1. Come on you lazy lumps. It’s time you were up and staying safe.
2. Training for field sports!!! (Not strictly accurate because he’s or she’s a harvest mouse, not a field mouse, but it’s not always a good idea to be pernickety about these things as Munguin can get a bit shirty .)3. Pose nicely, little one, and you’ll maybe get to be on Munguin’s Soppy Sunday…the ultimate prize for a wee bird!4. Washington State.5. A wee Musk Beetle who created considerable interest at a certain bar in a certain village in Bulgaria. Now conceivably the most famous beetle of his kind in the world!6. There’s always one in the family who gets themselves out of focus in the photos.7. Guizhou, China.8. They say it like it was wrong. Everyone needs a friend. Munguin even made friends with me.9. Told ya so!10. Innocence, ie it wasn’t me who dug up all your seedlings!!!11. I’m a cerulean warbler. You’ve probably not heard of me, but I’m a bit dashing, eh?12. Saltzburg.13. Munguin is growing Kiwi fruit. But who’s going to pick it. Need to find a Brexiteer.14. Another one of Andi’s bee photographs. How does he get them to stay still for long enough?15. What? You expect me to be wearing a dog collar? Me? A goat? Jings. you humans. What are you like?16. One of Munguin’s buddies.17. I popped in because I thought you could do with some cuteness.18. St Kilda.19. I got my eye on you…well, both of them actually.20. OK, that’s the floor show over. Go home, stay alert <snigger>, stay safe.
Munguin’s grateful thanks to Andi, Tom, John and Dave.
Spent the whole time going “awwhhhh, lovely”. I’ve been to Salzburg – smashing place. Mozart was born there you know! Loved the dogs (can’t believe I typed that!) – so cute. Cats were great too. Funnily enough I watched the Lion King last night. Must have been a premonition.
And the orangs, well as Ed would say utterly life affirming. I’m so pleased that despite losing their mums, they’ve found orang friends and humans to care for them.
The Village Street in 1988 showing restoration work. You can see the quarry in the distance. It was used extensively by the military to provide materials for the building of their garrison on the island:
I like the picture of St Kilda which shows it as it is now. The military presence is so pervasive and you can hear the noise from its generators from some distance. It is difficult to get away from that and experience the ‘remoteness’ any more.
Thankfully the wildlife is still there.
I’ve probably said before – I used to say “Hello” occasionally to the last resident of St. Kilda. She lived not far from a pal of mine in Clydebank. She was only 8 when she and her family were evacuated from St. Kilda back in 1930 when life on the island had become all but impossible. She died just a few years ago. Her name was Rachel Johnson. I’ve often wished I could visit St. Kilda but that’s unlikely now. Still, never say never.
That’s fascinating Andi! I read in the Wiki article that the last people left in 1930. It makes you wonder how people manage in such a remote and isolated location. Surely there’s a limit to how much self-sufficiency could be possible. You could keep animals, but I don’t know how much agriculture could exist in such a location. And surely the time comes when you need something that you can’t make yourself. So where do you get it? And where do you get the currency to buy it? Interesting to think about!
From Michael Powell to Bills Forsyth and Douglas, Scotland endures as the resonant repository for British cinematic mythology. An impressive addition to that tradition, this is a moving, factually-based investigation of the last gasps of life on remote St Kilda. Besieged by hunger, in-breeding, and a remarkable lack of contact with the outside world, the five families remaining in 1929 finally wrench themselves from their wild, beautiful island in a semi-voluntary act of evacuation to the mainland. The film both celebrates the close-knit community’s daily life and examines why, in its reluctance to adapt, it could not but disappear. Neither pastoral idyll nor a ‘we had it tough’ catalogue of survival strategies, it’s more a laconic account of the strengths and strictures of family and ritual – the Sabbath, funerals, a wedding, work and coming-of-age. Here, indeed, lie the connections with Bryden’s script for Walter Hill’s The Long Riders, and with his stylistic idol John Ford.
Here’s a link to the National Records Scotland on St Kilda, lots of detail.
There is an image of two people posing with a soay sheep and lamb but have a look at the stone wall behind them and mental calculate, a cubic metre of stone will weigh something in the order of 2.8t! I have spent many hours building dry stone dykes, almost 2 years full-time. I’m very impressed, not by the quality but the size of the boulders hoisted up, unless the wall is only a foot high on the other side!
A small pox outbreak killed many on St Kilda reducing the population to about 40, it was thought a visiting ship introduced the disease. MacLeod of MacLeod then started sending families behind with rent on the Macleod lands around Dunvegan Skye to St Kilda as a way of repopulating.
I’d like to get a copy of that. I would miss nightclubs and the theater, and there would have been no satellite television reception. Or electricity to run a television receiver and computer for that matter. Frightening to think about! 😉
No 3
Met with my brother yesterday in his garden, first time in ages.
Watched a family sparrows being fed by the parents, all afternoon, what life is about.
Then Soppy Sunday to confirm.
We have a couple of sparrow nests in the garden and watching the dad trying to encourage the little ones to try to fly is a fantastic way to spend an afternoon. Goodness they make such a lot of noise for very small creatures.
Munguin always leaves out lots of food when that’s going on, because we’re pretty sure dad uses it as an enticement.
I wish I had Andi’s skill at capturing stuff like that.
Believe me, Tris – there’s a lot more luck than skill involved 🙂 Great pics (no, not mine!) as ever.
