Tuesday 18th May 2010
Finally, comes some welcome sunshine on a Tuesday evening casting shadows across the deepening, green, glades of May. It is a peaceful scene full of birdsong and the gentle push of the wind across my ears. It has not been the best of months so far with some of the coldest weather for years. Despite the frost I think everything has survived but when I’ll have had enough rainwater to fill the pond is looking like next spring. Still it will be ready for the frogs to enjoy and give me plenty of time to tidy up the margins. I’m off to Cheshire with Nick tonight to pick up some speaker cabinets for renovation. They are Tannoy Super Red Monitor Cabinets...quite large but will make a nice project. Lucky Nick has a large car. I’ll put some pictures below of the actual speakers although I doubt these will ever look this good even after I have finished.

Robbie’s is good...in fact he’s sat at my side looking at the computer wondering which bits might be edible...the dog has issues, seriously. His favourite objects are rocks about the size of grapefruits which he rolls down the hillside with his nose and then sits at the bottom scraping them with his new grown up teeth. So probably looking at a toothless old Westie a few years from now. Ha-ha we’ll be a matching pair.

Hey I get my new car this weekend – a Kia Piccanto...ok not to sexy, but cheap to buy and run. The way that petrol is going that’s all we need to know.

I took these photos of the fountains in the local park the other day. 1 is in a currently very dry ornamental pond but the real jewel in the crown is the white cast iron drinking fountain. It sits on base that is slowly listing (like the leaning tower of Pisa.) That’s not a trick photo by the way. Still, nice though now it’s been painted and the heron crests redone. Shame there is no water running through it and it has security barriers all the way around. As regards the weather the dry spell along with the frosts is hopefully over and we should get some rain today...I need my pond to fill up. The bridal way is now finished and it looks reasonable...well better than I thought it might. My only misgiving is that the top of the garden is exposed but then again people can see how nice it is I suppose.

9th May 2010

Well I planted out the herb bed yesterday and inspected the frost blackened potato shoots and woke up this morning to another heavy frost – you can’t win. We are having some late frosts this year and more to come over the next few days. But at least we haven’t snow forecast like north Scotland.

Had a busy day yesterday ordering a new car – was going to opt for a Mazda but after thinking about it realised it cost too much, so I have opted for a Kia Piccanto – bargain. Ok not very glamorous, but sensible and more importantly; very cheap! I should be driving it around town within a couple of weeks.

Watched Avatar again...I love that film. I wonder if one day we will be able to go to other worlds and find other races. I suspect long range space travel will be possible one day. But inter galaxy travel will probably be dependent on some incredibly rare element that fuels our technology. This will drive us out into the stars to search for more of it...and pity anything that gets in the way. That’s not a sweeping statement because we do it already for oil, minerals or wood. Technology fuels the worst of our excesses really. We are capable of more and more advanced things, but seem incapable of advancing from the apelike capture we are. Perhaps our primitive drives and needs that run close under the surface veneer of societies will be the one thing we can’t advance in line with the ability to do great things and thus be always limited by it from achieving a fairer world. It certainly seems that way. But for now all I am worried about is the frost tonight.

Enjoy the volcano pictures from this great website

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/04/more_from_eyjafjallajokull.html

Got any spare change lying around?

A Pablo Picasso painting has set a new record for the most expensive art work sold at auction, fetching $106m (£70m). The Spanish artist's 1932 picture Nude, Green Leaves and Bust was sold at Christie's auction house in New York.
It had belonged to the late Los Angeles collectors Frances and Sidney Brody since the 1950s.
The winning bid was made by an unnamed telephone bidder. It breaks the record held by Giacometti's Walking Man I, which sold in February for $104.3m.
Another work by Picasso, Garcon a la Pipe, had previously held the record when it sold for $104.1m in 2004.
"The Brody’s bought it in the 50s. It was only exhibited once in 1961," said Conor Jordan, the head of Christie's impressionist department. "When we got into Brody's house in November it was quite an experience," he was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

Well it looks like it is going to be an interesting week...I wouldn’t put money on Gordon Brown winning Thursday. But the forecast is whoever wins nothing will change and we shall continue on this downward slide we are currently in. For Joe Average it means a higher tax burden for the remaining fewer and fewer of us employed and cuts in all the major services (which are already overstretched.) I don’t see an end to all of this and nothing drives inequality and bigotry quite like hard times. All the western societies have hard choices to make over the next few years but it seems unlikely that they will.

I haven’t decided who I shall vote for yet, but likely it will be Labour again and can only hope that if, (amazingly) they win, the first thing they do is drop Gordon and get someone with a bit more personality and vision. He reminds me of myself a little bit, but that is not a personality recommendation for politics, where first impression count for everything. After all looking back any worthwhile social reforms happened under Tony Blair’s leadership. What has Gordon done really of any note but infamously throw 120 billion at the economy and left us to pay for it. While we’re on the subject where did that money go? I didn’t get any, (£120,000,000,000 divided by 20,000,000 workers is £6000 each and as the money was simply printed (not underpinned by assets) what it really means is we now have each to pay £6000 back (plus interest) over the next few years.

Its times like this you need to have some kind of outdoor space (no matter how small!) To be able to watch nature grow, change and so remind us that we are not the most important things on the planet. Even if we tend to think we are. Today I hope to finish the new pond off. (It’s a public holiday in the UK – May Day.) Looking out of the window I can see a heavy frost occurred over night, so that has probably done some damage. It looks like being a cool day running into a cool week. If I get it all finished I’ll take some pictures and put them on later. Have a good day whatever you do.