tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13308128735276050492024-03-12T23:44:38.189-07:00Twinkle the WandererAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-20539750328137900522018-01-27T13:09:00.001-08:002018-01-27T13:10:19.066-08:00UPDATE ON ME<div style="text-align: center;">
Well it's been a pretty awesome week.</div>
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If anyone read my 'ME' post 5 days ago <a href="http://twinklespinalot.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/me_24.html" target="_blank">http://twinklespinalot.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/me_24.html</a> they will know that I was pretty fired-up and ready to ruffle a few feathers. The short answer to a long story is the day following that particular post and interview<br />
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<b><marquee behavior="alternate" height=" nnn " loop="infinite" width=" nnn "><span style="color: #e69138; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">
<span style="color: #e69138; font-family: "arial"; font-size: large;"> <b> I WAS ACCEPTED FOR A NEW JOB! </b></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">23 years without having had so much as an interview with a potato and bang, I nail it on the first run. Not only that, I will be working locally in the aviation service industry which has always been of interest to me. This is of course hugely exciting considering I have been working away managing an office, punching numbers on a screen and facing a slanting roof for 17 of those years, peppered with craning my neck out of a skylight to see whether the sun had come out and occasionally feeling like leaping out the 3rd floor. Prior to that, 6 of those years in an even smaller room managing that business and running a household whilst everyone else appeared to live it up around me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I came away from that interview on cloud 9, stratospheric and with renewed wings. The feedback alone that day was exceptional before I had even been accepted. My first impressions were "What a great company this seems to be". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So my induction starts soon, my new job needs all the usual security passes which takes time and my goodness I am finally going to work in an environment that I have interest in.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="giphy-embed" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://giphy.com/embed/sXXc9YTq2oik0" width="480"></iframe><br />
<a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/disney-peter-pan-captain-hook-neverland-sXXc9YTq2oik0">via GIPHY</a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">That day the wind was howling, the rain was sideways, my freshly straightened hair was squashed under a woolly hat, my shoes got wet and I lost a button on my suit. It didn't matter, nothing mattered except I had survived an interview after relatively little preparation, in a group at that.</span></div>
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Nana Twinkle has the wind in her sails</div>
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and fairy dust is optional</div>
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I'll leave you with this link to some funny interviews, I actually read these the morning of my interview to ease any tension I was feeling and get things into perspective a bit<br />
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<a href="https://www.snagajob.com/job-interview/funny-interview-stories/" target="_blank">Funny Interview Stories</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-22565481610124996722018-01-24T01:01:00.000-08:002018-01-24T01:02:10.088-08:00ME<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I never had
the career I wanted, for many reasons.
Discouraged by teachers, distracted by love and then disarmed by
circumstances. I made do and then my
children came along and I juggled being a mum with being a work at home to
support a business venture. I cooked,
cleaned, wiped away tears, taxied to and fro in between phone calls, accounts,
homework, housework and bedtime. I wiped
nosesies, tickled toesies, played your games, gardened, ironed, started work
again, listened to woes, lost boyfriends, unhappy customers, sickness, moans
and smiles, struggled along with little money and loads of ‘not good enough’
mixed with ‘you’re great, keep smiling’.
Now these things are done.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Today, is my
first real job interview in the outside world for 27 years. I am 53 and I would like to do something in
my last 10-15 years of working life that suits me, that isn’t a work around for
someone or something else. It may not be
the all singing, dancing, good-salary paying job that I wanted so long ago. But it will be something that I have chosen
to do and something that interests me.
It may not involve any of my current talents or capabilities as everyone
is so quick to point out to me at every opportunity “you could do better than
this, you are hugely talented”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yes I could,
yes I could have done 30 years ago, yes I love writing, yes I love Art, yes I
love space and science, yes I love gardening, yes I love astronomy, yes I love
making things. Now my talents are my
hobbies and I enjoy them more that way.
It stops me from the massive regrets of not pursuing them harder when I
became so distracted with other things and just getting by and carrying on
regardless. This may be a hard concept
to grasp and any job I take may not be 9-5 and fit around anyone else. Now is my time to shine. Now is my time to do something else. Now you are all on your own. My support hasn’t ended, it has just been
diminished whilst I pick up what is left of myself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Some will
understand, some will throw their hands up in horror and some will just give me
a hard time regardless. Some will not
even bother to read this.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Let me be
me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anyone feel
like unfriending or unfollowing me? Go
ahead...make my semi-centennial. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Anyone want
to leave a crass comment? Be my guest
but be warned I’m capable of blocking and reporting mass-spam, hate inciting,
religious freaks on Twitter and getting them shutdown, I can extend it to
nutters anywhere else too.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anyone want
to be kind, thoughtful, happy and supportive here? Welcome to my world, come in and have a
seat.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To all the
employers and jobs that I applied to on the Indeed website and received a
response, thank you for your time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To all the
employers and jobs that I applied to on the Indeed website that couldn't be
bothered, thank you for reminding me of the losers in this world.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I will be at
Stansted Airport most of lunchtime being interviewed, if you've missed the
opportunity to speak with an extremely talented woman, there is still time and
I can be contacted on social media quite easily.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My mind may
not be made up on a single job position today, but my mind is made up on one
thing: This is MY life, my choices, my
way.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-56482912671297235052018-01-15T12:22:00.000-08:002018-01-19T03:41:13.635-08:00EVERYTHING MATTERSI don't know about you but last night's Sky at Night programme (14 Jan 2018 - The Invisible Universe) raised more questions than answers for me. Further I don't pretend to be able to answer them either and I'm not sure there are many people on Earth can really say with authority that they KNOW what dark matter and dark energy actually looks like or behaves like. For one thing our primitive eyes have not evolved enough to be able to see this stuff, we have to resort to other means to find it in the first place, including large facilities underground shielded from radiation.<br />
<br />
Some of you may remember in November 2015 I attended an event at London's Tate Modern for a series of walks, talks and workshops staged as part of the International Year of Light. I blogged about this in 2 parts covering the whole day in summary. If that kind of thing ever turns up again, I will tweet the living daylights out of it because the whole day was very engaging and enlightening and unmissable.<br />
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Last night's programme gave a little more glimpse into the weird world of dark matter and dark energy, but as ever it was not enough for me. To begin with let's take a look at the model and how our universe is perceived both seen and (arguably) unseen.<br />
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Watch this before reading any further, its a bit quirky but this is the Universe for 'dum dums' like me and you in 4 minutes<br />
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Now what this video doesn't do is give an insight into how light actually works, so I'm going to refer you back to my Light and Dark Matters blog part 2 here to get the ball rolling.<br />
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<a href="http://twinklespinalot.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/light-and-dark-matters-part-2.html" target="_blank">LIGHT AND DARK MATTERS PART 2</a></div>
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And then...have a little read of this, it's a few pages long but worth reacquainting yourself with the subject of light...don't forget to come back here 😜</div>
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<a href="https://science.howstuffworks.com/light.htm" target="_blank">William Harris & Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D. "How Light Works" 10 July 2000. HowStuffWorks.com. <https://science.howstuffworks.com/light.htm> 15 January 2018</a></div>
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The actual scale of our Universe is hard for us to get our heads around because well, some of us have trouble with getting around our own county let alone something billions of light years across. Were we ever mean't to travel at the speed of light if we could because, actually, we are made of light too. We are made of the very stuff of stars. Our bodies reflect and absorb light. How many times have you sat in the sunshine feeling it's warmth for a few minutes after a cold, long winter and thinking "Yeah, I can accomplish anything now!". That's because physically your body is absorbing Vitamin D which you can't get from eating certain foods alone. Just 10 minutes in the sun is enough to boost energy levels for healthy bone structure, boost brain activity and reduce inflammation. Ever felt run down, tired or constantly battling a cold? Not enough sunshine my friends!</div>
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The Universe scale is so large that we may never actually know how far the whole thing goes, at the end of this video below is a depiction of other possible universes, but does it end there? Is that the 'brick wall' of Universes and nothing else?</div>
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In the Sky at Night programme they talked about dark matter and energy pushing and pulling at the fabric of the universe. I imagine a network of substance rather like a <a href="https://www.journals.elsevier.com/nano-today/news/carbon-nanotube-network-stays-stretchy-whatever-the-temperature" target="_blank">carbon nanotube</a>. We're informed that gravity has a great part to play with dark matter and in fact I asked the question on Twitter following the programme, given Maggie's analogy with the turntable and marble spinning off it, if matter can escape the gravity and in turn our Milky Way and yes, given enough energy it could but what part does dark matter or energy have in holding all the threads (galaxies, hot spots, stars) together and therefore stopping matter spinning out? Also, galaxies are known to collide, what is going on with dark matter then, does it 'throw a sickie' and crawl away when this process happens?!</div>
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Further we were informed that the Universe's expansion is speeding up, this has been mooted for some time, now we are being told that dark energy has something to do with it until we end up coming to what the Sky at Night so wonderfully termed "The Big Crunch" as opposed to "The Big Bang". Supposedly 70% of the Universe's energy is this stuff and we can't actually see it? Maybe that's why we're unlikely to ever travel to the Proxima Centauri, unless we can project ourselves to it somehow without encountering the speed of light or any of this dark stuff we can't see.</div>
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Given that we are ourselves made of light, every fibre of our being comes from light, even our thoughts are made of light matter charged particles giving off energy. By increasing our knowledge of the cosmos, improving our brains, advancing our technologies are <b>WE </b>actually accelerating the expansion process? Is this actually a battle between dark matter and light matter this pulling and pushing process? Rather than dark energy and dark matter winning this battle, is light matter winning it? Which is the strongest substance? Further, if we end up not alone in this Universe and there are others also increasing their knowledge, evolution etc, then could this be the reason behind the acceleration too? Like a critical mass of light energy hammering away at all the dark energy screaming<br />
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"Set me free, allow me to soar</div>
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Stretch out my wings like I have never done before..."</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px;">credit: </span><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 11px; text-align: start;">Francisco Guzman</b></div>
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<br />
I said I had more questions than answers!<br />
I also said I'd push a few buttons...feel free to discuss and bounce theories and ideas around, but don't go overboard with the technical terms, because as Albert Einstein once said "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it enough"<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-77674791192121924752016-06-26T03:18:00.000-07:002016-06-26T03:29:55.964-07:00Before I slope off to bed<div style="background-color: ; color: ##363636; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">I'd like everyone in the World to remember these things in such divisive times:</span></div>
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Politicians will lie<br />
Inflation is inevitable<br />
So is work, taxes and Death<br />
History repeats itself<br />
Except on BBC iPlayer when you may get only 30 days<br />
The media are manipulative<br />
The non-fiction section of the Library is not<br />
Culture is a worldwide phenomenon<br />
Tolerance is a conscious choice<br />
Google is not the only search engine<br />
Windows will still update at inappropriate times<br />
Macs will give you a choice but hide the result<br />
Jesus did not turn water to wine, that takes grapes as well<br />
Rome did conquer most of Europe<br />
We are here to learn<br />
We may fail the final exam<br />
Advice is a form of nostalgia<br />
Opinion is the lowest form of human knowledge<br />
People will still marry<br />
Some will divorce<br />
True Love will always endure<br />
Hatred will drown in its own juice<br />
The sun will not explode in your lifetime<br />
Betelgeuse might<br />
The rain does stop sometimes<br />
The weather is a global event<br />
Apophis might give us a firework display in 20 yrs<br />
Etna does it at least once a month<br />
If everyone is happy with you, you've made a lot of compromises<br />
If you're happy with everyone, you've ignored all their faults<br />
Judgement is always served warm<br />
Retribution is served cold<br />
True friends will stay with you<br />
Families are fickle but still families<br />
You will get old<br />
You will not remember these words when you do</div>
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Goodnight and may your God (s) go with you x</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-41501209018590833302015-12-23T07:08:00.000-08:002015-12-23T07:10:44.724-08:00GAH BUMHUG<div class="MsoNormal">
Ugh..not another blog of Christmas woe I hear you mutter.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Tough, I need to get this all off my chest before the
Christmas pudding explodes in a fiery finale.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It doesn’t help that I have 3 birthdays between 11<sup>th</sup>
and 18<sup>th</sup> December, one of which is my own. Additionally it’s the most wonderful (for
that read manic) time of the business year for me, with 3 VAT quarter ends to deal
with, one year end and enough PAT testing paperwork to re-sink the Titanic.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Officially the misgivings started when the tree was picked
up 16<sup>th</sup> December and further as I sat surrounded the next day by
baubles, pine needles and tatty tinsel. A
sudden flash thought occurred as my left L4-5 lumbosacral joint began to whine
about all the extra strain: <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>“Bah, 2 weeks and I’ll
be pulling this glitter off and dragging the mini-forest outside for
firewood”.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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It’s the time of year ladies when you’re other half throws
all 360 day abandon of the year out the window and is reminiscent of a toddler rampaging
through Tesco on a Saturday afternoon with handfuls of “we’ll have this”, “I’d
like that” foot-stamping, plea-bargaining, wretched waste and wanton lust all blended with occasional bouts of Merry on High, Fah la la and Ding Dong.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Normally I have hoards to cater for on Christmas Day, all
family mostly but sometimes a sprinkle of friends otherwise on their own. The lounge becomes an extension of the dining room with a concoction of tables, chairs and dogs, breakfast, lunch and dinner. I don’t mind this one bit, it is fun and
takes all day to eat, un-wrap gifts, play games and clear up before
collapsing into a chair with a bottle of Port.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This year my eldest daughter & fiancé are off to his
family, the youngest is half working, half at the boyfriends family, my parents
are hosting my sister and nieces so we were going to be home alone with the possibility
of the in-laws turning up for lunch. In
fact I was squealing inside with glee at the thought of a quiet Christmas with just hubby,
lying in bed forever playing hunt the toy soldiers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As it is, there could be 4 of us at the table on the big day, but the fridge wants to know why it's holding enough for 40. I have yet to tell it that by New Years Day we may just have gone through that many.<br />
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I want to get to Christmas Eve and be baking miniature madeleines
in the morning, painting my nails by lunchtime and dancing a waltz with the one
I love by candlelight at 11pm whilst the turkey cooks itself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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No chance.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Due to the fact some family members have already started the
wind down and are at a loose end (so they believe you are too) I found myself at
10pm last night wrapping everything I had hoped to have under the tree a week
ago, hunting for hidden gifts until I acknowledged they actually hadn't turned
up yet, discovering broken ones and realising I had to make an early morning
dash to exchange that before work and finally sitting down at 11pm before
someone announces “I’m off to bed, don’t be too long…” ….eh???<o:p></o:p></div>
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I end up dreaming of running naked with my phone clamped
around my head through British Homes Stores at 8.30am with armfuls of 5p bags
covering modesty.<o:p></o:p><br />
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As for venturing onto the roads, I could have dedicated a whole TV show with some of the parking shenanigans witnessed in the last week. Anyone who was caught up in the 6 hrs it took to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/12064128/Christmas-shoppers-endure-six-hour-wait-to-get-out-of-Bluewater-Shopping-Centre.html" target="_blank">exit Bluewater on Monday, 21 December</a> - you had my deepest sympathy.</div>
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This baby supposedly born 2015 years ago in a stable has a
lot to answer for. As for those 3 wise
men, do me a favour – it was their idea on the gift thing. How did we get in this hilarious muddle? What
did everyone do before this madness? Well if
you really want to know pull up a chair and the tipple of choice to watch this 45 minute documentary, it's eye-opening and covers the whole thing (but come back here for my jig at the end):<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>"In late December do not let your children and servants run too much abroad at night!"</i></center>
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Families, friends and Christmas are what it's all about even if it does bring out the worst and the best of us. What do we owe to friends and families? We owe them our time, love, patience and smiles for that day if nothing else. Be kind to each other, even if at some point you do feel like burying that one person alive. Let your heart sing to whatever makes you happy at this time of year.</center>
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So on my last day of work before I start getting my head into the freezer contents, at 5pm in the office I'll be raving along to this song, the lyrics say it all. Enjoy and Merry Christmas (whatever...).</center>
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<i>"Been doing this song a long time and the longer I do it the better it gets...I'm just getting started".</i></center>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-62434715752795402032015-12-11T11:57:00.000-08:002015-12-11T11:57:21.791-08:00TO GO FORWARD....WE NEED TO GO BACKThis is the story of a piece of Art.<br />
<br />
On 13 September 2015 whilst I was soaking up rays by the pool of The Wyndham International Drive, Orlando, I received an IM from my friend Henna Khan in Mumbai founder of @UnivSimplified regarding a competition she was promoting for lunar and space exploration. Henna remembered my rocket launch drawings and asked if I would like to enter. I remember vaguely looking at <a href="https://herox.com/FlashArtCompetition" target="_blank">The Lunar Initiatives Flash Art Competition</a> website at the time but in bright sunshine on an iPhone the text and details were hard to see.<br />
<br />
I didn't actually respond to Henna until the following day due to intermittent Wi-Fi, but said I would try to find some time on my return after 29 September.<br />
<br />
In fact, by the pool I had already begun to think about the possibilities for composition.<br />
<br />
So much goes on in my mind before starting a piece of Art, particularly in this case as I wasn't going to be drawing something I had seen or was in front of me, it would be more conceptual than actual. It takes time and patience to let creative stuff flow and more often than not most of that happens as it evolves from thought to paper and conclusion.<br />
<br />
After 3 weeks in the US, life is never easy when you help run a family business, there was huge amounts of catch up work to do and I didn't actually draw breath and start sitting at the drawing board until 10 October.<br />
<br />
This was my tweet around the start:<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet tw-align-left" lang="en" width="180">
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And so it begins, challenge accepted <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Drawing?src=hash">#Drawing</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Space?src=hash">#Space</a> <a href="http://t.co/0a332In5g4">pic.twitter.com/0a332In5g4</a></div>
— Wendy Clark (@twinklespinalot) <a href="https://twitter.com/twinklespinalot/status/652791423436226560">October 10, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As
you can see there was a</span> variety of post it notes on the board. This is how I started, building a theme, a storyline of the Art before pen even touched paper. I decided straight away that art pens not graphite would be used.<br />
<br />
Some questions I asked myself: Where are we going, what are we doing, how are we doing it, what are we missing? How do we change that?<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb6j5Cp8cmhVXamUxzArUyPIfbC9KPKj_lrBCfrDHmd8syEk-FH4aZb44u0ijKCoqBA4hcO0hurGt8RrMg_9Ubmb5VCHXszcp454P9UzTQT9ucVC1pL8NhU61jSJD0ghQN5osJNkrTmL4/s1600/IMG_2800a.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb6j5Cp8cmhVXamUxzArUyPIfbC9KPKj_lrBCfrDHmd8syEk-FH4aZb44u0ijKCoqBA4hcO0hurGt8RrMg_9Ubmb5VCHXszcp454P9UzTQT9ucVC1pL8NhU61jSJD0ghQN5osJNkrTmL4/s320/IMG_2800a.JPG" width="79" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Post it Archive</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
For the next 3 weeks on my non-working days, I added content to the drawing based on my answers. Rockets I could draw, have drawn and continue to draw. Lunar landscapes? Never. Time to start. It transpired that my choices worked out better than imagined, a landscape caught on camera on my birthday in 1972 by the last human crew to land on the Moon became a focal point for celebrating.<br />
<br />
I follow satellite passes quite a bit and one had caught my eye on several occasions, a real live experimental space habitat in orbit. From the small icon on my iPhone tracking app I could gauge the shape, but had to research further for more detail.<br />
<br />
Remembering the iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin taken by Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11 with Neil's reflection in the visor, I took that vision and extended it further with a different reflection, one that we are all familiar with. The pale blue dot we call home..Earth.<br />
<br />
Because of my love of retro, the drawing had to go back as well as forward in time, a current theme was also a requirement.