I like the delightful musk beetle, that iridescent green is almost jewel-like. I find that most insects are worth a close look – many are weird, wonderful and sometimes beautiful creatures. Here’s a thing though – yesterday I noticed a bumble bee which seemed to be in distress. It was floating on the surface of the water in one of my bird baths ( nothing fancy, by the way – one’s an old pottery casserole, the other a bucket). Anyway, the bee didn’t seem to be able to take off from the water so I thought I’d help by putting a finger beneath the bee and lifting it above the surface. This I did and the bee promptly stung me – Ouch! – and flew away. I did have the presence of mind to note that it was a Tree Bumblebee.
And I must say I’m impressed to see Munguin’s buddie – the Buddha, no less – now we know why Munguin is such an enlightened penguin.
Tris…..With the fine pieces of decorative art in Muinguin Gardens such as the Buddha, it occurs to me that you don’t have any pink flamingos. Very popular in America! 😉
LOL…….Pink lawn flamingos are a standing joke here. A testament to bad taste.
One prank is to cover a lawn with them along with a sign that says “You’ve Been Flocked.”
Andi…..I’ll bet that bumble bee has used the “distressed in a bird bath” scam before to lure unsuspecting passersby. Some miscreant sociopathic bumble bees will sting you just for the fun of it. 😉
The miscreant, sociopathic bee. Conjures a fantastic image.
The more so for me, having written “bees in unity, is loves expression”
It was my meditive phase.
Pretty certain there’s a nest on my roof. I quite often see a bird outside my window hovering just at roof level for a few seconds before it flies off. I’m guessing it’s dinner time for the kids. It’s too fast for me so anyone who can photograph something at this speed has mega skillz.
Reminded me how fortunate I am to live where I do.
We had a days boat charter to take a Japanese film crew and geologist out to a few places, Kilt Rock being one of them. They flew a drone round and about at Kilt Rock and when the operator landed it on deck there was great back slapping, hooping and cheering. The geologist saw me curious, I was thinking this is going to be raucous if this happens every quarter hour shooting, glad it’s stationery rocks I have to find. She explained that they only have this one drone left, that they cost about £2000 and they were so pleased that the “pilot” was finally getting the hang of it.
Was that just last Spring, seems so long away.
Alan…..great story! Clearly you crash a few drones before you develop your piloting skills. 🙂
I was watching the Superbowl (the championship game of American football which is far bigger in the States than the World cup) and was impressed with the action shots they were getting from unusual high angles. Then I saw a drone zoom by in the air, and realized that the TV production people are now using drones for sports coverage. Amazing things!
I suppose they could use drones for soccer coverage (incorrectly called football in the rest of the world), if anything ever actually happened that was interesting. Which is pretty much never, what with people just kicking a ball around the field willy-nilly, which occasionally (very rarely) goes into the goal for which one……..yes, only ONE…….point is grudgingly awarded.
I might suggest that they could spice up soccer by eliminating that one point goal thing…..which only happens if the ball accidentally gets by a guy who’s positioned there to try to prevent ANY points from being scored. There are no less than five entirely different ways to score points in American football, with different numbers of points awarded for each….1, 2, 2(a different way,) 3, and 6.
The final score in this year’s Superbowl was 31 to 20. Kansas City Chiefs over the San Francisco 49-ers.
If you could score 51 points in a game of soccer, you might really have something. Off topic, but just sayin’. 😉
Watching carrots grow in a bucket is way more interesting than Grid Iron, but my new favourite game is the Lingerie League, can’t be beaten for sheer entertainment value, although I keep getting distracted when they use their fingers to communicate the next play.
LOL Kangaroo……Perhaps only Americans can truly appreciate American football,
but I do agree that the Lingerie League brought a new dimension and more worldwide appeal to the game. 😉
Seldom, if ever, will you hear ‘soccer’ in Scotland, Danny. It’s always football (unless usage has changed considerably since I left all these decades ago). Soccer is a particularly English linguistic construct – English as in country rather than language – and derives from ‘association’ football as the round ball game came to be known, being administered by the Football Association.
In the English public school habit of giving things abbreviated pet-names, ‘association’ became soccer – even if it is a stretch of pronunciation, more visual then aural. This distinguished it from Rugby Football and the oval ball, or oblate spheroid to be technically accurate. In the same way, but more obviously, rugby became rugger. Football is therefore the older term and older game. Rugby takes its name from the English public school, where a boy called William Webb Ellis reputedly picked up the ball in a game of football and ran with it, leading to the new variant we now call rugby. His name is commemorated in the rugby world cup trophy.
Neither soccer nor rugger became part of everyday sporting language in Scotland, in my memory at least, but the modern generation of Munguinite residents will be able to tell us if that has changed.
Thanks John………Easy to see that the American game is similar to rugby, from the shape of the ball, and the fact that it is mostly carried or thrown down the field, but also gets kicked for three different reasons at three different times in the game; particularly through H-shaped goalposts, where the crossbar must be cleared. And I do see its historical association with an earlier game called “football.”
