swan – Page 2 – derrickjknight

Back On Track

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James Peacock of Peacock Computer Systems collected the iMac today and took it off for surgery. In the process he helped me out with the WordPress problem, and I was able to insert into the ‘No Resolution’ post

the sunsets at Lymington.

This afternoon we went for a drive in the forest.

The tide was out on a glassy Lymington River which was bright and clear in the sunlight.

On the eastern side of the river stand the reed beds, where a solitary swan, tail in the air, dived for food.

Undershore Road road runs alongside the river.

Jackie parked, at the point above, so that I could take a ramble along a footpath.

This narrow way offered on the left a view of the reed beds.

We have had such an extended dry period that the path mostly remains reasonably dry;

although streams meander from the river.

All this work has been carried out on my Windows laptop. I think you could say I was back on track.

This evening we dined on spicy Turkey, lamb and mint sausages, mashed potato, and carrots and runner beans al dente. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I consumed more of the Fleurie.

Lymington Quay

On a wet, mild, morning, I inserted the penultimate section into the garden album, and printed the final batch of photographs.

This afternoon Jackie drove us to Lymington quay and back. She left me to find Dials Antique Clocks, recommended yesterday by Highcliff Watchmakers, while she went in search of Peacocks and baby clothes.

We were both successful. Dials has a most picturesque location at the corner of Quay Street. The clock repairer was happy to tackle a traditional clock bought by Michael for Jessica and me about 35 years ago. He didn’t do battery operated digital clocks like Mum’s carriage clock that had become so corroded that, when Elizabeth cleaned it, the contacts fell off. When I explained that it was one I had bought my mother many years ago, and bore my name as part of her identification of presents to be returned to the donor when the time comes, he changed his mind, although warned me of the cost., which is really not a factor. I have, incidentally, told Mum that I don’t any longer give her a present I wouldn’t want back at a later date.

I left the clocks at the shop and wandered back to the still water.

The only real sign of life, where the boats were all moored, was of the sea birds.

A wagtail bravely advances towards a gull.

Speaking of gulls, surely this mongrel pigeon has at least dual heritage.

Swans were busy preening,

and a pair of sleepy mallards dozed to the rippling sway of their rowing boat.

For our dinner this evening Jackie produced her delicious lamb jalfrezi, chicken tikka, onion and mushroom rice, and an onion bhaji. I drank Old Crafty Hen and The Cook chose sparkling water.

Water

This morning Jackie cooked a superb sausage casserole (recipe) lunchtime meal for our friend Norman. Crisp vegetables and amazingly smooth mashed potato supplemented the dish. Dessert was an excellent plum, greengage, and apple crumble. Jackie drank sparkling water while our visitor and I shared a bottle of La Croix des Papes Chateuneuf du Pape 2012. Norman had travelled in reverse my usual fortnightly journey from his home in Preston Road, to visit us. We collected him from New Milton Station in the car.
After coffee Jackie drove us to have a look at the sea and the Isle of Wight before taking him back to the station for his return. Our octogenarian friend of more than thirty years, dating from when he had been my Deputy in Westminster Social Services Department, had, in his youth, lived in Southampton and had circumnavigated the Romans’ Vectis on many an occasion. As I have mentioned before, he is writing a book about passenger ships plying the Bay of Naples. He loves travelling on the water.
The problem with having potted plants and hanging baskets wherever Jackie can find to place them, even perched on the walls at the front, is that, especially on this, the hottest day of the year so far, they need constant watering. My task this evening, was to irrigate those at the front of the house. There are water butts all around the building, collecting the life-giving liquid from the guttering. It was just my luck that the one in the front garden should be empty. That meant I had to traipse round the side of the house to fill my can from one at the back. Still, Jackie had already watered far more at the back.
Afterwards, as we sat on the patio, with our books, and drinking sparkling water, we were visited by the timid pigeon that comes nightly to drink from the minuscule lily pond that began life as a household water tank. So shy is the bird that as I reached for my camera it flew away, but had left its mark on one of the convex leaves as it sucked up the water cupped in a concave one.
The novel I finished reading this evening was ‘December’ by Elizabeth H. Winthrop. Once I got over my irritation at the continual use of the historical present used by the writer, I was gripped by this book. Winthrop has a keen eye for detail and an insightful approach to her characters. The story concerns Isabelle, locked into a self-imposed silence, and her parents’ struggles to encourage her to speak. The eleven year old child is, herself, unable to break out of the prison in which she is trapped. Her parents feel guilty and helpless, and their nerves are stretched to the limit. Psychotherapists cannot help. Eventually the girl is freed by a shock. The author’s understanding of the condition is sound and plausibly represented.

Clipped Wings

Continuing with the card-making process, I began by trying to understand why, when printing through iPhoto on the computer, pictures were being cropped in a frustratingly restrictive way. In many instances this did not matter much, but when it came to a butterfly having its wings clipped this was intolerable. So I got up this morning determined to crack the problem.

Essentially what was happening was that the iPhoto customising facility offered specific frame sizes and sliced the pictures to fit. It is a while since I used my Canon Pro900 printer to any great degree, but I seemed to remember this not being the case with that piece of equipment in the past. So what was happening?

