Round and Round - Thematic Photography

When you are left home alone, well as alone as you can be with three pairs of 

Beady eyes

watching your every move, you just have to look (a)round to see what's going on.

There is no danger of not being able to see to shave with this illuminating array.

and should my eyes water I do not have to reach far for a tissue.

When finished I just turn round and dispose of it in a very British bin.

I must not forget to close the door to keep those nosey dogs at bay.

It's not just dogs that are nosey, someone else has their eye on me.

At least the web cam looks straight ahead.

Heads swivel if anyone approaches this jar.

Biscuits if they are good.

Meanwhile Scout just waits for someone to play, not that he will relinquish the round things in his mouth.

It's a dog's life even on a rainy Michigan day.

This wheel has seen better times,

and may be too tired to get round to visiting the links at Carmi's Thematic-photographic-314-round-and round.

Trades/Professions - Sunday Stamps

Greetings from the USA this week where we are staying with my daughter, her husband and three dogs. Yesterday was a bit traumatic as Gem, her oldest dog, had to be put to sleep after a remarkable 15 and a half years. Gem was the last of the original "Gang of Four."

The lady vet from the Lap of Love, a veterinary hospice was a true professional. However I do not have a stamp that is appropriate for her.

Nevertheless I was surprised to find how many stamps meet Viridian's 'trade/professions' theme.

Algeria - Job Mechanics; 18 April 1965

Hungary - Welder series 1955

Lebanon - Potters work

Iceland - Nurse and patient

This stamp was issued on 19 June 1970 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Icelandic Nurses Association.

My last stamp this week is from Tunisia.

Tunisia - Nass-work - Handicrafts; 15 August 1979

I was pleased to be able to include my one and only stamp from Algeria as the theme forced me to identify what it represented.

I wonder whether anyone will have a stamp of a philatelist this week. To find out you will have to check the links at Sunday-Stamps-193.

Coppers - Sepia Saturday

Those who read my post last week will remember that I was born in the village of Ketton. You may even remember the blue car in this picture.

Stocks Hill, Ketton looking down the High Street

That blue car in the distance was near Mr Robinson's, the cobbler's house.

The monument in  the centre contains a water tap at the far side. It was erected to commemorate the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887.

But I am in danger of digressing from this week's prompt

which contains three 'coppers.'

The house on the left in the photo of Stocks Hill is occupied by the village policeman. It just so happens that I knew three of its incumbents before I left the area - PCs Swann, McDonald and Hodgkinson, and the latter's daughter (over whom I will draw a discrete veil)

All this was was nearly 60 years ago - a time, in those pre-decimal days, when the currency of the realm was based on pounds, shillings and pence .

As a boy I was always pleased to have three coppers in my pocket.

A Farthing (1/4 of a penny)

Halfpenny (Ship design)

Britannia on the reverse of the one penny coin

(Images scanned by Retroplum; created by HM Government))

Why is it that these designs beat the modern coppers every time?

OK, officer - I'll go quietly, no need for handcuffs, to check the links at Sepia-Saturday-251.

When night falls - Thematic Photography

I have had trouble with my body clock over the last three days but now it seems to have adjusted to Michigan time.

We were just too late to catch all the trees in their full fall glory. However when night falls it's a different story despite my video camera in photo mode persisting in taking advantage of what light there is at my daughter's property.

Driveway at dusk

Night falls over the woods

Trees take on a ghostly hue

- appropriate as we approach Halloween.

To see if there are any more eerie sights check the links at Carmi's Thematic-photographic-313.

Harvest/country life - Sunday Stamps

I found this week's theme more difficult than expected. I have had to include a Danish stamp I have shown before.

Denmark - Binder

This machine was used to cut the corn and bind it into sheaves in the days before the existence of the combine harvester. You might say that this relates to summer rather than the autumn season.

I have been unable to trace the subject of my second stamp but I felt it may represent country life in an African country. 

Senegal

To see how well others have met the theme of country life/harvest/autumn please follow the links at Viridian's Sunday-Stamps-192.

A Load of Cobblers - Sepia Saturday

I've shown the house where I was born before, but here it is again to identify a missed opportunity.

Saddler's Cottage, Ketton

The missed opportunity is this:

High Street, Ketton

Just beyond that blue car, two houses down from my boyhood home, the entrance door was down two steps and railings prevented you from falling off the pavement into the window of Mr Robinson's shop.

We would stand for hours watching him work and could clearly see what he was doing - all his tools were laid out neatly rather like this.

Shoemakers and cobblers tools
(Joseph Allen Skinner Museum, South Hadley, Massachusetts) (9/6/2013 by Daderot - CCO 1.0)

Mr Robinson (I never knew him by any other name) would have looked lost in a big workshop like this.