I remain somewhat perplexed about how “association” became “soccer” in the round ball game. There is an “ss” of course, but that’s certainly not a “cc”. And there is nary an “e” nor an “r” nor an “er” anywhere in “association.” But I’m being picky here, and we are after all talking about the English who are a very strange people (from an American perspective.) 😉
Agreed, Danny. As I said it’s more visual than aural and was probably influenced by the abbreviations Assoc. Football for the game and Football Assoc. for the governing body. The last syllable ‘soc’ given a hard ‘c’ and the diminutive ‘-er’ added in the same English propensity for bestowing pet-names on players… Johnson to Johnners, Blofeld to Blowers etc.
LOL John……It does look more visually sensible as Assoc., and the “-er” ending as you described.
Speaking of pet names, sometime back, I read an interesting and entertaining article (don’t remember where now) about the practice of many “important” men in England…captains of industry, cabinet secretaries, aristocrats, etc……continuing to use in their careers the childhood nicknames they had back in their public school days. I remember one example was Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury…..who was always known as “Bobbety.” I assume that sort of thing must have applied to John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, who was an Admiral of the Fleet who became First Sea Lord, and was always called Jackie Fischer.
So in the higher ranks of British society, you had to keep track of at least three names, their original family name, their name as a peer, and their public school nickname. 😉
I became and cricket fan while living in South Africa and learning and understanding the game. And not just three days, Tris, that’s English inter-county matches or provincial/state clashes in South Africa/Australia. International ‘Test’ matches take five days! And believe me, there may well be dull patches, but they can also be tremendously exciting with the balanc of power changing by the session, the hour, or even the over. I suppse it’s like us watching gridiron: no idea how works, therefore no appreciation of the strategy or execution.
My cricket enthusiasm often gets me suspicious looks when in Scotland and there’s a match showing on the pub TV and nobody else pays any attention – apart from me. The locals check my wrist for limpness as I raise my whisky glass to my lips. Scotland does have a cricket team, but very much in the second division of international ratings. The game is very popular in some parts of the country – a Scottish side once won the UK-wide ‘Village Green’ knockout competition – but it’s on a par with Munguin’s croquet in most places. Fitba’ is king, although rugby draws extensive support at club and international level. Last year’s rugby world cup in Japan was the first I’ve missed since 1995.
Yes, John. All the people around the world can’t really be wrong.
Cricket is big many places where the English took it. I have an Indian mate who LOVES it and can’t understand when the mention of the word makes me yawn.
😊 Danny. You have form in the reform of sports, taking an easy to understand, sport for all, football. Even the name was simple and explained the most important rule, use your foot to move the ball. Simples.
American football, an outsider looking on. An undisclosed number of people line up, each built like a municipal toilet block (cludjie) and at some signal, that also escaped me, run at each other. Thinking; last man standing? Where’s the ball? Oh there it is, way down there. Bit out of shape from the melee, must pay attention, didn’t see how that now misshapen ball got down there. Wow, this game is fast, how’d the score get that high? I didn’t see much other than grown people bump into each other.
As demonstrated above perhaps the finer points of your sport have escaped me.
Then there is the innocent game of rounders, that we pretty much jetisoned when the sexes were given separate playgrounds at primary school. Giving it a different name, baseball, and making it more complex than necessary. 🤗
You have form. Form which runs contrary to some of your industrial developments, where stripped down simplicity is the norm. Examples of good engineering design, it does the job necessary, nothing unnecessary included, take any component out and it doesn’t work. I’m visualising the Sherman tank, the Liberty ship and something I possess, the American fish box clock. The fish box clock, an item so functional and effective at what it had to do (tell the time), simply constructed and sold cheaply that it put many Birmingham and London clock makers out of business. A similar shake up to timepiece makers as the Swatch watch had many years later.
Did the San Francisco 49-ers get their name from achieving high score lines?
Alan……..Nice of you to ask! After gold was discovered in California in January
of 1848, the year 1849 was the peak year of the California gold rush immigration. So the prospectors who flocked to California in the gold rush all came to be called Forty-Niners. San Francisco became a boom town, and so what better name for the National Football League San Francisco team than the San Francisco 49ers.
From a BBC documentary, Alistair Cooke drives California state highway 49 through the gold rush country, with some old photographs, and footage of low rise San Francisco from about 50 years ago.
Starting about 43:00 :
PS Alan….I really love your description of American (gridiron) football. I can imagine that it must seem bizarre to someone who doesn’t know what’s happening between the 20 seconds or so of furious action that makes up a “play,” after which people are getting up off the field, officials are walking around and talking to each other and repositioning the ball, sometimes assessing penalties, with some team members going off the field and other team members coming on the field (depending on what the next “play” is likely to be,) and then the offensive team “huddles” to get told what the next play will ACTUALLY be, and then they all line up again for the next 20 seconds of furious action…..after which the process starts all over again. 😉
There was a time when baseball was the big game in America, (it was called the “national pastime,”) and baseball still draws a lot of interest in the summer. But professional football is the big game now. The season games are played in the Fall, with the huge NFL championship game “The Superbowl” played in late January or early February in a warm location. It was played in Florida this year. The Kansas City Chiefs played in the first and fourth Superbowls in 1967 and 1970. They won in 1970 and then didn’t get in the Superbowl again for fifty years. So the Chiefs victory this year was sweet. 🙂
Thanks Danny. Your passion and love of the game comes through. Now I know that the Kansas City Chiefs have retouched the trophy after 50 years, I will pay attention to next Super Bowl, to see if they retain the trophy.
And I have the answer to the 49-ers.
John, Danny, I thought Clementine was his donkey.
