Down Memory Lane

 

Down Memory Lane

This Week's Blog Memory is based on a combination of my Ambulance Days when I met Mr Darcy at The Jane Austen centre in Bath and that glorious BBC production of Pride and Prejudice.

My original version was posted on 27 May 2009 entitled

Mr Darcy Found Alive and Well 

and this attracted some interesting comments. 

Click HERE

 I posted a revised version on 4 August 2010 still entitled

Mr Darcy Found Alive And Well

Click HERE

I had a lot of fun writing these. Please take a look and feel free to comment

Blogger's Grand National

Blogger's Grand National

In May 2009 
I wrote a post called

They're Off, Blogger's Grand National

It was about our annual best known Steeplechase at Aintree and featured my then Blogging friends, using blog names as horses and blog owners as riders.

It was a lot of fun and perhaps some of my newer readers might find it amusing. I can add you in as part of the field in due course.

Click HERE to see it and if you have any comments please comment there. Thank you.

I hope to return to Blogland soon but I am active on Instagram.

NUN JOKE

The Sunday Muse #86A

I could not resist using this great prompt as a vehicle for a Nun joke

Sister Marguerite was attending her duties when she noticed some of her sisters looking at her in a rather strange way, giggling and some making rather strange comments.

"Ah! sister Marguerite", said sister Cleo, "I can see you got out of bed the wrong side this morning!" and laughed and wandered off.

Sister Bernadette looked at her quizzically and said, "Did you get out of bed the wrong side today?"

"No, I'm ok, thanks, nothing wrong or unusual!"

"Sister Marguerite!!", said sister Theresa, "I can see you got out of bed the wrong side today!"

"No, I'm ok , , honestly!"

This went on all morning and she was beginning to get annoyed and made some curt comments herself as the morning wore on, 

Eventually she met Mother Superior who looked her up and down and was about to speak when Sister Marguerite cut her short by saying, "People have been asking me all morning if there is something wrong with me. Honestly, if anyone else asks me if I got out of bed the wrong side I shall explode, even if I have to say three Hail Marys as a penance."

"Well, my dear Sister Marguerite, I was not going to ask you that question but I do have another question I would like to ask.

"Why are you wearing the Bishop's shoes?"

lol

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No offence meant, just good humour, if any Nun's are reading.

To reach The Sunday Muse please press, HERE

PLEASE CHOOSE ME

The Sunday Muse #85

My word, the weeks fly by, don't they?

Once again The Sunday Muse comes around.

I thought this prompt was very appealing so I just thought I would let the little kitten speak for itself

Thank you Carrie for this great prompt.

PLEASE CHOOSE ME

Photography by Guy Kawasaki

Please choose little me.

I hope you will agree.

I'm sort of cute and fluffy

Though I'm also rather scruffy.

Will you adopt me?

Other's have dropped me.

Can I share your home

Where I can freely roam?

You might well be smitten

With me now as a kitten.

I can't promise I will stay

In this form and in this way,

For one day I will grow.

Will you tell me then to go?

I'll still be the same me

Could I stay?  So please agree.

I'll sit there on your lap

And have a long, long nap.

While you gently stroke my fur

And I will gently purr.

If you don't show me rejection

I'll give you my affection

And bring to you a mouse

or a bird into your house.


Please choose little me
I hope you will agree.

Eddie Bluelights

7 December 2019

To reach The Sunday Muse please press HERE

CULINARY DISASTERS

The Sunday Muse #84

Image Source

Culinary Disasters On The Wall

The evidence in my kitchen is plain to see

My cooking is wanting to the nth degree.

Years of grime and greasy fat

Cling to walls of my one bed flat.

With huge high hopes I read each recipe

I read each twice with sheer necessity.

Ingredients prepared with loving hands

Made it safely to my pots and pans.

All went well until the cooking,

Was it something I'd been overlooking?

Because each heartbreaking burnt disaster,

Spattered walls and the ceiling plaster

My simple intentions to inspire

Ended in a raging chip pan fire.

It's a wonder I am alive to tell

Frequent disasters which did not go well.

That explains the wall erosion

Years and years of pan explosion.

Now I do not cook at all

It's ready meals from the local stall.

Eddie Bluelights

1 December 2019

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To reach The Sunday Muse press HERE

WHY DO ZEBRAS HAVE STRIPES?

This week I am very pleased to participate again in Carrie Van Horn's weekly poetry circle,

The Sunday Muse #39

Image Source

Hey Mate! Why Have We Got Stripes?

One day Zebra A said to Zebra B,

"Let's conclude the debate which we could not agree,

On why we have stripes, and what does it mean?

And why they are there to be clearly seen?"

"The answer", said B, "is simple, of course,

For without them we would look just like a horse!"

Said A, "That is daft and your answer is silly,

Please think and give reasons, you illogical filly!"

"Hmm, maybe it's all about recognition,
Courting and selection and mating ambition,
Imagine a stallion approaching a mare,
Walking with a swagger and a lusty stare."

 'Hey, honey, you're it, I'm in romantic mode!
We have the same stripes and a matching bar code!'"
"At last you have noticed," she said with a stutter,
As she brushed his fetlock and her eyelids did flutter.'"

