!!!!

 

A Child

Terribly Cried

Oceanic Tears

None of The Voice Tonic 

Could Support & Know 

The Reason.

Her Friend

Started Playing Piano

Could Notice Her

Recovering Face.

Could See 

Her Changing 

Facial Expressions

Her Actions Changed.

She Sat In

Meditating Posture

Closed Her Eyes

Complete Silence Everywhere.

Many Nature

Dreams Came Her Way 

Walking Along The 

Himalayas, Hills, Mountains

Oceans, Rivers, Ponds, Lakes

Chirping of Birds

Beautiful Colorful Rainbow

Bright Sun Shine

Birds Flying So High

Her Hands Stretched

Facing To The Sky

Mother Earth Grabbed

The Young Girl

With Her Beautiful

Tender Hands of Nature. 

Love of Mother Earth

Towards The Young Girl

Is Indescribable.

Mother Earth

Showered The Young Girl

With Her Blessings,

Gifted Young Girl

Colorful Balloons

Hugged Her And

Whispered,

Baby, I Love You!!!!!

Don't Be Sad

Don't Feel Down

I'm Always With You

I Knew You Couldn't

Attend Your Friend's

Birthday Party Cause

of The Heavy Downpour

You Sat In The Park 

In The Dark Fearing 

To The Owls.

But My Moon Was There

Taking Care of You

My Fairy White Owl

Took Care of You

And, I At last You Were

Back Home, When Your

Friend Saw You 

Sitting All Alone 

On The Bench of The Park.

You Recollected The 

Happenings & To Let

Out Your Feeling

Cried, Cried & Cried

Finally, Your Friend Knew

You Love Piano 

And She Started Playing :) :)

Now, Enjoy Your Day

Take These Balloons With You

Sun Showed You The

Bright Future

Rainbows Showed You

Colorful Life :) :)

Written For,

Thursday Tales.

#31

Image Courtesy :- Janis Katlaps

PS :- Thanks A Lot For All Your Cherishable Compliments For The Previous Post, "Life And The Nature".

Classy Performances @ Skate Canada

Well - Alissa Czisny and Patrick Chan have both taught me a lesson - don't count them out!
Although both of them had a fall in their free programmes, they took deserved golds with beautiful performances and skating skills. I was particularly impressed with Alissa's ability to fight for her landings more than in the past. She has a painfully long history of being inconsistent when the pressure is on (rather like another vistuoso skater, Sasha Cohen). Chan also showed he can land his quad when the pressure is on, and the more he can do that, the more he can contend for a world title.

I hope these videos stay around on you-tube. Link to more videos here.

Money Shots - podiums.

Ladies - Makarova (S), Czisny (G), Lacoste (B)

Mens - Oda (S), Chan (G), Rippon (B)

Pairs - Moore-Towers & Moscovich (Canada-Silver)
Iliushechkina & Maisuradze (Russia-Gold)
Lawrence & Swiegers (Canada-Bronze)

Dance - Sinead & John Kerr (GBR - Silver)

Crone & Poirier (Canada - Gold)

Chock & Zuerlin (USA - Bronze)

Full results here.

Life And The Nature :) :)

Pure Heart

Pure Sky

Beautiful Rainbow

Colorful Life.

Pure Water

Pure Mind

Nature's Silence

Peace of Mind.

Moving Clouds

Smooth Flow of Life

Life Is Beautiful
When,
Nature Is Hand In Hand.

Looking

At The Sky

Dreaming of

Colorful Life

To Ward off 

Difficulties

Experience The

Fruitful Life

By Getting

Fruitful Results.

Beauty of Life

Is Bitter

Sour, Chilly

And Sweet.

God, Let The Life

Be As Colorful As The Rainbow

Pure As The White Clouds

Be Blessed As The Nature :) :)

PS :- Dear Bloggers, Thanks A Lot For All Your Cherishable Compliments & Wishes For My Youngest Sister's Poem. She Is Very Much Happy For All Your Encouragement And Appreciation :) :) 

 

King of Pop Michael Jackson photos

Aching

Zebedee with Dougal

There was a time when I felt invulnerable. Never ill, I worked for thirty years without a single day off. My body was my obedient servant. It did what ever I commanded it to do. Lift a heavy weight - no problem. Stay awake for forty eight hours - easy! Why was I surrounded by so many weaklings - snivelling and moaning - what was wrong with them?