Alan…..Honestly I don’t generally care much about sports, but I live in Kansas City where NOT being a Kansas City Chiefs fan just may be a criminal offense.
Add to that the fact that the Chiefs had not been in the Superbowl in 50 years, and after being down in the scoring 20 to 10 with only 7 minutes to play, engineered a final 31 to 20 victory……and you have a win for the ages. 😉
Clementine comes to a tragic end and sadly, she’s the miner forty-niner’s daughter.
Wiki says the lyrics date from 1884. The origin of the tune is unknown, but it may have come from an old Spanish ballad, made popular by Mexican miners during the California Gold Rush days. It seems that the reason we know it today mostly involves its use as a title song in a John Ford movie and a hit record by Bing Crosby. 🙂
(Munguin is fond of luxury items but don’t send perishable goods. They are starting to recruit customs officers now, but unfortunately it takes a couple of years’ training before they are any good… and they only have 6 months. Oh, and don’t send anything that will be deteriorate in the rain, snow, frost or even sunshine, because they haven’t built any buildings for storing all the stuff that will build up due to the lack of trained customs staff.)
I am afraid I was unimpressed by Salzburg. Its a tourist trap. Some nice bits to photograph but so full of tourists as to be basically a Mozart theme park. Anyway, kiwis. Is this your first attempt? I had never thought they might grow here, but I see they are hardy to minus 15 degrees. We might be looking to try that in the near future.
I bought the plant for 50p a few years ago. It was half dead. It’s one of these silly things I do. I buy something that is reduced becasue it’s going to die and then I bring it back to life with tender loving care.
No label on it, I planted it and it grew…
hen a neighbour who used to live in NZ told me what it was, but that it wouldn’t flower here.
So the next year it flowered.
The fruit was too hard to eat though, but maybe this year…
Mind you it’s gonna have to warm up a bit. It’s Baltic again!
You must have been lucky and got one of the relatively newer self pollinating cultivars of Kiwi because not so long ago you needed a male and a female plant before you’d get fruit.
They’re beautiful plants and worth growing just for that. The fruits just a bonus. I grew them in a big conservatory in the 90s and I know from experience how vigorous they can be if they like their situation.
As I say, I only bought it because I felt sorry for it, it wold, by the end of the day, have been headed for the crusher.
I did the same with quite a few plants, which had rewarded me by growing into big plants, looking lovely and providing places for the birds to nest. Very gratifying… and of course the bonus is they only cost pence, or in some cases, were free. 🙂
Green fingers here, Danny. In France “la main verte” (the green hand).
Any of the linguists know what the expression is elsewhere?
I’m not sure I do have green thumbs, fingers and certainly not a hand, to be honest. But I’m as ridiculously sentimental over plants as I am over animals.
I can’t stand that people treat them badly.
Locally there is a supermarket that sells plants, not many, but they are displayed on stands outside the shop. They are low priority for the staff and often they forget to water them and they start to dry up.
I’ve sometimes allerted them… thinking that if nothing else, the thought that they will all die, be unsaleable and that will reduce the day’s profit margin will spur them into action.
But no, they don’t care, so I buy a few bottles of water and soak them myself. Not because I give a stuff about Lidl’s profits. But I can’t stand to see neglected plants.
Ahhh Salzburg, I have fond memories. I used to live just over the border in Marktschellenberg Germany. Saltzburg was our place for shopping and caffè und kùchen culture.
Yes, I get fruit, but it’s generally too hard and bitter to do anything with – and someone’s picked all the flowers off it over the last couple of years; there’s a couple of kids in the stair above that I suspect! If it’s spared this year, I’m wondering whether some form of chutney or some experimental brewing/winemaking might be in order.
It depends on the variety you have, too; some modern ones are hermaphrodite, but older types are mostly male plant/female plant. The growth rate’s quite something at this time of year.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Spent the whole time going “awwhhhh, lovely”. I’ve been to Salzburg – smashing place. Mozart was born there you know! Loved the dogs (can’t believe I typed that!) – so cute. Cats were great too. Funnily enough I watched the Lion King last night. Must have been a premonition.
And the orangs, well as Ed would say utterly life affirming. I’m so pleased that despite losing their mums, they’ve found orang friends and humans to care for them.
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Life-affirming indeed, PP!
The poor wee orangutans in the first photie look awfy cauld, though.
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They are keeping themselves warm with hugs!
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many are cauld but few are frozen.
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Never been to Salzburg, but I’d like to go when (if) I get to that part of Europe again.
Hate that poor wee orphaned orangutans exist; love that wonderful people care for them and that they bond with their friends.
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“Never been to Salzburg, but I’d like to go when (if) I get to that part of Europe again”
pinched from twitter –
“This will be the first year I will not be able to go to Fiji because of Covid 19.
I usually don’t go because I am skint!”
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LOL LOL LOL. There is that, but in fairness Munguin says I can have a break and I don;t have to come back till a quarter past three.
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St. Kilda:
Wiki:
The Street in 1886:
The Village Street in 1988 showing restoration work. You can see the quarry in the distance. It was used extensively by the military to provide materials for the building of their garrison on the island:
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I like the picture of St Kilda which shows it as it is now. The military presence is so pervasive and you can hear the noise from its generators from some distance. It is difficult to get away from that and experience the ‘remoteness’ any more.
Thankfully the wildlife is still there.
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My friends went there last year while they were on their Western Isles holiday. It was expensive to get to, but fascinating.