Said A, "That's just plain nonsense and you well know it!
If you have any brain cells, wise up now and show it,
Us zebras have stripes and they are all the same,
Unlike tigers in Asia, all unique, scientists claim."

"I don't agree and I read it somewhere,
That our stripes are all different, just see over there,
That's Charlie, I can pick him out from the rest
By one little stripe ~ look there on his crest!" 

"An interesting thought, you speak like a tutor,
But our brains are all finite, and not a computer,
There are too many bar codes by far to remember,
With all combinations of each herd and each member." 

"It could be to confuse all those hungry predators

Lions, leopards, cheetahs and hyenas,

"I don't think you're right and my reason for saying,

Is stripes make us stand out, thus assisting the slaying!"

"I think what you say is entirely absurd,
That's why we stay close in a very big herd,
Where we're often safe if we all stick together,
Lions often miss out, if we run hell for leather."

"So the reason I feel it is not camouflage,

For a lion will attack us with wild sabotage.

It is in their breeding and for each hungry pride

They want us for food to fill mouths open wide!"

"Oh don't frighten me with that horrible stuff!

I'm feeling scared and I've had just enough! 

So tell me the reason and just what it is?

I'm keen to get answers for this very old quiz!"

"Research has suggested the stripes may be for

Cooling us down in a high temperature,

Because we are grazing in that very hot sun

Unshaded for ages, while we eat a ton!"

"But non zebra grazers feed hour after hour,
All prey for lions, wanting them to devour.
Impala, Antelope, Springbok, Great Kudu.
With none having stripes ~ ask any Gnu!"

"And how do stripes work, why should they cool?
What is the reason? and what is the rule?"
'A' said to 'B' that he'd work hard and try,
 To answer that riddle, to explain how and why.

"Heat strikes the black in a different way,
To the white all day long on a very hot day.
Where white meets black it causes an eddy,
Resulting in cooling, making us feel less heady."

"That may be so but I really don't buy it!
I think my solution is better, just try it!
It's all about flies which suck blood when they bite us,
And not camouflage, or lions that fight us!" 

"It could be infections from blood sucking flies,
Biting us as we graze, wanting us as a prize.
They could spread disease which would make us quite ill,
With a very good chance they might even kill!"

"Experiments show that for black and white types,
The flies are attracted, but not when in stripes!
When striped there's confusion and flies will not settle
So to bite and drink blood will not test their mettle!"

"So that is the way us zebras evolved.
It may be the answer to that old problem, solved.
But does this really prove 'stripes evolution',
And is it accepted as the true solution." 

"Darwin was puzzled and had no idea

about this conundrum, he was very unclear.
The fact is that for the last two hundred years
There is no solution, or so it appears!"

"All this may be rubbish as ideas we plod,
It could be the creator, let's call him God.
He may like our stripes and made us this way,
For he's King after all, and has final say!"

* * * * * * * * * 

Eddie Bluelights

20 January 2019

Research to this problem is still on-going  and scientists are baffled.

To reach Carrie's website at the Sunday Muse please press HERE




I recently joined The Sunday Muse and just missed out on Muse #36 which I found interesting so I have written something HERE

A Delightful Spot On My Way Home

Something a little different from me today.

I am most fortunate and blessed to live close by to delightful scenery all around me. Sometimes we take it for granted when we have such beauty on our doorstep, yet sometimes it becomes breathtaking and hits us smack in the eye ~ like today on my way home from visiting my daughter and son in law in Bath. 

I had been helping decorate their baby's nursery ~ my second grandchild is due on 19th August.

I was thirsty and fancied a beer shandy so I decided to visit a pub called The Jolly Sailor,  just three miles from my house, and one of my favourite places on a fine day or summer evening.  It is situated near the River Avon and beside some lock gates and an interesting weir.

I neared the pub and was smitten by this view of the shimmering water with the backdrop of hills bathed in evening  sunshine and I just had to take a photo.

Last year I had walked up to the cluster of trees, known as Kelston View, shown on the top tight hand side of the photo, with wonderful views of Bath and Bristol.  I shall do another post on this sometime.  

I jumped back into the car and headed for the pub, just a few hundred yards further, but not before getting another shot showing more glorious countryside.

I parked the car and walked towards the river and I'd like you to share the beautiful weir awaiting my gaze ~ makes one glad to be alive.

. . . and then I panned a little further downstream to this delightful setting, with Kelston View just showing.

Behind me were busy working lock gates with traffic passing up and down stream all day long.

I saw something half way across the weir and I crossed over the bridge to the other side to investigate, taking another photo midway. 

I wondered what was in the water and so I zoomed on a was rewarded with this shot of a heron, standing in a million fragments of glistening water.  I managed to hold my hand steady.

I enjoyed my beer shandy beside the water and talked to a fisherman who said there was plenty of fish there to share with the heron . . and we shared the beauty of the evening for a while in conversation.

Just time for one last look at the backdrop of countryside before heading back home.

Just a quick resume about my leg.  I am pleased to report that it is healed completely and has taken just 2 months and not the year the medics thought it might take ~ I am so blessed to get that out of the way.