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!

Too many cooks.....

....don't necessarily spoil the broth. Quickie from last night's family get together to celebrate niece Lizzie's marriage in South Africa today....the stay-at-home's had a great time! (my fuzzy head tells me so....)

Sunny in parts.....

A couple more from yesterday, when the sun shone for longer than 5 minutes at a time.....

IS IT A BIRD?..........

I'm trying very hard to gear myself up to do a bit of decorating, but I haven't quite managed that 'leap of faith' yet.....maybe if I open a can of paint and breathe deeply........

Headless in Tynemouth

ANONYMOUS CAFE SOCIETY.....EVEN THE DOG

HIGH HEELS (and yes, she walked on tippy-toes even without the shoes!)

Caught the Metro a couple of stops along the line to Tynemouth this morning then walked home along the beach......burnt my nose again.....

Seaside dereliction....High Point no more

On the days when I only get to the bottom of the street to hang over the railings to take a picture this is what's behind me.....one of many boarded up  pubs on the seafront between downtown Whitley Bay and Cullercoats. OK, so when it was open for business the decor left a lot to be desired (a lot of tartan upholstered seating and resolutely stuck in the 70's, along with the piped music), but the food was decent (though the, er, head waiter's suit could have done with a more regular clean) BUT, much more importantly, the beer and company was good....but all gone now for maybe 5 years. It'll probably end up being ripped down and rebuilt as executive flats, sorry apartments, with secure underground parking ('superb sea-views, within minutes of all local transport and amenities') when the property market eventually takes an upturn....question, am I a grumpy old git to see that as a backward step, a community asset being turned into expensive personal spaces? (Don't worry, no answer required.......I really shouldn't have opened that bottle of wine...........)

OTHER SEMI-RELATED (DERELICT) STUFF

99Rooms........an interactive journey
"99Rooms is an unique internet art project that interweaves wall painting, photography, animation and sound in a manner entirely unknown until now. Shortly after its launch in June 2004, more than 4 million individuals throughout the world have already visited this interdisciplinary composite work of art. 99rooms stemmed from the mystical, often apocalyptically charming pictures created by Berlin artist Kim Köster within the countless vacated premises of East Berlin‘s industrial sector. Photos of these paintings were initially produced in digital form and then animated through a cooperative effort between Richard Schumann & Stephan Schulz and then subsequently complemented through a personal sounddesign from Johannes Buenemann. The final product of this year long effort is a scintillating intermediary world which invites the observer into an journey through its morbidly-beautiful rooms"

AND The Hospital.....creepy medical dereliction with a floorplan......

Dehydration blues

I overdid the sun yesterday (I'll not inflict a picture of my pink-and-peeling nose on you, but just to give you a hint, it's nearly the same colour and about as rough as the concrete at the bottom of that picture up there, I'll leave the rest to your imagination!).....and the wine consumed after the sun sank below the yardarm didn't help either, suffice it to say I've got a bit of a sore head this morning. So that one's from yesterday..... I couldn't work out what the 2 guys in black in the foreground were up to, the one at the back had a metal rod that he was using to poke things with....maybe they were council officials checking the outlets from the Table Rocks pool on the left (Whitley Bay's first open air swimming pool, Victorian but now disused, but the local dogs like it!) Next up a couple from this morning's bread run....and there's a couple more on Flickr


3 FISHERMEN


OLD MAN AND THE SEAWEED

In need of a nap

Sultry weather and I'm feeling a Sunday afternoon snooze over a good book/trashy film coming on.....that or I'm coming down with something.....it was an effort just getting down to the sea-front and hanging over the railings this morning. But these 2 walkers somehow reminded me of the Abbey Road live webcam where you can watch an almost constant stream of tourists re-enact that famous Beatles LP cover.....strangely enough a lot of them seem to be Spanish......it comes with a sound feed so expect plenty of irate horn action from motorists! OK, I'm off for that nap.............

Another one bites the dust.....

Yep, that's right.....EzHighway has been suspended at the other place for the heinous crime of linking to extra-large (ie bigger than they do) images on his SmugMug Pro a/c........to be honest, I'm lost for words.

Mixed bag

This chick (what a whopper!) was taking it's chances the other night strolling nonchalantly along the road, his/her mother/father was perched on a nearby roof squawking fit to burst and dive bombing cars as they came around the corner.....luckily no lives were lost!

I could take a variation on this picture most mornings.....this fishing boat, the Stacey E, does a regular-as-clockwork sail-by around about 10 o'clock......top marks from me for colour coordination!

.....just a random chap with a dog on the beach.

OTHER STUFF

Haven't tried this game yet, but it sounds like a good stress buster, y'know, like after a Virgin train journey.....

"Virgin Trains have built a fantastic Street View zombie killing game to promote train travel in the UK.

In the game you have to follow directions in Street View to your nearest train station. But watch out for those zombies because just as you think your journey is going OK hordes of the living dead suddenly appear.

When this happens you have to grab your ticket machine and blast the zombies to kingdom come. As every zombie killer knows, just as werewolves can only be killed with silver bullets, zombies can only be killed by train tickets."

Play Don't go Zombie...go Virgin

BLAST FROM THE PAST

I've only had time to watch the first 10 minutes so far....but it looks good!

"Reporter Martin Young follows the fortunes of a group of Glaswegian holidaymakers as they spend their annual Glasgow Fair holiday in the seaside resort of Whitley Bay, Tyneside, during the blistering July of 1976. There's crazy golf and a trawl around the arcades, followed by a drink at the club and a snooze on the beach. Refreshments of cheese rolls and drinks from a thermos flask complete the picture."

Watch it here on the BBC website

To the North

Today was my first 'officially retired, no longer on the payroll' Monday, up until now I've just been on holiday.......haven't worked out a new regime yet.....therefore I've done sod all but written lots of lists and made zero decisions.....except maybe to take full advantage of the 3 months left to run on the all-zones metro travel pass!

ANOTHER THING

Sundry Sunday pics.....

.....a bit short on narrative......just pics from the morning bread run........