I finished the artwork 2 days before the deadline for submission to the Art Challenge. Curious as to how long it had exactly been since Apollo 17 had landed on the Moon, I looked this up and translated the years, months and days into hours, minutes and seconds that it had taken me to complete. To reflect that, this was the next tweet:<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Drawing?src=hash">#Drawing</a> stopped and finished at 42 hrs 10 mins 18 secs, these numbers will become apparent <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Space?src=hash">#Space</a> (1/2)</div>
— Wendy Clark (@twinklespinalot) <a href="https://twitter.com/twinklespinalot/status/659426073323675648">October 28, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
Now and then in between the start and finish time, I had also given very subtle hints within most of my tweets as to the drawing content, it was a little fun which just added sparkle to the story and a few people began to pick up on it. There were loads of tweet hints to be honest!<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet tw-align-right" lang="en" width="180">
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There are however subtle clues as to the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/drawing?src=hash">#drawing</a> content in virtually every tweet I've made since 10 October</div>
— Wendy Clark (@twinklespinalot) <a href="https://twitter.com/twinklespinalot/status/659429872562012165">October 28, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
I detest photographing my art because of compression rates but this had to be done for submitting a JPEG of the artwork. Thankfully the next day was dry, sunny and windless. I took the drawing outside on an easel, pegged straight and snapped a few times. The result was uploaded later that day and locked into my Flickr account as private. I felt that as the competition had not quite ended, it would be unfair to others and myself to broadcast an entry before anyone else had submitted to the deadline, which as it happened ended up being extended from 30 October to 30 November!
<br />
<br />
During this time following my submission, I discovered part of my decision to include a space habitat into the Artwork was more than just the final interest in the anti-clockwise view I had envisaged. This experimental 'hab' in an updated form is to be launched aboard Space X's Dragon CRS-8 re-supply mission in early 2016 for testing and attachment to the International Space Station, something I shall follow. The company that built this test habitat is at the forefront of <a href="http://bigelowaerospace.com/bigelow-aerospace-spacecraft/genesis/" target="_blank">habitable space</a> structures. On 8 December following months of bad weather in the UK, I finally had a clear sky that enabled me to capture Genesis I with my DSLR, crossing my sky at 17.47 GMT.<br />
<br />
I had already decided exactly when to release the drawing for general viewing and pinned that tweet to the top of my timeline:<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet tw-align-left" lang="en" width="180">
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Well tweeps, on a lighter note in 9 days time 19:54 UTC I'll be releasing my latest <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/space?src=hash">#space</a> drawing, special day for more than 1 reason <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Art?src=hash">#Art</a></div>
— Wendy Clark (@twinklespinalot) <a href="https://twitter.com/twinklespinalot/status/672188295476985856">December 2, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
It followed days of complete madness on twitter over the Paris attacks. Sometimes the internet brings out the worst in people.<br />
<br />
So today, being the 43rd anniversary of Apollo 17 landing on the moon brings me to the end of this Art story. It was quite a journey and a big turning point for me in terms of belief. Every time I start a major drawing there is a little fear of my own capabilities, it doesn't last long, fading within a few minutes. I don't think I shall ever be afraid of myself ever again.<br />
<br />
The link to the Flickr submission for the competition is <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/76699751@N07/22597866361/in/datetaken/" target="_blank">here</a>. We were only given 1000 words to describe the work, hence this post on my blog to expand the story. I hope you enjoy seeing this as much as I enjoyed drawing it, every dot on the paper taught me further patience with myself, the world and humanity.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Of the Moon I speak</i></div>
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<i>In regolith tone</i></div>
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<i>Rising, falling</i></div>
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<i>Through the ink of space</i></div>
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<i>We've run this race</i></div>
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<i>Planning, drawing</i></div>
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<i>It's time we left home</i></div>
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<i>To share what we seek</i><br />
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<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/76699751@N07/22597866361/in/datetaken/" title="TO GO FORWARD....WE NEED TO GO BACK"><img alt="TO GO FORWARD....WE NEED TO GO BACK" height="413" src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5716/22597866361_e9a1db51f0_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js"></script></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-72888385690322773282015-11-27T13:58:00.001-08:002018-01-15T03:22:46.639-08:00LIGHT AND DARK MATTERS Part 2<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgrfZIggaPtZdX5M4OzdCeL2hQ2xgo_QJucDVqitsxOvOHqZF7cTBhx1u2jFPik1O8QIPjYcB_SPl9HLqzsRF5xUI6quJQdzBlhG4WxwBIrwbwwSQA5PkL9V7Gagvy_TymSj_kBQPjHAI/s1600/Projection+Light+beams.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgrfZIggaPtZdX5M4OzdCeL2hQ2xgo_QJucDVqitsxOvOHqZF7cTBhx1u2jFPik1O8QIPjYcB_SPl9HLqzsRF5xUI6quJQdzBlhG4WxwBIrwbwwSQA5PkL9V7Gagvy_TymSj_kBQPjHAI/s200/Projection+Light+beams.JPG" width="150" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Rest of the Day</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After
the sunrise walk with Dr Lucy and a 2<sup>nd</sup> breakfast (the full English
Monty) I had a gap several hours before the afternoon lecture and discovered through
chatting with other group members that there were two free entry workshops
taking place at 11am. So I headed along
to the first one, an exhibition space run by <a href="http://oggsie.com/">Oliver
Lang</a> on mobile photography. This
included a detailed look at water microbes subjected to a laserbeam of light
under a microscope that were then projected onto a wall, making viewing
easier. Also within the space was a projected light beam appearing to split the visible light spectrum and a display of </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">light and colour with polarising filters entitled 'In/Visibility' </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">by <a href="http://vinitakhanna.net/">Vinita Khanna</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">. In all the </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">effects of this mobile exhibition space were quite astounding. Please follow my numerous orange hyperlinks if you wish to find out more about each subject, but remember to come back here!</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdJtTZq1zLiiKb5-BMsindWRpg-lIYOxL328jTo4XXHYZw0UI0JzIt0pWU1WyIOziandFNBvcwBiJCR6aJ2GGKZjImMYi3_8FWqyEj-UWB-D-2v93gP0o_W5l_3bdxP-uqFNGGJNFyadQ/s1600/Laser+Microbes.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdJtTZq1zLiiKb5-BMsindWRpg-lIYOxL328jTo4XXHYZw0UI0JzIt0pWU1WyIOziandFNBvcwBiJCR6aJ2GGKZjImMYi3_8FWqyEj-UWB-D-2v93gP0o_W5l_3bdxP-uqFNGGJNFyadQ/s200/Laser+Microbes.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Water microbes laser light projection</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj39UneVHiasaHQ6r517wR3hEzkBN0lGALJvv3MyQjBTob1odMih7x-h3BZ9zt1x-i71sRUADQoSDaJlVU1z8dANm9xtnSg9u3YlaFQcYJBNeSi0chqAIFuMGtWFwyeMItxToCDcDLi0yY/s1600/InVisibility.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj39UneVHiasaHQ6r517wR3hEzkBN0lGALJvv3MyQjBTob1odMih7x-h3BZ9zt1x-i71sRUADQoSDaJlVU1z8dANm9xtnSg9u3YlaFQcYJBNeSi0chqAIFuMGtWFwyeMItxToCDcDLi0yY/s200/InVisibility.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">In/Visibility by Vinita Khanna</span></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"> I met and chatted with a visitor here too</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">that had to be the most </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">appropriately dressed guy</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">for not only the event but also the weather! Sadly Antonio has</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">Since removed his photo which is a shame as he looked great!</span><br />
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<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-version="6" style="background: #FFF; border-radius: 3px; border: 0; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 250px; padding: 0; width: -webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width: 99.375%; width: calc(100% - 2px);">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/-WEk9XMhjo/" style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">#lightdarkmatters #instagram #tate</a></span></div>
<div style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">A photo posted by Antonio Cabrera (@antonio_cabreraseville) on <time datetime="2015-11-21T11:16:45+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Nov 21, 2015 at 3:16am PST</time></span></div>
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<div style="font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">Oliver Lang has since put up a short </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/-WY21LPpvy/?taken-by=oggsie">instagram video</a> of the mobile space.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">A short walk along the corridor and I found the Ultraviolet Art workshop with <span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/the-drawing-shed-105992166133663/info?tab=overview">Labern
& Lloyd</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: right;"> of The Drawing Shed</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">. Inside there was a range of very old-fashioned typewriters fitted with UV ribbon and a number of people were seated getting creative with the typewriters, black light torches and UV pens. Obviously I had to have a go at this! My result was I'm afraid very sparkly: </span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxqtC64TeCzkP9gEiXjuJywYfsZ8XylxJUaHHeL0S8bfLU3dxB98rvtEYbt41PXw2bxbZLwIFTr7dfmovj0LY4XD90PXLsJLXPy0sV0pxrMv4st1xWCrAuoNOrFD5WsdDa90EwE7ybYlQ/s1600/UV+writing.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxqtC64TeCzkP9gEiXjuJywYfsZ8XylxJUaHHeL0S8bfLU3dxB98rvtEYbt41PXw2bxbZLwIFTr7dfmovj0LY4XD90PXLsJLXPy0sV0pxrMv4st1xWCrAuoNOrFD5WsdDa90EwE7ybYlQ/s320/UV+writing.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Twinkle's contribution to the UV Art workshop</span></td></tr>
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<div style="font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">To one side of the typewriter area was a large blackboard covered with a variety of drawings and equations fronted by two men talking animatedly to those seated informally on leather cubes and bean bags. What a great hangout!</span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">This was a very cool area where Q&A and general discussions on light, dark matter, dark energy and the cosmos was taking place to a captive audience. I sat here whilst <span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.iop.org/events/iyl-2015/page_64413.html">Toby Shannon</a></span> from The Institute of Physics relayed his knowledge on light, debated why blue LEDs should win the Nobel Prize as we all got very heavy duty with the cosmology questions for the scientists and they in turn gave us answers on the concept of 'nothingness'.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">It was in this room that I first noticed a subtle, sometimes sub-conscious thing happening when the organisers and speakers were talking.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC6SUvmPZZFaOQaRGvCCdtvGgAGmGZN_UM2yWrasRoXn8u5r5KkopU-UCR77chmYt8RAV8iXM3ibMHPdE2BB-eqQBCY0stLTP_hrU7XUNMqaR4AjSuroqM0lR0I7rgqpBIAg7QVrjtSn8/s1600/IMG_3016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC6SUvmPZZFaOQaRGvCCdtvGgAGmGZN_UM2yWrasRoXn8u5r5KkopU-UCR77chmYt8RAV8iXM3ibMHPdE2BB-eqQBCY0stLTP_hrU7XUNMqaR4AjSuroqM0lR0I7rgqpBIAg7QVrjtSn8/s200/IMG_3016.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">One of many wall messages viewable<br />with a Black Light torch</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: right;"> </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbaVeGDGaDXYln6dUQ6gHQ_DRApKfTj-VJ7KZeNpv0aZ5QypIPNGxFEZqm6gfdfPq-QoCuR883uxr1Q1SjUDVrQjklCU8Yyf1qdjwQsXkkaqsYrdyFnoC-v5wdiAmaTldDlBnTplFPt9A/s1600/IMG_3021.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbaVeGDGaDXYln6dUQ6gHQ_DRApKfTj-VJ7KZeNpv0aZ5QypIPNGxFEZqm6gfdfPq-QoCuR883uxr1Q1SjUDVrQjklCU8Yyf1qdjwQsXkkaqsYrdyFnoC-v5wdiAmaTldDlBnTplFPt9A/s200/IMG_3021.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Labern & Lloyd artwork display</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">This thing was very visual in it's subtlety and in fact Toby Shannon actually described it in the same manner <span style="color: yellow;">that I have always imagined it to be</span>, he stated:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: left;">Dark matter could be viewed as if it were a piece of foam, with all the bubbles holding the galaxies, stars etc and the foam itself being the tendrils of dark matter connecting everything around it.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: left;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">Mind map! Shocking to discover you're on the same wavelength as someone with much more education behind them.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">Although not part of the exhibition, I am including below a black and white picture of a piece of foam I have at home, the type used to transport say a hard drive in the mail (two pieces fitting together forming a rectangle). For a sense of perspective, this object measures 1.375 x 5.5 x 12.375 inches. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">I'll ask you to come back to this foam picture later on.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRK8TKNXMffRg_U2Z0S4qC4r6KE_KVgkQPrSuaglBuwA-ZkikZX07lzVjiFbNLT7PvRejJ82ZkY9Icqy32QqD2A1ptbpY3tdKy8dKr9V4q264X-5fyr3mAzHpS6-jFxn4e7byjgfkEpcc/s1600/The+Sponge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRK8TKNXMffRg_U2Z0S4qC4r6KE_KVgkQPrSuaglBuwA-ZkikZX07lzVjiFbNLT7PvRejJ82ZkY9Icqy32QqD2A1ptbpY3tdKy8dKr9V4q264X-5fyr3mAzHpS6-jFxn4e7byjgfkEpcc/s320/The+Sponge.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Piece of foam on my kitchen worktop</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">After the engaging discussions with the Institute of Physics scientists, I headed outside to grab some lunch and air near the Christmas market in front of the Tate and here sampled some hot non-</span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">alcoholic </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">Gluhwein, which was just as tasty as the </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">alcoholic </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">version. The sun was out dancing between racing clouds, lots of people were walking along the river, shopping in the market or huddling beside hot food counters. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">Just before entering the Starr Auditorium for the afternoon event, I purchased a couple of books from the Tate shop as stocking fillers for Christmas.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">Although the auditorium filled quickly, I was able to obtain a seat to the left with a clear view of the panel just 4 rows from the front. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.asif-khan.com/">Asif Khan</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"> opened the proceedings with a short quote from </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Tanizaki's 'In Praise of Shadows' essentially an essay written in the 1930s comparing light and darkness to contrast Western and Asian cultures. A candle was lit on the panel table with the 'scent' of space, one of Katie Paterson's creations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/-XSEa9rpFh/" style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">@katiempaterson lit her work a candle with scent of space travel exploring light & dark matter with @marekkukula & Catherine Heymans this afternoon @tate #lightdarkmatters</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">A photo posted by Asif Khan (@asif_can) on <time datetime="2015-11-21T22:33:53+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Nov 21, 2015 at 2:33pm PST</time></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The panelists <a href="http://www.roe.ac.uk/~heymans/" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Catherine Heymans</a><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">, </span></span><a href="http://www.katiepaterson.org/" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Katie Paterson</a><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> and Dr
Marek Kukula each</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"> gave a brief resume of themselves and their field of work and study before taking questions from the audience.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">As an artist Katie Paterson draws inspiration from light and visible matter around her, but is also intrigued by the visual expressions possible from the invisible such as dark matter and dark energy, because I also engage in art this was perfectly understood. Dr Marek Kukula explained that we don't as yet fully understand dark matter but we create images of beauty to describe it, this may be the result of not yet having the words to describe it hence the artistic connection.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">In 2012 Catherine Heymans and Van Waerbeke led an international team of astronomers that mapped the largest ever scale of dark matter to date. The ongoing project is the </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.roe.ac.uk/roe/support/pr/pressreleases/20120109-dark-matter/">Canada-France-Hawaii
Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS)</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">Catherine Heymans referred to this image of dark filaments in the Tate lecture,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">this was when I mentally made my connection to the foam.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.space.com/images/i/000/011/227/i02/supposed-dark-matter-distribution-universe.jpg?1311796556" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://i.space.com/images/i/000/011/227/i02/supposed-dark-matter-distribution-universe.jpg?1311796556" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A computer simulation of dark matter filaments</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;">This mental connection was further reinforced when Dr Marek Kukula talked about the image below</span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/sites/default/files/main/articles/reviews_film_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://www.sciencenews.org/sites/default/files/main/articles/reviews_film_0.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Webs of dark matter, from Dark Universe part of<br />
the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium show</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">Back to that foam...I've always struggled with understanding and v</span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">isualising </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">Einstein's Theory of Relativity and comfortingly, I learn't this week on the 100th anniversary of that theory, he too struggled to describe it!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">To date my own view has been based on that piece of foam with the 'whole piece' existing in the same moment in time across all sides. A person standing in one part of the foam sees an event say in the middle, another person on the other side sees the same event but possibly the event is seen to them at a different point in time due to disproportionate distance. But..the event happens in one moment (a unit of time) and is then gone. This is how I understand the phrase 'everything happening in the now' and why 'time' cannot go backwards, only forwards for everyone, no matter where they are in the universe. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">In just a few minutes, the quantity of dark matter particles that pass through a fingernail is in the billions. Think of how much then there is between you and the computer keyboard, the computer and your window, your window and the outside world. It's almost like a never ending reflection in a mirror but instead of getting smaller, the particle quantity is growing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">Asif Khan showed the audience a relatively new substance in a round sealed plastic container able to conduct heat, block light particles and not reflect them. The substance is called Vantablack and although I had heard of it, I had never seen it up close, something he gave us the opportunity to do after the talks. After asking the question, I was intrigued to discover the shape of the particles were like hexagonal nanotubes, neatly fitting together to form a shape so tightly packed that light cannot get through. Applications for this substance could be camera equipment and telescopes to name a few. When drawing with graphic pens I've often been frustrated by not being able to achieve a complete black block of colour, maybe one day pens will be made of this stuff too!</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidCeotIOyjEIVhOimTumEJEMsUNukJzsvB1AZ7HeYo2vVjML2FqFFtcNW13ehnd_jFNzZ67oXighbZ7WIVbglmXIYfsDGvhL-rQkx_mo-fv6rLLEtpZhWPZP2fR4CPXIsGMOTCqF47rEQ/s1600/The+stage.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidCeotIOyjEIVhOimTumEJEMsUNukJzsvB1AZ7HeYo2vVjML2FqFFtcNW13ehnd_jFNzZ67oXighbZ7WIVbglmXIYfsDGvhL-rQkx_mo-fv6rLLEtpZhWPZP2fR4CPXIsGMOTCqF47rEQ/s320/The+stage.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Panelists</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">By the time all the questions had been answered in the audience and the lecture was over, I was beginning to feel the effects of rising at 4.00am with very little sleep beforehand. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">Needing coffee badly I said goodbye to the people I had met along the way this day and headed for my car back through Borough Market to St Thomas's Street. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">Just before going underground to the car I caught sight of the Moon just escaping the clutches of The Shard.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5dciJlwwuPMmkWhC821sTVlNF3_zDxanmqt77GYUniZ-f09QS5bl1bW9oyBqRDBjCmBrkZrTVv-gXZFP55lZv3wkw-Aw4EabG1NJwJAmb4mLFSWi_krtABcp7EM0MmKmSBNfxq5ud-LM/s1600/IMG_3037.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5dciJlwwuPMmkWhC821sTVlNF3_zDxanmqt77GYUniZ-f09QS5bl1bW9oyBqRDBjCmBrkZrTVv-gXZFP55lZv3wkw-Aw4EabG1NJwJAmb4mLFSWi_krtABcp7EM0MmKmSBNfxq5ud-LM/s200/IMG_3037.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">All round this was a very entertaining day out and I really hope that Tate Modern do more of this collaboration with science again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">I hope this has given a small taste of Light and Dark Matters to the reader who might be encouraged to research further.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">I make no apologies here for incorrectly theorising anything, that is the <b>freedom </b>of personal thought. Where possible I have tried to link, embed and credit those involved with this wonderful day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px; text-align: center;">With the greatest thanks to Tate Modern and The Institute of Physics.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-25852449782706579302015-11-27T13:56:00.001-08:002018-01-15T03:23:27.695-08:00LIGHT AND DARK MATTERS Part 1<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
The Sunrise
Walk<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
On Saturday
21 November 2015 I spent the day at London’s Tate Modern for a series of walks,
talks, events and workshops staged as part of the International Year of
Light. The fact I made this event at all
was due to seeing a tweet fly past on my timeline detailing the event a week
earlier, but I’ll come back to that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
On 17
November I bagged the last ticket to take the 7.15 am sunrise walk with <a href="http://luciegreen.com/">Dr Lucy Green</a> of the Mullard Space Science
Laboratory, UCL’s Department of Space.
In addition I booked the afternoon Tate session entitled ‘Are we
darkened by light?’ with <a href="http://www.roe.ac.uk/~heymans/">Catherine
Heymans</a>, <a href="http://www.katiepaterson.org/">Katie Paterson</a> and <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/careers/specialistsupport/researchers/videos/68aaf4f3fa02">Dr
Marek Kukula</a> chaired by <a href="http://www.asif-khan.com/">Asif Khan</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
In <span style="font-family: inherit;">order</span> for
me to arrive on time for the sunrise walk I had to rise at 4.00am travelling in from Essex. The journey along the M11 in the clear twilight was uneventful until I reached the brow of the hill by North Weald airfield, where as always I was struck by the dancing array of lights from the skyscrapers of London on the far horizon. Within 12 miles I knew I would be bathed in megawatts of light.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<br />
Having booked a parking spot near London
Bridge, it was just a short walk through Borough Market and along Jubilee Walk
on the Southbank to reach Tate Modern.
Seems quite early I guess but in fact I ended up with just minutes to
spare after a series of spanners in the works including being woken up 3 times
during the night, one of which involved disabling our home fire alarm at 3am
and another on arrival in London when the entrance to my parking area was
blocked by a fire incident truck. All
designed to throw me off kilter I guess but these are the reasons for time
management and planning!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
It was a bitterly cold morning with a persistent north wind blowing and although I was wrapped
up, I had failed to check the wool beanie was inside my trusty flying jacket,
so my head was resigned to exposure. At first
I couldn’t manage to raise anyone at the front entrance to the Tate, so I tried the
staff entrance and within a minute Dr Lucy appeared in that reception accompanied by two
helpers armed with a bag of headphones and receivers. We then trooped round to the Turbine Hall
entrance to wait for the other walkers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
Our first
stop along the walk from Southbank was approx. 50 yards along the Millennium
Bridge where in the biting wind Dr Lucy had hoped we would see the sunrise;
however the UK weather had other plans. Here
Dr Lucy discussed our knowledge of the Sun, it’s dynamic internal convection
process, the magnetic field and particularly the ability to recycle
turning hydrogen into helium at the core with heavier elements such as carbon,
oxygen, neon and iron being formed by stellar nucleosynthesis. The Earth’s relationship with our Sun being
that most of us and it have at some time been formed from these elements when
the solar system was born and will continue to do so for another 5-7 billion
years, when the Sun recycles again, becomes a red giant followed by a planetary
nebula and finally a white dwarf.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/S0.1.6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/S0.1.6.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<b><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A timeline of the Sun’s life (Credit: Smithsonian National</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: center;"> Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)</span></b></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<a href="http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/evol_sun.htm">The
Evolution of the Sun</a> is a fascinating subject for anyone wishing to explore
further please use my orange hyperlinks in this blog, but remember to come back here! <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 16.8667px;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
Our little
group bravely moved on across Millennium Bridge to the framed view of St Paul’s
Cathedral for the next stop where Dr Lucy discussed further the Sun’s magnetic
field, it’s influence on Earth and the rest of the solar system and our first
real understanding of that far-reaching process when space travel began in the
1950’s and 1960’s. We were shown and
able to hold a primitive early edition of a radiation detector used aboard
aircraft and later developed for space travel.
Had we then not been interrupted by everything mother-nature could
possibly throw at us including thick sideways blown blobs of snow, I might have
had a nice picture of this object to include here.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
We moved
onwards towards the Bank of England, stopping just before under an arch by King
Street. Here we shook off the
accumulated wet stuff and listened to Dr Lucy talk about the economic impacts
of the Sun. With the advent of electricity
and technology in the 20<sup>th</sup> century the economic risk factors have increased. When
our nearest star decides to cough large quantities of matter and
electromagnetic radiation out during the course of a CME or solar flare with
the solar wind, it doesn’t just produce aurorae displays for our pleasure. The subsequent shockwave of a CME or flare when
it reaches the Earth causes our own <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/science/magnetosphere2.html">magnetosphere</a>
to compress on the day side and stretch further out into space on the night
side. The magnetosphere works to protect
us to some degree from solar storms, but there are other initially invisible reactions
at work.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
One such solar
storm occurring on March 13, 1989 initially caused short wave radio interference
with the arrival of x-rays and ultraviolet light ionizing the upper atmosphere,
then aurorae recorded as far south as latitude 19° (Grand Cayman) followed by a
total blackout for around 9 hours to the province of Quebec, Canada as a result
of magnetic field changes giving rise to underground electrical currents that
then interacted with the local igneous rock sending the current through power
lines to ultra-sensitive transformers. To
avoid further damage to the transformers the grid was taken down. The cost in damage to Hydro- Québec was circa
C$10m with almost 10x that amount to end-users. Across the US within minutes of this solar
storm there were over 200 power related network issues. In space, satellites had electronic issues
with some tumbling out of control for a while.
A further solar storm in August that year brought trading on the Toronto
Stock market to a halt. It is easy then
to see the economic impact of a major solar storm.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
On route to
the next stop I discussed briefly with Dr Lucy the differences between now and
200 years ago when the world was not so reliant on the electricity grid for daily
life and therefore the subject of solar storms and their impacts were not on
the science discussion agenda. A repeat
of the famous Carrington Day event in 1859 would likely disrupt our modern technically
built world to such a degree it could take a decade or more to recover from it. This is why solar studies and monitoring of
spaceweather events are so very important to prepare and minimise the risk to
infrastructure on Earth.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
We carried on
walking through the unfailing cold wind towards Walbrook stopping briefly under
an archway to listen to the sounds of the sun through our headsets. I have heard this before but it’s always nice
to reacquaint yourself with the unusual. This video has a small clip at the end of the sounds.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CcuZD0A7RwM/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CcuZD0A7RwM?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
Unfortunately
our next stop was blocked at <a href="http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/76071">Walbrook
Wharf</a> river walk by a 58 minute estimated wait for the crane to finish
unloading city waste onto a barge. A
detour was organised to take us across Southwark Bridge to The Globe on the
Southbank, our final destination before returning to the Tate. Here Dr Lucy spent a short while reciting a
poem by Simon Barraclough inspired by the Sun and Shakespeare taken from his collection
book <a href="http://simonbarraclough.com/sunspots/">Sunspots</a> . It was a very fitting end to our walk and her tweet is shown here on the left.<br />
<br />
<blockquote align="left" class="twitter-tweet" lang="en" tw-align-center="" width="250">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Sunrise walk ended at the Globe theatre, to read <a href="https://twitter.com/EssBarraclough">@EssBarraclough</a>'s poem inspired by the Sun & Shakespeare <a href="https://t.co/bhf88lHyLg">pic.twitter.com/bhf88lHyLg</a></div>
— Lucie Green (@Dr_Lucie) <a href="https://twitter.com/Dr_Lucie/status/668000227610238976">November 21, 2015</a></blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglaJ_we3vOtz6GDw8HKwP8msVCkl3BxNGTp3PgOMxMrBrb9bTBZ7xFQyZYEtq4JL0MZtYHeWV1fMI3dhrgbw8K2nVADq0I3N4CztNs_KgaDXsqdLuPnMsWge7s-EcTyI129kJK9fUHezM/s1600/Dr+Lucy+%2526+Group.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglaJ_we3vOtz6GDw8HKwP8msVCkl3BxNGTp3PgOMxMrBrb9bTBZ7xFQyZYEtq4JL0MZtYHeWV1fMI3dhrgbw8K2nVADq0I3N4CztNs_KgaDXsqdLuPnMsWge7s-EcTyI129kJK9fUHezM/s320/Dr+Lucy+%2526+Group.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Detour of our group walking along Cousins Lane</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
I think we
were all a little relieved to be back in the warm confines of the Tate Modern
where we were led up to the 6<sup>th</sup> floor for a breakfast of tea,
coffee, cake and fruit. During the walk
I had chatted with many others in the group including several artists and these
informal chats continued over coffee. As
an amateur astronomer I take a great interest in our Sun and regularly observe
sunspots and finer details of our nearest star using safe white light filters and
a Hydrogen Alpha eyepiece. I showed one
of these images detailing a solar prominence to a lady artist who was
interested and it is reproduced here.</div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8YPNTewEsZf_oMzi7SpJ-3IUhvMtAQD84-Pt5HZrIHkPNiG6BP9AUEBKAOdb5Q4J6z0wp3e73M947nXnLEIvK2s5QNBVZPJA6PuD9md61h55A2T7mmtorW79O3Qwa9wDkkOQ9wJ1lR-o/s1600/Prominence+8+Oct+2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8YPNTewEsZf_oMzi7SpJ-3IUhvMtAQD84-Pt5HZrIHkPNiG6BP9AUEBKAOdb5Q4J6z0wp3e73M947nXnLEIvK2s5QNBVZPJA6PuD9md61h55A2T7mmtorW79O3Qwa9wDkkOQ9wJ1lR-o/s400/Prominence+8+Oct+2015.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nice clear curling prominence feature on the Sun's West limb - 8 Oct 2015</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
My interest in
the subject of light and dark extends further to the stars outside our solar
system and I have been following one variable star in particular now for a year
whilst it displayed increasing light curve variations in the form of a Nova,
observing this through the iTelescope network and collecting data myself. This week I have chosen to ‘adopt’ <a href="https://www.aavso.org/lcg/plot?auid=000-BLP-536&starname=V5668+SGR&lastdays=200&start=&stop=2457352.16000&obscode=&obscode_symbol=2&obstotals=yes&calendar=calendar&forcetics=&grid=on&visual=on&uband=on&bband=on&v=on&pointsize=1&width=800&height=450&mag1=&mag2=&mean=&vmean=">V5668
Sgr</a> for a year via AAVSO.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
I would like to pass a huge thank you to Dr Lucy Green for taking the time to
travel into London so early, braving some pretty extreme
weather conditions to talk us through one of the most fascinating objects in the
Universe, an extremely enjoyable Saturday morning all round.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m always looking to learn from such events
even with subjects I’m already aware of, there is always more to take on board.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-71981450726934818172014-09-12T08:33:00.003-07:002014-09-12T08:33:16.539-07:00The Art of Trolling and other Social Media NastiesAnyone who reads my Twitter feed, see's my Flickr and 500px pages and is my friend or family on Facebook knows that I love photography and that it goes hand in hand with my other love of astronomy.<br />
<br />
Anyone who has ever tried to combine the two will also know that IT IS NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS. Hard work, hours at a time and energy are put into both and I share it with like minded people because they understand the process only too well.<br />
<br />
So...when I've given permission for use of my photography to anyone, I've done so in the knowledge that those people are trusted with correct usage whether they have paid for the photo or not.<br />