Tom sent me that pic a while ago.
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Must have been a rough life. The weather out there can be pretty rough.
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I’ve probably said before – I used to say “Hello” occasionally to the last resident of St. Kilda. She lived not far from a pal of mine in Clydebank. She was only 8 when she and her family were evacuated from St. Kilda back in 1930 when life on the island had become all but impossible. She died just a few years ago. Her name was Rachel Johnson. I’ve often wished I could visit St. Kilda but that’s unlikely now. Still, never say never.
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No, never say never. This won’t last forever.
I think it’s an expensive day out, but worth it from what my friends say.
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That’s fascinating Andi! I read in the Wiki article that the last people left in 1930. It makes you wonder how people manage in such a remote and isolated location. Surely there’s a limit to how much self-sufficiency could be possible. You could keep animals, but I don’t know how much agriculture could exist in such a location. And surely the time comes when you need something that you can’t make yourself. So where do you get it? And where do you get the currency to buy it? Interesting to think about!
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There’s a film with David Hayman in it about the last days of life on St Kilda.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0155756/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_116
There were certainly no discotheques on the island.
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What did you do when the pubs shut?
🙂
Thanks. I’ll watch that.
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Silly me. I thought it was the video.
🙂
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From Michael Powell to Bills Forsyth and Douglas, Scotland endures as the resonant repository for British cinematic mythology. An impressive addition to that tradition, this is a moving, factually-based investigation of the last gasps of life on remote St Kilda. Besieged by hunger, in-breeding, and a remarkable lack of contact with the outside world, the five families remaining in 1929 finally wrench themselves from their wild, beautiful island in a semi-voluntary act of evacuation to the mainland. The film both celebrates the close-knit community’s daily life and examines why, in its reluctance to adapt, it could not but disappear. Neither pastoral idyll nor a ‘we had it tough’ catalogue of survival strategies, it’s more a laconic account of the strengths and strictures of family and ritual – the Sabbath, funerals, a wedding, work and coming-of-age. Here, indeed, lie the connections with Bryden’s script for Walter Hill’s The Long Riders, and with his stylistic idol John Ford.
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Here’s a link to the National Records Scotland on St Kilda, lots of detail.
There is an image of two people posing with a soay sheep and lamb but have a look at the stone wall behind them and mental calculate, a cubic metre of stone will weigh something in the order of 2.8t! I have spent many hours building dry stone dykes, almost 2 years full-time. I’m very impressed, not by the quality but the size of the boulders hoisted up, unless the wall is only a foot high on the other side!
A small pox outbreak killed many on St Kilda reducing the population to about 40, it was thought a visiting ship introduced the disease. MacLeod of MacLeod then started sending families behind with rent on the Macleod lands around Dunvegan Skye to St Kilda as a way of repopulating.
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LOL You forgot to send the link, Alan.
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😊 A case of always keep the audience guessing what’s coming next, or another senile moment?
https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/features/stories-from-st-kilda
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Ah, yeah I thought it was that… In fact I could hear “Ladies and Gentlemen” and the drum roll…
Keep ’em wanting more, Alan.
🙂
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I’d like to get a copy of that. I would miss nightclubs and the theater, and there would have been no satellite television reception. Or electricity to run a television receiver and computer for that matter. Frightening to think about! 😉
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Hmmm, Once I started thinking of all the stuff I wouldn’t have, it was quite scary.
Where do you recruit pizza delivery boys on a wee island?
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Tris…..I didn’t even think about the pizza delivery problem. 😉
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Well, you need to, Danny. ‘Simportant!!!
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🙂
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No 3
Met with my brother yesterday in his garden, first time in ages.
Watched a family sparrows being fed by the parents, all afternoon, what life is about.
Then Soppy Sunday to confirm.
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We have a couple of sparrow nests in the garden and watching the dad trying to encourage the little ones to try to fly is a fantastic way to spend an afternoon. Goodness they make such a lot of noise for very small creatures.
Munguin always leaves out lots of food when that’s going on, because we’re pretty sure dad uses it as an enticement.
I wish I had Andi’s skill at capturing stuff like that.
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Believe me, Tris – there’s a lot more luck than skill involved 🙂 Great pics (no, not mine!) as ever.
I like the delightful musk beetle, that iridescent green is almost jewel-like. I find that most insects are worth a close look – many are weird, wonderful and sometimes beautiful creatures. Here’s a thing though – yesterday I noticed a bumble bee which seemed to be in distress. It was floating on the surface of the water in one of my bird baths ( nothing fancy, by the way – one’s an old pottery casserole, the other a bucket). Anyway, the bee didn’t seem to be able to take off from the water so I thought I’d help by putting a finger beneath the bee and lifting it above the surface. This I did and the bee promptly stung me – Ouch! – and flew away. I did have the presence of mind to note that it was a Tree Bumblebee.
And I must say I’m impressed to see Munguin’s buddie – the Buddha, no less – now we know why Munguin is such an enlightened penguin.
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There’s a guy who has taken brilliant photos of insects:
It’s a great site http://microsculpture.net
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Hmmm, copying the image url only captures part of the image. Never mind, have a look at the site.
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Amazing work, Dave.
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Being allergic to bee stings, I’m careful about lifting them out of water. I keep an old store card in my wallet for just that puropse,..
Munguin is pretty close to gods and their like, It’s just royalty he has a aversion to.
