The Pig of Happiness

Solitary Bathroom Pleasures

I've been spending a lot of time in the bathroom lately. Nope, not too many ferret tikka masalas nor even a a new conditioner to try (have you noticed how all the different gunks sold to bung on hair these days are all given the generic term "product"? I find it ridiculous that terms from TV adverts are adopted by intelligent human beings and I want nothing to do with it - simples). Anyway, I'm sure you're all agog vis a vis my solitary toilet moments so I shall endeavour to explain.

This building used to be a riverside inn with the whole first floor being used as overnight accommodation for the itinerant population of sailors, travellers and other sundry ne'er do wells until it eventually languished into disuse. The building was bought by a local estate agent and the first floor converted into one big flat which is now Chez Bassett although I do have a house as well (but that's another story!). Anyway, one of the few drawbacks here is that the windows are all quite small and don't really look over anywhere that has a changing scenery like a garden. Sadly, the river is quite boring and doesn't provide much in the way of photographic opportunity until I go further down the road to the harbour. And that is the key to tonight's offering - photography.

The bathroom window overlooks a flat roof which is ideal for attracting the local bird population and it's the only place where I can leave food for them. I can set up my tripod and click away quite happily hence the plethora of "bird on flat roof" pictures" This is a picture of the set-up which might be considered a bit pervy. However, the only people I can spy on are those waiting at the bus stop over the road and even I haven't quite discovered any perverted pleasure associated with that.

Since I started doing this a week or 2 ago it's been a constant battle of wills with my ornithological opponents. I see them out of the kitchen window, pecking away at the feasts I leave and sidle quietly into the bathroom to capture their souls on my G1. The ringed dove seems to have a built-in sensor system and takes off immediately I move a muscle, the magpies tempt me by posing until the moment I am ready to press the shutter and the seagulls basically don't give a toss! That's all the birdlife there is around here apart from the pigeons. No chaffinches, pied wagtails, starlings or jays and I've seen more tits in a catwalk show changing room.

The magpies, presumably a pair, live in a tree about 20 yards away and spend a lot of time strutting around on the grass and chattering away. They've been christened Max and Madeleine and I have to say I've got quite possessive about them. The gulls of course are everywhere and tend to just barge in and fight each other for every last crumb of bread although the babies seem to rule the roost.

I'm hoping that autumn will see a few more visitors as well as give me more visibility as the leaves tumble. Certainly, the wild bird food seems to be largely ignored and I spent ages in the pet shop trying to decide what to buy. Having just researched what magpies eat however, it seems to range from nuts and berries to small rabbits and mammals! I suppose staking out voles for a good camera shot might not go down too well with the neighbours but it's worth considering - teehee.

It's a real bugger not having a proper garden when you have a long lens and time to spare. Yesterday I got a phone call from my best buddy Jimmy saying come round for a cuppa and he looked on with his usual expression of bemused acceptance at my behaviour as I hurtled round his garden taking photos galore.

It certainly beat the solitary pleasures of the bathroom. Having said that, I think I've found Max & Maddie's nesting area so I'm going to need another tripod at one of the kitchen windows now!

I'm not quite dead yet!

Gosh but it's been a long time since I even dared click on my blog page, let alone attempt to write anything.

The summer is slipping away and today apparently Harrods, Selfridges and Fortnums have opened their Christmas departments complete with Santa, songs and, no doubt, sweaty little elves. Footie season has started and the Reds won 4-0 tonight so life ain't too bad

Still not sure what I am writing but it's good to feel I needed to. Is it good though? Perhaps I need the therapy of writing? Hmmmmm.

After my attempts at photo manipulation ,I started looking at proper grown-up cameras as well as my Sony compact and somehow, one found its way into Bassett Towers! As a consequence, I've been doing a fair bit of photography lately...... well, taking pictures and letting a camera with a brain the size of a planet make all the decisions regarding the arcane arts of exposure, shutter speed etc. For those interested , it's the Panasonic Lumix G1 with both 14-45mm and 45-200mm lenses.


I've always enjoyed taking pictures but have got back into it lately and occasionally get something I am pleased with. Of course, digital cameras have changed things so much with their "throw-away" capability rather than careful harvesting of the roll of Fuji 400 and the associated "I'll worry about the processing cost on payday". These days I can happily take 100+ shots in an hour or 2 with no problem whatsoever.

Mind you, considering it's all "instant" technology, it's all a lot slower these days.

Old days: Buy film, take shots, send off to BonusPrint and then hope there is one that is recognisable. Total time: 7-10 days.

Now:

1. Pack camera bag with lenses, spare camera, spare memory card, spare battery, filters., mini tripod, spare batteries for spare camera etc. Get in car.
2. Get back out of car after realising you forgot the actual camera in amongst all the other stuff.
3. Go to wherever and take pictures.
4. Get home, look for memory card thingy. Find it in cutlery drawer (!)
5. Decide which of the 38 download/viewing choices you want. Windows Photo Player? Adobe Bridge? Photoshop Elements? CS4? Finally click on entirely the wrong one and find you have bluetoothed them to the lady in the shop over the road's mobile phone.
6. Retrieve them and finally get them on the PC.

