Photopost: Festival Fireworks

I had to work from home today because I was sore enough that moving and eating made me feel queasy. At lunchtime I had to go into work to sort out a problem with access (totally accidental). I was using my stick, and bumped into a colleague who asked why I was working at home. "Because I woke up this morning in too much pain to walk anywhere." Ten minutes later, we had a conversation that ended up with me describing how I was off home to lie on my front on the couch because sitting up was getting too painful.
"Oh, I really envy you on your couch." says she.

I just ignored it, but it's now really bugging me that I didn't make reference to how she could enjoy the excrutiating pain too. Or similar put-down. I really hate esprit d'escalier. Dammit!

There is always tomorrow, but it would be too late, and anyway, I'm pretty sure it was thoughtless or badly put - she really meant she'd prefer to be working on the couch at home, rather than suggesting that I wasn't working, or that I wasn't in pain/didn't have a good reason to work from home.

Anyway, on a far more entertaining note, have some fireworks photos. These are all taken from the comfort of my bedroom window, while wearing my jammies. There's an advantage to living in such a noisy place!
Also, the only processing has been the watermark and resizing. All the weird effects are due to long exposures and in some cases, the high winds.


A good example - no photoshoppery, even though it looks like someone scribbled on the sky with a pencil.

I'll stick the rest under a cut; have a look:

Photo Post: Adventures on the east coast - smugglers, caves and tunnels!

My explorations and adventures along the east coast continue. This time, we explored Cove, which is a teeny tiny hamlet of about ten or fifteen houses perched on the cliff edge. This part of the coast consists of very high sandstone and mudstone cliffs which drop sheer down to the rocks and sea below. In places, rivers have cut down through the sandstone, creating a valley which opens up to the sea. Pease Bay is one such place, with a beautiful strip of white sand. Once a small village, it's now overrun with caravans, and is frightfully Butlins-esque, complete with the "Recreation Hall", where they have shows, songs and dances every night, with a disco for the kids and karaoke for the teenagers. I admit, I was a bit intimidated when we stopped there for a bathroom break before heading home.

In contrast to places like Pease Bay (which is still very beautiful and you should still visit it), there are places like Cove. At Cove, there's no river to cut down through the sandstone. Instead, part of the cliff has slumped down, leaving a half-moon bay, bounded on one side by the continuing line of cliffs, while on the other a line of harder sandstone extends into the sea, parallel with the cliffs. The whole bay has been enclosed by walls, creating a very secluded harbour:



Cove is not the sort of place one could possibly find caravans.

Photopost: Food and Sunsets

The other night P and I made the First Pasta to be created since flatsharing started to happen. This is significant because it was brought into being after P got home from work at 10.30pm; under non-flat-sharing circumstances, this wouldn't ever have happened, partly due to not wanting to disturb my flatmate, and partly because I have to get up at 7.30am, and so like to be heading for bed by 11pm.

However! The joys of flatsharing are that all flat inhabitants are awake and involved in the cooking, and so can't be disturbed. Even better, instead of having to send pajh home so I can go to bed, I can be floating about in my pyjamas (and getting in the way). This time, however, I was allowed to help! This is mostly because P was Cruelly Savaged by a Very Sharp Knife. There's something endearing about a grown man sucking his thumb (to prevent bleeding) and directing chopping operations by gesticulating.

The resulting pasta - created by combined effort - is a thing of exceeding yummyness. In order to mark the occasion, this evening I made my plate of pasta pose for me (for a total of one minute before I fell upon it, ravenous). So, have some arty-pasta shots:

Tomato-y goodness:

Have some pretty (photopost)

There was a lovely double rainbow the other day. 'Twas pretty, indeed.


All-in-one shot. Bother that new building...


A close up. Isn't it amazing when you look at it closely?

All is well in the world of the Jehane. I have a more interesting post to do, involving tunnels, caves, abandoned cottages, and a seafaring tragedy. However, it must wait until I have time to fiddle with Many Photos...

Tech Support: the Admin version.

Today I was sitting happily subjugating spreadsheets when one of our researchers came in, to provide me with an interesting example of a dichotomy in technical knowledge.
"Hello! I have a difficult IT question for you. The external mouse for my laptop isn't working, and I was hoping you could come along and fix it."

So, I trotted along to her room, to find that what she was waving around was... not remotely a mouse. It was, instead, a receiver for a wireless mouse which she'd dug up from the depths of the stationery cupboard. (Where I'd hidden it for exactly this reason. There's no mouse to accompany it.) Now, it was round, but it had one teeny little button, and a huge dip in the middle, and wasn't hand-sized at all. In short, it didn't really look like a mouse.

I didn't have the fortitude to explain, so I ran off with it, and returned with a shiny new mouse.

What makes this interesting to me, is that this same researcher is completely fluent in statistics programmes and GPS and mapping programmes, all of which are so complex that they make my toes curl* just looking at them.

People are so interesting!

*not in a good way.

Picture post: More from East Lothian in May

While I was in North Berwick, some people I am in chaoots with came down for a visit and a picnic. We stopped off at the butcher for Serious Sausage Rolls (they're HUGE and taste good and are very filling. Just what's needed when going exploring), and then went to explore Dirleton Castle, stopping off at the very pleasingly round doocot first:


We then walked round to the castle entrance, which is still very imposing:


The castle was attacked by cannon; the damage wasn't ever repaired:


The entrance reminded us all of the castle in Knightmare:


We had a good poke about round the castle. This is the passage to my favourite room:

(The doors are as small as they look - people were shorter then.)

In which my father has a sense of humour.

There's a major dinghy sailing competition in North Berwick* this week, with sailors from all over the UK. Most of them are adults, and many of them usually sail on lakes.

One bloke (an adult) wandered up to my dad, who is performing cat-herding duties on the beach. He looked across the beach - where the tide was half way out, and said, "Is this place tidal?"

My father replied, "Oh, only twice a day."

This bloke had driven himself and his boat up from England. Apparently he managed to do so without looking at a map.


*North Berwick is a seaside town, which - if you look at a map - is very obviously next to the North Sea.