Our bird baths are old woks!!
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Tris…..With the fine pieces of decorative art in Muinguin Gardens such as the Buddha, it occurs to me that you don’t have any pink flamingos. Very popular in America! 😉
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LOL.
Munguin says he’ll pass on that… These birds are a trifle too pink for him.
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LOL…….Pink lawn flamingos are a standing joke here. A testament to bad taste.
One prank is to cover a lawn with them along with a sign that says “You’ve Been Flocked.”
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LOL Danny… In a group, from a distance, they don’t look too bad.
Probably that distance should be about half a mile!
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Hahahaha…..Half a mile would work for me! Love it!
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Andi…..I’ll bet that bumble bee has used the “distressed in a bird bath” scam before to lure unsuspecting passersby. Some miscreant sociopathic bumble bees will sting you just for the fun of it. 😉
I like the Buddha in Munguin Gardens too.
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The miscreant, sociopathic bee. Conjures a fantastic image.
The more so for me, having written “bees in unity, is loves expression”
It was my meditive phase.
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Alan…..I like that! 🙂
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Deep.
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LOL. Don’t get much past the bee psychologist!
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Pretty certain there’s a nest on my roof. I quite often see a bird outside my window hovering just at roof level for a few seconds before it flies off. I’m guessing it’s dinner time for the kids. It’s too fast for me so anyone who can photograph something at this speed has mega skillz.
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What kinda bird?
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Wouldn’t it be better for us lazy lumps to stay in bed as we would not catch the virus that way? 🙂
This week’s calming video – Highlands (waterfall included).
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Hmmmm… On reflection, probably you’re right there, Marcia.
The video reminds me of happy days spent up there in magnificent scenery with fresh fresh air and makes me want to do it again.
Don’t think it will be this year though.
The big and small waterfalls were beautiful.
Thanks.
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Drone footage is a technological triumph! Thanks for that.
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Reminded me how fortunate I am to live where I do.
We had a days boat charter to take a Japanese film crew and geologist out to a few places, Kilt Rock being one of them. They flew a drone round and about at Kilt Rock and when the operator landed it on deck there was great back slapping, hooping and cheering. The geologist saw me curious, I was thinking this is going to be raucous if this happens every quarter hour shooting, glad it’s stationery rocks I have to find. She explained that they only have this one drone left, that they cost about £2000 and they were so pleased that the “pilot” was finally getting the hang of it.
Was that just last Spring, seems so long away.
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Sounds like a great day… See lots of people now using drones for checking repairs on roofs. Beats a ladder.
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Depending on your pilotage, might work out cheaper to get the builder in.
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Yes, I dunno anything about the costs; I’ve not had to do it, but I’ve seen a few builders looking at roofs with drones.
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Alan…..great story! Clearly you crash a few drones before you develop your piloting skills. 🙂
I was watching the Superbowl (the championship game of American football which is far bigger in the States than the World cup) and was impressed with the action shots they were getting from unusual high angles. Then I saw a drone zoom by in the air, and realized that the TV production people are now using drones for sports coverage. Amazing things!
I suppose they could use drones for soccer coverage (incorrectly called football in the rest of the world), if anything ever actually happened that was interesting. Which is pretty much never, what with people just kicking a ball around the field willy-nilly, which occasionally (very rarely) goes into the goal for which one……..yes, only ONE…….point is grudgingly awarded.
I might suggest that they could spice up soccer by eliminating that one point goal thing…..which only happens if the ball accidentally gets by a guy who’s positioned there to try to prevent ANY points from being scored. There are no less than five entirely different ways to score points in American football, with different numbers of points awarded for each….1, 2, 2(a different way,) 3, and 6.
The final score in this year’s Superbowl was 31 to 20. Kansas City Chiefs over the San Francisco 49-ers.
If you could score 51 points in a game of soccer, you might really have something. Off topic, but just sayin’. 😉
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Watching carrots grow in a bucket is way more interesting than Grid Iron, but my new favourite game is the Lingerie League, can’t be beaten for sheer entertainment value, although I keep getting distracted when they use their fingers to communicate the next play.
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LOL Kangaroo……Perhaps only Americans can truly appreciate American football,
but I do agree that the Lingerie League brought a new dimension and more worldwide appeal to the game. 😉
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Seldom, if ever, will you hear ‘soccer’ in Scotland, Danny. It’s always football (unless usage has changed considerably since I left all these decades ago). Soccer is a particularly English linguistic construct – English as in country rather than language – and derives from ‘association’ football as the round ball game came to be known, being administered by the Football Association.
In the English public school habit of giving things abbreviated pet-names, ‘association’ became soccer – even if it is a stretch of pronunciation, more visual then aural. This distinguished it from Rugby Football and the oval ball, or oblate spheroid to be technically accurate. In the same way, but more obviously, rugby became rugger. Football is therefore the older term and older game. Rugby takes its name from the English public school, where a boy called William Webb Ellis reputedly picked up the ball in a game of football and ran with it, leading to the new variant we now call rugby. His name is commemorated in the rugby world cup trophy.
Neither soccer nor rugger became part of everyday sporting language in Scotland, in my memory at least, but the modern generation of Munguinite residents will be able to tell us if that has changed.
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Thanks John………Easy to see that the American game is similar to rugby, from the shape of the ball, and the fact that it is mostly carried or thrown down the field, but also gets kicked for three different reasons at three different times in the game; particularly through H-shaped goalposts, where the crossbar must be cleared. And I do see its historical association with an earlier game called “football.”
I remain somewhat perplexed about how “association” became “soccer” in the round ball game. There is an “ss” of course, but that’s certainly not a “cc”. And there is nary an “e” nor an “r” nor an “er” anywhere in “association.” But I’m being picky here, and we are after all talking about the English who are a very strange people (from an American perspective.) 😉
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Agreed, Danny. As I said it’s more visual than aural and was probably influenced by the abbreviations Assoc. Football for the game and Football Assoc. for the governing body. The last syllable ‘soc’ given a hard ‘c’ and the diminutive ‘-er’ added in the same English propensity for bestowing pet-names on players… Johnson to Johnners, Blofeld to Blowers etc.
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LOL John……It does look more visually sensible as Assoc., and the “-er” ending as you described.
Speaking of pet names, sometime back, I read an interesting and entertaining article (don’t remember where now) about the practice of many “important” men in England…captains of industry, cabinet secretaries, aristocrats, etc……continuing to use in their careers the childhood nicknames they had back in their public school days. I remember one example was Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury…..who was always known as “Bobbety.” I assume that sort of thing must have applied to John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, who was an Admiral of the Fleet who became First Sea Lord, and was always called Jackie Fischer.
So in the higher ranks of British society, you had to keep track of at least three names, their original family name, their name as a peer, and their public school nickname. 😉
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There is absolutely no accounting for the upper classes, Danny.
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The upper class ones are, Danny, from everyone’s perspective.
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LOL
Nope. it’s footie, or futba’ here.
None of that English public school stuff in the republic.
Although, that said, Munguin prefers croquet himself… even if he get me to actually do the ball hitting.
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Croquet seems like something the aristocracy might like. 😉
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Yes, they do.
Munguin and the aristocracy. It’s very big in Antarctica, I hear.
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🙂
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LOL. If you think soccer/football is boring, you should try watching cricket… over THREE days!
Not so much payed in Scotland but dear heavens, they love it in England.
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Do they break for nightfall? 🙂
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I wish I had a pound, for every time I’ve hear “Rain stopped play” on the news.
I suppose they do stop when it gets dark… who cares though?
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I became and cricket fan while living in South Africa and learning and understanding the game. And not just three days, Tris, that’s English inter-county matches or provincial/state clashes in South Africa/Australia. International ‘Test’ matches take five days! And believe me, there may well be dull patches, but they can also be tremendously exciting with the balanc of power changing by the session, the hour, or even the over. I suppse it’s like us watching gridiron: no idea how works, therefore no appreciation of the strategy or execution.
My cricket enthusiasm often gets me suspicious looks when in Scotland and there’s a match showing on the pub TV and nobody else pays any attention – apart from me. The locals check my wrist for limpness as I raise my whisky glass to my lips. Scotland does have a cricket team, but very much in the second division of international ratings. The game is very popular in some parts of the country – a Scottish side once won the UK-wide ‘Village Green’ knockout competition – but it’s on a par with Munguin’s croquet in most places. Fitba’ is king, although rugby draws extensive support at club and international level. Last year’s rugby world cup in Japan was the first I’ve missed since 1995.
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Yes, John. All the people around the world can’t really be wrong.
Cricket is big many places where the English took it. I have an Indian mate who LOVES it and can’t understand when the mention of the word makes me yawn.
🙂
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😊 Danny. You have form in the reform of sports, taking an easy to understand, sport for all, football. Even the name was simple and explained the most important rule, use your foot to move the ball. Simples.
American football, an outsider looking on. An undisclosed number of people line up, each built like a municipal toilet block (cludjie) and at some signal, that also escaped me, run at each other. Thinking; last man standing? Where’s the ball? Oh there it is, way down there. Bit out of shape from the melee, must pay attention, didn’t see how that now misshapen ball got down there. Wow, this game is fast, how’d the score get that high? I didn’t see much other than grown people bump into each other.
As demonstrated above perhaps the finer points of your sport have escaped me.
Then there is the innocent game of rounders, that we pretty much jetisoned when the sexes were given separate playgrounds at primary school. Giving it a different name, baseball, and making it more complex than necessary. 🤗
You have form. Form which runs contrary to some of your industrial developments, where stripped down simplicity is the norm. Examples of good engineering design, it does the job necessary, nothing unnecessary included, take any component out and it doesn’t work. I’m visualising the Sherman tank, the Liberty ship and something I possess, the American fish box clock. The fish box clock, an item so functional and effective at what it had to do (tell the time), simply constructed and sold cheaply that it put many Birmingham and London clock makers out of business. A similar shake up to timepiece makers as the Swatch watch had many years later.
Did the San Francisco 49-ers get their name from achieving high score lines?
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He he he… Answer that, Danny!
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LOL….LOL…..LOL……! Tris, isn’t it wonderful when you get a question that allows you to launch into a full blown lecture on American history? 😉
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🙂
I imagine it must make your day, mate!
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Alan……..Nice of you to ask! After gold was discovered in California in January
of 1848, the year 1849 was the peak year of the California gold rush immigration. So the prospectors who flocked to California in the gold rush all came to be called Forty-Niners. San Francisco became a boom town, and so what better name for the National Football League San Francisco team than the San Francisco 49ers.
