Poor little thing has obviously become breakfast for someone else... sometimes Nature can seem rather cruel.

Look at the grass crying...

While awaiting the results of last night's Bloscar Awards I posted a teaser by way of light relief...

I asked you to identify this:

Only two people joined in with my bit of fun, which was a bit disappointing but hey ho...

All of those lines of light were generated from this piece of tree trunk:

Thanks to both Jack & Munzly for taking part - feel free to select a prize from the Virtual Prize Draw or if you'd prefer an Usky Desktop just let me know and I'll arrange it.

I think I may have overdone it at last night's Bloscar Awards ceremony... way too much celebrating for a week-night... still it was lots of fun seeing the happy smiling faces of so many friends and raising many a toast... I ended the night on Pinkers...

Anyway... here's my morning image...

Netted Nuts

A bottle of good Plymouth gin, a wipe of Angostura Bitters... nothing else needed... except a willing sipper... ...that's Pinkers... in case you didn't know.

I'm tempted to say....

whoopsie!

Some poor sailor lost his mast...

I can only speculate on the fate of the rest of the craft...

...and of course the crew...

Just a brief word of congratulation to all this year's Bloscar winners, but also to Landers and the team who made it such a great night... excellent work, all of you... and a humungous round of applause.

...and for a bit of light relief...

Can anyone tell me what this is?

Prize for the best answer...

I sometimes wonder about humanity and the apparently aimless way we appear to blunder from crisis to crisis... for all our modern technology... we're little more than pebbles on a beach, randomly rolling from place to place...

When I was a kid I always wanted to live in a castle tower... not such an unusual fantasy for a young child I suppose... but I always had an urge to live somewhere high up.

Later on, when I was in my teens, architects started building tower blocks and my parents, who knew my childhood wish to live high up, suggested I might want to live in one of these, but no. Oh I'd have been high up, but I really didn't want to live in that sort of tower... with all those other people.

No, my fantasy was still to live in a tower... but I was already a solitary soul and the sort of tower I fancied was one of these...

I can still imagine living in something like a lighthouse tower... or a tall windmill... or a custom made tower... and that kind of worries me a little...

During my recent mental turmoil I've had to do a fair amount of self analysis... and I'm starting to wonder if my obsession with such erections means... I've got a fixation... with that particularly male organ... the penis.

These are the Nash Point lighthouses and fog-horn. The old light tower, far left, hasn't had a light for some time and these days the lighthouse keeper's cottages are available as holiday lets. Of course you may find the over-sized belisha beacon a bit off-putting at night and when the fog rolls in...

...you'll probably need a set of ear defenders when these big boys let off!!!

Here's a crest some of you might recognise... but I'd be interested to find out just how many of you know what this is?

Feel free to illuminate me...

Sometimes photography can be a bit of a lottery... you don't always get the results you expect. Occasionally things go completely pear-shaped and you end up with an abomination, but at other times you end up with the most amazing image.

There's a technique in photography known as contra-jour (from the French, 'against the day'), which breaks all the rules because you point the camera at the sun allowing sunlight directly into the lens. Generally speaking this is a no-go area for photographers, but it can be useful for generating dramatic silhouettes or as in this case, capturing reflections off water.

This was one of those very lucky occasions when the sunlight combined with the conditions to produce a dramatic effect...

Sadly I doubt I'll ever be able to recreate these colours with artificial filters... in the lottery of photography, it just happened o be me!

I thought I'd post another of my tree reflections photos... this one's not quite as nice as the image I posted in the Photography Group earlier, but it's not too bad if I say so myself.

There are times when a man just has to forgo being big, gruff, ugly and guy-like, and get in touch with his more sensitive, touchy-feely feminine side...

Isn't she lovely?

Here's a tree I'd like to share with you... it's another of those trees that has a special place in my heart... because it has a rather special shape...

So here are both sides of this misshapen monstrosity.

Hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do.

The world, we were told by Bony M, is just a great big onion...

Or maybe you have an alternative view?

We're told we should eat five portions of fruit and veg a day... so following on from yesterday's pea pod(?) I thought I'd offer you a sweet pepper... or an apple... or maybe two rows of beans in a pod... or something...

Yet another nondescript piece of modern art - anyone fancy trying to identify this one?

Here's a bit of modern sculpture... I quite like it... I enjoy the shapes... but I've absolutely no idea what it is!

Any ideas what the piece represents?

Before anyone gets too excited, I'm not about to announce another free Stones in the Park concert... unfortunately. Ah, the 1960s... I digress...

There are stones in Cardiff's Bute Park though and this is how they look... not exactly Stonehenge or Avebury, but quite attractive in their own way.

With Cardiff Castle as the backdrop and surrounded by trees, it is easy to see why the 3rd Marquess of Bute enjoyed his private garden so much.

These are the gorsedd stones - in Welsh, gorsedd means throne. The throne is the large flat stone to the left of the image.

Bute Park was landscaped in the late eighteenth century by Capability Brown although alterations were made in the late nineteenth century by the 3rd Marquess of Bute.

In 1947, the 3rd Marquess of Bute presented the park to the Council; the park is still owned and managed by Cardiff Council and is freely open to all.

The time has come
The Walrus said
To bugger off to bed
For it's that certain time of night
When thoughts are in my head...

Thoughts of sleep
Of tiredness
Of slumber so serene
So off I trot to read my book
And slip myself between...

The crisp clean sheets
Ironed fresh
By mine own fair hand
To take me to that far off place
At Morpheus's hand...

G'night all

I photographed this in Bute Park last week... I think it's a camellia, but not being a gardening type I'm not really sure...

It's rather lovely though isn't it?

Delicate...

Pink...

Lovely to touch...

Oh dear...

I don't think these will be at their best for another couple of weeks or so... but mean time here's a single bud.

Regular visitors here will know I look for beauty in many shapes and forms... natural world... man-made... combinations...

I included some images here recently featuring parts of the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. This morning I want to look at a specific part of the stadium that I find both interesting and oddly beautiful; the roof supports.

The designer of the Millennium Stadium included four roof supports, one at each 'corner' of the building.

You can see from the structure these supports are obviously incredibly strong, but have also been designed with a eye to both shape and beauty.

If I stand underneath one of the supports and look up...

...this is what I see.

What do you see?

We all seem to have been banging on about the change of seasons recently, warmer/cooler days, etc.

Many, including myself, have posted images of flowers, spring lambs and the like. There's no denying, in the UK this is a wonderful time of year with everything springing into life again.

Here's another reminder of spring... cherry blossom.

Cherry blossom has a special place in both Chinese and Japanese culture and for me it's a special reminder of a particular time in my life.

As a child I suffered poliomyelitis; for those who don't know, poliomyelitis has caused paralysis and death for much of human history. At its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, polio would paralyse or kill over half a million people worldwide every year.

Obviously, I survived...

One of the things I will always remember is the sight of cherry blossom on the trees that lined the hospital grounds...

The badge of The Prince of Wales comprises three silver (or white) feathers rising through a gold coronet of alternate crosses and fleur-de-lys. The motto "Ich Dien" (I serve) is on a dark blue ribbon beneath the coronet.

This royal heraldic symbol dates back to the 14th century and the time of Edward Prince of Wales, better known as the Black Prince.

How apt this symbol should be marked as a floral tribute beside Cardiff Castle.

Come out come out wherever you are....

Just a bit more of Cardiff Castle...

Munzly suggested the pointy bit was Wales' first inter-galactic space craft, but those of us from down by yer know it really belongs to Morgan the Moon.

Old moch, the mechanic, I remember him well,
He once built a rocket, or so they will tell,
From an old winding engine, he found on the dole,
Built in the Rhondda, and powered by coal.

Sing fal deraldal deralday.
(words by Max Boyce)

A while ago I posted an image of a castle tower just begging for a Rapunzel figure... well here's another one, but in a rather different location.

This is a bit of Cardiff Castle photographed from Bute Park; I rather like it so I thought I'd share it with you here.

I've no idea what these were part of... some kind of drainage thing I suppose... but I'm drawn by the shapes.

