Monkeying Around - Sepia Saturday

As you get older your memory plays tricks with you; it did with me when I saw this week's prompt.

Back in my wartime childhood it wasn't an organ grinder that turned up at our door, rather...

An itinerant knife grinder
(Biçakçi - by a Greek artist c1809)

Mind you our visitor's equipment was more up to date and there wasn't a monkey. His sharpening stone was pedal driven rather like the one below.

Child watching knife grinder at work

(Relief on Buchanan House, St Jame's Square by Newbury Abbot Trent, sculptor (1885-1963) - By Weglinde, Gordon Lawson, 260311 CC BY-SA 3.0)

I understand that an organ grinder is an itinerant street musician who earns a living by playing a hand organ or hurdy-gurdy. This confuses me further as I thought a hurdy-gurdy was a stringed instrument. Perhaps Mike will help us out because if we follow Churchill's advice we should never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

Street organs come in all shapes and sizes from those carried on the organ grinder's back to barrel organs the size of a small piano pushed on a set of wheels - often with a monkey on top.

Edward Williams Clay - Organ grinder with monkey
(Ink and watercolour illustration - satirical cartoon, Paris c1828)

Organ grinder's monkey licking a juice bottle top
(By Thomas Quine - January 2006 - CC BY 2.0)

It seems to have been common for the monkey to be on a lead or attached by a chain to the organ.

Buchanan House has another relief to confirm this is this case.

Organ grinder

(Relief on Buchanan House, St Jame's Square by Newbury Abbot Trent, sculptor (1885-1963) - By Weglinde, Gordon Lawson, 290311 CC BY-SA 3.0)

For some reason or another I have associated barrel organs and their monkeys with local fairs. But in the late 1950s neither made it to this photo.

Pat and Bob at Stamford Fair

It was only a few years after this that we were attached by an unbroken chain. 

Organ grinder with monkey on chain
(1892 - Library of Congress)

However we did manage to find some monkeys of our own,

Two monkeys (or four?)

Nearly fifty years on I was pleased to find that monkey men are still around, not that I have seen any of late.

Organ grinder at local Harvest Festival
( 20 Oct 2007 - by Kathy, from a small town in SW PA, USA = CC BY 2.0)

But enough monkeying around it's time to see what other monkey tricks you can find at Sepia-Saturday-244.

Vegetation - Thematic Photography

When I saw this vegetation theme my first thoughts were of what grows in my garden.

Fern

However when I saw the North Yorkshire Moors on our way to Whitby yesterday I knew I had to show sometime a bit wilder.

Less than 20yds from the main road from Teesside you could find yourself up to your neck in in a bracken bank.

Bracken with hedge bindweed (belibine) flowers

I wish now that I had some close-ups of the flowers of the bindweed which. in gardens, is regarded as a pest.

More bracken and a single plant of Indian balsam (pink)

The Indian balsam is another invasive species.

But the view that I found best included the plant that gives the open moor its purple colour at this time of year.

Purple heather

Ferns with heather in the background

Although there was vegetation visible at the top of the cliffs below Whitby Abbey

Whitby Abbey (viewed from afar)

it was this shot that got to me.

Birds of a feather (a week too late)

They would be more interested in fish than vegetation.

Don't let that stop you however, checking out the vegetation on view at Carmi's Thematic-photographic-308.

Reptiles - Sunday Stamps

Viridian's reptile theme proved harder than I thought and I have had to show some stamps for a second time.

This one from Australia was included before with several other wildlife stamps so deserves an outing on its own.

Saltwater Crocodile - Australia

You can read about crocodylus porosos here. . The stamp was issued in 1994.

The marine iguana on the next stamp was part of a 2009 set to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

Marine Iguana - Great Britain

And as Viridian also allowed amphibians this week I thought the common frog from from the Europa Pond Life series deserved to be seen.

Common Frog - Great Britain 2001

One of my daughter's dogs spends a lot of time trying to catch Rana clamitans (the American Green Frog) - I wonder whether she would be interested in a common frog from Britain.

The European Green Lizard (Lagarto verde; scientific name lacerta viridis) appears on a stamp issued in 1974.

European Green Lizard - Spain

To my surprise I did not find a stamp showing a snake of any kind. To see whether anyone else, has try the links at Sunday-Stamps-185 where there is another green lizard on view.

Birds of a Feather - Thematic Photography

Carmi couldn't have made a better choice of a topic for me this week.

Feathers abound on the grass by the side of the road along which I take my morning walk.

A feather down

And if that is not enough - 

Four feathers

But not from a thrush.

Tail feathers

However there is a sad tale to this as these feathers are all that remained of a wood pigeon demolished by a hawk.

