The ex-pond, with a stone fish in a stone river:
Charlie, Rosabelle and Mamichou:
An isolated fingerpost:
Picking wild garlic:
Apple blossom:
Lettuce salad:
Rickety swing:
Dandelion:
Gone to seed:
Year: 2010
Apparently this Gordon Brown chappie is …
Apparently this Gordon Brown chappie is labour???? for some reason I had him in my mind as conservative!!! even though I know that the weasley faced guy is the Tory 😐 My political knowledge never fails to astound me.
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That is pretty astounding.
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Though actually, on reflection, perfectly understandable, given the only real difference in their policies concerns fox hunting.
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Here’s one new Conservative MP you should have no difficulty remembering!
www.louisebagshawe.net/home-
carotte Yay for foxhunting I say!
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Election fever – the bottom line
What a ghastly choice: Lord Snooty, with 17 old Etonians in his Cabinet; the discredited Supreme Leader, with the Miliband puppets jerking convulsively in the background; or the party of, as AA Gill put it, ‘comfortably vast bottoms’.
Clearly, my civic duty is to spoil my ballet paper.
Japan
A fairly delayed blog post re Japan.
Had a great time seeing Jul and Mayumi, and seeing the temples, shrines, parks, towers, etc. Plenty to see in Tokyo and plenty of tasty food.
day 1: a vist to a noodle restuarant followed by a trip to see the blossom. then home to bed as we’d been up for 30 hrs or so.
day 2: the temple and market at Asakusa. it’d rained all day and unfortunately the temple was covered for to repairs
day 3: tokyo tower and nearby temple. lovely day and there seemed to be an event of sorts going on. met up with jul in the afternoon in a park near the fish market. tried traditional green tea – no so tasty. walked back via Ginza.
day 4: early start to get the the fish market for the best action. arrived to find it deserted. apparently drunken tourists had trashed the place and it was closed for a month. went to the folk museum instead. then to yoyogi park to the main buddhist temple and then to Hirajuku for people watching.
day 5: yokohama. pleasant walk along the harbour. got burnt.
day 6: a bento lunch with jul in the national gardens and a spot of reading
day 7: beer museum and park near the imperial palace. trip to bic camera – impressive
day 8: made gyoza under the instruction of Mayumi. Epic taste. Visit to Ghibli museum which was good fun.
day 9: a bit ill. stayed in.
day 10: Kamakura. very nice small village by the sea. loads of surfers.
day 11: bit more ill. visit to docs, followed by stroll round the east imperial palace gardens.
day 12: back to kamakura to see bamboo grove and giant buddha
day 13: hmm, not sure
day 14: chillout day, walked around gotanda area
day 14 + 1: flight cancelled. ate roast chicken in yet another park. taste! afternoon reading on jul’s roof
day 14 + 2: still no flights. visited the national building. good views and guided tour.
day 14 + 3: still no flights. small aquarium near gotanda. good dophin show, but tanks seemed a bit small:-(
day 15 + 4: early phone call from Virgin. panic! rush to airport and flight miraculously took off!
fixing the bibs at the local noodle soup emporium
tourists
rice n pork n egg n cheese
standard procedure
raw beef third stomach?
a tasty drink
baggy trousers
walking in gotanda
warning about resin shoes
a halfwit
a blossom
jul
blossom outside the imperial palace
jul
on the metro
a golden buddha
some drummers
a blossom
one of the parks
a bit more park
Han in the park
japanese maple
a samuari
egg
one of the massive ravens
nice and frothy
a tree
good design
the wandering samuari
a bit of road
this chap spotted me i think
yokohama at night
chestnut rice
tea
an ant
a pond
bento
posing by the robot from Laputa
exercise
a heron
a bamboo shoot
a bamboo forest
me and han
the giant buddha
more trees
the hotel from lost in translation
enjoying the blossom
ramen!
still going bald
taste!
raining in asakusa
bamboo shoots
selecting from the menu
fish
“expert” photographer
tasting a dumpling
a japanese wedding
a deserted fish market
fish at the top of landmark tower
the closest we got to seeing mt fuji
cool dudes
a slackwit tourist
creating gyoza
mmmm tasty
gyoza and dip
airing the toes
kamakura beach
fountain
I’ve also uploaded more photos to picasaweb.google.com/decoyotis/Japan
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Great medley of photos. I particularly like the municipal workers kitted out to go base jumping. Somehow, I find it hard to believe the same healthy and and taste conscious people eating those enormous bamboo shoots would also be queing up for raw horse meat or, perish the thought, raw tripe, even if it was, as promised, ‘freshly sliced’!
Goodwood
Stepping out:
Studying the form:
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dodman, try editing the post and uploading the photos again.
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I keep getting this message:
The uploaded file could not be moved to /f2/livsterblog/public/wp-content/uploads/2010/05.
And if I try via Z Raven, it keeps stopping at 60% …
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some sort of weird bug. have another go.
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That sorted it.
Yes Minister
According to the BBC:
On Planet Greece some civil servants get a bonus for turning up to work on time. Foresters get a bonus for working outdoors. At least they show up.
There are civil servants called ghost workers because they never go into the office, head to a second job and still claim a state salary. They can’t get sacked, because a civil service post is for life. Unless the incumbent decides to retire in his or her forties, with a pension.
And the government can continue paying for the afterlife. Unmarried and divorced daughters of civil servants are entitled to collect their dead parents pensions. Another lucrative sinecure is to belong to a state committee. The government has no idea how many there are.
It has been estimated that they have 10,000 employees and cost nearly £200m a year, and that includes the committee to manage a lake that dried up 80 years ago.
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crazy!
nice photos dod. i guess I haven’t seen rosabelle for a while – she’s grown loads!
the ex-pond is looking very “zen”;-)
Lovely photos, but what happened to the goldfish?
I would like to say we ate them, lightly battered; but the truth is, they were liberated, along with a bucket of tadpoles, in Binstead Pond.
That dandelion clock would appear to be superior to yours Liv!!! Good photo’s. I give the river a good five minutes in current state when the hoolies arrive!!! What about an ornamental bridge over it? I liked the bridge.
are those anti cat toilet sticks I see???
The sticks show where we planted our miniscule geraniums …