Is it just me, or has there been a universal shift in the number of people commenting on blog posts since the various blog-groups were created?

Just idle curiosity on my part, but stooging about as I am it occurred to me not many people had commented here in the past few days despite the blog-stats indicating an average (for me) number of visitors. I guess I'm wondering whether the new groups are channelling activity... I really need to get out more!

Are you getting poor results from your printer?

Change the ink cartridge...

Use a recyclable one...

Much cheaper and a lot better for the environment.

In this day and age there's really no need to put up with poor prints...

...then again I could easily be wrong!

Who??

Continuing from my earlier nice doggy post, she also knows how to look after her little ones and give them a safe environment to play in.

Bowsy wowsy...

This is a section of the Riverside Walkway (sometimes referred to as the Taff Walkway) on the River Taff side of the Millennium Stadium. A quiet and easy walk from Cardiff Castle to the city's main railway station, except on match days when thousands are channelled along this exit route.

The world's rugby playing nations are denoted in mosaics on the deck and flags along the riverside.

This all looks very quiet and peaceful doesn't it? But from 2:00pm on Saturday it'll be a raging flood of red or blue clad humanity....

With the Six Nations kicking off again this coming Saturday I thought I'd share the odd image or two of Cardiff on a quiet day...

This is the Rummer Tavern... a favourite pre-match watering hole for many a Welsh rugby fan... better make sure you get in early though because the pub will feel more like a tin of sardines by about 11:30am!

Nature is not too proud when it comes to finding a new home... if man has left his mark, Nature will utilise it if she can.

Who'd have thought a few old bricks would form the basis of a new colony?

I have quite fond childhood memories of this beach... it has changed a lot in the last 50 years though.

When I played here as a young child, the beach was mostly small pebbles with the odd patch of sand between the rocky outcrops. Nowadays the beach is mostly sand with just a few pebbly bits and not as many rocky outcrops as I remember.

We hear so much about our changing coastline and the effect of erosion on our environment, but I think it's when you witness the changes for yourself that the penny drops.

The range of dunes at the far end of this beach mark the start of the biggest dune range in Europe, but that may not be the case much longer. The sand that is now accumulating at Newton almost certainly comes from the weathered edge of the dunes at Merthyr Mawr... I wonder how much more sand will have accumulated at Newton in the next 50 years and how much further the dunes will have receded. I also wonder how the children of this generation will look upon the beach at Newton in their dotage...

The weather has been truly fabulous here in God's own country today... so Usky took a trip to the seaside...

Aren't the AA supposed to be the nation's favourite motorist rescue organisation? Hard to believe they can maintain anything unless the new fleet vehicles are akin to a Tardis...

Just a quick post to say Happy Sunday one and all and make sure you enjoy the wonderfully sunny weather if you can.

The sun's shining so hard here today, it might even put a smile on this guy's face.

Have a great day y'all

Good morning all.

Seems I'm coming out the other side of my 'dip' thank goodness.... yesterday's feeling of desolation morphed into one of a bear with a sore head... I stomped around in grumpiness for a while... kicked the virtual cat... shouted at the moon... eventually went to bed feeling mean and moody... but I awoke feeling much brighter this morning so here I am...

Just a big old teddy bear.

Apologies for my absence here in Blogland; I'm not quite myself at the moment. Just a bit off colour I suppose. Feeling a little like this image...

...desolate.

I wanted to thank everyone for their messages of support and say I'm hoping normal service will be resumed shortly.

Wednesday... middle of the week... Hump Day (as some would have it)...

It's also my therapy day and to be honest I couldn't feel less like it today. Oh well...

I fear today is going to be one of my darker days.....

I thought this composition was interesting... all natural... just a bit of tree in shallow water... the question is... what's above and what's below the water-level?

Answers on a postcard please...

This was the view over Llwyn-on reservoir this morning... stunning isn't it?

Much too blue to be Wales in February you'd think, wouldn't you? But this really is Dwr Cymru (Welsh Water).

...where this is?

Here's a hint... it's in Wales.

Just a quickie for the start of the day...

...and I'm sure you all know you can't beat a quickie first thing in the morning...

