images of nature

fractal: A geometric pattern that is repeated at ever smaller scales to produce irregular shapes and surfaces that cannot be represented by classical geometry.

can you see it? :D

anyway, the london plane is a fine tree; a hybrid of east and west - a metaphor for london culture. i was happy to leave london for the sticks and i wouldn't go back now. i do miss the culture though - but you can't have your cake and eat it. i miss it when i see the fantastic urban images people take; the city is so capricious, the happenings seemingly so much more transient and plentiful than anything in the country.

hey, why can't i have my cake and eat it?!

cow parsley in autumn

october

the recipe for disaster asks for a can of worms

I may as well declare this blog open.

Now I've got to think up some stuff to put in.

'Sculpting' alludes to a desire to be creative/expressive though I'm not sure how, hence 'With Soup'.

I’m not even sure I actually like soup…

My Soup

Some people say that chicken soup is the panacea of all ills and the eternal comforter. If you’d have asked young ian russell he’ll have told you it was cream of tomato. Soup to me was cream of tomato; if my mum offered me ''soup'', it wouldn’t be anything else. I’d have it with little bits of broken bread – not croutons, mind. Oh no, we’d never heard of them – just small square pieces torn from a larger square slice from a rectangular white loaf.

After I’d eaten the soup, I’d be left with a tell-tale orange tide mark circling my lips, looking like a prototype for Ronald MacDonald. I think at that point my mum would grab me and scrub my chops with a damp flannel before sending me out to play in the street.

Now, if I think of soup at all, I’d say my clear favourite is my wife’s gazpacho. On a warm day, al fresco, it is to die for!

Now, mulligatawny is anglicized Tamil for pepper water, and minestrone is a soup of ''multitudinous miscellanea'' – there are few rules to this soup, anything goes. It’s the kind of soup that if it was a flag, I’d salute it, if it was a lover, I'd wrap my coat around it and if it was a dog I’d throw it a stick…for a very, very long time.

So, that just about covers all the bases (everybody knew about animal crackers, eh?)

procrastination is the mother of stress; shop early for christmas?!

So, I bought this donkey yesterday.

Normally I don't take much notice of those flyers that newspaper people slip in between the sections of their newspapers.

I believe they're called flyers because they fly to the floor as soon as you open the paper. And it's a short hop from the floor to the recycle bin which is their destiny - unread.

Anyway, last week this happened and I looked down and this donkey looked up. And it said Buy Me!

So I did. Yesterday, with the convenience of internet shopping and I hope it is going to make someone's christmas a bit special this year.

I don't much like conventional shopping - all that pushing and shoving, never finding an assistant when you want one, beating great hords of them off with a stick when you don't. All that frustration ending in inevitable disappointment. But internet shopping is a boon! In fact, I find it so enjoyable I fear it's addictive...

After I put the donkey in the basket, I looked around to see what else they had and I ended up with a couple of mosquito nets, 50 small trees and a fresh water supply for 50 villagers. But the donkey still remains my favourite.

Of course, it isn't right to brag about your charitable donations, and I wouldn't. If I'm honest, I couldn't pretend to be very charitable. I agree with causes if pressed but I must have a high conscience threshold because without pressure it rarely crosses my mind that people are so much worse off than I would ever know.

The beauty of the 'Oxfam Unwrapped' scheme is it makes it fun - more than an act of slipping a fiver in a tin or buying a ticket for a raffle. Also, the bizarre notion of buying exotic farm animals as christmas gifts just about gives you permission to mention it to your friends in the pub.

And this is a mutual benefit because the more it gets around, the more donkeys will be wrapped up this christmas.

Or camels, or milk cows, or goats...