Today’s guest picture show a fine reconstructed Saxon helmet from Sutton Hoo, complete with designer sunglasses, spotted by my brother on a visit to the British Museum.
Thanks to the late night at the Gilnockie Burns supper which didn’t finish until after midnight, I wasted the best weather of the day by lying in bed and thinking, “That looks quite nice out there.”
By the time I actually had got up and been to the producers’ market, the clouds had crept up again. I did get organised to go out for a wet and windy walk after lunch but by the time I had got organised, it had become too wet and windy and I got disorganised again and wasted the rest of the day watching international rugby on the telly.
It was too dark to take decent pictures so I took a couple just for the sake of it.
And that was my day. I might mention that I didn’t enjoy the Burns supper as much as I had hoped, apart from the meal which was excellent. The chief male speakers were very confident and expert speakers but their stock in trade was a steady stream of either coarse or misogynist jokes which sat uneasily among exhortations to celebrate Burns’ humanity. The jokes were funny enough in their way but I feel that I have heard an awful lot of these over the years and perhaps it is time to move on. The bright spot was that one of the organisers gave me an excellent poem which she had written about last year’s event which took place in in very snowy conditions.
An elliptical chaffinch to end with.
Tootlepedal's Blog 
Hope you didn’t win two tickets for next year.
We agree with Dropscone!
At first I thought the Saxon helmet photo was Mr. T himself in new cycle head gear.
It certainly looks quite cool.
No, we were blessed with a box of chocolates instead.
Burns. A very good friend of mine, exercise physiologist Professor Craig Sharp, has a copy of The Old Gray Mare. What makes it exceptional is that it is hand-written by the poet. In addition, Craig has published his calculations of the energy Burns expended to plough sax rood.
A scholar.
Sorry about the speeches last night, don’t go again even if the tickets are free. Your bird pictures were very fancy.
There are some days that seem to be made for being lazy, I’m having one of them myself today.
Enjoy it. Get the feet well rested.
It’s been the same here today-too dark to take photos at 3pm.
It has probably been the most persistently gloomy spell of weather that I can remember though last spring was pretty bad too.
One should be able to enjoy a non-productive day, but I’ve yet to learn to do that…the guilt–self-imposed, of course–creeps in…
And just when there are so many interesting lichens to explore too. Also when you get to my age, you don’t like to waste too many of your remaining days.
Well, in spite of a lazy day and your frustrations with it, I must say it sounds far better than the packing I’ve been doing. Kat and I are making a move to a nearby city (closer to work and lower rent cost) and my day consisted of brown cardboard boxes, inside, all day. And, it was glorious and sunny outside. ~SueBee
Moving house is always counted among the stressful moments on life so you have my sympathy.
Your depths are better than my depths… Agreed, nothing worse than having to sit through bad talks. But you have the most wonderful Chaffinches.
They are a constant source of pleasure.
If you say ‘boring’ again I will bop you.
I’ll get my internal thesaurus our…tedious….unadventurous….stay-at-home….lacklustre…will any of these do?
No.
Sorry about the Burns supper, but your flying pictures are great.
What a shame about the Burns Supper. Still at least you didn’t have to pay for the tickets, I imagine that would have been even more of a disappointment.
The food and the singing were good and it was great to be in a village hall in the middle of nowhere with 120 other people enjoying themselves so the evening wasn’t by any means a total wrote off.
You know how much I like the photos of your chaffinches but I have some good news. I have a new feeder and now I see many chaffinches and bramblings (Fringilla montifringilla) everyday. I will post some photos next days. And I dislike dark days… you hardly take a few decent photos.
I saw your very nice picture of a brambling. Bring on some sunshine.
So sometimes happens: There is little reason to write then it is good to look sport on television.
The photo of old town makes me think of science fiction movies (Star Wars) 🙂
The science fiction people often look back to get ideas for the future.
I admire you so much for not liking coarse and misogynist jokes. How do they even fit in to a Burns supper? one wonders.
The speeches seemed to go down very well with the audience.
If I were a more ambitious sort, I would definitely replicate that Saxon helmet as a winter cycling mask. But not in metal.
It has a certain style.