Once I emerged from a potentially fatal car crash. The vehicle had turned over two or three times on a bend in a Scottish country road. I was lying on the ceiling. I wound the window down or up and crawled out. Seeing the car on its roof and being in a state of adrenalin-fuelled shock, I decided to turn the car back on to its wheels so I could push it to the verge. I succeeded.

In contrast, on Friday, I found myself prostrate on my son's small bathroom floor. I was tiling some unfinished floor level boxing for pipes - around the bathroom "furniture". This meant I had to be up and down like a yo-yo but every time I got up from the floor, the effort involved was strenuous. Back in my salad days I would have been zipping around like a spring, leaping from the floor as Zebedee did in "The Magic Roundabout".

Frustratingly, since I "retired" from my last school I have had to contend with a catalogue of physical "issues" including:- urine infections, a frozen shoulder, returning gout, broken ribs, an abscess on a tooth, an e-coli infection, two hospital operations. I am well and truly peed off with this stuff and just want to get back to how it was before when I was pretty much a suburban superman. But I'm honest enough to accept that time has been catching upon me. I'm getting old and though it would be nice to think that getting old meant sitting in a rocking chair on a verandah watching the sun go down, I rather think it has much more to do with aches and pains, faculties reducing, the body starting to shut down.

Tonight, as I write these words, I'm confident that for the first time in seven or eight months my frozen left shoulder will not wake me in the early hours and I'm pleased that for the first time in a month I did not limp home with pain caused by uric crystals in the joints of the big toe on my right foot. On Thursday, I felt strong enough to finish digging over the vegetable patch - allowing frosts and winter weather to contribute to the development of a finer tilth.

So the aches and pains are at bay but I recognise they haven't gone away for good. Just round the corner there will be something else. I guess it's payback time. When you are younger you think you will last forever but it isn't so. We are only here for a short while.

Skate Canada - Day 1

Day 1 in Kingston is a busy one with all disciplines competing. Although the action will continue until long after we Brits go to bed, I will do my best to keep everyone posted with updates.


Ladies
Sadly Sarah Meier had to withdraw after morning practice. She sprained her ankle training her triple lutz.
First skater out of the box was Agnes Zawadski - a relative unknown from the US making her senior debut after winning silver at the World Jr Champs last year. She laid down a great short programme scoring 56.29. Last week at NHK Carolina Kostner won the short with 57.27 and Kanako Murakami was 2nd with 56.10. Zawadski should place very well by the end of today.
Canadians Myriane Samson and Amelie Lacoste also put in clean performances to score 51.62 and 55.30 respectively.
Fumie Suguri (JPN) first competed at Skate Canada in 1998 - 12 YEARS AGO! she put out a decent performance with some underrotated jumps, putting her in 4th behind the two Canadians with a score of 48.17
Haruka Imai (JPN) Skated with great character and speed to a programme of gypsy music - scoring 52.52
Ksenia Makarova (Russia) hit her triple-triple competition and got the crowd on her side with a great flamenco programme. She goes into first with 57.90
Alissa Czisny (USA) had beautiful spins (as ever) but struggled fully rotating on some of her jumps (as ever). No falls but not quite the performance she may have hoped for - 55.95.
Cynthia Phaneuf (Canada) delighted the home crowd with her clean spanish programme, full of character and quality. She goes into the lead with 58.24.

So with less than 3 points separating the top 5 skaters - Skate Canada looks to be shaping up for a better competition than expected.
The top ladies after the short programme are-
Pairs
New Canadian pair Duhamel & Radford had an great GP debut. She doubled one of their side-by-side jumps but they performed well together for a new pair. 54.80
Young pairs Lawrence & Sweigers (Canada) and Castelli & Snapir (USA) gave impressive and fun performances.
The two highest ranking pairs coming into the competition, Kemp & King (GB) and Dong & Wu (China) underperformed badly and end up at the lower end of the rankings after underwelming performances.
The stars of the day were the young Russians Iliushechkina & Maisuradze (Whose names I always have a nightmare spelling!) who outclassed the field with difficulty and performance quality.


