V is playing Christmas music (to death) on the CD player. Just had Guadete which I like both as a song and as a Christmas song and then came someone’s rendition of In the Bleak Mid-Winter which reminded me:
I have some very nice watches, which I tend to wear when we go out or at weekends. But, during the week, at work or when working at home I wear a particular watch.
So, the plan is that, this weekend, we shall go to the lakes. Here, right now, the weather is glorious; cold but clear blue skies and sunny. The leaves on the trees are at their very best.
It would seem that Mr Poole, recently attacked by a herd of cows, thinks it is ‘rare’ for this to happen.
Not so, I’m afraid, Mr Poole. True, unsuspecting dog owners/walkers should be made aware but I found it to be frequent. For all the dogs we have had, I was always wary when walking across a field where cows were and, absolutely when the field contained a group of young cows or cows with young.
I first became aware of this fact, probably, thirty years ago. They were, of course, not after you, but the dog. And the RSPCA are wrong when they say it is a large dog that can cause this. Nearly all our dogs have been bearded collies and they are not particularly large dogs.
After the first time it happened, I became nervous when crossing a field of cows. And there have been several times where we (the dog(s) and I) have had to make a run for it when they suddenly come charging from one end of the field towards you. Now, I’m not particularly frightened of cows. When I was a child, on my Uncle’s farm, I used to help with the milking and that included rounding the cows up. I learnt the way to make the cows frightened of you and not the other way around.
But when there is a dog in their field, no amount of action can change what appears to be a blood-lust. They want the dog and there is nothing to stop them I’ve tried. So yes, it’s fear; but tinged with respect for nature. In the end, the only thing to do was to keep the dog close by, walk quickly to the stile or gate and, if they did start to make a run towards you, run like hell.
Secondly, shamelessly, I wish to prostitute myself for Seal. Well, not the bloke, just the Best of album. Jack is giving away 10 of these albums. I’m hoping that his readership is not so great that there will be too much competition, but I suspect there will be. On the other hand, I don’t expect my site to generate much traffic for him, sorry Jack. BTW, I prefer his blog now that he has gone back to telling us about the trials and tribulations of his job. Although the posts regarding the news were good, this stuff is really interesting and why I read the site every day. So thanks Jack. I like the lined paper theme too. So name me, Jack but I don’t feel any shame!
I know I’m getting old and I know that it must be the same for many of us ‘oldies’ but I can’t help getting annoyed about the bad spelling and incorrect use of words that I find.
Apparently, Americans (as in the people from the USA) use alot instead of a lot, quite alot. I’m not sure about afew or abit but I guess it’s much the same.
However, when I see English people using it, it really bugs me. The prevalence of the joining of ‘a’ to other short words is rife on the internet. Type one of them into Google and see! But why? These days we have spell checker. And, so far, as I type this into my word processing package, afew and abit are underscored in red to show that they are not words, whereas the package automatically changes alot to ‘a lot’ and I am having to go back and remove the space, leaving the ‘new word’ underscored in red.
I wonder if, in years to come, a lot will become alot?
Another one that does get to me is the incorrect use of your. This applies when they mean you’re. I realise that this has something to do with the increased use of texting. After all, when using predictive text, typing in your instead of you’re is so much quicker and, I have to admit, I’ve done it myself occasionally. But, when it comes to writing, why do it? It doesn’t take much effort to get it right.
However, the concern from my point of view is that it’s not that people are being careless or trying to be quicker, it’s that they honestly don’t know the difference. I used to see it at work in the UK. It seems that anyone under about the age of 30 didn’t practice spelling or grammar when they were at school.
And, perhaps that’s it. And for people who didn’t have much schooling, I can, kind of, understand. But for those people with degrees or, even, ‘A’ Levels (or whatever they’re calling them now), the propensity for using any of the above examples is simply showing what a poor education you’ve really had.
And that’s another one. ‘They’re’. Often, ‘there’ or ‘their’ is used instead. And from people who present themselves as ‘well educated’. It’s a joke.
Language is a beautiful thing, much more than just a method of communication. And I am not putting myself up as the perfect example of using English correctly (often starting sentences with and ‘and’ or ‘but’ which I realise may be just as annoying to other people), but these examples I’ve given are basic and make the reading of a piece, post or blog and, especially, a CV so much more difficult as my eyes are drawn to these fundamental errors and my opinion of the people reduces accordingly.
However, if you wish to annoy me alot just sprinkle afew of these into you’re blog and, maybe, afterall Ill get used to it in abit and just pose the question ‘am i bovvered?’, to witch the ansa maybe no, knot rilly.
I’m not the only one but, still, I feel guilty. It’s been 10 days since my last post! And, as a result, traffic is down. Not that traffic is so important, but it’s nice to know that there are people that read my blog (and I’m talking about the regular readers, here).
In the UK, if someone suggests a trip out, where you were going to travel for two hours to get there and two to get back, you would tend to make a day of it. So, for instance, when we lived in Herefordshire and you decided to go to, let’s say Aberystwyth, you would set of at, say, 10 a.m., reach Aberystwyth, have lunch, enjoy the afternoon having a walk around and set off home at 6 or 7 p.m.
I’ve noticed he has hardly been mentioned in the blog recently and thought I should put this right. Note that the picture is NOT Rufus. This is how he SHOULD look if we were to treat him like a show dog and not have his hair cut. He actually looks much cuter.
Today, in Milan, the sun turned green! Yes, that’s right, it was only a slight hue of green, but green it was. It was very strange walking around in this slightly green light. It seemed to make the leaves on the trees (yes we have a lot of them in Milan although how they survive in the pollution beats me) much greener than normal. Walking around, people were just staring up towards the sun or there with their hands in front of them, examining them, as if they had some dread disease. It was quite freaky, just like some sort of Science Fiction film. Except that we were here and it wasn’t some film set.
We were catching a plane and I quite like certain airlines. My favourite is Lufthansa followed by Alitalia. For about 9 months I flew Lufthansa every week to Cologne and I found them to be great. So, although this time we were not going to Germany, we were using Lufthansa and that meant a connection in Frankfurt.