<br />
Earlier this year in February 2014 I had a run-in with two major daily UK newspapers that had used a photo which they swiped from another paper that already had my permission. The result being they agreed to pay costs and damages. This was settled amicably on both sides.<br />
<br />
Last night I was given a heads up by a family member about a local paper that already had my permission to use the same photo (originally correctly credited) that had of yesterday been re-posted on their FB webpage. Unfortunately, the link to the FB page showed a distinctly pixelated image with no credit; once you clicked on the news item it did indeed take you to the local paper's website where the image was correctly displayed.<br />
<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>It would have been nice for the local paper to just ask again for it to be used.</li>
<li>I will always now question that integrity originally proferred to me by this paper.</li>
<li>The resulting reply comments on the paper's FB page under my comment querying the issue are the product of ignorance from a mass audience that refuse to check their heads before opening their mouths because...well it's easy to do so when that person is not in front of you eh?</li>
</ol>
<div>
Now I'm guessing you're all thinking "Crap...whose been having a pop at Twinkle?!" and "Where's the link to this, I wanna dive in?!" well...you have been warned...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=768483313194777&id=125574517485663" target="_blank"><img alt=" Abandon" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT5Ofw41kdZ0hcd-sKd2tUa_mySUzSQFwSQ4QwGIBnokD94LuPeL_69CHZGqYiwzaXATZPItTxP-nNSixpUppbe8V3aR6b-hsNidAPNBUaiYc5r_zPzDbDlmy306qZHuoyKDiWTk7VI_w/s1600/Abandon_All_Hope_by_Hjoranna.png" height="159" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=768483313194777&id=125574517485663" target="_blank">Enter to Abandon</a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Silly isn't it?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now if this 'item' belonged to any one of them, they would be up in arms and all over it like a rash, but because the author made comment they feel disconnected in some way, so that's alright then we can trash and troll away to our hearts content right? Wrong.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Facebook has it covered if you are not clappy happy: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards" target="_blank">Standards</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm guessing that these type of people don't have much experience in life, have never done any real hard graft, grown or created anything from scratch, never come close to death, stood 200 yards from a 1 ton bomb going off and never had to make their way home through that carnage, never cared for an animal or much less a human and never stood in wonder at nature or the planet we live on.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
At the time of blogging this issue isn't really a problem since I'm not feeling harassed...however it could go completely pear-shaped, you just never know. Interestingly the local paper's webmaster hasn't responded back since the reply last night.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I don't use FB particularly often or extensively for this very reason and I'm only connected to people I know, can trust and are also my family (and believe me, I get hacked off by family too at times!).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Social media is great for debate and comment and really should be used for such as if you had that person standing in front of you..e.g. would you really call that lady a c**t to her face? Many of us think that is OK on a keyboard but you'd likely get a black eye in reality.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
On Twitter I can block those who are downright stupid, arrogant and full of nastiness, it's a simply click and I actually prefer debate on this medium. However, I generally love all of my followers and the people I follow, it's rare I have to block anyone. In future I'll just be asking the FB webpage owners to remove any of my stuff or links to it if such a thing is abused.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you're hoping to see Aurora (the Northern Lights) in the North or South of England tonight or tomorrow as predicted may happen due to the G3 solar storm, my advice is.....get checking the <a href="http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/" target="_blank">NOAA </a>website, get off your butts, get outside, get away from street lighting, get your eyes accustomed to the dark (30 mins minimum) and get looking for yourselves. In the words of Paul Newman:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Stop feeding off of me!"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-16557826929504247652014-04-11T12:04:00.002-07:002014-04-11T12:06:11.345-07:00Today I have earned my wages tri-fold..<span style="font-family: inherit;">I always look forward to Fridays...don't you? Why, because usually I can slow down the work pace a little.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">No such luck today, needed a brain, a heart, courage and distinct yellow brick road instructions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have been trying to update one of our software programs, Sage Payroll 19.02.157 for best part of a week without success, each time I kept getting this at the end:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHWJWH-awL0dwMPQ5bcBVfAe3TdbZZo8urJsGn9MsDXkhTfPn-a4V67e-P_Rs-ianrFVsORrvC5DLWhoxP9rgV37UirvT2bWHp48hs64p1XWnORzke_K6OuopDqXDZaLnLZkt1Gk6NEkc/s1600/Silly+Net+4+msg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHWJWH-awL0dwMPQ5bcBVfAe3TdbZZo8urJsGn9MsDXkhTfPn-a4V67e-P_Rs-ianrFVsORrvC5DLWhoxP9rgV37UirvT2bWHp48hs64p1XWnORzke_K6OuopDqXDZaLnLZkt1Gk6NEkc/s1600/Silly+Net+4+msg.jpg" height="292" width="640" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
After which, the Sage program did not update to version 20.01. If you're not familiar with RTI (Real Time Information) this will mean nothing to you suffice to say that due to collaboration on an unprecedented scale with HMRC, without the update I would be unable to a) post our company wages in the new tax year and b) file RTI submissions to HMRC, the latter whip out penalty letters faster than you can access their online services.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then when I tried again to re-install the update I got a
different message asking me where my installation was as it now couldn't locate it (nuts since I had the thing open!).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Now I'll have you know that .Net 4.0 WAS installed, I checked. I also checked my Windows Updates....hmmm what's this then? I'm pretty sure I have seen this message from time to time:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkOE49QZx1iKqEqd83KzTEgsiqslnulQVIxjmteTx73RhD3IOwfEyxrN4No0YH8yXNT_LMl_9Y0zZENnQA5bPxzqKH1KiU1a99GYdzU_EsEeFicDdbO0tKtDPI9SHNLsQ35hIa6KFlSgk/s1600/updating_thumb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkOE49QZx1iKqEqd83KzTEgsiqslnulQVIxjmteTx73RhD3IOwfEyxrN4No0YH8yXNT_LMl_9Y0zZENnQA5bPxzqKH1KiU1a99GYdzU_EsEeFicDdbO0tKtDPI9SHNLsQ35hIa6KFlSgk/s1600/updating_thumb.jpg" height="278" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And this one..</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Sl3mt3_VvBUsS3IEmkBNcWHYvY_XftKWJxRQpV2VT1JDRo6SlOBSv1Z4znWiAAtpQUQ5kUxoqMX3-L6_WWWnwomwyU9fX6gIDt83flf_6SHEwp_QZQFEHaWEU6Ym6oMXhqTh6wneiP8/s1600/installing-update_sf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Sl3mt3_VvBUsS3IEmkBNcWHYvY_XftKWJxRQpV2VT1JDRo6SlOBSv1Z4znWiAAtpQUQ5kUxoqMX3-L6_WWWnwomwyU9fX6gIDt83flf_6SHEwp_QZQFEHaWEU6Ym6oMXhqTh6wneiP8/s1600/installing-update_sf.jpg" height="118" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Uh oh..haven't seen this one before...</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_231DkcSkjmY6Z25aby57PXxEDsCTXVycFzHfjTCnoadVMH3vO4TB9R1-sU5PsAFQ0jkZGQMjzwKQKE6mwG5gj5Wlfc6Ngqr1QBoWAg4WsBcIz_JR4eSnTpVKMBNvyI-oIhq300kowCA/s1600/KH0FO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_231DkcSkjmY6Z25aby57PXxEDsCTXVycFzHfjTCnoadVMH3vO4TB9R1-sU5PsAFQ0jkZGQMjzwKQKE6mwG5gj5Wlfc6Ngqr1QBoWAg4WsBcIz_JR4eSnTpVKMBNvyI-oIhq300kowCA/s1600/KH0FO.jpg" height="446" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In fact, the windows update service WAS running according to the administrator console. In the middle of all this I have a guy from Sage emailing me back and forth telling me things I already know how to tweak and at the same time failing to properly read my email responses back to him. Doh!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I must have restored the computer to a previous moment in time about 5 times as one tedious trial and error fix after another failed to work. The best one was when I tried to uninstall Windows .Net 4 Framework and then re-install it to which I received the message 'cannot complete install : HRESULT 0x80003f3 error'. <a href="http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/archive/windows_update_codes.htm" target="_blank">Binary</a>, if I say so myself Watson.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Something just wasn't right...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then I found this beautiful <a href="http://windowsdiscussions.com/error-0xc80003f3-while-installing-microsoft-security-essentials-update-windows-7-a-119616.html" target="_blank">thread </a>which if you click and scroll down to Kumar12337 you'll see a nice simple set of instructions.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>COFFEE BREAK ALERT!!</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">1 hr later after restoring computer back to 8 April and any other shenanigans, re-booting for the umpteenth time, and taking another restore point (just in case) I followed Kumar12337's instructions to the letter.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It worked...except...I ended up with 64 Critical Windows 7 updates that had quite clearly failed to ever update before, despite said machine saying it had.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the meantime, the boss (hubby) arrives home; yes I know what you're all thinking and yes...he drives me round the bend too, all day and night.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sparkleupalot: "Er...would you mind going for a drive? Take the ol' racing pigeons for a spin up the road for me?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Twinklespinalot: "If I must...." *rubs hands with glee*</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Heheh...now I don't have to watch a spinning blue circle for an hour updating Windows 7.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A quick white van run up to Steeple Bumpstead and back with birds in tow and lo and behold the 64 updates have finished. Another couple of re-boots and I was ready to try installing Sage Payroll V20.01 again.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">IT WORKED! SAGE UPDATE INSTALLED WITHOUT A HITCH! KUDOS TO KUMAR!</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And now....I'm going to polish off a glass or two of wine, my day is done.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-83438747240804869272014-03-26T08:41:00.005-07:002014-03-26T13:07:17.369-07:00End of a Photography Era?<span style="font-family: inherit;">Late last night on return from my weekly tap dancing session, I logged onto my laptop to get a better view of a friend's excellent photo of the planet Jupiter on the Flickr website, of which I have been a member for nearly 2 years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Immediately I was struck by the sudden enforced change Yahoo had made whereby the Beta 'Photo Experience,' which up until that point had been optional, had now been foisted on all Flickr members. It was horrendously messy to say the least. I could not immediately see anyone's comments on my own photos, leaving me wondering how to respond to people. Furthermore when I tried to share a photo directly to Twitter social media site via the Flickr share button, it appeared that the ampersand we all use freely to shorten the word 'and' was not in Flickr's dictionary and therefore couldn't handle it. The resulting protest tweet made me look like a fumbling numpty:<br />
</span><br />
<blockquote align="center" class="twitter-tweet" height="50" lang="en" width="100">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">.<a href="https://twitter.com/Flickr">@Flickr</a> Complaints Dept what were u thinking this eve now want 2 up sticks &amp; leave <a href="https://t.co/UN90ntSHrG">https://t.co/UN90ntSHrG</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">— Wendy Clark (@twinklespinalot) <a href="https://twitter.com/twinklespinalot/statuses/448600991534178305">March 25, 2014</a></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Like others I took to social media for a good ol' rant, because like it or not, this is what we do on occasions like this, right? I wanted to throw buckets of paint around, chew on my own intestines, smash a thousand plates and worse, I wanted to do this:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://gifsoup.com/view/5007128/hades-smoke.html" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view7/20140326/5007128/hades-smoke-o.gif" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://gifsoup.com/" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank" title="GIFSoup">Arrrrrgggggh!</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">'Change' as a way of naming something is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>"<span style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;">An act or process through which something becomes different"</span> </b></span></span></blockquote>
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Most people associate change with the adjective 'better', which is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as:<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 25.600000381469727px;"><b>"More desirable, satisfactory or effective"</b></span></span></blockquote>
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<span 25.600000381469727px="" font-family:="" inherit="" line-height:="">Arguably one of the most popular photography sharing sites on the internet suddenly overnight became neither desirable, satisfactory or effective; it was disagreeable, unacceptable and feckless.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span 25.600000381469727px="" font-family:="" inherit="" line-height:=""><br /></span></span></div>
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Take the Flickr group <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/astrometry/" target="_blank">astrometry.net</a> for example which I know many have found most useful in identifying astronomy objects and which I use in some of my own astrophotography efforts. You might be asking at this point "where have all the machine tags gone that this group made on my photos?". This morning it took me a lot of help forum searching to work out that scrolling down to the tags section on the new Flickr sidebar and hovering over astrometry's star notes produced a single square annotation on the photograph in question. This completely dumbs down the idea of learning from your own and other's photographs as to exactly what you're looking at if you have to singularly keep hovering over the tags on the right bar to produce individual answers!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsyCYFzm1x-SwFN6A9F0BmbZD1Pw-iuBQxtOup0GiYXKa4B38W4DQ8yoEiexVXoDe7eNAeMSGa7W0kXt87xOgQ6OVfqC9mGjIkfl5MScfNj4O6AIoxjpGwPHDXPfZNQZM0Bx3RSTX9Kgc/s1600/Pollux.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsyCYFzm1x-SwFN6A9F0BmbZD1Pw-iuBQxtOup0GiYXKa4B38W4DQ8yoEiexVXoDe7eNAeMSGa7W0kXt87xOgQ6OVfqC9mGjIkfl5MScfNj4O6AIoxjpGwPHDXPfZNQZM0Bx3RSTX9Kgc/s1600/Pollux.jpg" height="191" title="Pollux" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes...it's Pollux!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">From my point of view Flickr was all about a central, clean and easy to use site for showcasing my amateur photography and viewing other members photography progress in a fascinating hobby which has captured my imagination since I first played with an old Russian Zenit EM camera at the age of 12. As my hobby has grown over the years, technology has moved on to the digital age bringing new insights and huge learning curves. As the internet has grown both technology and information have exploded into our lives to the point where we believe at times that we cannot be without something that connects us to it in a user-friendly manner. It's what we expect from advances in technology and when it fails to live up to expectations, as users we are capable of upping sticks and looking elsewhere.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Step away, sit back and breathe slowly...you have a choice as to where you put your faith and support in technology and there is more than one road open for the ride today.</span></div>
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The official <a href="http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/72157642911765443/" target="_blank">help forum thread</a> on the new 'Photo Experience' interface says it all and the responses on it makes for some interesting reading, notable feedback so far:</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><i>"With each design change, the site gets more and more inconsistent"</i></span></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">"Sorry, I cannot thank you for something I never wanted.."</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">"You guys don't seem to understand some very basic, simple rules of photography and displaying images. The large size image needs to be framed all the way around. Not just on two sides, or three sides, but ALL FOUR SIDES!! The portraits are clipped on the top and bottom - no framing whatsoever. The landscapes on the right have a very narrow margin, and no margin on the left. This is so basic, I cannot comprehend how anyone would allow this to happen."</span></i></blockquote>
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It is supposedly faster they say...well speed is what you make of it and getting there quicker doesn't always mean the destination is tourist spot of the month. Besides which if you don't have super-duper 20Gb Broadband or 'BT Infinity' (when it works) then nothing, not even stone tablets thrown by a Guinness World Record Breaker is going to make viewing photographs load any quicker.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I tried to view a solar image on Flickr this morning from one of my favourite photographers, Mr James Lennie, 5 mins had gone by and .....only half the solar image was showing.</span><br />