So the pairs standings are -

Mens
History was made in the Men's competition when Kevin Reynolds of Canada became the first man to land 2 quads (toe and salchow) in the short programme. Reynolds also has a THIRD quad (loop) in his arsenal. If he can further improve his transitions and maturity to match his jumps he could really be the cat amongst the pigeons on the World stage.
Canada's leading man, Patrick Chan however had less luck in the short programme with 3 falls, however the judges were still kind to him and he is currently still in 4th and not a million miles away from medal contension.
Nobunari Oda leads the men with a clean and difficult programme and Adam Rippon made a great season debut of his new Romeo and Juliet programme, currently in third.

Dance
It's super close in the Ice Dance stakes with the Kerrs leading Crone and Poirier by just 0.001 of a point going into the free dance. My patriotic wish for the Kerrs to finally win a grand prix gold is balanced by my love of C+P's youthful, fresh style. I'm going to sit on my fence and wish them both well!

Full Live Scores
Tweets from Patinaggio
Great live blogging from Flutzing Around

Superb Iceberg stills

Skate Canada

The second stop on the Grand Prix season is the Skate Canada International in Kingston ON this weekend. Canada will unfortunately be missing a few of it's stars as Virtue & Moir and Dube & Davison have been forced to pull out due to injuries. Still - many others will be looking forward to make a first big impression on Canadian soil since Vancouver


Men
Canada's young star Patrick Chan will be looking to re-assert himself amongst the best in the world after a slightly disappointing olympics. His performances at minor summer competitions were well recieved and having been training at altitude in Colorado he should be fighting fit.
He'll face competition from other young talents - American Adam Rippon (now Brian Orser's most senior pupil), Japan's Nobunari Oda and mini-Plushenko Artur Gachinski

Ladies
After the splat fest that was the ladies competition last week at NHK, the door is open for some surprise entries to win a Grand Prix final spot with a good performance here. The list for skate Canada is somewhat devoid of big names.
World bronze medallist Laura Lepisto was due to compee but is not on the start list. She recently started university so may be focussing on that for the moment.
In her absense the medal contenders include russian diva Ksenia Makarova, Canadian Cynthia Phaneuf, and the veterains Sarah Meier, Fumie Suguri and Alissa Czisny.

Pairs
This will be the grand prix debut of canadian Megan Duhamel and new partner Eric Radford - who recently finished 3rd at the Nebelhorn trophy.
The main medal contenders may be relatively junior pairs in this fairly inexperienced field - Lubov Iliushenka & Nodari Maisuradze of Russia and Huibo Dong & Yiming Wu of China.

Dance
In the absense of Virtue and Moir this could be the chance for British pair Sinead & John Kerr to challenge for gold in a season which may be their swansong. The Scottish siblings had long planned to retire after the 2010 games but found they were not yet tired of competing.
The home favourites at this event will be Vanessa Crone & Paul Poirier. Americans Madison Chock & Greg Zuerlin (who train at the Canton school of Ice Dance champions!) could also challenge the Brits with a good performance.


As ever the season after the olympics is a changing of the guard. More famous faces vanish off the radar and new ones arise. We may see a glimpse of the future at Skate Canada.

Full starting orders and results here.
The competition for all skaters starts Friday.

A Fairy!!!!!!!!!!

 

I Looked Up At The Sky 

And Something Caught My Eye

A Tiny Bright Light

Oh! What A Sight!

I Wished It Came Close By

It Didn't, I Wondered Why!

I Called Out To It

But There Was No Reply.

Then, Suddenly It Came Fluttering By

Now, It Was Not So High

Down It Came And Made Me Merry

And Then I Knew, It Was A Fairy!

