Photos, Shows and criminals

Tuesday morning and I’m on the train going to work. There is a bloke sat behind me with a huge B.O. problem. Well I hope it’s him and not me…

Just thinking about all that happened since I last blogged. I had written two part blogs since my last full effort. The first was discussing the pro’s and con’s of various photo image hosting that I had available to me and asking you dear readers your opinions. Thing is by trying it up, make me think more and more about it and I made up my own mind. I’ve decided to upgrade my fotopic account to a premium account. Which means that I can have more galleries on there and more importantly be able to sell copies of my photos. So far I’ve added some aircraft photos and I’ll copy across my church photos and eventually all my general photos. This will mean that my pbase.com account will not be renewed when its due.

I did another part blog about the weekend and going to the village show in the village where Sue was brought up. I did enjoy the show. Especially coming away with some nice books from the book stall, couple of nice plants and winning a coconut, two bottles of wine and a bottle of whisky. Didn’t enter any veg into the show. Haven’t got any at the moment available to be show, they have either been eaten or aren’t ready yet. I guess I’ll try and enter something next year, but I do have issues with the whole thing. Rules and regs on every aspect of the veg, size, colour, shape, how they are presented etc and some people take the whole thing far too seriously for their own good. Mum did really well bringing us all up and there was always food on the table. But whether our spuds had a better skin colour than anyone elses wasn’t important. The fact that they were there was important.

Talking about spuds I’ve harvested my crop of them on Sunday and I’m really pleased with them. Got a huge box full. Lovely. Should keep us going for a while and hopefully reduce the food bill.

However, biggest news is that the criminal element in our society has been trying to break into the factory behind us. Gaining entry via our and our neighbours gardens. We caught a couple trying to hack their was through our gate at the side of the house. We rushed down to chase them off, luckily they legged it before we got outside. So we’re not really sleeping well these days. Feels terrible haven been invaded and knowing they could and probably will come back. My home and home life is so important to me these days.

The great side of this is that we got chatting to out neighbours to the right, who we’d never spoken to before. They turn out to be really nice people and they woman the other side of them seems nice as well. So looks like on the whole we’ve got a really nice bunch of people all round us.

Well nearly at Bournemouth now. Luckily the block behind me got off at Brockenhurst and the smell went with him… So it’s not me stinking the place out.. well not this morning at least.

Monday blues

Well it Monday morning again. Back to the soul destroying hell that I call work. Writing this blog on the train heading to work.

Been a good weekend though. You’ve probably already read on /Sue’s blog about the fact we didn’t go to London yesterday. We did pull up the first of he spuds and they tasted lovely. Better than you would get in a shop. You see my main aim is taste (o.k. my MAIN aim is to get the things to grow) but as each year passes I get to know, what I can grow and how to grow it. So as a gardener who going to eat his own veg. Taste is number 1 aim. Unfortunately, the supermarket has other ideas. Money is everything with them. So the product has to be cheap and have a long shelf life. Taste is not a priority for them.

Did a bit of work on my we pages on old stone churches of England yesterday. Not that I’ve looked at any different ones recently. Just catching up on the ones I look at a while back. Trouble is I’ve forgotten where a couple of them were.

Oh well, passing Hinton Admrial now. Nearly all of the usuals are either on or have left the train.. Southampton twins. Nurse Gladys, PC Plod, bog man, though I haven’t seen duchess. She must have a day off*. Yeah, making up names for my fellow passengers helps the journey go quickly. Wonder if any of them have a name for me. Mind you looking at them all in their own little world I would guess that most of them never notice their fellow passengers.

*update - she was on the train - sat behind me with her friends stripy and fizzy

Wonder how much I'll get

Well good news is that I have once again become a published photographer. I’m not sure why I took my camera to work that day. It was a nice day weather wise. But I don’t normally take it and when I do I don’t normally take it when I go out to lunch. These days I rarely take a lunch beak unless Sue wants a DVD from the papers that you have to go to WH Smiths for. Anyway. Walking back from lunch I saw Yellow Buses new training vehicle. It a new livery. Hmm wonder if Buses magazine would be interested in that. Now I’ve been kicking my of late for a) missing out of the new Yellow Buses livery and b) missing out on the new mini-bus service around Southampton, i.e. City Clipper. But if Buses magazine was going to publish a picture of this new livery, I was going to try and make sure it was my picture. Thumbnail of the pic was sent off to the editor that afternoon and he requested the full size image that evening. I had my fingers crossed. Well today the picture came out in print and I’m chuffed to bits. I’m happy on many levels. Knowing I can take pictures that are magazine quality, knowing that I can spot a photo that an editor or a magazine would want, earning money from my hobby and I’m getting back some of the expense of my digital camera. Well at the moment I’ve no idea how much I’ll get. The last time I had a photo in Buses magazine I got £2.50 but that was back in 1983! So I’m hoping I’ll get at least a fiver….

Yeovilton

Another long gap between blogs. I’m sorry dear readers. Been a bit busy the last week or so. Last weekend was Yeovilton Air Show and what a jolly good show it was. The Swiss version of the Red Arrows, the Patrouille Suisse, put in a brilliant display, and the mock battle they normally have at the end of the show was a better than normally effort all round. Went with my good mate Paul, Mark and young Jimmi. Took lots of pictures which I’ve een trying to sort out this week for the Air-Britain Photographic Site. Normally its just a rush as to who gets their photos uploaded first will get theirs on the site, but for the first time they have decided to give people a week to upload their pictures and the only publish the best ones of each aircraft. So that’s what I’ve been trying to do, get my pictures sorted out. However there is a problem. The have a sliding scale as to how many pictures you can have in the queue at any one time, which is based on the percentage rate of acceptance of your photos over the past thirty days. Most of the time I’m on the highest rate and can upload 50 photos at any one time. However last Friday I took the afternoon off and went out the Hurn Airport and took some shots there. Uploaded them to Air-Britain but many were rejected as there was already too many photos of that aircraft on the database already. One aircraft had 6 shots from the same photographer, so there was no room for my, rather good I think, shot of it. I’ve had a moan about one photographer having so may photos of the same aircraft. Anyway, thanks to all these rejections, I’ve moved down a band and now can only upload 40 photos. Bit annoying that. Just trying to get as many photos of mine out there, to get my name know around aviation circles.


Some of you may have seen that I’ve become active on Facebook.com. Known about that site for a while but never really got into it until now. I guess I never had many friends on there but no it seems that they’ve all joined up. Strange how many of my friends have join all at the same time from both my work and outside of work. It’s not like they all knew each other.

Still off to the Air Tattoo at Fairford on Saturday with Paul and Mark. Ready to upload load of my pictures from that on Sunday and next week.

Have a good weekend all…