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For some time and also since the last lot of changes were rolled out on Flickr in 2013, I have been toying with abandoning the site and joining <a href="http://500px.com/" target="_blank">500px</a>. Although 500px is free to use, the $25 a year 'Plus' service appeals more to me now following copyright mis-use of my photographs by two well-known national newspapers in late February 2014 (that's a good blog for another day folks!).<br />
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I need protection and ease of use if I'm to continue sharing my photography, it's taken a long while and a lot of effort to get to where I am with this hobby and I'm very proud of my achievements in this field so far as I know a lot of my friends online are of their own efforts. To have a large corporation take it's users and affront them in this manner with a confusing hotchpotch of their own ideas on how a social media sharing site should look does not endear me to publishing my work any further with them.<br />
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Social media, whether we like it or not is an important tool for the whole world and beyond. It connects us to like-minded people, provokes debate, provides insight and lets us view the world from wherever we are at that moment.<br />
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Imagine for a second you are bound to your home, unable to travel outside those confines for health or personal reasons. Now imagine your only contact with the outside world is online. With vast streams of content and access to trillions of places via photography, video and live news the world opens up into your psyche and you now feel a part of that world just by being able to view it. Before long you are connecting with people and places you never dreamed of.<br />
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It's not hard to also imagine how depressing that might end up if you spend all your time trying to figure out the tools and navigation elements to get there from one day to the next.<br />
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It will be sad to leave Flickr as I follow a lot of great photographers, but I think letting it be for a while and going elsewhere is the best thing to do. We've all talked about it before and we've all hung on in the hope no-one tinkers further with it, but that day has come for me and I'm moving on. I'll check back with my Flickr friends from time to time and I'm sad for people who only yesterday just started following but I'm already in a new pasture.<br />
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A change of field definitely should be for the better.<br />
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I'll leave you with this view because it was the first thing I saw on 500px most popular and it really did sum up today's thoughts on the Flickr changes:<br />
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Sums it all up really today.....Photo “hello and goodbye” by Rune Askeland <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23500px&src=hash">#500px</a> <a href="http://t.co/WoErsdQ8k9">http://t.co/WoErsdQ8k9</a><br />
— Wendy Clark (@twinklespinalot) <a href="https://twitter.com/twinklespinalot/statuses/448751996393115648">March 26, 2014</a></blockquote>
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</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-47178438035229143472013-07-05T15:42:00.001-07:002013-07-05T23:16:55.658-07:00I'll be back Greenwich....smoke me some whitebait for breakfastWhen you take a trip to London from the 'sticks' of the UK, the 1st thing you notice is how everyone is in so much of a rush. So it was no surprise to me that when I drove down the M11 and parked my car at Debden central line station, Loughton, I was almost floored walking into the station by a young girl steaming full tilt out the entrance, phone in hand, eyes down, oblivious to the world around her. The 'tut tut' under her breath was all the more remarkable since she had bolted straight into me! I think I said something like "Perhaps you ought to slow down a bit". That fell on deaf ears completely.<br />
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So my trip on Thursday 27th June to the Big Smoke had a two-fold purpose. One to meet the requirements of my appointment at The Arthur Steele Clinic on City Road with <a href="http://www.julianstevens.co.uk/" target="_blank">Mr Julian Stevens MRCP, FRCS, FRCOphth., DO</a> and the other to catch up with my good friend Ric Barham for lunch, then both enjoy an afternoon at Greenwich with our cameras and hopefully get in to see <a href="http://www.rmg.co.uk/visit/events/visions-of-the-universe?gclid=CN3-7suQjLgCFY3HtAodaHcA9w" target="_blank">The Visions of The Universe</a> exhibition.<br />
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Travelling on London's Tube is always a fascinating experience and for many years I did this every day without a thought commuting to work. Even as a child, I had to use the Tube living in the suburbs of London and was once stuck underground going home from a dental appointment at Wimpole Street escorted by my heavily pregnant mother, sweltering for 4 hours between Stratford and Leytonstone where some inconsiderate lady had decided to end it all on the tracks, but hadn't quite managed it. In case no-one is aware of this fact, it was procedure on London Underground then that if a 'jumper' was not dead, they couldn't turn off the power and let everyone walk through the trains to safety, the heavy lifting equipment had to be brought in to hoist the train off the track so they could retrieve what was left of the unfortunate person. I also recall waiting for an eastbound train on Embankment station in the mid-1990s when a briefcase bearing gentleman decided to step straight off in front of me on the other side, just as the westbound train pulled into the station. A sure-fire way to quickly clear 2 platforms of commuters if ever there was one.<br />
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But on Thursday last the trains were looking good, it was 10.00am so all the rush below street level had dissolved into a few late risers and eager tourists. Between changes at Bank for the Northern Line I even had time to let a train go in order to try out the sports mode on the Canon 700D.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCODP-Wz-Nx53jfVBn64UGNLf3-mZ3daPx6eHYvL0VhBoj4hicOJkvO9CnhJEeKVTs8JKsOkBmbZJZX12-nb60phY7inzSwtudYecL3qIaZd2UupqlRlUlGV2ap4VSE1B_DbLmO81Yah4/s1600/Northern+Line+Tube.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCODP-Wz-Nx53jfVBn64UGNLf3-mZ3daPx6eHYvL0VhBoj4hicOJkvO9CnhJEeKVTs8JKsOkBmbZJZX12-nb60phY7inzSwtudYecL3qIaZd2UupqlRlUlGV2ap4VSE1B_DbLmO81Yah4/s200/Northern+Line+Tube.JPG" title="Northern Line at Bank" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Northern Line at Bank</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As always the Tube is a warm place. The deepest part of the underground system is on the Northern line
just below Hampstead Heath where the rails are over 220 feet below ground.<br />
<br />
At Old Street station I was pleased to see the little dress shop that I like still there, although disappointed at the range of clothing currently on sale. I emerged into breezy daylight and headed to my appointment at 11.30am. Had a little trouble trying to get the receptionist to answer the intercom, but then realised I was on the wrong floor! It's been a while since a checkup so I went through an eye test and lots of staring through expensive and futuristic equipment before I got to see Mr Stevens. I had my eyes treated here in the 1990s under Moorfields excimer laser photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) surgery programme. My eyes were treated separately over a 6 month period, costing £500 each. During 2007 I was treated a second time by LASIK on my right eye as it had slightly reverted back, this time however Mr Stevens had reverted back to the private clinic and the cost was significantly higher at £800 per eye. Since that time I have had 20/20 vision, although due to my increasing age, I use reading glasses of +1 just to help nature out a bit. I have never regretted having the surgery as contacts and glasses were just as expensive.<br />
<br />
Thankfully my 2 hour stint in the clinic turned out fine and all was well with my eyes, just a little massage needed to get my oil glands going (who knew you had oil glands in your eyelids!). I was very hungry having resisted the temptation in the clinic to help myself to Hobnobs and other treats on offer. I then headed over to London Bridge to meet my friend Ric who manages a number of buildings around St Thomas's Street for Great Portland Estates.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7LJoJoZWIy04uKKKb3Fm8qqW-5qP3Ik6mOi3RAPoMdCVtHFNCyCNt2LkmMsuDNC0AbixPecbBCN27RcRIar5UuFMtYt5l61JLLXtnamuDe06G-RBevoSoAOdxxUUCj_HRAj9NnKW6Knc/s1600/The+Shard.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7LJoJoZWIy04uKKKb3Fm8qqW-5qP3Ik6mOi3RAPoMdCVtHFNCyCNt2LkmMsuDNC0AbixPecbBCN27RcRIar5UuFMtYt5l61JLLXtnamuDe06G-RBevoSoAOdxxUUCj_HRAj9NnKW6Knc/s200/The+Shard.JPG" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Shard</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I can never get the whole of this building into the frame! A much wider angle lens required I believe....sigh, all these hobbies cost dosh, dosh and more dosh.<br />
<br />
A short drive to Greenwich ensued and we parked close to <a href="http://www.trafalgartavern.co.uk/" target="_blank">The Trafalgar Tavern.</a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" target="_blank"></a><br />
<br />
I hadn't tested this particular watering hole before, but we were both more than ready to eat. I should mention that Ric recently went through an amazing operation that resulted in extreme weight loss, so he warned me that eating lunch would be a slower affair than usual. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcDh0f2FS0a5l1lXEktU7achTkZw3BWNCMeEQKNUtpyYZ6I9NvJrBQIxBzv2DZkVWe1UNSqjIa5ECMzE49BQqgV7Sm0g2mhX_n9-GAUbCDEmPLh3BpRDuW4OOX8rppYR7elIg4GRKq7rY/s1600/Ric.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcDh0f2FS0a5l1lXEktU7achTkZw3BWNCMeEQKNUtpyYZ6I9NvJrBQIxBzv2DZkVWe1UNSqjIa5ECMzE49BQqgV7Sm0g2mhX_n9-GAUbCDEmPLh3BpRDuW4OOX8rppYR7elIg4GRKq7rY/s200/Ric.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ric Barham</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I'm impressed by the progress Ric has made in the last few months and he's looking very healthy and a lot happier for it. It's been a long road <span class="st">psychologically</span> too, I applaud his determination and bravery for going through such a hard few months. Well done mate!<br />
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<br />
<br />
Oooh, what a view of the O2 from the Tavern:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJC7xqEtSbl9Mxtq4U-DU60UcgtXlj9O0yNuY60O2XvgvGrdX0uDC4Eaasmc6_m9pU3g5QcBXuE9vU2tjFzr7YRnAjesihF4uNtlUQ62zEWsoIKPsUWQefwFH73UntT-6M3uTriBjbG3w/s1600/O2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJC7xqEtSbl9Mxtq4U-DU60UcgtXlj9O0yNuY60O2XvgvGrdX0uDC4Eaasmc6_m9pU3g5QcBXuE9vU2tjFzr7YRnAjesihF4uNtlUQ62zEWsoIKPsUWQefwFH73UntT-6M3uTriBjbG3w/s200/O2.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
Feeling quite adventurous, I chose Greenwich Whitebait from the pub <a href="http://www.trafalgartavern.co.uk/TTRestaurant.pdf" target="_blank">food menu </a>with a side of fries, I had never tried that fish before. We sat down and pulled out both our cameras, fussing over this setting and that, comparing apps on iphones too. I'm a newbie with my iphone, so all assistance helps!<br />
<br />
Ric has been interested in photography, particularly the wildlife sort for a long time. I've always been interested in taking pictures on holidays, day trips and the like, but never really seriously. I learn a lot from my good friend this particular day, in fact I'm shown an amazing trick to widen the angle of my Canon 700D 18-55mm IS II lens as he quickly pulls out a small 1 inch deep <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/DIGIFLEX-58MM-Wide-Angle-Canon/dp/B003VNF116/ref=sr_1_74?ie=UTF8&qid=1372380806&sr=8-74&keywords=High+definition+wide+angle" target="_blank">adaptor </a>and screws it onto the front of my lens..."now look through that" he says:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyeMqyliWbACPPUyzoqpBOlmXuf20Sn_hGUyQcBW6vWdsTZSnb0uBElXEoiqqvlAk89hvSR0WSsViH3CrFWHUnn1X2srWb00uUZ4_9Z0gV5ZTNgKuedoCh6R3B7_BMMxl4JZ-ScYi3m4o/s1600/Wide+Angle+from+The+Trafalger.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyeMqyliWbACPPUyzoqpBOlmXuf20Sn_hGUyQcBW6vWdsTZSnb0uBElXEoiqqvlAk89hvSR0WSsViH3CrFWHUnn1X2srWb00uUZ4_9Z0gV5ZTNgKuedoCh6R3B7_BMMxl4JZ-ScYi3m4o/s320/Wide+Angle+from+The+Trafalger.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
As I look through the viewfinder, I am blown away by the difference, even taken through the grubby glass of the Trafalgar Tavern on a less than bright day, this is impressive for me.<br />
<br />
I'm sold!!<br />
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This adaptor also doubles as a macro lens<br />
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Amazing!!<br />
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<br />
The food arrives and initially I look pensively at the breaded deep fried whitebait in front of me as I can see two little eyes peeping through the batter....ah well, in for a penny in for a pound.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8nb7zavrBjzXCfUvCsDUKj2Mp6E43cXkC8S0u_i6XKw5Yak922ndpClbxEv86VTbdSTsOpSixlULHASqssTV64Ox1uxZjjj1od0QK_AgoElK5IbSZ-h3i6hD7p8bfTAnPp4hSKOhDhx4/s1600/Me+looking+out+window.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8nb7zavrBjzXCfUvCsDUKj2Mp6E43cXkC8S0u_i6XKw5Yak922ndpClbxEv86VTbdSTsOpSixlULHASqssTV64Ox1uxZjjj1od0QK_AgoElK5IbSZ-h3i6hD7p8bfTAnPp4hSKOhDhx4/s200/Me+looking+out+window.JPG" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Twinkle before the food</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I've tried fish from many countries, even gone deep sea fishing off the Florida Keys twice now, where I hauled snook and snapper for my dinner up from 80 feet of seabed, single-handedly and simultaneously providing the ocean with fresh bait for the next customer shortly afterwards. Excitement, Dramamine, egg-sandwiches, sun and good beer are always a good recipe for sea sickness.<br />
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The whitebait at the pub came with a lemon and paprika dip which served for me to ignore the eyes a bit. However, on reflection now I have to admit one of them did taste a bit....strange. But, I had already swallowed it. I think I looked quite happy before lunch in this photo!<br />
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We left The Trafalgar after about 2 hours and headed across to our destination, the Visions of the Universe Exhibition at the Maritime Museum. The museum was a short 15 minute stroll from the Tavern. Just before entering to purchase our tickets, Ric commented that the running waterfall outside close by the ship in the bottle would make a good photographic shot.<br />
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Was this deja vu?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMXbRBeoXMCBAOMRRVujuEN4LTYxj1HdmgU6CD7u3hv-jH0OzwbS3gnMDWpKWEzYsqkvYboFGEydXLaU2pVo0Y3IKbfrA7WciC83gQQ4CBLfCEWQpm8cMv8DnaK6Hlg0afP40xZRoDHJk/s1600/IMG_0154.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMXbRBeoXMCBAOMRRVujuEN4LTYxj1HdmgU6CD7u3hv-jH0OzwbS3gnMDWpKWEzYsqkvYboFGEydXLaU2pVo0Y3IKbfrA7WciC83gQQ4CBLfCEWQpm8cMv8DnaK6Hlg0afP40xZRoDHJk/s200/IMG_0154.JPG" width="149" /></a></div>
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At the desk we were told we could not take photos inside the exhibition. Our tickets purchased, we strolled inside with much anticipation and I nabbed a snap of Ric under the banner with my phone. The first photograph you are confronted with inside the dark room is that of Sir Patrick Moore. The <span class="st">exhibition is dedicated to his memory, I will always remember him with much fondness as he provided my first interest in astronomy and space at the tender age of 8 with The Sky at Night programme. There are over 100 fantastic images of the cosmos at this exhibition and I thoroughly recommend a visit.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">I was a bit peeved that some guy was snapping away with his 'point and shoot' at the photos inside and made a point of informing the security guard, to which she replied "Yes, you can take pictures, I'm sorry you were mis-informed". Had I known this, I think I would have asked Ric to take a picture of me sat in front of Mount Sharp with what happened next.</span><br />
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<span class="st">We had only been inside the exhibition 10 minutes when I began to feel very hot, particularly on my hands and feet. They were on fire and I was scratching frantically. It was quite dark inside the exhibition so I couldn't really see what was going on, but after a while I had to find a seat. That seat happened to be slap bang in front of the massive panoramic photo of Mount Sharp on Mars. My sandals came off and I rubbed my feet on the cold carpet, I must have looked quite a sight scratching like some bear against a pole. At the end of this seat a young far eastern girl was coughing and spluttering constantly and I hastily shifted away from her. Ric kept asking me if I was alright and clearly this wasn't the case.</span><br />
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<span class="st"> I managed this quick snap inside but, after 20 minutes I couldn't stand it any longer, In a quiet whisper that felt more like a roar in my head I said, "Ric, I've got to get out of here NOW, I'm really sorry". I think I almost ran out, calling over my shoulder for him to grab me a coffee. Out the front door by the Ship's bottle I sped towards the running water exhibit and stood in it, much to the amusement of a group of school children. The cool water was a blessing, but my hands and feet were red raw and blotches were appearing on my knees and legs. I sat on the cold stone wall and waited for the coffee. When Ric saw my hands and feet he couldn't believe it. The only explanation was an allergic reaction to something, but what??? I was breathing fine, no swollen tongue, lips of any other body part.</span><br />
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<span class="st">"Right, let's go find a chemist for some Piriton", he said.</span><br />
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<span class="st">"But, I want to go up the hill, this is my day out", I wailed.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">We waited 20 minutes and I began to feel better, despite the misery, my feet were cooling and I put my sandals back on. We walked no more than 100 yards and I had to sit down as the whole itching thing started again. In the end this is all I got to see of the Observatory:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD1doMM0h5pvIAW59ZaedawXc9teuE3XlDg8EVUnJuT07MgtfeOoF3pMJRvuBUpDag60O_lqvhbJyd0OPa9UFqITjSd-pySROfwJBxuhg3_E7od_Cef3cMe6WeDNpk2hpjNTuztW_54sg/s1600/Observatory.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD1doMM0h5pvIAW59ZaedawXc9teuE3XlDg8EVUnJuT07MgtfeOoF3pMJRvuBUpDag60O_lqvhbJyd0OPa9UFqITjSd-pySROfwJBxuhg3_E7od_Cef3cMe6WeDNpk2hpjNTuztW_54sg/s200/Observatory.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