Man, the worse predator of all, can also have a devastating effect.

Owl - a road kill victim

Other birds play hide and seek behind - 

The chimney pots

Jackdaw viewing spot

Discussing last night's soap

While sparrows watch the children cross

Some just watch the world go by.

Young blackbird on kitchen window sill

A much better place to be than behind glass at - 

Detroit Zoo - King Penguins

Some birds just have to pretend while - 

Waiting for the mail.

Meanwhile there is a work in progress for me - I'm trying to get a decent shot of this bird.

Nuthatch (image scanned from a bird book)

This is the best I have done so far from 50ft away and through a double glazed window.

Nuthatch clearing ivy from a nesting box

We saw this bird for the first time in our garden only last month; now it is a regular visitor.

Fortunately it's a little smaller than the bird we saw at nearby Preston Park.

However my favourite so far this year is one some of you have seen before.

Male Bullfinch

It was making itself comfortable in a hand towel while it recovered from the argument it lost with our lounge window.

Now is the time for you to recover to and fly over to see other 'Birds of a feather' at Carmi's Thematic-photographic-307.

By Boat and Plane to Guernsey - Sunday Stamps.

I have never been to the Channel Islands and only have a few of their stamps. However I came across this lot last week on my favourite market stall.

Guernsey

The Dasher appeared in a Mail Boat set issued in 1972, the Isle of Guernsey in another Mail Boat set the following year.

The Arthur Lionel lifeboat stamp was issued in 1974 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute. The Arthur Lionel was launched in 1912 at Liverpool and appeared on another stamp in 1999 on the 175th Anniversary of the RNLI.

The Westland Wessex stamp was issued in 1973 to commemorate 50 years of flying to the island and the three aircraft used by Cobham Air Services. The plane shown came to grief on the 3 July 1935 when it ditched in the English Channel with the loss of the pilot, the passenger managed to escape. The aircraft was carrying only the one passenger from Guernsey to Bournemouth. Its starboard engine failed 25 to 30 minutes into the flight but carried on with the two remaining engines. After an half-an-hour one or both of these engines failed and the aircraft crashed into the sea. The passenger was picked up after two hours but the pilot was never found. An inquiry concluded that the pilot had taken an unnecessary but not wholly unjustifiable risk to continue with two engines and he should have considered turning for the French coast.

The Les Casquets lighthouse stamp was issued in 1976; the light guides shipping to Alderney and Guernsey.

Herm Island used to issue its own stamps. Herm is one of the islands making up the Bailiwick of Guernsey. the 7p stamp was issued in 1975.

To see what others have chosen this week please visit Viridian's Sunday-Stamps-184.

Shooting strangers from afar - Thematic Photography

If you live in a village as small as mine it's often difficult to find a stranger at all. However just when I was about to give up I came across an ideal opportunity.

A stranger getting directions from a stranger

I thought it rather odd to see a car in this country lane that leads to nowhere but some farms. When I checked the car's registration I found that it had originated over 250 miles away, in Chelmsford, Essex.

I guess the stranger just wandered into my next shot of a fire practice on the River Tees.

Fire practice near the Infinity Bridge, Stockton-on-Tees

We went to watch our grandson in a surfing contest at Saltburn last October. There were strangers by the score - 

On the pier

and - 

On the beach

Even two of the surfers were strangers to me.

Shame the surf was so poor.

For more strangers unaware they are in the camera's eye head over to Carmi's Thematic-Photographic-306.

Stamps on Postcards

As there is no Sunday Stamp theme this week I went looking for another source of stamps by raiding a collection of postcards that have accumulated over the last 30 years or so.

Rio de Janeiro - Sunrise on Copacabana Beach

Brazil

Both the stamps were issued originally in 1982 although the card is clearly postmarked 1984.

The top two stamps show the Mamona or Castor Oil Plant; The bottom stamp shows ears of Trigo (wheat). Brazil is the third largest producer of castor oil behind India and China.

From France I found two different denominations of the same Marianne.

France

François Mitterrand became the 1st Socialist President of the Fifth Republic on 10 May 1981. However the Marianne on these stamps is that used during the presidency of his predecessor, Valéry Giscard d-Estaing.

This is the Gandon Sabine Marianne by the stamp engraver Pierre Gandon inspired by a painting by Jacques-Louis David,

The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799)

'Mitterand's' Gandon Liberté Marianne did not appear until 1982.

Both the postcards with these stamps were to my daughter.

The Côte d'Azur

The card from Paris just had to be from my eldest son to his sister 

because the message ended, 'Il me plait que tu n'es pas ici!!' This is a long standing family joke even if it was in French.