PS :- Dear Bloggers, This Fairy Poem Is Written By My Youngest Sister. She Is Just 8Years Old. She Wrote For A School Magazine. Her Words Mesmerized Me & Wished To Share Here With You All :) :) She Is An Excellent Fantastic Fabulous Poetess :) :) 

PPS :- Dear Bloggers, Thanks A Lot For All Your Cherishable Compliments For The Previous Post, "Bird's Nature".

Request

This coming Sunday evening, a special event will be held in Millennium Square in Sheffield. It has been organised by The Stroke Association and its principal aim is to raise money for that praiseworthy organisation's work. What is it it? It's a firewalk over burning embers and participants are asked to achieve as much sponsorship as they can muster.

Don't worry, the writer of this request wouldn't be brave enough to even consider such a challenge. However, a fellow Yorkshire blogger has signed up for the firewalk. Her name is Elizabeth and if you can spare a fiver, ten pounds or more it would be excellent if you could sponsor her. I am proud to have regular blog visitors from America, NZ and Australia but I must confess I am not sure about the feasibility of sponsorship from overseas. Perhaps you could try it via the link at the bottom of this post and see.

For Elizabeth, the firewalk isn't just about raising money for The Stroke Association, it's also about fulfilling a long held spiritual ambition and perhaps more importantly reaching a milestone in her personal recovery from a debilitating fall some four years back. That fall caused a brain injury which Elizabeth has been battling to overcome. It has been a long and difficult road back.

So come on folks! Please support Elizabeth on her firewalk by sponsoring her. Every little helps. Go to:- http://www.justgiving.com/Elizabeth-Stanforth-Sharpe

A Quickie: How to Win His Heart

When I was 12, I had a huge crush on this guy, whom I'll call Bonzo here. Clueless about seduction, I was desperate for advice on how to win his heart. Lo and behold, a teen magazine I read religiously at the time published an article titled, "How to Win His Heart". It gave me some very specific instructions, such as:

1. Write his name on a piece of paper, then put the piece of paper in a jar of honey, and store the jar under your bed.

2. Fake fainting around him. It'll give him a chance to take care of you and feel knight-like.

3. Buy a notebook that looks just like his, make sure your phone number is in it, and swap yours for his when he isn't looking.

4. Flirt with your teacher in front of him. Seeing you get attention from an older man will awaken his animalistic need to mark his territory.

5. Ask a friend to give you a hickey. He has to know you're not waiting for him to notice you.

So I followed the advice to boot and, as predicted, he fell madly in love with me and we had a beautiful love story.

NOT.

What really happened was:

1. I ended up with an ant infestation under my bed and had to explain to my mom why I had a jar of honey with the word BONZO in it.

2. I got sent to the nurse for "fainting", she thought I was skipping meals and sent me to the guidance counselor, who gave me a bunch of brochures on eating disorders.

3. I bought the damn notebook, swapped mine for Bonzo's, but he apparently never missed his notebook because he never called me or returned my notebook to me or tried to figure out where his notebook was.

4. My teacher stood stone-still when I hugged him. Awkward and, if I had lived in the U.S. at the time, probably would've gotten us both arrested. No one's animalistic need to mark their territory was awakened, as far as I could tell.

5. My mom saw my hickey and grounded me for, like, ever.

Bonzo soon started dating some girl and I cancelled my subscription to said teen magazine.

Conclusion:

Honey doesn't have magic powers.

Fainting isn't hot.

Notebook swapping isn't how Cupid communicates.

Don't hug your middle-school teachers.

Hickeys are just a bad idea, period.

And teen magazines are full of shit.

image from here.

Bird's Nature !!!!!!!!!!

I Saw This Beautiful Bird

Near The Beach

Sitting On The Branch of The Tree.

 

His Eye- Sight Is So Perfect That,

He Could See The Fish 

Staying In depth of The Ocean

He Waited For The Fish

To Come Near The Shore. 

The Bird Flew 

To Some Distance

And Landed On To The Shore

Slowly Hopping Reached

The Fish & Caught Him

With His Beak. 

