of snags and snogs

Many of you have urged me to post updates on both the post-apocalyptic pond and the state of dormancy that has been our beloved building site in the Pyrénées.

Well, maybe not many of you. This is for you Ruth…

The once war-zone has become ‘un lac d'amour’. The mute swans have discovered a new form of love and are forever snogging…

A black swan looks jealously on…

Leaving behind this idyllic scene, we head off to the Pyrénées…

…to find, to my utter amazement, that the builders had not only returned, after their extended furlough…

…but had very nearly finished!

The snagging (you know, those bits that are forever left after the main job is done) is all to be finished next week. Maybe.

So there is a god! (Albeit of the noodly variety.)

Above: a picture of the backside…

fowl play

It’s been a bad week in the micro-ecosystem that is our pond. And it can all be blamed on hormones.

The white swans, previously of good standing, have transmogrified into monsters.

The male has taken to attacking anything that moves. First, a whistler duck mysteriously died, killer unknown, then the heinous crime, the death of my close friend Bruce, the male black swan found mutilated and headless by the pond. Gone was the one animal that I could have a decent conversation with…

At first, a fox was suspected, but on replacement with another male black swan, the true culprit became clear; the white male. His immediate attack on the new swan showed his true colours (er…white?)

The new black male had to go for his own safety, to be replaced by another female.

Then the decision was made to remove the white male before further deaths ensued and because it was discovered that, in fact, the white male was an imposter, an illegal. His black feet gave him away, marking him as a swan not to be kept in domestication by law. We had been sold a dud.

Removing him was far from easy, and ended in disaster. Having found somewhere that would take him, no questions asked, the transport proved his undoing. So stressed was he from his enforced removal, and subsequent cramming into a box, that the box became his coffin, as his heart gave out en route. A sad day…

The whistler has been replaced, and a pair of Ruddy Shelducks added.

So now peace has returned to the pond, as both swan couples are now lesbian, much less prone to warlike behaviour than us males.

Here’s all the recent pond photos…

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sky corrupted

It has often been said that power corrupts. I have seen this at first hand.


Sky, once a cute, harmless, cuddly puppy, has gradually grown to become more daring. We started to realise that perhaps we might have a criminal in our midst when underwear mysteriously disappeared, only to reappear again several days later, partly digested.


She has now become fully grown, and begins to try to exert dominance over Pippa. You can see her mind at work.


Here is Pippa at play, doing her favourite thing in life; chasing sticks…

Whilst Pippa searches for her latest toy, hurled into the deep snow, Sky stands and watches. You can see her brain ticking.

Pippa runs with her prize, full of pride.

Sky chases the next throw and stands over the stick, exuding threat. The two are in balance, who will be the first to move?

As a show of her new found dominance, Sky waits for Pippa to back down, then runs off with Pippa’s most prized possession. Pippa, enraged, gives chase. This, my favourite picture of the two dogs:

Sky stands alone, conqueror and thief, with her newly stolen and unwanted prize. Power.

Aren’t we so much like dogs?


Phil


hmmm…. I can feel a movie coming on…

The end is nigh

Dear friends and family

On hearing the news of the preemptive strike made by North Korea on Europe, we have thankfully made it to our bunker in the Pyrénées. The feeling of doom lies heavily in the air. Nuclear fall-out is covering the whole valley in the form of a mysterious white ash.

I fear for the lives of many in the village, as most of the houses seem empty. Those that remain have never seen before the likes of this strange white substance that is falling gently from the skies, like gently falling strange white stuff…

Local wildlife, already mutated, huddle together for companionship and to escape the cold.

Thankfully I had the foresight to fit nuclear winter tyres to our car.

I fear that the end is nigh…

Ooh…er…

The end.

A Week in Wye

Lots of rambling of the non-verbal kind over the last week or so spent in the Wye Valley, thanks to unseasonably dry weather, albeit mixed with a wind-chill to give concern to brass monkeys.

Went around Tintern with the kids…

The wye valley walk…

past Cleddon Hall…

and the local forest ‘Bargain Wood’…

Meanwhile, the problems with the landslide in the garden continued. With my lovely neighbours doing a bunk, costs are going up like the new wall, that is, slowly but inexorably.

Now I’m back in France, arriving to torrential rain in Toulouse and now snow (again) in the Pyrénées.

Blimey…

Phil

All pictures from the week here…

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Touching up

That got your attention didn’t it? But no, I’m not talking about that kind of touching up, more the photographic kind.

Several of you have asked what kind of trickery I’ve used in the most recent photos I’ve sent around. The answer is a little complicated, so feel free to ignore this and just look at the pictures…

The whole process revolves around ‘bracketing’ three (or more) photos with different exposures, then merging the three together. This allows you to get much more detail into the picture, including the very dark and light parts, much in the same way that our own eyes do.

I’ve tried this before using Photoshop, but the results were rubbish. The big change has been using a program called Photomatix. This gives loads of control over the final image. It can give very natural results, but can be tweaked to give 'hyper-normal’ photos that can look 'painterly’. It works great on scenery as above. It’s very good on buildings:

Note that the bloody scaffolding is still there…

This one has no scaffolding:

 

It even can work on wildlife, though movement is a real problem:

Thankfully, Sky doesn’t move very much.

I just took this one in the garden to show how all the detail is brought out:

A big thanks to Geoff for introducing me to this program:

Here’s some recent photos that use this jiggery pockery:

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In and around Montauban

An old(ish) schoolmate and vet is our latest guest, and apart from a goodly dose of nostalgia and some really fine games of snooker, he has taught me how I can (finally) take photos that look like the ones I can see in my head. And what a strange head it is…

Thanks to Geoff, we’ve visited the villages around Montauban normally reserved for better weather. We’ve had everything from balmy beach weather to blizzards all in the space of a single day. The up side of this was photographic skies and lighting, and no tourists but us!

Montauban, as always, looked terracotta red:

Cordes-sur-ciel was amazing:

Puycelsi, the ideal stop for a great meal. Tartar de boeuf with a great local wine refuelled us for our continued phototourism:

and finally Bruniquel with its hill top castle:

Now I’ve figured out how to photograph bricks, I’m gonna try mountains with Geoff this weekend!

Here’s all the photos from this trip. To see them in more detail, click on the first one then use the right arrow on your keyboard to see the next… [AFG_gallery id=‘47’]