It still amazes me that my friend Phil made us this ginger cat, leaded light window above our front door from a design I drew out for him. It’s proper stained glass with lead holding it all together. It’s about 27 years old. We had it done because the half moon of glass that is above the front door was only single glazed and this does help the draught a bit. I’m so glad I had it made. X
I need to move on. I’m not going to ride this and I’m not sure if anyone will buy it. It’s a trike conversion. The back wheels and stays are bolted onto a bike frame so it can be adjusted to different sizes. We refurbished it, adding new wheels in 2022. A friend has stored it for me for over a year but it’s not fair to expect him to keep it.
So with regret I will try and sell it. If anyone here is interested I’m in the North Midlands of the UK. I’m willing to sell for a fair price.
Something is creeping into the Internet and it really irritates me. I guess hate is too much but it’s annoying.
I just saw a short video where a white meringue turns into tiny polar bears and peaches start wriggling about, then a large lobster changes into something alien and a white and yellow parrot sits happily in a frying pan where an egg is being fried.
The images all look perfectly realistic, and if you didn’t know you could imagine they were real, but I see a grotesque version of reality, like Heironymous Bosch has returned from the past and has created his AI vision of the Garden of Earthly delights.
AI can be very disturbing and it’s getting everywhere. It’s like looking at someones hallucination. A strange trip into a distorted mind. I want it to stop. Human imagination can be simple or warped, but AI? It’s just too fake for me, for some reason I can recognise it and I don’t like being tricked.
In the 1980’s we went to visit a friend from college for the first time. It was a journey we would make every couple of years until he moved up to the North of England.
We lived in the Midlands and I’d learnt to drive about 6 months before. I was driving a Morris Marina.
We took the M6 then M5 motorways until it ran out and changed to an A road. We stopped off for breakfast at a service station because the journey was about 240 miles. I hadn’t been on a motorway very often and as we came out of the service station I ended up on the North bound slip road! I did something illegal. I reversed back down the road and then took the South road!
Luckily the route was very simple, we got to Plymouth, and the house we were visiting was a few hundred yards away from the motorway junction. I remember we took bicycles on the roof of the car so the rest of the week was spent cycling to beaches and visiting various interesting places. The trip back was uneventful!
This was pre satnav and we used maps to navigate. To be honest I still use an A to Z if I want to find somewhere. But my driving is restricted to short journeys these days.
Funny how your mind looks for something interesting when it’s got nothing to do. I used to know a lot of nursery rhymes when I was a little child. This one I would say is well known? But who knows this one that I used to sing when I was on a seesaw.
Seesaw, Marjorie Daw
Jenny shall have a new master,
She shall have but a penny a day
Because she can’t work any faster!
I want to try and remember more. A couple in Manchester or Salford? Collected a lot of rhymes and children’s songs in the early 1900s. I think their surname was Opie. I’m sure there’s more information about it on line. They found that a rhyme sung in the south of England could travel to the North of Scotland in about two weeks by word of mouth (pre telephone).
I’m feeling rough today, I have a very sore throat, but I also have a very achy back. If I bend forward I’m getting shooting pains down my leg. I feel shattered and I’m trying to look after myself, drinking plenty of fluids and taking pain killers. Last week I managed to go shopping, and I noticed lots of people were coughing and sneezing, I guess that’s where I caught whatever this is?
Sorry to be moany. I need to get things done tbat I had planned to do today, feeling frustrated. I guess I’m looking for sympathy, I want to be fit and healthy, rant over!
The tree across the road a few years ago. Covered in ivy. This was drawn for an old #bandofsketchers prompt. The prompt was ivy.
I haven’t been doing these challenges for a few months. I think I ought to try again. It seems a shame that I stopped but life has been getting me down. Art is a great cure for sadness I think. I’ll try again soon.