<span class="st">A cute blackbird also popped up in front of me whilst I pondered whether or not I could go on or go home.</span><br />
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<span class="st">The answer was obvious really but I didn't want to admit it. Ric really wanted to take me to A&E, but I firmly refused. Done enough time there in the last 12 months, thank you kindly.</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk5Agtf-LunGOmWlhnRSXZRSk0bUOhsEC3MnG8s1MQPjmRGbGK3YHpuTPPNa1JT8qPGr9nq6BYUjl-9PqZwfrpAWFBowAD4elgvj-QLjogYsNetkaYg6xGSqBKT5ho11RlHddh38Qfpug/s1600/Blackbird.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk5Agtf-LunGOmWlhnRSXZRSk0bUOhsEC3MnG8s1MQPjmRGbGK3YHpuTPPNa1JT8qPGr9nq6BYUjl-9PqZwfrpAWFBowAD4elgvj-QLjogYsNetkaYg6xGSqBKT5ho11RlHddh38Qfpug/s200/Blackbird.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hello little blackbird</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="st">We turned around and headed back to the car. On the way back I managed two half decent camera shots of Greenwich and the City of London in the distance, in between hopping along with swelling feet and tearing at my hands.</span><br />
<span class="st"> </span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmsZlS2gAYRScuDiCvpeTIEdc1x43DOz3zpW8pw0ivvGIVIzPUWfzeZjxb6TgB6Ftk7cRpMiJvHjY3jQ4b3zL8Xz-cpE87HGMRBHKN1IqbGDCD3X8GsOfGfGRIT2DrSsXCVymNauBlh5I/s1600/Canary+Wharf.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmsZlS2gAYRScuDiCvpeTIEdc1x43DOz3zpW8pw0ivvGIVIzPUWfzeZjxb6TgB6Ftk7cRpMiJvHjY3jQ4b3zL8Xz-cpE87HGMRBHKN1IqbGDCD3X8GsOfGfGRIT2DrSsXCVymNauBlh5I/s200/Canary+Wharf.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Canary Wharf</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In the early 1990s I worked on the 36th floor of One Canada Square in the left of this picture. From that point you could see for miles, watch aircraft pass close by and land at London City Airport, that view must be very obscured by the new buildings now. Standing at the window edges on our floor used to make me feel giddy. <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8f6Wj7KF3hwToMcTG-AOkoIeB1jAlPwdObrpNyr4pXg2V5LjEae0Sv6D3kAPNuWpRfY72ELAdpflTWxt3uTp1UY9l_lSAaFjRuw06TvktaAXT5KXB7TibqchrpalDYMzzrJoXfm93uKk/s1600/Maritime+Museum.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8f6Wj7KF3hwToMcTG-AOkoIeB1jAlPwdObrpNyr4pXg2V5LjEae0Sv6D3kAPNuWpRfY72ELAdpflTWxt3uTp1UY9l_lSAaFjRuw06TvktaAXT5KXB7TibqchrpalDYMzzrJoXfm93uKk/s200/Maritime+Museum.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old Royal Naval College</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="st">Walking down the hill on terra firma I felt very giddy indeed. But managed somehow to take a picture. Spots of rain were beginning to fall as well. Could this day get any worse? It's now 5pm.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="st">By the time we get back to the car and Ric ploughs through the rush hour traffic heading east to find a pharmacy, I can no longer bear sitting up front in the warm car. He stops down a side road, finds a chemist and I woof down a piriton tab with some water, climb into the back of the car and lie down, middle seat belt awkwardly stretched across my stomach. I remove my sandals again, lie down with my hands up holding my phone and feet raised, pressed against the passenger window in 1st position (ballet term for the uninitiated). This cools them down considerably.</span><br />
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<span class="st">What a sight, I take to Twitter on the phone to distract me from the itch and this was the photo I posted before both feet were back on the glass. I joked with Ric that he'd have to clean the footprints off before Aunty Pat got in the car or there'd be some interesting conversation going on!</span> <br />
<br />
Ric wanted to drive me back all the way home, but my car was at Debden Station. Providing the tablets kicked in I could then drive back home without incurring a clamping.<br />
<br />
I became aware of landmarks passing by as we crawled through the traffic, and at one point as we came out the Blackwall Tunnel into 3 lanes of queuing traffic, Ric stated that we were passing a police car at which point I momentarily moved my feet in case they thought he had a dead body in the back. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgtJDX5LjcjS3IfqZ_7NPXJdqdZ1AfDVa0F7IKPYXDe2XrWGvJeYLWj-rWJzQugOemtrAM1uoJUVw6ZSm8V1msIQ1IC3hN6gh-LPkFq4iwo_oU-sz0XJ63kjaPpfNytCU52hLw6GIrDok/s1600/IMG_0156.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgtJDX5LjcjS3IfqZ_7NPXJdqdZ1AfDVa0F7IKPYXDe2XrWGvJeYLWj-rWJzQugOemtrAM1uoJUVw6ZSm8V1msIQ1IC3hN6gh-LPkFq4iwo_oU-sz0XJ63kjaPpfNytCU52hLw6GIrDok/s200/IMG_0156.JPG" width="148" /></a></div>
<br />
I knew roughly where we were by raising my phone up to take this of the Olympic park. We finally arrived at Debden and grabbed two teas, I sat up and waited for the inevitable flush in my extremities. Thankfully it had eased. Yes I could drive!<br />
<br />
Instead of taking the M11 as usual, I headed back through Abridge, Chipping Ongar, and The Rodings, a route known as "The Rat Run" as it runs parallel with the motorway through fast country lanes and sleepy villages. Arriving home, I headed straight to bed but not before I had taken some Ibuprofen as by the time I reached home, something else was starting to happen. The itching had died down, replaced by joint swelling, making my hands and feet tight and difficult to move without considerable pain. My 16 year old daughter was away in Devon so I slept in her room for fear of my husband rolling onto my painful hands. He had to be up at 5.00am and in London the next day for 7.00am.<br />
<br />
In the morning my hands were solid rocks and communications with them were very slow, I had hardly any motor control at all. Alone in the house except for Oscar the ever cantankerous labrador, ("Err...yes I still want my breakfast woman, get to it!") I struggled around willing everything to work properly. Even holding a mug of tea was surreal, like it was half floating in zero gravity in my hand. I had an appointment with the nurse at 8.45am so I made sure our doctor came in on that to examine my problem. I was dispatched with some anti-histamine that "Will not make you sleepy". I had 3 VAT returns to complete in the office and upload to HMRC, plus a host of other typing, the last thing I needed was dropping off on the keyboard.<br />
<br />
Everything that day took forever, my vision was intermittently blurred by staring from screen to paperwork, it was clear "Will not make you sleepy" actually mean't "Will make you dunk your head in your tea numerous times". My 8 hour day turned into 14 hours as the following stilted conversations took place between my head and my hands:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Hello hand, Twinkle here do you think you could type a little quicker?".</blockquote>
<br />
2 minute pause....<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"This is Hand, take a hike Twinkle...I'm busy down here".</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Well Hand, I'm a little up against it here too and I need your help PDQ".</blockquote>
<br />
2 minute pause....<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Twinkle this is Hand, look there's a major offensive going on here right now, the macrophages, leukocytes<b> </b>and me have got more pathogens, anti-bodies and white cells than you can shake a stick at (sorry you can't shake a stick right now either)".</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Hand, this is Twinkle, you've got to try harder, I mean it's not like you haven't had help with drugs or 8 hours straight rest because you HAVE".</blockquote>
<br />
2 minute pause....<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Twinkle this is Hand, don't get shirty with me madam, I wasn't the one who munched on some untried fishy, I'll get to moving when I've neutralised all these enemies<span class="st"></span>".</blockquote>
<br />
I don't know how I did it but I managed to file 2 of the 3 VAT returns late that night, one had queries I couldn't resolve immediately. Even a week later, my right hand (the worst affected) is still stiff. I've since looked up this kind of allergic reaction and the most likely scenario is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scombroid_food_poisoning" target="_blank">scrombroid food poisoning.</a><br />
<br />
It's amazing what you can't do when a vital body part refuses to work properly. I don't blame a soul.....<br />
<br />
But.... I'll be back Greenwich, you are not dismissing Twinkle the Wanderer that quickly.<br />
<br />
<i>With thanks to Ric Barham, ex-army medic on the spot and kind permission to use his noodle on here.</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11107456070764724937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330812873527605049.post-14928735584094414392013-05-02T07:05:00.002-07:002013-07-09T01:56:43.207-07:00Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2003<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Exactly 10 years ago in May 2003, I was making frantic preparations to exhibit a small courtyard garden at the world's largest flower show at Hampton Court Palace along with my friend Janet Johnston. I had been a visitor to the show since it started in 1990, marvelling at changing designs, fads and at times downright wacky gardens on display. My favourite stand at the show is always the cacti displays by <b><span style="color: yellow;"><a href="http://cactusland.co.uk/main.php" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Southfield Nurseries</a></span></b> of Bourne, Lincolnshire where I would stand gawping for ages before deciding on a purchase, they always seemed to win gold medals and rightly so since their displays were immaculate. Southfield is definitely worth a visit for any cacti enthusiast.<br />
<span style="background-color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Here is my very first cacti purchased from the Southfield stand in full flower last year (2012)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The original size was that of a golf ball, now it's almost football size</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The key to cacti flowering: Between October and March let them rest and provide plenty of light</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZWqICVvlP7I1LtFZ08lOLS2BqBIHQX49Lh7x9orpFL6Mz1qEsqXESfFHkHFLmAr7MkCTH929m6CqKJryX7Jpc7M3YIlHqaQhdVE-x9a1OIypgT1u4r6q7_flwg4mRwMzJZObGy9FdrS4/s1600/IMG_0334.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZWqICVvlP7I1LtFZ08lOLS2BqBIHQX49Lh7x9orpFL6Mz1qEsqXESfFHkHFLmAr7MkCTH929m6CqKJryX7Jpc7M3YIlHqaQhdVE-x9a1OIypgT1u4r6q7_flwg4mRwMzJZObGy9FdrS4/s200/IMG_0334.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Echinopsis Pseudolobivia hybrid</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I also spent inordinate amounts of time near the <b><a href="http://www.firtreespelargoniums.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Fir Trees Pelargonium Nursery</a></b> stand and would always buy the little angel pelargoniums or the nutmeg scented leaved varieties, trying to keep them going in my greenhouse from one year to the next. One I fail to keep and seem to buy every year is Black Prince seen below.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM80yeBsHHyUNyWkDfOBNhvLYb05OLUcwAz094BCQQVro2Hk5ibIQJezGqFZCrne3mhwtkcAJDg_FPChqwh8q6rRTHO1oFtLPg2Nd6RxI0N7EJFQK1tTwGfsN5iQcWoP65Rm8dIepb0-o/s1600/Scented+Geranium.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM80yeBsHHyUNyWkDfOBNhvLYb05OLUcwAz094BCQQVro2Hk5ibIQJezGqFZCrne3mhwtkcAJDg_FPChqwh8q6rRTHO1oFtLPg2Nd6RxI0N7EJFQK1tTwGfsN5iQcWoP65Rm8dIepb0-o/s200/Scented+Geranium.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="st">Pelargonium Black Prince</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I kept a small diary of our HCPFS garden design mis-adventure between May 2002 and July 2003, this being originally uploaded to my Fleuriche website (no longer in use). I am sharing a copy of the original blog here today below. I should point out that I also managed a trip to Venice late in May 2003 for four days as well!<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
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<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 2; margin-top: 1; word-spacing: 2;">
In
2003 I had the privilege of exhibiting a garden at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, designed in collaboration with
my friend Janet Johnston.</div>
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 2; margin-top: 1; word-spacing: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 2; margin-top: 1; word-spacing: 2;">
The
story of our journey begins here.....with my original artwork and ideas.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGKPQsIx7JZMDUYNl6uBLxGcgdw6LWZlAlBQY_CLTBIueksFq8JPaERX-mkgjYnIq7daSbXeOioqJSAcDY-up0X3_crQ2mumeDhMWY12rPYANzPjXcb8uZS6mVNEtytW-jk_-RjM0RbLk/s1600/heaven_full_picture_flipped.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGKPQsIx7JZMDUYNl6uBLxGcgdw6LWZlAlBQY_CLTBIueksFq8JPaERX-mkgjYnIq7daSbXeOioqJSAcDY-up0X3_crQ2mumeDhMWY12rPYANzPjXcb8uZS6mVNEtytW-jk_-RjM0RbLk/s320/heaven_full_picture_flipped.gif" width="320" /> </a></div>
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 2; margin-top: 1; word-spacing: 2;">
In
June 2002, whilst waiting to collect my daughter from Felsted Primary school, I was approached
by another mother in the playground with a view to designing a garden for RHS Chelsea
Flower Show 2003. Janet Johnston had seen a rough sketch that I had done for
the school's garden behind a proposed new hall.</div>
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 2; margin-top: 1; word-spacing: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
Janet had studied for a diploma in garden
design at Writtle College, Essex and designed a garden, which was built by
herself and other students from the College at the Chelsea Flower Show in 1998.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The design called 'Scotch On The Rocks' was a Scottish wildflower garden
featuring colours from the ancient Johnston clan tartan. The garden won a
prestigious Silver-gilt award.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Janet
is married to Keir Johnston who was the main building contractor for ‘Heaven
on Earth’.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
After agreeing fleetingly to jointly design a garden, I
did not have an earthly clue as to what I was letting myself in for. Over
the few weeks that followed, Janet and I brainstormed for ideas on the odd days that we
were not assisting husbands with their businesses, transporting children from A
to B or trying to be domestic goddesses. I think by July 2003 we had
cracked the dom. goddess bit but almost both ended up divorced in the process.
Thankfully the men have been towed into line now.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
The inspiration for this garden first came from images
of a walled garden at Helmingham Hall, Suffolk and a scree garden with random
planting seen in a garden magazine. We wanted something that was both
pleasing to view and easy to maintain. The category we chose was 'small
courtyard garden'.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
The starting point for our drawing became the gates, simply because they looked
so stunning in the catalogue we had found through a mutual friend. I set to work
drawing the gates freehand at first, then decided it was wiser to trace the
general outline from the catalogue and complete the intricate detail later - I
am lucky enough to have a full sized drawing board. Janet meanwhile
was preparing a plan of the garden. The idea of looking through
gates into a courtyard setting appealed to us, the theme name of 'Heaven on
Earth' came from the perceived entrance that most people have of Heaven - a set
of magnificent gates leading into a beautiful garden. Water we felt had to
feature in a gentle manner. It was interesting to see that although we
started to look at fonts and the like to begin with, casting them aside and
concentrating on two-tiered fountains, we eventually ended back with a font
design for many reasons, particularly when it came to size. We didn't want
anything behind the gates to completely outshine them.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
In the middle of drawing, paperwork came through from
the RHS offices that included rules and regulations. All work stopped on
the drawing when we noted that the front of the garden had restrictions on
height. A quick call was made to the RHS to discuss our height of 1.7m at
the gate apex and the fact that you could see through the gates quite
clearly. We both breathed a sigh of relief when they determined it was
ok. This was to be the first of many panics. It was also a sticking
point in the judge's comments later on.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
With the completed drawing, plan and RHS forms all
bundled in a presentation pack and tube we were ready to rumble. The
postmaster in Felsted was probably fed up with us calling him continually by the
end of the final application day and we made the post just in time after
nit-picking at the application a dozen times.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
We assumed then that the RHS had received everything as
the whole pack had been sent by recorded mail. We were wrong. During the course of
the next few weeks we discovered that, yes they had received everything into the
RHS offices, but somehow the tube had been separated from the presentation pack
and one part was lost. We only discovered this by chasing the RHS
ourselves to make sure they had received the application! More panic
ensued, we were extremely concerned about the drawing going missing in their offices and
someone then nabbing the design. Although another copy of the drawing was
sent to them, this was not a pleasant few days for us.</div>
<br />
A long awaited holiday back to Florida and The Keys was just what I needed after
that episode.
<br />
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText2">
About a month after my return from holiday,
we received a call back from the RHS. It was "YES the design is up to
standard and we like it but NO, we cannot fit you in at Chelsea, due to the high
number of quality designs this year. HOWEVER, you can choose from Tatton
Park, Hampton Court or the NEC shows." After the initial disappointment of
not nabbing a Chelsea spot, we became quite excited at the thought of Hampton
Court, as I have been a visitor to the show for a good many years.