Relishing His Breakfast

Flapping His Wings

Flew High Up In The Sky

I Could Just Stare At His Doings....

As I Said, Dear Bird

Stop Flying High Up In The Air

Come Near Me, I Just Want To

Caress Your Beautiful Wings

But, He Flew So High 

Beyond My Reach!!!!!!!

PS :- Dear Bloggers, Thanks A Lot For All Your Cherishable Compliments For Previous Post, "Beauty of The Night".

Alabama Tourist photos

Event finals - day 2 (finally!)

Unfortunately my Sunday was rather busy (as was my Monday!) So it wasn't until last night that I managed to finally watch the event finals from Sunday.

Still there were a few happy- makers to be had.

1) Ana Porgras finally some gold around her neck after beautiful performances and graceful composure all week.


2) After the floor final had begun to look like a bit of a splat-fest, brilliant performances from Ferrari, Chelaru, Raisman , Sui Lu and of course Lauren Mitchell finished the women's competition in style.


3) The Rotterdam home crowd mustering to cheer on their gymnast, the incredible Epke Zonderland. And then with no subtlety at all boo the judges when he was knocked down to silver by Zhang Chenglong of China.


4) No bronzes handed out to the women on Sunday, showing just how close the competition is!

2 Golds, 4 silvers!

So that was Worlds 2010. With only 640 days to go until London 2012 it looks like we still have plenty to look forward to.....

Then

On Sunday, our twenty-ninth wedding anniversary, rather than driving straight to the supermarket with the list that Lady Pudding had given me, I took a detour to the Crookesmoor area of Sheffield in order to take a few pictures for the Geograph project. It was a lovely, bright autumnal day. It may be just me, but I find the sunshine on clear autumn days to be more intense than in summertime or spring. It makes photography very easy.

In 1981, I had been teaching for three years and Shirley had put in just a year since qualifying as a State Enrolled Nurse. Times were hard as they probably always are but we did the arithmetic and found that we were just about able to buy a modest house in what was a traditional working class owner-occupier part of lower Crookes. It was an end terrace, recently updated by a builder and the address was 40 Leamington Street. It cost £15,250.

In the weeks before our wedding we worked hard to paint the place, lay carpets, get in some furniture and a second hand cooker and fridge. The three-piece suite cost us £50 from a posh house at Abbeydale. We had seen it advertised in the evening paper.

Returning from our one night honeymoon in Lincoln, I carried Shirley over the threshold to begin our married life together. We lived happily in that house for eight years and it was where our children were conceived. Frances wasn't even one year old when we moved across the city to the more salubrious Sheffield 11. This time the house sold for £45,000.

We both have happy memories of Leamington Street. We had lovely neighbours and friends in the area - Ruby and Glyn, Kirk, Tony, Colin and Lorraine, John and Irene, Mrs Harris, Paul, Scottish Joe and Maureen, Harold and Sylvia. Though you can't tell from the photograph, the view from the back of the property was quite wonderful - over the central bowl of Sheffield with its twinkling lights, tower blocks and chimneys. Just round the corner was "The Closed Shop" pub where many's the pint was consumed amidst raucous laughter and idle conversation. It was a home from home.

It's over twenty one years since we left there. We sold the house to a university student's parents. Many terraced homes were being bought up in this way so that now the area is almost exclusively a student ghetto. See the brick red rendering. I painted that twenty five years past. It would make a great advertisement for the long-lasting qualities of "Sandtex" masonry paint.

Walking around the old neighbourhood was like stepping inside a personal history book. Echoes of old times. The social webs that were woven. On that wall Glyn sat and wept as he told me that after thirty five years, he'd been made redundant from his job as a steel turner. He never worked again. That's where the old corner shop used to be. This is where the DIY man fell from his ladder and died. That's where Colin and Lorraine's cats would wait for them after closing time. Number 40 Leamington Street became part of my very DNA. And it seems just like yesterday...

Anger

In job interviews of a certain ilk, a member of the smirking interview panel might sometimes ask: "And what makes you angry?". You'd like to say - "Interviewers like you! People who dangle stupid questions as if taunting donkeys with carrots. People who probably don't even know what being angry means!" Instead you say: "Anything that stands in the way of meeting targets", or, "Realising there are not enough hours in the day to achieve all you want to do".

