A-Z Challenge 2018 - British Rivers: 'K' - Kennet

The River Kennet is one of the 161 chalk streams in the UK. It is a tributary of the River Thames; its navigable length to Newbury makes, with that of the River Avon and The Avon and Kennet Canal, a waterway that stretches across England from Bristol to London.

River Kennet near Avebury, Wiltshire

Its tributaries north of Avebury combine with water from the source at Swallow Head Springs near Silbury Hill.

The area between Malborough and Woolhampton is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) due to the wildlife (brown trout) and the chalk stream aquatic plants it supports such as rununculus, the creeping buttercup. 

Mouth of the River Kennet at Reading
(With Brunel's GWR bridge)

The Kennet flood plain at Burghfield in Berkshire contains many gravel pits renowned for their fishing. The river section is one of the most prolific for barbel with weights registered of over 17lbs.

A Burghfield Lake

Photo attributions:

• River Kennet near Avebury: upload to wikimedia commons 16 December 2011 - CC BY-SA 3.0 licence
• Mouth of the River Kennet: 10 March 2013 by Quentin UK - CC BY 3.0 licence
• A Burghfield Lake: 30 January 2008, ex geograph.org.uk by Andrew Smith - CC BY-SA 2.0 licence.

Data - Thematic Photography

I've reached an age when studying lots of data is boring. So I rarely look at equity prices in the newspaper and never online. Not even - 

London Commodities Prices

That's London, England, Carmi not Ontario. And anyway there's probably an app for data such as this.

However even with leisure activities it's impossible it seems for some people not to record data of what they do.

Watching birds that frequent our garden - over 5 years data.

I've played a lot of golf over the years and can tell you how many courses I have played at;  I even at one time recorded my scores - hole by hole for every game. I won't bore you with data like that.

However I know of players who go to pieces every time they see the data on it every time they pick up a card.

There's another nine holes of data on the other side.

All before they've hit a ball.

I just wonder how Harry Potter kept the Quidditch score when he played behind these walls.

Alnwick Castle (where the film was made)

Perhaps he stored his data in the clouds.

Like us these days he has plenty to chose from.

If you haven't had enough, you may explore more data at Thematic-photographic-367.

Olympic Games - Sunday Stamps

We are continually being advised that it is less than a year to London 2012. The first Olympics I remember were those in London in 1948. Unfortunately I do not have the set of Great Britain stamps issued then

In 1960 my wife and I were living in a flat in Wolverhampton and we hired our first TV to watch the games in Rome when a boxer named Cassius Clay won a gold. I have two stamps commemorating the Rome games but not from a country that I associate with the Olympics. I'll post them both because I like the shape of one in particular.

Rome Olympics 1960 - Mongolia

Rome MCMLX - Mongolia

I was surprised to find that I do have one Olympic stamp from Great Britain so I have decided to include that as well.

Barcelona 1992 - Great Britain

I could post stamps from other games but there are too many for a single post. Perhaps I can use them another time.

For other posts on Viridian's open them check out: Sunday-stamps-30

Never! Never!

A-Z Challenge – ‘N’

Do you have an unrealistic dream about the future?

The ‘never-never land’ is a term often used dismissively when some one dreams unrealistically about a utopian future. I just might win the lottery today.

However the Never Never Land actually exists. The remote outback regions of Australia’s Northern Territory and Queensland are known by that name.

The Australian Henry Lawson wrote a poem called the Never-Never Country the second verse of which reads:

My home lies wide a thousand miles
In Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the skyline sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand-
A phantom land, a mystic realm!
The Never-Never Land.

But it was Barrie’s Peter Pan that brought the term into every day language. When Wendy asked Peter where he lived, he replied, ‘With the lost boys. They are the children who fall out of their prams when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Never Land.’

 Peter Pan Statue in Kensington Gardens, London (Photo by Sebjarod)

Millions of children live in a dream world, their Never-Never Land. They probably won’t have heard of the ‘never-never.’ Buying something on instalments was once described as, ‘you pay $80 down and more than you can afford for the rest of your life.’ Students’ tuition fees may fall into this category.

Never say die, never say never, never again, never been kissed are phrases that trip off the tongue. 

Just don’t ask young girls today have they heard of ‘Never Say Never’ and you will deafened by screams for Justin Bieber.

Me? I’ll settle down with the book ‘Never Let You Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro.