Still snowy.....

Cold (sea)front

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

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.....

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

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.........

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......

Walking on water....

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

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.........

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.............

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

Surf's up

New camera.....this was taken from the bottom of the street looking North maybe a mile or so....

.....and this one looking South from Marconi Point (on the Whitley Bay/Cullercoats boundary) towards Tynemouth (about 3km as the seagull flies)

So I bought myself a little retirement present, a Fuji Finepix HS10 with an in-built 30x zoom lens (I know my limits, I'd never, ever get around to changing a lens and anyway my camera bag....one of those re-usable Co-op carriers, yep, I'm a class act!.....is always filled with onion skins, semi-sucked sweets and half-done crosswords) But the compact still has a safe place in the broad scheme of things, for one thing it fits in my pocket!

Midgie attack

So I had 2 possible projects today.....finish off the wallpaper stripping (postponed....way too humid for anything physical indoors) and sorting out the shed/hosing down the backyard (postponed....swarms of midgies congregated under the overhanging ivy, I could do without bitey bit) Only thing achieved has been picking up the wallpaper I ordered last week (came home like a damp rag, panting gently) But at least I took some pics on the way.....here's a couple.....

THE LIFEGUARDS MORNING COMMUTE

ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE

It looks like the night shift might have been a tough one...............

Supersaturated Sunday....

....with lots of leaping.....no, not me, that would be Daizy in the distance.....luckily she has a foghorn voice.
'NOW Grandma', did you get it?' (me....'hmmm, not sure.....do it again, didn't quite catch it')


much later..........(I'll leave you to fill in the gap)
'3,2,1, I'm jumping.....' (me...Diz, can you do it just ONCE more?)
Bigger on Flickr

The deed is done!

This one's from last night, really threatening skies over the North Sea but bright sunshine on the coast....dramatic stuff! I had to go up to town today to hand in my 'acceptance letter' to the HR department (didn't quite trust it to the postal system!) and I nearly melted, it was stifling even though there was a breeze.....one thing I definitely WON'T miss is shopping in town in the summer!

OTHER STUFF

"UNphotographable is a catalog of exceptional mistakes. Photos never taken that weren't meant to be forgotten. Opportunities missed. Simple failures. Occasions when I wished I'd taken the picture, or not forgotten the camera, or had been brave enough to click the shutter."

The Mating Rituals of the Water Shrew.....animated in slo-mo (and very, very funny!)


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