Is anger a bad thing?

I think it would be bad if you spent your whole life in an angry state. Angry at the supermarket checkout woman who's talking to her colleague at the next till, angry at Simon Cowell's "X-Factor" media-cult, angry at dog owners allowing their mutts to foul the street, angry at racism, sexism, plagiarism, fanaticism, terrorism. If you were permanently angry, your life would hardly be worth living. In spite of it all, we need to chill out, laugh, find time to be calm, ride over the rocks that appear before us as we bounce down the rapids that we call Life.

But I wouldn't dismiss anger. I think anger has its place and is often more healthy than neutrality. When you get angry about things - these may be the times when you feel most alive. You're engaged with issues - either at a personal level or in relation to wider local, national or international matters. I'm a devout atheist but I recall from "The Bible" that even Jesus got angry when, for example, he allegedly overturned the moneylenders' tables. Calmness, karma, level-headedness, chilling out, not being "bothered" may occasionally be inappropriate, unnatural responses to situations that deserve anger's fire.

"Cat Devouring a Bird" by Pablo Picasso 1939

Why deny anger or try to disguise it? If it's there inside you, what's wrong with allowing it to surface? Surely that's healthier than letting it gnaw away at your insides like a cancer.

I'm angry about George Osborne with his massive bulletproof personal inheritance fund telling his fellow citizens in melodramatically paused sentences that we're "in it together" as he cuts away at vital services. I'm angry about parking regulations and angry about every single scrap of litter that is ever dropped. I'm angry about university tuition fees, child deaths from diarrhoea, The Tesco Monster, Nick Clegg, Grumpy Old Ken, my last headmistress, mobile phone masts, the persecution of tigers and whales and pandas. I'm angry with myself for failing to follow certain things through such as song-writing, decorating the bathroom, writing projects, sifting through the stuff in the attic, reading "The Origin of Species" or simply wasting precious time.

I like the idea of "angry young men". When I was younger, I would occasionally express my anger not only verbally but physically. Even now, I recall things that happened back in the day that I have never shared with anyone and they all arose from anger. Of course, the only sure-fire way to maintain a secret is to keep it completely to yourself. So please don't ask.

The angry young man in me never really went away. He's still there sleeping lightly but I have learnt to live more happily and harmoniously than before. What may have made me angry in the past can sometimes seem like water off a duck's back these days. But I still recall Alcibades's pertinent question to the senators in "Timon of Athens" - "Who is a man that is not angry?" The day you lose the capacity to be angry is the day that you have finally given up on life.

Ten

This year I have taken many photographs with my trusty digital camera. As I have mentioned before, I like to contribute to a website called Geograph which continues to capture images of the British Isles. In August, the website logged its two millionth image. In an average week, Geograph receives around 8,000 images and every week fifty photographs are selected for a competition shortlist. You can imagine that to even make the shortlist of fifty is a great achievement - statistically you have a one in one hundred and sixty chance of doing that.

I am proud to tell you that so far this year I have had ten photographs in the site's weekly shortlists and, as I recall mentioning before, one of my photos was even picked to be the "Photo of the Week" back in February. So here are my ten shortlisted pictures:-

Power Station from Willingham-by-Stow

Wicken Fen - WINNER - Week 7

Holmesfield Common

Near Treeton, Sheffield

Samuel Holberry's Grave, Sheffield General Cemetery

Allotment Hut at Meersbrook

King Harry Ferry, Cornwall

Endcliffe Park, Sheffield

Stanage Edge, North Derbyshire

Near Brookfield Manor, Hathersage

Don't you agree that digital photography is a wonderful invention? Even now I can only dimly remember the tiresome business of buying films, loading them, winding them back, unloading them, taking them to the chemist for processing and then a few days later ripping open those amber Kodak or Agfa envelopes to be underwhelmed by my prints. Digital photography is much more faithful to whatever we see when we press that button.