Having then plumped for Hampton Court, Janet then set about compiling a new list
of plants that would be 'doing their thing' in July instead of May. The
'possible' list became endless............</div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText2">
During March/April 2003 we went to all our
favourite nurseries, wholesalers and a few we never knew about. We saw, we
bought, we nurtured and we stamped our feet a few times when we couldn't find a
particular specimen.</div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: center;">
The <b>Final </b>plant list below used in the
garden was much more concise!</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: center;">
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</div>
<br /></div>
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</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSH0KCM7_4aDIBryKttlRSd2iZYpH9SnBhQm-nKd-G61jb0edOEjk-TgKIDVhYtpTyaHNgoFIJSR4GLy6XH43lEVmRVdNpkocZ-6g6C5FS5rx4aT7OaoVJ1iL5lfeijCcrnJnxWtrhO-Y/s1600/Plant+list+HCPFS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSH0KCM7_4aDIBryKttlRSd2iZYpH9SnBhQm-nKd-G61jb0edOEjk-TgKIDVhYtpTyaHNgoFIJSR4GLy6XH43lEVmRVdNpkocZ-6g6C5FS5rx4aT7OaoVJ1iL5lfeijCcrnJnxWtrhO-Y/s1600/Plant+list+HCPFS.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
If you had seen the ENDLESS list before this then, you'll
wonder if we were bonkers. But, you need to have reserves in this game and
in fact it paid off tremendously to have more than we needed in the end.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
Plants were purchased from March 2003 onwards
continually. Half the plants were housed around my greenhouse in our
Secret Garden and half were at Janet's. The weather played havoc with
us. One minute
gallons of rain, the next buckets of sun. Plants shot up, flowered and
then left us dithering over which ones had gone over, which ones could
safely
be cut back with the hope of renewed growth and flowers and also which
ones
were just not sprouting a jot. Gravel trays came out and were discarded
so
many times with all the effort of continually moving stuff out of the
scorching
sun or protecting it from wind and rain. One afternoon saw me erecting
an
octagonal Gazebo over a large number of plants after hearing of an
impending
gusty night. Well putting it up was just side splitting. Worse still,
it survived the gusty night, but come that afternoon the gazebo decided
that it was better
suited 100 yards away by the fruit trees and promptly took itself for a
walk. Poles, anchors and fabric were strewn over a wide area. We were
just lucky it
didn't end up in the pond which it had bypassed on its way to pick
fruit.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
Janet also had her fair share of plant problems with
shrubs dropping leaves, outbreaks of greenfly, slug attack, leggy seedlings
etc. Try as we might some plants eluded us. The one tree we gave up
finding a decent specimen of was <b><a href="http://www.gardenbestbuys.com/garden_shrubs_and_plants/cornus_controversa_variegata_white__4l/24921_p.html?utm_source=googlebase&utm_medium=Organic" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Cornus Controversa Variagata</a></b>. We just could not
find one that a) looked good and b) was the right height and c) wasn't a king's
ransom. It was towards the end of our first visit to Coblams Wholesale
nursery in Surrey that we spotted several <span style="font-family: Book Antiqua; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="color: magenta;"><b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=aralia+elata+aureovariegata+buy&client=firefox-a&hl=en&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=hEKCUYdpi5PQBc3mgIAI&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=594#imgrc=Ne2l27ZGfwBYcM%3A%3BcCIPsZyEOjjYLM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.beautifulbotany.com%252FSTOCK%252520A-B%252FAralia%252520elata%252520%27Variegata%27.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.csmonitor.com%252FThe-Culture%252FGardening%252Fdiggin-it%252F2009%252F0901%252Fplants-that-glow-in-the-dark-corners-of-the-garden%3B450%3B294" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Aralia elata aureovariegata</a></b><i>
</i></span></span>one of which was a good 2 metres tall<span style="color: magenta;"><i>.
</i></span>By the time we had gone up and down the aisles and both our brains had
gelled to the idea of this as our tree for the garden they were closing off that
section for the night. We left consoling ourselves that there were quite a
few at the nursery and we could always come back and pick one up another
time. NEVER would I do this again. By virtue I usually see it and
buy it there and then. Several weeks later we both wish we had, <i><span style="color: magenta;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Aralia elata 'Variagata' and Aralia elata 'Golden Variagata</span>'</span> </span></span></i>then became
hot property. Coblams couldn't seem to find us one of the size we
required, searches went out to other nurseries and then I got in touch with <b><a href="http://www.placeforplants.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Place for Plants at East Bergholt</a></b><span style="color: blue;">.</span> They kindly reserved one for us to look
at and off we went. When we arrived, we ummed and aahed for ages over two
or three and eventually walked away with a two leader plant about 1.8m
tall. Initial joy soon passed. Over the next month or so the Aralia
plaintively refused to burst any of the lower section buds to form the tiered
effect we longed for and kept producing top growth and dropping lower
branches. It also did not like the hot air we experienced later in the
season and reacted by browning its leaves despite much watering and
sheltering. Another plant consigned to the 'not in use' section.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
Searches for other plants on our first list were also
hilarious at times: Our hunt for <b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Dianthus+Charles+Musgrave&client=firefox-a&hs=7ds&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=rkaCUdi7IIWhO46MgdAC&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=594#imgrc=Oe2de9it6lOXaM%3A%3BgHZhJVSZEbOleM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.botanypictures.com%252Fplantimages%252F%252Fdianthus%252520%27charles%252520musgrave%27%25252001.JPG%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.homeopathydatabase.com%252Fdetail.php%253Fdetail%253DDianthus%252520caryophyllus%3B1984%3B1323" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Book Antiqua"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Dianthus 'Charles Musgrave'</span></span></a><span style="color: magenta;"> </span></b>(which eventually we could not use) took us to
three different Dianthus specialists, one of which charged us twice as much as
the other. Sadly, this beautiful dianthus flowered non-stop in the weeks
before the show and then didn't put out a single bud for the crucial
moment! Our eventual small tree <span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Book Antiqua"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><span style="color: magenta;"><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Acer+platanoides+%27Drummondii%27&client=firefox-a&hs=bKD&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=8kaCUd3_EuWf0QXs9oCADg&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=594#imgrc=XniN8ZNcmePYNM%3A%3BQYKudj8eyOQZDM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.deeproot.co.uk%252Fphoto%252Fimages360%252Fa%252FAcer%252520platanoides%252520%27Drummondii%27.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.deeproot.co.uk%252Fpbo%252Fplantdetail.php%253Fplantname%253DAcer%252Bplatanoides%252B6I927Drummondii6I927%3B240%3B360" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Acer platanoides 'Drummondii'</a></span></b><i><span style="color: magenta;"> </span></i></span>was sourced from the newly
refurbished <b><a href="http://www.baytreegardencentre.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Baytree Garden Centre</a></b> on the A120 Colchester road.
The first day I ventured along to look at the new place I spotted this tree for a very
good price and roughly judged that it would fit in my Audi A4. The chap
who helped me to fit this in the car did give me a less than hopeful look at
first, however the tree was only just beginning to unfurl leaves and this made
the fit a lot easier than if it had been a mophead of leaves. The pot end sat
in the passenger footwell and the tree tip just touched the back window. The
way some people cross your path in life is just too much of a coincidence at
times as you will see, the man who helped me turns up later in this story.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
Another helpful lady in our search for plants was Louise
Nixon of Cottage Garden Plants, Gt Sampford, (now moved away to Cornwall) who watched us come and go laden with specimens
on several occasions, one of which was the final desperate search for <span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: magenta;"><span style="color: blue;"><b><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Eryngium+giganteum+%27Miss+Wilmott%27s+Ghost%27&client=firefox-a&hs=L5X&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Q0iCUbvmE6Gh0QWVg4HIBA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=594#imgrc=tJTrFZkJ9IEzCM%3A%3B0kUtBvZ0Pfk1zM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dianeseeds.com%252Ffiles%252Feryngium_giganteum.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dianeseeds.com%252Feryngium-giganteum.html%3B300%3B206" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Eryngium giganteum 'Miss Wilmott's Ghost'</a></b></span></span></span><i><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="color: magenta;"><span style="color: blue;">.</span> </span></span></i>Janet and I had both
gone it seemed to the ends of Essex and further in search of this
one. This is a biennial plant, there were lots available but not a
single one with a 'ready to burst' flower stem (usually 2nd year plants). The
only one in fact was in my own garden! It wasn't until a week before
build-up at the show that I happened to be passing Louise's garden and wandering
round realised I was surrounded by numerous 'Ghosts' popping out of flowerbeds
everywhere. Explaining our
predicament with these plants, Louise very kindly dug up several for us.
This was a delicate operation, not least because of the spiny nature of the
plants, but if the long tap root breaks when lifting, the plants wilt and don't recover. We have some fabulous pictures of this
plant in the show garden, our dogged search paid off well. Everyone at the show went
hoopla over it including the local wildlife; we had to explain to people
that due to its nature we could only let them have some fresh seed at sell-off
as the plants were unlikely to flower again. I've never seen such a frenzy
at the sell-off just for seed heads at 25p each!</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
We also had a great evening at Peter and Corine Ageron's
nursery in Earls Colne with Peter personally showing us around and detailing his
collection. This man is very passionate about plants in a way that is
extremely catching and he and his wife obviously work extremely hard to produce
some very unusual varieties. I'm not sure but I believe they have moved back to France.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
All our clematis bar one were pre-ordered from
<b><a href="http://www.thorncroftclematis.co.uk/?eprivacy=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Thorncroft Clematis Nursery</a></b> in Norfolk and hand tended by their staff until
collection. These had to be collected last minute during the two weeks we
were given for build up and I had volunteered to collect them direct from the
nursery. Before I departed, Jon Gooch at Thorncroft had given me
directions for the best route which was extremely helpful and very easy to
follow. When I arrived it was raining steadily, Jon apologised that one or
two plants we had ordered were not doing their best, however we know what that's
like by now... there were plenty of other choices available within our colour
range and this was not going to be the end of any last minute changes by
far. Thorncroft Nursery is mainly a family run business and despite the
illness of a close relative at the time, Jon and his team managed to supply us,
the general public and many other show people with quality plants last year, not
to mention putting on his own display stand at HCPFS in 2003.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
The one thing that struck us most during our searches
was the lack of specimen shrubs of any decent size and condition. It
seemed that regular shopping trips were a must. This desire invariably
played merry hell as husbands were left with children and the parting words
"We'll only be half hour" when we were actually gone about 2
hours. As time wore on we both had what I call crux points in our marital
relationships. Both centred on the fact that our other halves (Keir and
Steve) wanted time
for their normal day to day business running as well as the things we had to do
with more and more time being taken away from them as build up drew near.
Both had pledged their business skills in the show garden and both of them at
separate times threatened to withdraw labour at the last minute. On the
plus side, they both donned wet gear when it poured down one night and we had to
frantically move every plant to shelter. During eventual build-up they
both worked like dogs to get the job done to schedule with some very creative
building techniques.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
These yo-yo highs and lows were a real feature of doing
this garden and were reflected in our appearance. It didn't really bother
me until Press Day when I realised that my trouser suit looked a little big for
my frame - I had lost over half a stone in weight. Janet's main problem
was juggling her children which were both relatively young and seemed to be
giving her lots of guilt trips every time she had to leave them to their own
devices. For six months we couldn't pass in the kitchen without getting
onto the subject of gardens, plants, design and if both our families were
together the men would roll their eyes skyward muttering "they're off
again... be glad when its all over......". This screamed of
'inattention syndrome' and in one case 'green-eyed monster syndrome'. I
would still like to say, as was mentioned in our show brochure (extract below) that
without their support and assistance, the show garden would not have been
possible. In the last weeks before build up, Keir had erected our
'pretend' walls in his back garden for us to get a feel for things. The
walls were built of manmade exterior board, fixed to metal studs, to around 75mm
thickness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Restraints were placed
at corners and also interlocked at ground level with lateral restraining.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The exterior finish was fine textured paint to emulate a rendered finish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The top of the walls eventually had brick coping to match the brick piers
- built on site.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The front pillars
were to be facing bricks attached to the walls topped with stone coping.
During the show week, many visitors thought that they were real walls, the
quality of the work was so good.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
Our gates were ordered well in advance from <b><a href="http://www.rourkes.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">B. Rourke & Company</a>.</b> We had approached them as far back as June 2002 and
maintained contact with them in the ensuing year. The most marvellous
stroke of luck was that the Daffodil gates we wanted were in Rourke's showroom
and as such they were prepared to loan the gates out for the time we needed at
the Flower show. We had made the long journey to the factory and showrooms
as a full day out one Saturday morning in 2002. I would recommend this
place to anyone looking for individual wrought ironwork, as the quality and
designs just blew us away. Seeing the stuff close up just could not be
compared to our days pouring over the brochures. We also required a stand
to hold the gates in position at the front of the garden and two pieces of
custom made wrought iron railing to fit either side up to the brick piers.
Whilst browsing round the showrooms we were inspired by so many things, walking
away with our own personal purchases as souvenirs and finding that they also
made garden plaques with any interchangeable writing, gave them another order
for the show garden plaque. Michael Stott and Paul Ellis were our points
of contact and provided us with the most professional service of all our
sponsors, the preparation of the gates was superb with all the paintwork being
re-touched before we took delivery. When it came to transporting all the
wrought ironwork down to Essex, our good friend Simon Jones was on hand as he
was already making a journey that took him past the factory shortly before the
show. Rourkes were so helpful in all our dealings with them, even
down to waiting 4 weeks before we could also have Simon take the gates back to
them.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
Although Janet and I used our own funding for
plants and
peripherals, we were determined to obtain sponsorship for hard
landscaping
materials, this included the gates, font, paving and bricks. We left
our
decision on paving quite late, simply because we had to be sure about
the type
we wanted. Having seen a new Marshalls paving slab called Honeydew in
the
flesh and also noted that our garden was to be opposite Marshalls stand
at
Hampton Court, we approached the company direct and were put in touch
with their
stand supervisor. Having given him the details of our mixed pack
requirements, a few days went by with no answer (the chap was away). We
had been promised a call at the end of the week and at one point
on that Friday afternoon in May we really thought that we had possibly
pushed
our luck too far with a major company. Then I received a late call from
Janet saying that Marshalls had just rung and said we could have the
slabs for
nothing as we were giving them a mention in our brochure. Why do
some things just fall into place so easily when you think they'll really
go
awry?</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
As far as press goes, I had a call from Michael Kerr at
the BBC asking if I could do an interview over the phone just as I was going to
pick up children from school. I had to put that one off for an hour or so,
particularly as it had me a little flustered. Janet had been our
designated co-ordinator and unfortunately Michael had caught her out of the
house that day. We had a simply chat about the garden on my return which
wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be. So much for fame. The
Dunmow Broadcast also came to see us and took photos of us both beside our
plants prior to build-up. This article had the effect of people coming up
to us in the street a few times, but that was nice too. We didn't really
want a big press thing and I'll cover the real Press Day later.<br />
<br />
<div align="left">
G-Day, Monday 23 June, 2003: I think Janet and I both went to bed on the Sunday night and
slept less than 2 hours. On that Sunday, Janet and Keir had taken their
children to Hampton Court for the day with a view to looking at our site prior to official marking out,
due to take place on the
Monday. It was a good job they did. They were shown to the actual
spot marked on the show plan and discovered........we were on a slope. Our
design had clearly shown that we needed level ground. After some
discussion, it appeared that it was not really possible to move us anywhere
else. The small looking tree on the RHS show plan in front of our section
turned out to be an 80' specimen, which we later discovered had a tendency to
dispatch large amounts of tassled flowers in all directions. On the
way back, Janet and Keir dropped by to pass on the good news. The tree
wasn't such a bad thing since it would give us some relief in the hot weather to
come and could act as a people magnet in that event. The ground was a
little more taxing. Keir promised that he had something in mind to get
around the slope. The difficulty was that we had not intended to excavate
the ground in our original plan and we had to provide some depth for
planting. If we did a show garden again, excavation would have helped us
as we later found out.</div>
<div align="left">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
Work started on the Monday on schedule, most of the day spent
delivering our wall sections, bricks and other building materials. The
first day also gave us an idea of the journey times. When you are sitting
in a comfy coach on your way to Hampton Court Palace Flower Show for a day trip,
the 2 hour journey seems to fly by with no hassle. When you're driving a
van load of building materials down a motorway already dubbed 'The Road to Hell'
with a deadline to meet, there's no need to ask what the difference is. We
had already decided to go back and forth each day, as with both families running
businesses aside from doing the show itself and four schoolchildren to attend
to, staying in a B&B for two weeks in Surrey wasn't an option. Two
hours there and back was the minimum. Add a couple of minor vehicle shunts, the
Kent constabulary sunning themselves on a bridge for two days, toying with the
traffic flow and a major accident shutting the M25 on the middle Sunday of the
two week build up and you are looking at anything between 2 and 4 hours each
way. Predictably, virtually every day had its road problems.</div>
<div align="left">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
There was no need for Janet and I to actually go to site
until
Keir had put together the nuts and bolts of the design and then we could
get
down to the planting. We had at first given ourselves 3 days for
planting
and finishing touches. Our first real day was on the Wednesday, when we
both took a van to Chilstone Garden Ornaments in Kent to pickup our
font, base
and copings. On arrival we were a little disappointed to note that all
the
materials pre-ordered months in advance were a little on the green
side.
As we were also being part-sponsored by Chilstone it was difficult to
argue, however
annoyed we felt, they were providing the font on loan for nothing.
Suffice
to say that all our dealings with Chilstone have left us a little jaded
about
ever using them again. We found them a little more than
unscrupulous. We made two trips from Chilstone to Hampton Court as we
were unsure of the weight in the van. Keir had not been at the show
site that day, so Janet and I were left to move the font base ourselves
once we
arrived at site, everyone around us seemed pretty busy and we felt
stupid asking
for help moving stuff. Each part of the font base had to be moved one
block at a time with two of us holding each side and traversing across
other
half built gardens. The last block of 8 seemed to weigh a ton.
Arriving home much much later both husbands did their nut over us not
loading
all the stone in one hit and the time we had taken. Tensions were
running
a little high by now. MEN!</div>
<div align="left">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
Thursday saw my husband Steve doing his brickie bit, with Keir on site
too. From all accounts it seemed they had a pretty good laugh that day and
worked until all the brickwork was finished. I had one call from Steve to
say that a Chilstone coping piece had cracked in half as he put it on the brick
pier. This didn't surprise me as they had been soft and 'green'.
