28th November 2014
This is the fifth and final day of the black and white flower photo challenge. On the second I posted a close-up of cow parsley that is having a second flowering this year. I finished my response to the challenge with a shot of what this plant usually looks like in winter.
Apart from the soggy newspaper atop a skip in which butterflies perched on pearls in Shorefield Road, it was a sunless morning when I took my Hordle Cliff top walk in reverse.
Openreach vans are regular visitors to this area. I stopped and chatted to a gentleman 
working on a cab, as we now know the engineers call the cabinet. When, during the first of my recent calls to BT, the Indian adviser told me that the problem was in the cabinet, I would have been even more confused had he said ‘cab’.
This evening Jackie drove us to Wickham where we met Elizabeth and her friend Cathy at the Chesapeake Antiques Centre open evening. Mulled wine and mince pies were served and a beautiful singer performed. I found it difficult to negotiate the crowds in the confined spaces of the corridors between the packed rooms and display cases, so I soon repaired to the Veranda Indian restaurant where I waited for the others, and Cathy’s husband Paul to join me. There we enjoyed our usual splendid meal and Indian lagers.
On our return home I was once more unable to access the internet, and had to post this the next day.
As usual, Derrick, I enjoyed your post. I get such a kick out of your blog because we speak the same language, and yet, I must learn what cow parsley, a cabinet (We would call that the electrical panel.) and a skip is. I promise I won’t tell you what the American take on these words is in the future. I am just saying I enjoy this. Besides our shared language, we share another thing with no need for interpretation…the frustration of the Internet provider hooking up service. It is the same here. I will say that upon moving into this building, it took two months for them to admit that my address existed. After that, it was all down hill and ended in the “Internet/Telephone Guy” telling me that he could provide Internet and telephone service after all…but only in the cellar. In all sincerity, he told me that he could hook it up in the old coal storage room.
Ginene
Thank you Ginene for your thoughtful comment. Please do continue to give me American meanings of words – all part of our shared richness. For me, the marvel is that the internet works at all – that puts the frustrations into perspective.
I think a skip is known as a ‘Dumpster’ ? in the US, it is a huge metal thing that people can hire to fill with building or household rubbish, it is then taken away by the firm for disposal.