Then there is the agonising choice of what to do with them?

I start off with Definite Keep and Definite Lose and then find I have kept everything but the totally blurred ones of my finger "just in case". I tell myself to be strong and cull them some more and finally get left with , say, 75%. Then it's a case of selecting those which I feel sure enough about to allow people to see (usually 4 or 5).

Of course it's not just a case of uploading them as I still don't feel they're good enough so I start playing with PhotoShop. Approximately 3 hours later I have totally f*cked the picture so end up just uploading the original. I still keep the rest and have inflicted yet more agonies on myself vis a vis storage. It took me 3 weeks to decide on a format (simple - just keep 'em in date order) but then I started thinking of storage. 3 hard drives on PC so plenty of disk space but what if that particular drive fries? NO probs - I have external drive back-up running permanently. Most people would be content with that but not Loony Lugs, oh no. What if the back-up failed AND the drive failed? There are now several high capacity memory sticks en route from deepest Hong Kong!

Total time taken? Who knows? I still have hundreds of photos to sort! Never, I expect.

So, my faithful old Olympus OM10 sits moribund in a small camera bag whilst the flat is littered with the accoutrements of the new technological age. Photographic gadgets, gizmos and bits everywhere - and there was me thinking I was just buying a camera!

I suppose I really wrote this blog because people have been kind enough to say some nice things about my photos. Some are hobby photographers and some are not but I am still astonished that they take the trouble (oh, and before anybody says anything nice, you know I am shite at accepting compliments and pleasantries so let's just take that as read shall we and move on?). Certainly the offerings of my three photographically-inclined friends on Flickr fill me with awe at their skill in both seeing and executing a shot. If you enjoy photographs, might I recommend www.flickr.com and do a member search for Lily-Wren, Kitty W and Gemo52. It's well worth a browse!

My worst frustration, especially with a love of macro photography is a pair of unsteady hands. I've always had a tremor but it had got to such a stage recently that I couldn't even carry a mug of tea so photography was a bit iffy to say the least. Fortunately it transpires that some tablets I was taking were mostly responsible although I have the delights of an MRI scan shortly, just to make sure. It's still a bugger though, especially with a long lense and I have a plethora of almost perfectly sharp photos to prove it. However, tripods and remote shutters are handy for some stuff so all is not lost.

To paraphrase Robert Brault, I take amateur photographs of Nature and Nature makes my photographs look professional. I see my surroundings in a different way now I am actually looking at everything and the thrill of capturing a moment forever is one of the sweetest there is.

Art and Crafty

'Ello me dearios. Gosh, that was Rambling Sid Rumpo from the days of steam wireless and Round the Horne. Oh the bliss of Sunday lunchtimes - roast cow, huuuuuge Yorkshire puddings, perhaps a soupcon of Blue Nun if my parents allowed me and then an hour of comedy; The Navy Lark, Round the Horne, The Clitheroe Kid, Educating Archie with Peter Brough as radio's only ventriloquist (!!) and of course, the inimitable Goon Show.

As usual, I digress so will march onward with an update on the events of the last couple of weeks.

I've been ploughing on with my PhotoShop bits and am thoroughly enjoying my first faltering attempts at art. I seem to be hung up on changing the scale of things and distorting size (OMG, what would Freud say?). I've got a stream on Flickr should anybody wish to waste a few moments - here's the link.

I have to say, as a beginner to the joys of Flickr, it's a truly marvellous place to search for photos and I found a wonderful selection from a group set up in my local area. It's cost me many an hour just browsing Flickr. It seems that whatever search words you enter brings forth beautiful pictures and it makes my own efforts look truly amateur. Still, it's made me start taking my camera out with me so this (apparently scorching) summer should see me adjusting my exposure with monotonous regularity!


I've also another admission to make - I am now a student once more (pauses to drink cider, eat a tin of cold baked beans and find duffel coat). I've now got 10 weeks to become a web wizard via the Open University so hopefully, in the relatively near future, I shall be posting from my own website. I've had it for several years although never done anything about it until now and it presently displays very little. You could be one of the very first to visit it and be entered into a free draw to win a holiday for 2 in Bermuda (closing date 30 April 2009). Just visit www.papermoneyworld.co.uk and leave a £25 donation to cover admin costs and I'll announce the winner sometime or other.

I got 3 loads of bumph from the OU today and I really hope the course is easier than the admin - none of it makes any sense whatsoever.

