Still snowy.....

Weather report

I'm saying nothing, it's probably not printable.......

Cold (sea)front

Can I just point out it's damned chilly out there?

Flush Tracker

Just for fun, track your crap......

Flush Tracker: "I just tracked my flush online to raise awareness for World Toilet Day, Nov 19th. Track yours"

Christmas is coming......shock, horror!

What can I say.....it's apparently true.....

Still here!

Just busy.......

Nearly the same as the other place but taken 10 minutes earlier...

CHANGES IN CHILD BENEFIT EXPLAINED......

Cold front.....

Two quick pics to prove I'm still in the land of the living......

Cabin fever.....

......is starting to set in, waiting for deliveries is doing my head in. Tomorrow I'm having a day out come hell or high water! I did manage a quick dash down to the seafront this morning though, not that there was a lot of action.....





OTHER STUFF

I'm strangely tempted by the idea of broccoli and cheese muffins

......but maybe not one of the things you'd try on a first space date....

Weather window?

It was pouring down at 9am but by 10 the sun had made an appearance.....I thought I'd better make hay while the sun shone.....probably a good move.....

Monster alert.....

.....it's not up to EZ's standards but just look at those hairy legs!! Enough to say I served a speedy eviction order and he's making a new home down at the bottom of the garden.

Some slightly less scary flora and fauna.....it's been a slow day.......

Miscellaneous Monday shots

Up to my neck in wallpaper paste at the moment, thought I'd better do the scenic walk to the shops before I dived in!

Does my bag look too big for this?

.......well, maybe a bit!

Out to lunch.....

Quickie post.....just back from Sunday lunch at Tynemouth Station, it's a wee bit more upmarket than the 'station buffets' of yore......not a curly ham sandwich in sight...

I had some company.....

.....now we're all off for a bit of a snooze......

Coded message.....

.....for 'still a bit rough'

High temperature

.....me not the weather....coming down with something I think, I'm taking to my bed with a large Lemsip, a 2 litre bottle of water and an audio book....

LAST PUNTERS ON THE BEACH

ONE OF THE MORNING REGULARS

Mishmash

Assorted images from the morning bread run.....
Cullercoats beach....

A hazy view towards Tynemouth.....

solitary shorts, Cullercoats......

and one from last night....the Tyne Bridge reflected on the west side of The Sage

A musical evening.....

Just back from an evening at The Sage seeing The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain....a good time was had by all but I have to say my photographic endeavours were mediocre in the extreme....it's a photogenic place but the lighting is weird at night, maybe I should have read the camera manual......

Rough stuff....

.....offshore but not actually THAT bad on land, just a bit breezy but warm (though some of those waves dwarfed the lighthouse on the end of the pier)....it looks worse than it was! Of course we're a tough lot here on the Tyne, bloody have to be!

Good for the feet....

.....apparently.....but I gave it a miss today.....too bloody cold!

Winter pasture.....

.....they've moved the full-sized plastic cow at the care home around the corner.....I wonder where the milkman leaves the morning deliveries.........

For Lizzie.....Spicy Sesame Potatoes recipe

SPICY SESAME POTATOES

1 KG potatoes
dice and boil until cooked without salt, no need to peel them, a scrub will do
In a large frying pan heat some oil and when it's hot add
4 Tablespoons sesame seeds
1 Tablespoon mustard seeds (black or yellow or a mixture of the two)
1 Tablespoon cumin seeds
(they should start to pop if you've got the temperature right)
Cook for a few seconds until the sesame seeds are just starting to go golden
Add the potatoes, turn and cook until they start to brown
Sprinkle with
1 Tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika/smoked paprika OR cayenne pepper if you want them hot and spicy
the juice of a large lemon (I sometimes add the grated rind too)
Cook until the potatoes start to go crispy or to taste
Check the seasoning, you might want to add some more salt
Eat them hot or cold!

Added bonus.....hours of tooth-picking pleasure when they're gone..........

Accidental backyard fish......