...unless you have time for something more satisfying of course...

I hear the latest craze is nicking farm tractors and selling them on... obviously a limited market, but lucrative nevertheless. Farm equipment is no doubt horribly expensive to buy new...

Anyway I see these two tractors just sitting around day after day and wondered if I could jump on the band-wagon... do a mate a favour... and make a few bob in the process... any takers? James?

(no tractors were harmed in the making of this image)

Or just perfection?

It all depends on your attitude...

Have a Good Monday all.

For a Sunday that is... don't you think?

Well? What else did you expect on a Sunday?

Okay then, off we go... walkies!

Don't forget you can click all these images for a larger view as we go.

We'll head off up The Elms...

As we walk along you'll notice lots of these...

This part of the county is criss-crossed with footpaths, but today we'll stick mostly to the tarmac. We will make the odd diversion though, or we'd miss some of the things I want to show you... like this tree for instance... a favourite of mine.

The dull roar you can hear in the background is the main arterial route into South Wales; we'll pass under the M4 shortly.

Transport... ancient and modern.

We'll soon put this lot behind us...

To cross the motorway, we'll use this underpass. I hope you won't be nervous when we feel the rumbling of the traffic...

You'll notice quite a difference between this side of the motorway and the other. We have to pass this drainage ditch; it doesn't look like much, but there's usually a good six feet of water in it and you'll often see the odd heron nabbing frogs on the banks.

Amazing isn't it? The motorway is just a few yards behind us, but the level of traffic noise has dropped already. It certainly doesn't seem to bother these little chaps.

Happy families, eh? They'll make a wonderful roast in a few weeks time!

Up the lane we go then. I see the farmer's been out and trimmed the hedges so they're nice and neat.

It can feel a bit claustrophobic when the hedges are just left to their own devices, so it's always nice to see James has been about with his hedge-hacker.

Oh look... something rusty for Usky to perv over!

Come on... don't dally, we've a long way to go yet.

Hmmm... we're approaching the crossroads. Decision time Mutley... left, right, straight on?

Let's follow the Sun's arrow shall we?

Oh look... more old farmy bits. Not quite rusty enough for me really, but an interesting old thing anyway.

This is one of the local riding stables. They don't teach people to ride here, but you'll see from the various horse boxes there's plenty of activity going on.

We're quite horsey around here of course... especially since David Broome set up his empire down the road a bit.

This field was full of maize last year... I wonder what'll be planted here next?

Lots of the fields look a bit barren just now, but the seagulls always seem to find something to pick at.

Oh dear, they've spotted me... I wonder where they'll go now?

Flappy flappy....

Off they go, squawking and calling... noisy buggers, seagulls. Still they're quite interesting things to watch.

Not too much further to go now... about another mile until we loop back to the motorway.

Some of you might recognise this scene; I've photographed it before and posted the image here in Blogland. I thought it would be interesting to replicate the photograph... perhaps you'd like to take a peek in my media and see the original? Make sure you don't get left behind though...

As we trudge up the hill, you'll see a range of Spring flowers tucked away on the bank...

Aren't they beautiful? Snowdrops, daffodils and primroses... wonderful.

Just look at these trees breaking into flower too...

Here we are, back to civilisation and the M4 again. All these busy people rushing about...

If you look into the distance you can see the brewery at Magor. It used to be owned by Whitbread, but of course it became part of one of the multi-nationals. Still it has one of the most hi-tech canning lines in Europe and was used as a film-set in the last season of Dr Who...

I can't help wondering how many of these people were heading for Cardiff and yesterday's rugby international... a few I'll bet!

Right... follow me over this style please... and mind the mud!

Just one last hill to climb then we're almost home. We'll skirt round the allotments and past the radio masts, then it's all down-hill.

Here we are then, almost back. I hope you've enjoyed our morning amble around the lanes...

If you just follow the path now it'll bring you right back to the house. I'll just nip on ahead and pop the kettle on... who's for tea? Coffee? A nice cold beer perhaps?

Well it seems like there's enough interest to run a series of photos of one of my walks, so I'll post them tomorrow.