Chilstone's pieces should have been given 7 weeks to cure. It was apparent
that 7 days was more like it. As it turned out, Steve did a reasonable job
of sealing the two halves together with jointing the same colour and once Janet
and I had strategically placed a sprawling clematis over the pier, you
couldn't see the offending crack. Both men came home late that night and
full of it, with Keir having half persuaded Steve that he should 'go back on the
tools'. For the uninitiated, this is a builders term for giving up the
desk job and going back to manual labour.</div>
<div align="left">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
Friday became my trip to Norwich for our Clematis. This
day was a real respite for me even though I was driving a long way, I enjoyed
going through Thetford Forest, past Lakenheath and seeing 'tank crossing' signs
for the first time! I even had time to look round <b><a href="http://www.classicroses.co.uk/#" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Peter Beales Roses</a></b>
too. I had already been in contact with Simon White over using some roses
and even though I picked two that day, which were taken along to the show site
with all the other plants, we did not use them. A detour to <b><a href="http://www.thegardencentregroup.co.uk/garden-centres/blooms/Bressingham-Blooms-Garden-Centre/1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blooms of Bressingham</a></b> on
the way home was also of help and I picked up some beautiful blue Jacob's Ladder
(Polemonium Bressingham Purple).</div>
<div align="left">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
At the beginning of the second week, we met our
neighbours. At one point the stand next to us had stood empty so long we
thought they were not coming. I kept looking over at one of the men on
this stand because I felt sure I had seen him before. It wasn't until the
next day when he wore his shirt with logo that I realised it was....the man from
Baytree Garden Centre! The chances of this happening were
unbelievable. We found good friends with these people and couldn't have
asked for better neighbouring exhibitors.</div>
<div align="left">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
Plant transportation began on Wednesday 2nd June. Two trips with
plants were made over two days in one van both prior to planting and
during. Plants went back and forth, in and out. On our first
planting day we started really well. I took one side of the garden and
Janet took the other, both starting from the gates at the front and working
backwards. It was at the start of planting we realised that the guys had put the
wrought iron railings on back to front. The difference was imperceptible
so we didn't make a big deal of it. Over the course of the last few months
we had seen what
plants worked well together and now it was a case of the ones that looked their
best working together. Many other exhibitors commented on the number of plants
we had brought along. They were on the garden, outside the garden, round
the tree, down the sides. The first day we could hardly move.
In the previous week we had had some disasters with some plants literally
keeling over with us frantically running about for more as they tended to be the
ones we really wanted to use. Janet went out late one Sunday
afternoon to both Louise Nixon and our friends Peter and Corine Ageron (Marks
Hall Estate) in the hope of finding replacements. The latter were
obviously out and although it crossed her mind, I believe Janet thought twice
about scaling the fence for a quick look round. Sometimes in a quest you
can become very anal with extraordinary tunnel-vision, it happens to all of us at one point
or another before reason sets in and you think "What <i>am</i> I
doing.....?".</div>
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<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1wVP4xfFu3_X9pzMmE6FeTEFa4dax98hGB3knugHIcqda9GcBLkWFrOWPryam4p4BXIN9rg7nyBfRKb8zlSRk1GQVHMLpVzkGGqvDhrPi8ch-heMIY44nTMfr0be3Qew5eaW6XnZeC0U/s1600/Surrounded.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1wVP4xfFu3_X9pzMmE6FeTEFa4dax98hGB3knugHIcqda9GcBLkWFrOWPryam4p4BXIN9rg7nyBfRKb8zlSRk1GQVHMLpVzkGGqvDhrPi8ch-heMIY44nTMfr0be3Qew5eaW6XnZeC0U/s320/Surrounded.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Janet surrounded by plants</td></tr>
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<div align="left">
</div>
<div align="left">
Water
became a laugh too. Marshalls who had sponsored our paving were opposite
our stand.
Their team were exceptionally professional at their work.
They had their own standpipe which they allowed us to use, we also had one at
the back corner of our stand and our neighbour's appeared to have theirs buried
at the back of their stand. For the most part that was useless as the
narrow corridor behind us didn't allow for a body to get in let alone move.
World of Water opposite us were also very helpful and allowed us to use their
pipe when others were busy. By 5pm on the Thursday we decided to
have a break from planting. One bacon roll later and walking back to the plot the
heavens opened big time. Well, everyone ducked for cover and we sat under
our 80' tree for 10 minutes hoping it would pass, until we realised the Almighty
really
mean't it and wet was seeping through the branches. During the ensuing few
minutes it took to quickly tidy up and leg it to the van, Janet and I were wet
through to our underwear. We realised that we had to throw in the towel
for the day, having lost about three hours of planting time and only half way
there. I had thoughtfully put in a change of clothes but Janet had not
that day. The only consolation I could give her was a pair of semi dry
shorts which she tucked over the top of her bra to hide any blushes.</div>
<div align="left">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
5.30pm is not a good time to leave Hampton Court, drive a van
through Esher or negotiate the M25 back to the A12. We caught all the rush
hour traffic plus a few interesting looks from other drivers as we slowly nudged
through the traffic, with little clothing. On this day we also discovered
the vagaries of the temperature control in the van. Either it was too hot
and steamed up or freezing cold, made worse by wet clothing. During our
ride home, we had to re-think the next few days. We really wanted to be
finished planting and titivating the next day, already our plans to chill out on
Friday had been scuppered, the traffic home was appalling. By the time we arrived back both
hubbies were
on ego alert when they discovered our new plans to finish planting again the
next day. All sorts of rows ensued in both houses. It transpired
later that both men had been contriving earlier in the day like a pair of old
gossips moaning at each other over us, talk about Grumpy Old Men. As this repressed frustration had
been building some time, the explosions should not have surprised me, at the
same time these men should not have been surprised at the 'revelation' that we
women want more creativity and space in our lives than smelly socks and ironing.</div>
<div align="left">
</div>
<div align="left">
The nightly tantrums that week really got me down, I only felt
good when I was actually on the garden with my hands in the dirt. Gloves
had long gone west and carefully tended six week fingernails were shot to
bits. I didn't care and neither did Janet. We de-stressed knowing
that the more we persevered the better the garden looked. On the last day
of planting, Janet was having troubles on one side of the garden, with plants
were going in and out of holes over the course of an hour quicker than you could
say 'bad association'. And that was the trouble. I stopped at my
last corner and told her to stand back a while. As she did this I moved
several plants about for her in different combinations so that she could get a
better view. This worked extremely well and did the trick.
With the problems at home still warm, we pushed them to the back of our minds
and carried on until almost 9pm. That night I arrived home about 11.30pm to 2 lonely slices of chicken on a plate in the microwave having put a large bird on timer earlier in the morning. No-one managed to do any veg. I sank into bed without even undressing.</div>
<div align="left">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
The following judging day was horrendous. We ended up stuck on the M25 for ages and our attempts to get to site before 8am fell flat. We arrived at 10.30am to find that the judges had already been round at 8.30am and left us with an envelope and notes. This was not supposed to happen, in fact we had been told they wouldn't arrive until at least 11.00am. Opening the envelope we discovered we had won a Bronze medal. I think both of us felt a little cheated when we read some of the notes re-produced here:</div>
<div align="left">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
1. The gates were out of proportion and too high (helloooo, you lot put us on a dammed slope!)</div>
<div align="left">
2. The planting scheme was very good, properly spaced and met the design criteria, however more</div>
<div align="left">
could have been made of the back walls (conceded - we ran out of time).</div>
<div align="left">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
Slightly deflated, but not being able to chat through the design further with a judge, we tended the garden and headed home.</div>
<div align="left">
<br /></div>
<div align="left">
The show week saw us receive a lot of feedback from the public, many thought we deserved much better than Bronze, lots of visitors wanted to walk around the garden and many reserved plants before the Sunday sell-off. I should point out that the gardens have to be dismantled and site left as before on the same final show day, quicker to destroy that create. In the end, the whole experience was uplifting if a little exhausting. I always said I would love to do this again except next time hire a river barge and stay over. Most exhibitors at the shows have quite a team behind them, especially the likes of Roger Platt & Co. We did this off our own back from design through to completion, I'm quite proud of that achievement in all.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;">Heaven's Gate</span></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Last minute watering</td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDrrQsMgamW7gaxPozZslH8sk7nVf2uIyuiEj44QpeGcEIKDz0V17VtfMQmsd48it5aXvRMiID_2b6mM5Swq1q8YE4rOqYBMwhmdnc6wdWzjYj9p6-jlBAawP_wJqOuuFRTfq1WtOqCpU/s1600/Garden+Plaque.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDrrQsMgamW7gaxPozZslH8sk7nVf2uIyuiEj44QpeGcEIKDz0V17VtfMQmsd48it5aXvRMiID_2b6mM5Swq1q8YE4rOqYBMwhmdnc6wdWzjYj9p6-jlBAawP_wJqOuuFRTfq1WtOqCpU/s320/Garden+Plaque.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua; font-size: x-small;">Our Wrought Iron Plaque with Garden Title </span></td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeCNNJpG9yNLK4SvjDpGqlhAx01zJuzfIw0z7zWNN778A_L1Jfr5qGtlFtw5EBx2C4F6vzfKaBcGt-5AHhukCN8eti-YqEFvFuQeOa6tJHmgkKlgfR0RueT8u6SVBcS0nCG5s4H-2NM90/s1600/IMG_0017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeCNNJpG9yNLK4SvjDpGqlhAx01zJuzfIw0z7zWNN778A_L1Jfr5qGtlFtw5EBx2C4F6vzfKaBcGt-5AHhukCN8eti-YqEFvFuQeOa6tJHmgkKlgfR0RueT8u6SVBcS0nCG5s4H-2NM90/s320/IMG_0017.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and hubby Steve at Gala Evening</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDxOhoVhEpc62UejEuLsnuNcD8iDyBglhS77yEVVG7_CGbV9XRYszJP_azY80VEbDyfONanGkUYfSVANoY3gUi2c3u-gUkGIwabuFNCpibs5mVeMq3F6QfLPx-Wuqp0TX3mZzeJbvsf7E/s1600/Back+Border.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDxOhoVhEpc62UejEuLsnuNcD8iDyBglhS77yEVVG7_CGbV9XRYszJP_azY80VEbDyfONanGkUYfSVANoY3gUi2c3u-gUkGIwabuFNCpibs5mVeMq3F6QfLPx-Wuqp0TX3mZzeJbvsf7E/s320/Back+Border.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Back left border with Acer Drummondii</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicj3QBFqDlrtQduSai1WyfmIOI7NndO1RNrlSdUWkeVyf4bpnct8OcTO2PvjWSfe0sj8W9XgUMTZWwtTX3pbkNlynUy7YfFaPFBWeGbzdD7678cd_4NTJXUCZmtEQ8rcXTDgc-OgYpKaI/s1600/Right+Hand+Borders.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicj3QBFqDlrtQduSai1WyfmIOI7NndO1RNrlSdUWkeVyf4bpnct8OcTO2PvjWSfe0sj8W9XgUMTZWwtTX3pbkNlynUy7YfFaPFBWeGbzdD7678cd_4NTJXUCZmtEQ8rcXTDgc-OgYpKaI/s320/Right+Hand+Borders.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Front right border</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_d-03Y3AL_XJ1WwLVdUaJrdUQdcLhvBLUrKq9hcT8rdWaYwCFwAOFwvO5V4H6vm_32fX2b_D0ew8C3qk5OYcT5VZcco0eaZMR5J1j-4vUw1INXzX4IUsIluVy1K6npqzbPYKXtNQkylE/s1600/Left+Side+Border.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_d-03Y3AL_XJ1WwLVdUaJrdUQdcLhvBLUrKq9hcT8rdWaYwCFwAOFwvO5V4H6vm_32fX2b_D0ew8C3qk5OYcT5VZcco0eaZMR5J1j-4vUw1INXzX4IUsIluVy1K6npqzbPYKXtNQkylE/s320/Left+Side+Border.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Front left border</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKEz93wiJdUseixI_F_4Iybx-OHPsAQtOIlYOGIl4V_oRoCW9128CyvLT6jSC0skctnWstTwklPSdVVtGbmIwuRffNVZqsNvNYZeK3uhUpoZ8TFuDdtjtLD2YtgS-Yt0a99CVpxYaFkSc/s1600/Sisyrinchium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKEz93wiJdUseixI_F_4Iybx-OHPsAQtOIlYOGIl4V_oRoCW9128CyvLT6jSC0skctnWstTwklPSdVVtGbmIwuRffNVZqsNvNYZeK3uhUpoZ8TFuDdtjtLD2YtgS-Yt0a99CVpxYaFkSc/s320/Sisyrinchium.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US">Sisyrinchium
E K Ball</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="right"><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1UrP2qf2Y845OqtvNptjFhDcAmsY5EDwjWTpAlITAhoQKeQz03LvI8k2YI0IJA9AIr4GYMrra3rwAsnG2DsrlEyto2FM-DuEYGfKv39WHUqzhbitkb5vI0F7PWXc8gzrApTq5E2U6Lmk/s1600/More+Ghosts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1UrP2qf2Y845OqtvNptjFhDcAmsY5EDwjWTpAlITAhoQKeQz03LvI8k2YI0IJA9AIr4GYMrra3rwAsnG2DsrlEyto2FM-DuEYGfKv39WHUqzhbitkb5vI0F7PWXc8gzrApTq5E2U6Lmk/s320/More+Ghosts.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua; font-size: x-small;">Alliums
and Ghosts as the sun went
in </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcv9IFfklu1pPUGfo1N5URu-X6N3qtsExl92SZ00HabGYZVlKnaY76lTzCX7N0BwiB4x6rwimJMGwZphFZ0ODUCRnV4CdFdPJkMQG4fUKFHqHH-s9jgtiTJ5v8t5jp4oxMwk5x756aCQg/s1600/Hakonechloa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcv9IFfklu1pPUGfo1N5URu-X6N3qtsExl92SZ00HabGYZVlKnaY76lTzCX7N0BwiB4x6rwimJMGwZphFZ0ODUCRnV4CdFdPJkMQG4fUKFHqHH-s9jgtiTJ5v8t5jp4oxMwk5x756aCQg/s320/Hakonechloa.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Book Antiqua;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hakonechloa
macra 'Alboaurea<span style="font-size: x-small;">'</span> </span></span></span></td></tr>
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From the back of our brochure: </div>
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<div class="BlockQuotation" style="background: transparent; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">
<i><b><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Many personal thanks go to</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">:</span></b></i></div>
<i>
</i><br />
<div class="BlockQuotation" style="background: transparent; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Graham Gilbert at Chilstone for his enthusiasm and excellence
in technical drawing - one of the fastest scaled drawings we have ever seen,
thank you for the loan of the font and pump!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To Richard Twiddy, MD at B Rourke & Co Ltd for giving us
permission to loan the showroom gates, Michael Stott and Paul Ellis for their
exceptional assistance in preparing the gates, stand and railings – this place
is a <u>must</u> visit for the Burnley area!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thanks to Andy Taylor at Marshalls,
who didn’t know us from Adam, but gave us an unexpectedly supportive end to a
frustrating week in May.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks also to
Chris Barton at EH Smith’s for assisting us with our building materials, to
Chris Barrett at Arup for advising us on water treatment for the font, to David
Petters at The Architectural Association for our rope, to Sharon O’Neill at
EMI, to Tesco’s at Dunmow, Essex, to Corine and Peter Ageron at Rust and Ageron
Plants for taking the time to show us round their nursery at the Marks Hall
Estate, Coggeshall, Essex, to Louise Nixon at Cottage Garden Plants, Gt
Sampford, Essex, William at Manor Nurseries, Saffron Walden, Essex, also The
Place for Plants, East Bergholt, Essex.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Special thanks goes to Jon Gooch at Thorncroft Clematis Nursery for the
loving care given to our chosen clematis and also to Simon White at Peter
Beales Roses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks goes to all our
friends and family who helped us organize school runs and childminding, special
thanks to Simon Jones who gave up his own personal time to make a run up to
Lancashire<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for our gates.</span></i></div>
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<i><b><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">And lastly:</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the two husbands, Keir Johnston and Steve
Clark, who without their support and building assistance this garden would not
have been possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thank you for giving
up your time and energy, firstly to produce first-class workmanship on the
build, for all your advice (regardless of whether we took it!) and secondly for
managing the children at short notice and maintaining the home front as we went
on endless shopping trips for plants, for all the time you allowed us to
concentrate on tending our plants including dashing about in heavy rain,
erecting gazebos to protect plants, midnight slug patrols and watering
expeditions.</span></i></div>
<i>
<span style="font-family: "Book Antiqua"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Thanks to Nigel Thomas “Builder from Hell”</span> </i></div>
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