......no idea what the cut-off cable is, hope it's nothing important..........

Under the eaves......

.....there's unexpected rot.....but it'll be fine......I'm sure it'll be fine......tell me it'll be fine.......

Man in black (with a bag on a blurry beach)

Not a lot to say about this one....it's a man with a bag on the beach.....maybe he'd been collecting shells....or he was on his way to the shops.....or it's the reincarnation of Andy Warhol....hey, whatever......

Imagine for a moment you're a binman.....

.....you see a backyard gate wide-open, but no bin ready for collection.....you're filled with concern for the resident, maybe there's been a break in, maybe the doddery old lady has had a tumble when doing a bit of recycling, so what do you do?

a) clock the fact that there's scaffolding everywhere
b) ditto there's a large, red builders van
c) and a skip
d) and a yard stacked with  slates and builders rubble
e) AND, for good measure, two builders on the roof.....hey maybe, just maybe, THEY might know what's going on
f) or, heaven forfend, stick your head round said open yard gate and ask the doddery old lady (at that moment making a cup of tea and cursing the fact that she hadn't moved the bin into the back lane before the slates arrived the afternoon before)
OR
g) none of the above?

And the answer, of course, is 'none of the above'.....oh no, you dial 999 and request the police and the ambulance services! 10/10 for social conscience, 0/10 for common sense!

It made for an interesting morning.........

PS......I might have forgiven them BUT they didn't empty the bloody bin.......

It's coming off....

......the roof that is, so this is just a quickie......

Walking on water....

Just a quickie, I've got a kitchen floor to wash.......

Back to the sea

One of the regulars.....he must live over the road from his sunbathing spot (on the sea front) and I often see him in his deckchair bronzing his limbs of a morning....radio on, a cuppa to hand, but with his back to the sea staring at the traffic.......

A bit of a.....

....low-res, pixelated sort of day..........

A bit of North Sea glitz.....

It started out a nice day and then the clouds rolled in....but it gave me a chance to get to the bottom of the source of vague, but definitely memorable, cat pee aroma that's been bothering me for a couple of days. Result.....the washing machine has worked it's socks off, the cats are looking well-and-truly pissed off and the air is comparatively fragrant.....probably too much information.........

But did he jump?

 

Sadly not....because that really WOULD have been a good one! (but, hey, I was ready and waiting.......)

Then there was this comedy duo who, I have to say, displayed a few interesting fishing techniques......

OTHER STUFF

I stayed up way too late last night playing this......

"Things could not be easier: you have to herd all of the identical stones into clusters, at which point they will flip over with the uniform efficiency of a Mexican Wave. The trick is getting them together. A stone is flicked into a direction and it will perpetually travel until it hits a boundary or obstacle. A board with one or two stone types is relatively easy to crack, but when the game starts to hit four it gets tricky. Every board is shaped differently, both on its boundaries and inside, making the shuffling a more deliberate endeavour. You have to maneuver a stone around bends, past other stones and into its own group. but once a set of stones has flipped, none of them can be moved. So you have to keep your end game in mind and not accidentally corner a stone beyond redemption."
Play Rock Garden Deluxe

Bench-to-bench salesman

So the conversation probably went a bit like this......

Man with the bag: Mornin' pet, do you want to buy some tabs....good price, good price
Old biddy on the bench: Eeee no pet, aaah divvent smoke
Man with the bag: What aboot fer yer auld man, or one of the bairns or grandbairns mebbe?
Old biddy on the bench: Naa, naa, not today pet
Man with the bag: Now are ya sure aa can't tempt ya?
Old biddy on the bench: Wey no man, aav'e just telt yer
Man with the bag: Aall reet, aall reet, keep yer hair on wumman....

NB I know he was selling cigarettes because I was the previous old biddy on a bench he tried his silver-tongued charm on....the rest, of course, is pure conjecture.....

On the up and up....

.....though it started more like this......

But just to make sure, I'm off to bed early with a good book and a flask of tea.....nighty night!