With the aid of Dave Farrow’s ‘A Guide to the Garden Birds of Britain & Northern Europe’ we are trying to learn our birds. This morning we think we identified a nuthatch; and great, coal, and long tailed tits; on the bird feeder. There was also a robin, but we are fairly sure we can spot one of those. The pole holding the feeders has gone a bit wonky, but gravity works quite well on the hanging items, even if the fixed trays are on a bit of a tilt. I just thought I’d mention that in case anyone thought the photo was askew.
Once we had completed the building of our second Billy bookcase, we looked up to see wisps of thistledown floating around the birds. I do believe I can honestly use ‘we’ in this context today. Full of confidence, we had a coffee and built a third bookcase in good time to collect Sam from the railway station. The thistledown turned out to be snow, but it was wispy, light, and, despite continuing throughout the day, not settling.
After lunch Sam went through the fourth assembly at a rate of knots. He did allow me to bang a few nails into the backing sheet.
Photograph number 12 in Elizabeth’s scanned series was taken by a young woman aspiring to be a professional. I do hope she managed it. In about 1977 she had a portrait project to complete for her qualification course. Unfortunately I can only remember the name of her mother, who worked in my Social Services Office. This was Liz McKay. The student daughter asked me to pose for her and produced a very pleasing set of black and white pictures. It was more than thirty years later that Alex Schneideman, a true professional, was to repeat the compliment. We will come to one of his pictures a bit further on ‘through the ages’.
The original scan was taken directly from the print, as the photographer, of course, kept the negative. The result was covered in dust and minute hair marks. I therefore had another iPhoto challenge, requiring quite a bit of retouching. This was simple and successful.
Sam, we hope, had a nice relaxing time until dinner. This was Jackie’s arrabbiata with fusilli. Thoroughly enjoyable. Sam and I drank Roc des Chevaliers bordeaux superieur 2010. Jackie, as usual, quaffed her Hoegaarden.