Brass monkey weather

It's all relative but the normally mild south coast of England is in the grip of a cold spell.

Passing cars have splashed water onto the surrounding bushes creating this fantastic natural icicle sculpture.

 It's not clear at what temperature the above mentioned brass castings will suffer brittle metal fatigue and fracture, but I'm willing to bet it's cold enough.

Oldham on Sea

Looking back through some recent pics I couldn't think for the life of me why I'd taken this photo, it's of the foreshore and mill pond at Emsworth but hardly showing the location off in it's best light.

Then it came back to me, I remember thinking at the time that there was an LS Lowry quality about all the people enjoying a Sunday walk and some fresh air. I forget which painting in particular, there's one where his matchstick characters are walking past the end of two rows of terraced houses observing a quite disconnected street scene within as they pass. If I were a bit better at photoshop I could probably have elongated and stretched the figures to make it more Lowry-esq.

Cruel

Coming into the kitchen after a hard day of conference calls and emailing, I was stopped short by a wonderful aroma of baking, a hint of cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla pod and there it was, fresh from the oven, bread pudding, perfect winter food.

Alas not a spoonful passed my lips.

Why was that, you may ask, is BB doing the will power diet?  If only!!

One of Erica's friends has just had a baby and their group were taking turns in cooking meals for a few days. The pudding was our contribution. Now I'm all in favour of community spirit and helping one another, but I'm sure they wouldn't have missed that really nice crusty bit in the corner.

Haze

Settled high pressure often brings the most dramatic conditions and this misty morning recently was one such example, the grey scale started at the water's edge, with no discernible change from sea to horizon to sky.

Occasionally the sun would break through to provide a spectacular back light.

Before once again the haze descended with a monochrome blanket, occasionally punctuated by a passing boat and the odd marker.

 It wasn't that many years ago that such conditions could be a real nail biting experience and test of a navigator's ability. GPS and the ability to pinpoint a position on an electronic chart has taken away the uncertainty of position finding, but even with radar,  I'm happier staying clear of the busy shipping lanes in such conditions.

Love surfing, hmmm

Fellow blogger Joe The Horse's Mouth loves surfing, and you can see why, lacking ocean swells in our protected Solent waters, kite boarding is probably the closest thing we have going on over here.

 Wandering along the foreshore recently kite boarding just didn't seem to have the same appeal.

Can't think why.

Bursledon Challenge - Results

Ok so not exactly University Challenge, but thanks to all the clever types for their amusing word smithery, my favourite goes to O'Docker for Gustical - Strong, intermittent winds - I might try and put that on wikipedia!!

Broken computers and alas drinking bets down at the Jolly Sailor are not behind this conundrum, rather it's corporate policy. Employees are now invited to provide their own smart phones onto which the corporate voice and data will work. Being a penny wise blogger and socially responsible recycler, I managed to collect 3 company issued Blackberry Pearl's from colleges who were leaving. 

The problem is the company enforced  password of 8 digits has to be changed every 90 days, without warning, you try and use it one morning and the damm thing demands a new password before you can make calls or get your email. Bad enough trying to remember the passwords, but these old Blackberry's have 2 characters per key. Simple answer - think of some memorable words which only use the first character so I don't have to use the shift key - very important for those of us who can't use our phones without our glasses!

So thanks to the BB readers for providing some thoughtful password material, someone will probably tell me I could get an app to do that if I had a smart phone!

And of course the creek is Fowey, not Frenchman's Creek from the novel by Dahpney de Maurier, who's house is in the centre of the picture at Bodinnick on the east side of the river. Patrick deserves a mention for identifying that it also wasn't **** creek, he having navigated there previously without a paddle. 

Snow Go

As blizzards rage across the eastern United States I'm reminded on a mild and wet Saturday, that only a couple of weeks ago we were snowed in.

Admittedly we didn't have to deal with two feet of snow fall, but it was enough to bring the area to a grinding halt and of course it was great fun for small children.

The sound advice is to to stay at home and keep warm, pay heed, in our busy lives there are all too few weekends when you can't actually go anywhere and do all the things that we can't get to do during the week.

So take the opportunity to do something indulgent, catch up on old movies, write to a friend, work your way through back copies of old sailing magazines, savour the smells of something cooking slowly and perhaps a glass or two of something special.

Bursledon Challenge

While clearly not in the Tillerman challenge league, here's a conundrum to while away these long winter evenings.

What 8 letter nautical words can you construct using any of the following letters?

Q E T U O A D G J L Z C B M

and with these as mandatory

 I S

Budding word smiths should have no trouble with that, so bonus question.

Which creek is this not and why?

And finally why, and very specifically why would I be interested in the aforesaid 8 letter words?

Have fun.

At the dinghy dock

That's one way of avoiding marina fees!!