Can't do it tonight... I'm suffering from too much activity this afternoon... and a touch of the hot flushes...

See you all tomorrow.

There are lots of walks around here and I know most of them. Without having to go very far I can be out of my estate and and away from civilisation...

Here is The Elms

The Elms is the lane that takes me out of the back of my estate and into green fields. Would you like to join me on an amble?

We all need a little support from time to time and no-one knows better than I how wonderfully supportive you folks here in Blogland can be.

Stepping back some nine months, there was no light on my horizon... or at least, none that I could see. I feel somewhat differently now and a lot of that is down to the support I've found here.

So here's the thing... when Lennon & McCartney were penning their song, did they have me in mind? No of course not! On the other hand, they might have been for a walk in The Minnetts wood...

Who said Nature doesn't provide support for her own?

I quite often walk early in the day; I love the crispness of the air and the way the sun's rays colour the morning mist...

Even the natives are friendly... well some of them are... some of the time.

I guess it won't be too long before we can walk through field of wild flowers again...

As much as I enjoy cultivated gardens, I always think there's something special about Nature's garden. Walking through fields filled with daisies, wild orchids, angelica, borage and the myriad of other wild flowers native to the UK always fills me with joy.

Here we are at the end of the first week in February... the sun is shining... the skies are blue... and I'm dreaming of walking here again...

Several of us were posting photographs of swans here in Blogland the other day and it reminded me that I'd meant to post this image back last spring.

I was following the footpath around Cosmeston Lakes in the Vale of Glamorgan and stopped at one of the 'feeding stations'... within minutes I felt I was being mugged for bread I didn't have!

Cosmeston is a great place if you're into swans; there are ducks, coots and often cormorants too, but I don't recall ever seeing any geese.

How about...

Tintagel

Drake's Island

Castle on the Coast

These are about the best I can do for castles by the sea just now... I can see it's an area I need to look at.

Anyone want to answer this baa'd boy?

Just thought I'd show you good people my HUGE ASS!

I have to say I'm not sure at this juncture how relevant the new BCUK Communities are to Blogland, but given my addiction to things photographic I've joined the new Photography Group and will be posting some of my images there from time to time.

I do find myself forced to make this observation though; if I wanted to be a member of Facebook (or similar) I probably wouldn't be here. The fact that I choose BCUK for my 'community presence' indicates that I deliberately avoided the others for a simpler, faster, more efficient system. I hope BCUK doesn't suffer as a result of the new additions.

The small rural hamlet of Whitebrook is approximately 6 miles south of the thriving market town of Monmouth. Chepstow lies approximately 12 miles south from Whitebrook.

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the Whitebrook valley - like the Angiddy valley at Tintern a few miles to the south - was a centre of intensive water-powered industry. A branch of Tintern wireworks was established here in 1606, and wire working continued to be the main industry of the Whitebrook valley until about 1720.

By about 1760, paper mills had taken over and much of the housing in the valley was built for mill-workers around that time. Some of the paper at Whitebrook was made from imported esparto grass, brought in via the river quay at nearby Llandogo.

In the 18th and 19th Centuries, Whitebrook became famous for paper milling when wallpaper became a fashionable way to decorate houses.

Paper making in the Whitebrook valley probably came to an end in the late 1880s. An advertisement in The Times on Monday June 28th 1880 (page 16) stated paper mills at Whitebrook and the Fernside Paper Mill were up for sale, with a supply of water that was "constant and pure."

Although the industry had ceased by 1900, the valley retains the remains of several old mills, warehouses, dams and water courses. Many of these have now been transformed into desirable residential properties. The village is designated as a Conservation Area.

In a recent BBC documentary, 'Great British Journeys', Nicholas Crane said of the Whitebrook valley "I find it almost impossible to imagine in this enchanted woodland, that this was once one of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution."

Richard Drover, a hydro engineer with extensive experience installing small scale hydro electric turbines throughout the UK, has constructed a 3kw turbine in Whitebrook on the site of one former paper mill. This domestic installation provides sufficient power for three homes and replaces a similar system installed in the 1920s which was removed thirty years later when the national grid arrived in the remoter corners of Monmouthshire.