Nothing much else to write about at the moment although the urge to get back to my flying is becoming stronger by the day. If you recall, I had reached Karachi and there I am marooned. I watched a documentary on Discovery the other day about a WW1 flier called Major James McCudden who rose from air mechanic to Major and became one of the top aces with 57 kills. Apparently, it was forbidden to keep any sort of journal in those days but he did and this was eventually published in the form of a book entitled "Flying Fury". I am reading it at the moment and am stunned at the simplicity of aerial warfare at the time and the nonchalance of his narrative. It could be said that it was "doctored" to make it more readable but tragically, he died in 1918 and was thus unable to change one word. The irony was that his death was caused by engine failure of his SE5A and not in combat. Major McCudden VC, DSO & Bar, MC & Bar, MM, Croix de Guerre survived his 2 brothers who were both also pilots and killed in battle - he was only 23.


We talk of our soldiers coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq as heroes - they chose their career and undoubtedly are consummate professionals. Reading of the privations, the desperate conditions and the appalling decisions of their leaders puts the soldiers, sailors and airmen of WW1 in a toally different league to the fighting men of today. I salute them both - but have no difficulty in choosing which era in which I would prefer to serve.

The Man from Del Monté says Wii

I've got yet another new toy!

Due to the combination of 9 month's non-smoking, laziness, boredom and sheer gluttony my body has taken on the appearance of Buddha as viewed by one of those distorting mirrors you used to get on all the best seaside piers. Oh those were the days - a penny in the What the Butler Saw (with a delicious frisson of guilt as you saw those knee-length drawers), the glass animal man, a few machines and all the stalls. Nowadays, it's the mega-decibel clatter of mindless machines and a cornucopeia of ways to relieve you of as much money in as short a time as possible.


I digress as usual so back to the toy: it's a Wii, complete with Wii Fit and it's going to turn me into the god-like figure that I know is hidden (fairly deeply) inside the layers of muscle cunningly disguised as fat. My GP said he has one so it was justified as a medical need and I was quite excited as it told me it would keep track of progress and help me turn into the new Wii Mii. It asked my age, height, weight and got me to do a few tests and told me my physical age was actually 5 years younger than the bitter reality. Result!! All one apparently has to do is leap on the thing and do a few balance tests and the years drop off. At this rate, I thought, in a week or two I'd be 21 again.

I started a few exercises. 2 minutes virtual hula-hooping was a bit interesting and I suddenly realised the room was getting hotter, then it got me to do a short jog and I realised that, whilst it was a great piece of kit, a sports bra should have been included. Anyway, cutting a long story short, 60 minutes later I was a sodden wreck but I had tightrope walked, tried step aerobics, totally failed at yoga and become rated as "professional" at skiing.

Next day, I took my aching body to check how many years as well as stone I had lost. It welcomed me back and got me to do another Wii Fit age test. Seventy frigging nine!!! Stupid, STUPID machine. I took solace in some 10 pin bowling and was starting to feel a bit better about life until my son arrived and proceeded to get 7 strikes in a row. Anyway, the challenge is now on and, if nothing else, the Wii has succeeded in me seeing much more of Master Bassett as he seeks to avenge the many years of playing second fiddle to the alpha Bassett. So far, I am baseball and golf champion as well as whuppin' his ass at advanced hula hooping - we'll conveniently forget all the other disciplines!


If you are listening to the music on here it's the title track to the new Neil Young album, Fork in the Road (the cover is rubbish so here's a picture I prepared earlier!). Mr Young's album output has been prodiguous to say the least during his career with, I understand, 48 released thus far.Add to that his Buffalo Springfield, CSNY and other occasional get-together albums and it's about 80 altogether. This latest album was typical Young insofar as it was written and thrown together in 2 recording sessions in the middle of a long tour. Why the hurry? Because NY had a bee in his bonnet about the motor car industry and needed to express his protest.

Neil Young has always been a man of conscience espousing such things as Farm Aid, anti-war protest and the environment. Sadly, the age of protest singers is perceived to belong to the bygone era era of Joan Baez, Dylan, Lennon, Seeger etc - a spin-off of the hippy '60s. There are undoubtedly still songs expressing protest with REM, Springsteen, Green Day, Eminem and Pearl Jam all contributing but Young still seems to carry the conscience of a nation upon his shoulders at times. The new album may be a bit raw and a tad crude around the edges but I think it's back to Young at his stirred-up best. I admire the man but I can't say I enjoy all of his music. More often than not, the whimsical country stuff is not for me.The fact remains though that he is still exploring his talent and his craft. Hearing him with his old simple rock style once more, is superb. Feeling the passion in his work is a privilege.

I'm still trying to improve my PhotoShop skills and thoroughly enjoying the creativity it gives me. Speaking as someone who can't draw a straight line, it allows me a freedom to play without the skill of an artist. Prawn Cocktail is very Daliesque although I didn't consciously make it so and God alone knows from where The Glorious Twelfth came? The Taj Mahal as a cake was just a play - nothing more.

I decided I would try and express in Photoshop what I have previously done in my writings i.e. my thoughts, fears influences etc. I had no idea just what would come out but below is the result - it hasn't got a title. Maybe one day I will feel my thoughts deserve one.