Light and shade

Alzheimer's Society

Now then, let’s see: where did we put those letters for safe keeping? You remember, the ones which fell off in the recent gales?

The four Enots

A gentle stroll, in a brisk sea breeze, climbing leisurely up to an old burial mound  built on top of the hill overlooking Durdle Door, followed by some kite flying, soon blew away the cobwebs from the minds of the four friends pictured here.

Enot is a word we invented a few months ago. Suffice to say here that it causes much merriment among those in the know.

We're hungry, mum!

As I left home for work this morning, the volume of this cheeping quartet was significantly louder than it had been all week. Both busy parents were out of the nest, away on the grub run, trying desperately hard to meet the draining demands of their clamouring sextuplets. It’s been like watching a miniature re-run of the Berlin Airlift.

From the fledglings point of view, my camera must resemble something from a cartoon by Gary Larson. Some giant, silver-headed Cyclops descends randomly from the sky above, immediately signalling the arrival of a lightning storm.

Sparkly & I are taking a break by the sea for some much needed decompression. I'll see you later.

Mother

Almost exactly twelve months ago to the day I showed you a five-fledgling family. Well, the seasons have turned full circle once again. There’s a new mother raising her brood in exactly the same old dry, rusty downspout.

Here she is, protecting her noisy, ever- hungry brood, giving me the kind of defiant look I fully deserve for intruding on her sanctuary.

Leading camera manufacturers have all invested substantial amounts of time and money in making sure that their products photograph almost any subject in practically any situation. This picture was certainly a challenge to my clever little Canon. But that old "auto-just-about-everything" setting delivered the goods reliably yet again. The rest was smoothed out in Photoshop.

When the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing

Can you tell your right hand from your left? I can, and so can Sparkly. We’re organised people, ones who communicate our needs very clearly to others. When ordering some new modular seating recently, in a furniture retail outlet called Harveys, we even went to the lengths of cutting up the store’s own photographs of the different sections needed to suit the layout of  our new home. We gave the assembled montage to the helpful member of staff on duty, who had no trouble at all translating our request onto the corporate ordering system.

Like many British goods these days, the store displays seating assembled from components manufactured in China. But we discovered this about ours only after it had been delivered, following a wait of some fifteen or so weeks. We were very disappointed to find that it did not fit the space we had so carefully measured. In fact, it had assembled completely the wrong way round. It was actually a back-to-front version of what we had planned.

After Sparkly’s trademark assertive telephone complaints, it was established that yes, indeed, it had been made reversed left to right. We found later we had not been the only customers who had suffered from this error. Some of Harveys staff had had to visit the factory in China which produces the goods. It was a really basic communication error: the British staff plan their furniture when looking at it from the front, while their Chinese counterparts view things from behind. Hey Presto! In the blink of an eye, right became left, left was flipped into right. The real magic was in being told by one of the two delivery drivers that the warehouse wouldn’t listen to him when he told them the order was missing a piece, which then had to be brought separately the following day by two more employees.

You could say, in this case, that two Wongs didn’t make a right. Anyway, it’s back to the drawing board for Sparkly and me. We’ve refused to buy the unfit furniture. It’s going back to the store, but only after we’ve had our money back – and then some. Their first “cash incentive" offer to stay loyal was £50. On a £2200 spend, that’s little short of an insult. How much were those air fares to China, eh? Well then, we’ve declined their offer to re-order, which would have involved us waiting until the end of August before we could see if they were capable of putting things right. From the comments on the Internet I’ve read about other customers who’ve lost faith in Harveys ability to deliver the right stuff, I’m not prepared to waste my summer sitting on packing crates just to find out.

Sparkly’s hot on the compensation trail now. She’s lost two days annual leave, plus a cancelled hair appointment (extremely bad news for a smart PR professional like her), not to mention the phone calls and wasted car fuel. All of which leaves me in no doubt at all that it’s going to be woe betide anyone who hinders her path to complete and speedy customer satisfaction.

Me? I'm off to buy a pair of left-handed scissors, especially for our next interior design project.

Shadow window

The frame of a window opposite my classroom was open at such an angle earlier this week that the sun was able to cast a virtual window frame.

No cleaning required.

Vase

I never feel a trip to Malvern is complete without climbing uphill and upstairs to The Bluebird Tea Rooms, a rather genteel establishment, where buttered scones with jam and clotted cream are served, accompanied by a choice of any one of a large number of traditional beverages.

From outside, on Saturday afternoon, the first floor windows were punctuated by the loud reds of some cut flowers in vases. Inside, the sunlight playing onto them caught a different part of my eye.

Three in one

I write here quite often that having a a few picture themes as ongoing strands to explore is a way of keeping one’s eye in.

Occasionally, a random combination of strands pops up, as here: a window and a group of three. In such moments, it’s nigh impossible for me to resist call of the camera.

Three candles

I promised Peacebear over at "Eye of a Lens" that I’d post my next phone camera picture. We’d been talking, on and off, about making pictures of lighted candles.

Tonight, after my weekly guitar lesson, I needed to escape from some tricky fretboard practice which was stretching not only my mind but also my fingers. A set of new, thicker strings had dealt its own sadistic challenges to my dexterity.

I hunted out a box of matches (no mean feat in the middle of house-moving preparations, as says it meself) then lit three waxy red stalks, the better to play with the buttons on my Sony Ericsson mobile.

I liked what the “Night” setting was doing. After that, all I had to do was keep the tiny, fixed-focus lens far enough away from the flames not to crack it, then press the OK button a few times.

As for that guitar, it insisted on being the subject of the final phone picture of the night. The deliberate loss of colour conceals some sanguine sweat and tears, dripped during the riffs and licks I made earlier this evening when jamming .