Whitebrook is best known today for its Michelin starred restaurant, The Crown at Whitebrook.

Further up the valley, the buildings of Fernside Mill remain externally intact, and make a most beautiful scene. Beside the mill pond stands the mill-owner's attractive house, enlarged from an earlier cottage which can still be recognised. Below this stands the main mill building. Back from this building stands the former stable block and beside the mill is a series of stone-built water tanks at ground level. It is indeed fortunate that the mill has been preserved, and is likely to remain so.

Photographs of Fernside Mill to follow at a later date.

All images on this page are 'clickable' for a larger view.

Did I ever mention that there used to be a thriving paper industry in this neck of the woods at Whitebrook?

You may recall I posted some images of and around Whitebrook back before Christmas... an idyllic little valley village with a babbling brook running through it. It wasn't always like that though... at one time there were five... yes five... paper mills in Whitebrook. And we're not talking about small garden sheds here... oh no...

This chimney is all that's left of one of the mills now, but just look at the size of it? A chimney this big obviously supported a damn large mill...

So anyway... I was wondering if anyone would be interested in seeing some images of the remains of this industry? If so I'll post a few with a potted history for your delight and delectation...

Open the box!

Good old Michael Miles; I wonder how many of us still remember him and the original quiz show Take Your Pick?

Perhaps more familiar to some would be the wonderful Month Python piss-take, featuring the inimitable Mrs Scum?

So anyway, there I was looking around this very old church and tucked away in one corner was this box...

Isn't it wonderful? If only it could talk, I thought, what stories it would tell.

I examined the timbers, the locks and the hinges. Nowhere could I find anything to indicate an exact date for manufacture. Oh but it was so beautiful to touch...

A small sign on top of the chest said, "Do Not Open."

A red rag to a bull in this china-shop...

I needed to peek inside... and there was no-one about... so I peeked...

I opened the lid and I peeked... and inside, what did I find?

It wasn't a pile of old bones or dusty books or ancient parchments...

No holy relics of a bygone age...

Just a couple of very rusty...

...clappers from a pair of old bells!

So much for being inquisitive, eh?

Baa Maa... why won't Junior get up and play?

...when you need sleep the most, it always damn well evades you...

Sick to death of being awake through the night and spending the day yawning and nodding...

Or in this case, the place to come next Christmas to get lots of cheap xXxs

Well I seem to have had a busy day doing nothing very much... it never ceases to amaze me how long doing sod all takes!

Anyway I'm going to have a trawl about and see what everyone else has been up to today, but I just thought I'd share an interesting bit of stick with you all before I go.

So yesterday I wanted some nice new potatoes to go with my tuna steak and salad... yes I know new potatoes aren't exactly in season right now, but like almost everyone else I've become used to getting fresh(!) fruit and veg year-round.

Anyway I went to visit Mr Sainsbury who kindly supplied me with a packet of new potatoes... called Vivaldi!

Now I don't know if it's just me, but I always associate Vivaldi with violins... somehow the last things to come to mind when Vivaldi is mentioned are spuds!

Who the hell had the bright idea of naming new potatoes Vivaldi?

Answers on a postcard please...

I don't know about you, but I still think of the lion as the King of Beasts... it's one of those childhood things that has stuck with me through my life.

Birds on the other hand are a different matter. For me the King of the Birds is the Andean Condor, but I'm well aware that to many people it's our own native swan that site atop the regal stack. The Queen of course is allowed to eat swans, so I suppose that pushes them up the list a bit.

I've posted a couple of images from the Magor Marsh Reserve recently, so I thought I'd take the opportunity of showing you a couple of denizens of the Magor Deeps.

They may not be condors, but these are certainly beautiful birds.

Cute aren't they?

There are any number of drainage ditches in my neck of the woods... they make wonderful refuges for local wildlife and afford the casual watcher the chance to observe animals and birds others may never experience.

I never tire of walking along these drainage ditches, or rheens as we know them in Wales. One thing bothers me though... I've yet to come across the little boy with his finger stuck in a dyke... I'm obviously looking in all the wrong places!

