They both love cats

My daughter, Bryony, and I visited another village where my Mum and Dad live in a very flat part of Cambridgeshire that, interestingly doesn't appear to have great many flats but possibly the highest proportion of bungalows in this part of the country if not the world. As the two captured here will soon have a combined age of exactly 100 I am wondering whether they will also at that point also be exactly the same height. One is growing and one is shrinking but neither seem to be bothered about it. 

"You won't get it."

For some reason I can gaze at this snap for ages. It's totally unposed, an almost random shot, which I thought might be useful to doctor one day - the white rectangle nicely blank, space to add some reverse naughty image on the laptop and a replacement picture on the wall sprang to mind at the time. But now there are the two guys' expressions, the contrast of position and shirts. One looks out of proprtion to the other as if I'd cut and pasted one in from elsewhere and not checked dimensions. The picture on the wall looks as if it should be another way up and the strange-shaped table is just sort of there. Black plug in white socket. Leads gushing out here, rolled up scroll there. Red box. Blue chair. Brilliant white lights. Apparent ceiling and head-line. The wall-line that stops. And on it goes . . . And the whole scene reminds me of some old famous painting but someone will have to help me out there as I've no idea whose . . . but there is one I'm sure. Anyway, for those who see none of that or just fancy a laugh, there's a collection of LSDera freebies for the best caption or text on the projector. You can use the Comment thing if you like. 

The eyes had it

People talk about sleepy villages but four colleagues at a recent meeting illustrate a nice flow of animated interest through to the Land of Nod in the middle of a large city! Fuzziness not, on this occasion, due to my smoke filling the room but out of courtesy to the nice individuals concerned. For an e-learning stroke technology meeting there was a remarkable amount of paper on the table. (Thought I'd better say that before anyone else does.)
 

Twisting by the 'Pool

Beginning to emerge from hibernation now, and first exercise was some evening exercise somewhere in Liverpool. These undoctored mobile-phone-camera shots will bring back fond memories for anyone who used to smoke Three Castles cigarettes.

The hue is neither due to the camera being on one side of a glass of brandy nor my red-eye control being deficient but more or less as it was.

As you'll spot later, or may have spotted already if reading this after I add the daytime snaps, the taxpayers fund a unique combination of tedium and excess on these occasions when I am sent to wilder places. I guess that's fine as it all works out OK in the averages.

The idea of twisting by the pool has concerned me since the Seventies when the aptly named Dire Straits brought it to my attention. Never having been one for either twisting or pools on the grounds that I look ridiculous doing either and two wrongs would make a big, probably final, splash all right, I was glad to have this fine selection of pillars, ropes and chains to hang on to when the early Sixties Beatles tracks which I think the local Council insists are played at every club brought on the urge to sway.

There seems to be some robot rolling towards me in the three pillar shot which has a somewhat disturbing air. Especially as I would have thought that I would have remembered the fellow.

This marks the end of the LSDera as that fine old quango that has brought us such gems as 'Q for effective practice', 'm-learning: reaching across cultures' and possibly the worst freebies in the history of freebies, in the shape of plastic beer mats containing a suspicious-looking straw-coloured liquid which was supposed to gloop around when you ran your finger over them but didn't, gets extinguished at the end of the month.

Hopefully some of us will get vacuumed up by the LSN Noo-Noo and I'll still be able to provide some glimpses of the hyphen in Post-16 education.

Rod Rubber writes to say that there has been an inordinate amount of scraping and banging in the village but precious little evidence of life after my departure. Indeed no-one has been seen for some time and I no longer get reminders to Open This Way Up on my car door in the Towcester Tesco car park. There is even a rumour that the Colvo has been vrumpled by an even larger tank in the shape of a truck on the A43 but these have yet to be confirmed.

I really quite like this last picture.