It occurred to me that I was not seeing the usual box on the screen showing alternatives that come with the printer. This offered me much more flexibility. iPhoto must therefore be overriding it. It is, of course possible that I have not fully understood the capabilities of the Mac. Nevertheless, I had to find a way round this.

I thought I would work outside iPhoto. How could I do that? Then I had a brilliant idea. I would drag the pictures onto the desktop, open them up in preview, and print from there. And what do you know? It worked. This had the additional bonus of the printer’s options for producing multiple copies of the same photograph on one sheet of paper. Instead of having to find two different pictures that would conveniently fit together, I could now fit up to four samples of one image on the sheet. I was able to rescue the poor Peacock, and to offer unpruned Clematis.

I had not used the butterfly at all, because the clipping would have ruined it. The Clematis, however, had worked to some extent as a squarer image than the elongated one I had wanted. I was now able to use both.

Now, I am sure there are those of you out there who would have managed this in a much easier way, but please remember I am a septuagenarian, and when I was your age, before space travel brought the computer into its journey to the palms of your hands, we made do with film and chemicals. And time.

The swan taking off is an example of the inventive creativity my able assistant brings to her part in the process. Not having been able to decide the size of this print that would work, I produced two, one really rather too small. Jackie decided to place the smaller version inside the card to echo the larger image on the front. This also involved considerable trimming so that the whole concept made sense. Once having hit on this idea there was no stopping her. Bits snipped off pictures began to turn up in all sorts of places, inside, on the back, to the left, to the right, in the centre. Here a swan, there a swan, everywhere a swan. When writing my inscriptions on the back I even missed some.

Despite her antipathy towards photographic cards, believing that such artwork should be drawn or painted, Jackie was heard on occasion to punctuate her work with such phrases as; ‘I could buy that one’. It made me feel I must be doing something right.

We spent all day in the ‘factory’. Today’s tally of products placed in the plastic wallets was fifty three. That makes 153 in all. Jackie thought that should have sufficed, but I found some more photographic paper that just had to be used up. More were consequently printed. The tally will be recorded tomorrow. .

Jackie still cooked a delicious hot arabbiata which I enjoyed with Lusac St Emilion 2011, and she with her customary Hoegaarden. Before this I learned what it is like to water 83 pots so full of flowers that you cannot see the containers. I just helped. I didn’t fill the whole eighty three.

A Swan In The System

This morning I took a train up to Waterloo to visit Norman then Carol. Because Jackie’s car was being repaired I needed a cab to Southampton Parkway. Lindsey from Point to Point arrived bang on time. He explained he was taking the safe route through London Minstead because crossing the A31 was too dangerous. I agreed. As we travelled through the village he pointed out houses that had been used for other purposes when he was a child growing up there. Examples were the old post office and a second village shop. On a corner in London Minstead he pointed out where the Knight family had lived. He has been a patient at the Lyndhurst surgery all his life, and spoke very highly of it. He offered himself as a fount of local stories.

The station was packed when I arrived. The man selling tickets informed me that there was a two hour delay in getting to London. The platform announcer told us that the train, normally consisting of eight coaches, contained four. On entering a carriage I was one of the few people who managed to secure a seat. Actually it was only half a seat with room for just one buttock. Checking out the time delay with other passengers, I was relieved to learn that this only applied in the other direction. I would be able to keep my appointments but not get home on time, for the problem would not be rectified before midnight. The concourse at Waterloo was filled with serried ranks of hopeful travellers, eyes fixed on the departure boards. This did not augur well for the return journey, and, indeed, by 6.45 p.m. the sight was the same.

From Waterloo I walked to Green Park by the route described on 22nd November. From The Embankment to Green Park crowds of people photographed each other against their chosen backdrop. Geese, having abandoned the lake in St. James’s Park in search of tourists’ proffered titbits, drank from puddles on the paths.

I took the Jubilee Line to Neasden and walked to Norman’s where he fed us on roast duck followed by Christmas pudding, accompanied by a fine chianti. After going on by tube to visit Carol, and spending a couple of hours with her, I boarded a 507 bus to Waterloo. There was no let-up in the morning’s disruption, although the train I did catch was only about 40 minutes late in arriving at Southampton.

It was, however, standing room only on the ten carriage train. I could get no further than the second coach. Even in the first, first class, carriage there were no seats available. A certain amount of hilarity was engendered by the guard’s announcement that there was a buffet car at the front of the train, which it would have been impossible to reach. I was able to give Jackie an accurate estimate of the arrival time and she was there to meet me as I came out of the station.

Today’s problem, across the region, had been cause by ice on the tracks at Woking. In December 1987 I had set out optimistically from Kings Cross on the very first evening of my commuting back home to Newark. This journey, normally lasting 80 minutes, took four hours. The train came to a standstill when a swan became stuck in the braking system. It could not be freed, so a replacement locomotive had to be sent down from somewhere in the far North. As I arrived home some time after midnight I wondered: ‘What have I done?’. Fortunately it was never as bad again.