Sometimes I just can't resist getting into my own photographs... arrogance... vanity... your choice...

So anyway there I was walking around the Magor Marsh Reserve the other day and when the opportunity arose I thought to myself, what the hell, why not

So here I am, walking around the reed beds....

Four in the morning and for lack of anything more interesting I find myself sitting here with the Emmerdale Omnibus...

Abandon hope all ye who enter here....

Anyone good with their hands and with a reasonably large bank balance and plenty of spare time on their hands out there?

Fancy a small restoration project?

Go on... you know you want to.

Anyone else out there find this street sign slightly odd?

Following on from my post yesterday about tree silhouettes and the like, here's another example of shape and form...

I'm attracted by the 'tangle' of twigs masking the larger branches. I'm also attracted by the colour of the lichen growing on the tree bark.

Not quite a cat on a hot tin roof...

...there are all kinds of other interesting shapes out there to grab images of.

Radio masts and pylons make interesting subjects.

Photographically speaking this is the best time of year for shooting tree silhouettes. You often get gloriously clear skies, which means you can create really stark silhouettes of interesting tree shapes with no foliage to get in the way.

I've shot lots of these over the years and although satisfying I sometimes like to play with exposure to include at least some colour from the tree bark. It's fairly easy to get your exposure right with a modern digital camera, as long as you can over-ride the built in exposure metre. Your camera manual will explain how to do this on your camera.

Playing with exposure means you should be able to produce results like this:

A mixture of pure black silhouette and colour, producing interesting shapes against the blue sky backdrop.

If you've never tried this sort of thing, get out there and give it a go. Post your results here in Blogland and show us what wonderful shapes you can come up with.

I was chatting to Jacobite here yesterday and the subject of anonymity rose its head. I expounded the theory that people are more likely to be truthful about their lives in an online community such as this one because of the anonymity the community affords then. Of course the reverse is also true... some people are more likely to live a complete fantasy here. Anyway that got me to thinking... I know... dangerous move!

I dare say we've all come across the archetypal American gun-slinger: the man with no name.

People of my generation will probably recall the song by America that bleated "I rode through the desert on a horse with no name."

How many other things in America are nameless? Horses, people, what else?

Well not to be outdone, there's a whole village by me that is nameless...

You drive/cycle/ride/walk (delete as appropriate) down the road and get to the sign... cue Billy Connolly... Where are we? Where the fuck is this place?

It's okay Bill, it's the place with no name!

Have a happy Saturday all!

I can't help thinking these crows are all looking skywards and watching the con-trails thinking to themselves...

...look at that git showing off!

Take a look at this; it's an image of our village cop-shop, better known as the Police House.

Now please don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for the things the Police do and the crap they have to put up with in their day-to-day duties so be assured I'm not knocking the force as a whole. My beef is with a couple, just two, village bobbies who should damn well know better.

If you haven't already guessed, this is an Usky Rant!

So what's the rant all about? Well, look at the picture again...

Notice where the two official police vehicles are parked?

See anything wrong with that?

Okay... there are 10 spaces in the car park and the only vehicles present are the four you can see in the image.

What pisses me off are the two "official" vehicles inconsiderately parked in the two spaces nearest the front door and main entrance...

Why is the police 4X4 parked in the disabled parking space? Because the moron who drives it refuses to walk anywhere!

What the flip is he point of creating a disabled parking space if the damn police are allowed to abandon one of their vehicles in it? If the space is supposed to be used by the police... put a Police Parking notice on it!

What about the other car... surly that's legally parked?

Well yes it is... right in front of main entrance, which just happens to be where the wheelchair ramp is! So tell me... how would I get my wheelchair into the police house, should I need to?

Hmmm...

And don't think this is just something that happens occasionally... oh no... you'll find the 4X4 parked as near the door as it can possibly get every day of the week... usually in the disabled parking spot!

This is Usky, bloody frustrated, downright annoyed and really uptight...

Rant over.

To my eye, there's something vaguely foreign about this image... it reminds me of France... or Belgium... or Holland... almost anywhere in fact, except where it is... Wales.

Do you see things in your local area that conjure up foreign parts?