Recreation of a cobbler's workshop at Amberley Working Museum, Nr Arundel, West Sussex

(10/04/2009 - by Basher Eyre - CC BY-SA 2.0)

Mr Robinson was a very small man and but you could always see and hear him working away - and ideal model for Petula Clark.

In May 1994 another much larger shoemaker was making the news.

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 - 17 May 1994
(Source NASA, STSci and ESA; a NASA Hubble Space Telescope image)

The comet's 21 icy fragments stretched across 710 thousand miles of space (or three times the distance between Earth and the Moon). When the picture was taken the comet was 410 million miles from Earth, on course to collide with the planet Jupiter in mid-July.

Jupiter showing Shoemaker-Levy 9's impact sites(Source NASA, STSci and ESA; a NASA Hubble Space Telescope Telescope Camera image)

The brown spots mark the places where fragments of comet SL9 tore through Jupiter's atmosphere in July 1994.

Having gone from home to space, perhaps I have digressed enough as I wouldn't want to be subject to "The Cobblers Cure."

(From Wellcome Images, a website operated by the Wellcome Trust - CC BY 4,0)

This is a post inspired by 

The last thing for you to do is see whether others have produced a load of cobblers too by visiting the links at SS250.

Patterns - Thematic Photography

On wet and windy days like today I tend to walk along looking down and wonder what patterns will emerge from the rain.

According to one English philosopher and mathematician, "Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern." (Alfred North Whitehead).

Here's what I came across without lifting my head.

Triangle

Squares and oblongs

Circle plus ....

If our mathematician friend could derive a formula for these, perhaps it would drive him mad finding one for this.

Crazy paving

And here it's difficult to see the wood for the trees.

It's patently obvious to me what it as it is visible to me as I use the keyboard to compose this post.

To see other patterns this week check out those behind the links at Carmi's Thematic-Photographic-312.

Fishy - Sunday Stamps

We don't buy many stamps and it annoys me when the local post office insists on putting one large generated stamp on the occasional parcel we send abroad. Apparently it's easier for them that using proper stamps.

We buy a booklet of six First Class stamps especially for birthday cards and last week was no exception. This is what we got.

Great Britain - First Class Stamp Booklet

When I opened the booklet I thought it only contained four stamps untill I looked at the fish - the Common Skate (Threatened) and the Cornish Sardines (Sustainable)

These are two from a set of six issued on 5 June 2014.

To see what others have chosen in a week when Viridian lets us post what we like you need to follow the links at Sunday-stamps-191.

Deadwood - Sepia Saturday

Every day that I walk to fetch my paper there is a tree that stands out from the rest.

Dead wood

I have to say it reminds me of the tree in our prompt this week.

My tree stands at the side of the road from Yarm which in 1803 became a part of the turnpike road from Yarm to Thirsk. This brought trade to the Crown Inn at Kirklevington, but not without some risk.

An accident at Pond Corner (Artist's impression)

By 1900 the Crown Inn had become the Crown Hotel and this is what it looked like then.

Crown Hotel, Kirklevington

Today it is my local and looks like this (taken from a similar angle.)

Crown Hotel (2014)

Of course the stage coaches gave way to the iron horse and today only riding school horses pass the Crown.

Not long before that 1900 photo of the Crown was taken another famous stage took its last trip and a lot of folks where there.

The last Deadwood Coach -  December 28, 1890
(John C H Grabill - Library of Congress)

The Deadwood Stage had mountainous country to contend with as show by this picture from a glass negative from the 1880s.

The Deadwood Stage in a mountainous area (probably the Black Hills of South Dakota) - By Charles C Pierce

A replica of the coach made its appearance at Fort Laramie celebrations in 1937 (the year I was born)

Replica displayed at Fort Laramie (1937)

However it was the 1950s before I heard of the Deadwood Stage. I just wonder what Calamity would have said if she had the seen all those fellas at the site of the Stage's last journey.

I'll let her have the last word,

For others' views on coaches or what has inspired them visit the links at Sepia-Saturday-249.

Run Down - Thematic Photography

"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down." (Aneurin Bevan)

But you can get run down at the side of the road as well.

Fence run down by grass cutter in the Spring.

Sometimes however you wonder where the culprit rebounded to.

But perhaps it didn't rebound at all.

I'm not sure what role the JCB had in running down the conifer in our garden yesterday.

Now it's too late to change its mind.

Run down stump

I'm glad I don't have to clear up the mess. It would be enough to make anyone feel run down.

For other run down symptoms you need to check out what others have been inspired to post at Carmi's Thematic-Photographic-311.