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The year is immortalised in the song ‘Çlementine’…
In a cavern, in a canyon
Excavating for a mine
Lived a miner, Forty-Niner
And his daughter Clementine
Anyone who has sung that at wondered at the significance of 49-er will now be better informed, thanks to Danny.
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Thanks John! I like that old song!
From a BBC documentary, Alistair Cooke drives California state highway 49 through the gold rush country, with some old photographs, and footage of low rise San Francisco from about 50 years ago.
Starting about 43:00 :
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PS Alan….I really love your description of American (gridiron) football. I can imagine that it must seem bizarre to someone who doesn’t know what’s happening between the 20 seconds or so of furious action that makes up a “play,” after which people are getting up off the field, officials are walking around and talking to each other and repositioning the ball, sometimes assessing penalties, with some team members going off the field and other team members coming on the field (depending on what the next “play” is likely to be,) and then the offensive team “huddles” to get told what the next play will ACTUALLY be, and then they all line up again for the next 20 seconds of furious action…..after which the process starts all over again. 😉
There was a time when baseball was the big game in America, (it was called the “national pastime,”) and baseball still draws a lot of interest in the summer. But professional football is the big game now. The season games are played in the Fall, with the huge NFL championship game “The Superbowl” played in late January or early February in a warm location. It was played in Florida this year. The Kansas City Chiefs played in the first and fourth Superbowls in 1967 and 1970. They won in 1970 and then didn’t get in the Superbowl again for fifty years. So the Chiefs victory this year was sweet. 🙂
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Thanks Danny. Your passion and love of the game comes through. Now I know that the Kansas City Chiefs have retouched the trophy after 50 years, I will pay attention to next Super Bowl, to see if they retain the trophy.
And I have the answer to the 49-ers.
John, Danny, I thought Clementine was his donkey.
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Alan…..Honestly I don’t generally care much about sports, but I live in Kansas City where NOT being a Kansas City Chiefs fan just may be a criminal offense.
Add to that the fact that the Chiefs had not been in the Superbowl in 50 years, and after being down in the scoring 20 to 10 with only 7 minutes to play, engineered a final 31 to 20 victory……and you have a win for the ages. 😉
Clementine comes to a tragic end and sadly, she’s the miner forty-niner’s daughter.
Wiki says the lyrics date from 1884. The origin of the tune is unknown, but it may have come from an old Spanish ballad, made popular by Mexican miners during the California Gold Rush days. It seems that the reason we know it today mostly involves its use as a title song in a John Ford movie and a hit record by Bing Crosby. 🙂
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LOL LOL LOL
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Not as sweet as Trump faux pas…
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Hello Ducky
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LOL. There’s nothing as nice as a day at the pool!
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OT, but good for a wee laugh:
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Also OT, but an interesting thread. I don’t understand all the initials, but it looks REALLY bad.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1269569793398620160.html
What the guy is saying is that people in the know are stockpiling food.
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Yep. Really bad. I hear Bojo is now wanting to rewrite the Withdrawal Agreement that he signed. Never trust a Tory.
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Never mind. You can send us food parcels.
(Munguin is fond of luxury items but don’t send perishable goods. They are starting to recruit customs officers now, but unfortunately it takes a couple of years’ training before they are any good… and they only have 6 months. Oh, and don’t send anything that will be deteriorate in the rain, snow, frost or even sunshine, because they haven’t built any buildings for storing all the stuff that will build up due to the lack of trained customs staff.)
Oh I love this taking back control.
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Hope the SG are up to speed for the big increase in births in the new year.
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LOL… Baby boom mark II
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Hadn’t thought of that.
Though it makes sense.
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And a new entry on the birth names list at the top we have, overtaking Mohammed….drum roll……Covidian.
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LOL.
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I am afraid I was unimpressed by Salzburg. Its a tourist trap. Some nice bits to photograph but so full of tourists as to be basically a Mozart theme park. Anyway, kiwis. Is this your first attempt? I had never thought they might grow here, but I see they are hardy to minus 15 degrees. We might be looking to try that in the near future.
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I bought the plant for 50p a few years ago. It was half dead. It’s one of these silly things I do. I buy something that is reduced becasue it’s going to die and then I bring it back to life with tender loving care.
No label on it, I planted it and it grew…
hen a neighbour who used to live in NZ told me what it was, but that it wouldn’t flower here.
So the next year it flowered.
The fruit was too hard to eat though, but maybe this year…
Mind you it’s gonna have to warm up a bit. It’s Baltic again!
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You must have been lucky and got one of the relatively newer self pollinating cultivars of Kiwi because not so long ago you needed a male and a female plant before you’d get fruit.
They’re beautiful plants and worth growing just for that. The fruits just a bonus. I grew them in a big conservatory in the 90s and I know from experience how vigorous they can be if they like their situation.
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Yes, it would take over if I let it.
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I wondered about that. Somehow, I don’t associate kiwi fruit with Scotland.
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I’ve never seen another one here.
As I say, I only bought it because I felt sorry for it, it wold, by the end of the day, have been headed for the crusher.
I did the same with quite a few plants, which had rewarded me by growing into big plants, looking lovely and providing places for the birds to nest. Very gratifying… and of course the bonus is they only cost pence, or in some cases, were free. 🙂
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Tris…..You have a green thumb. (If that term is used in Scotland.) 🙂
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Green fingers here, Danny. In France “la main verte” (the green hand).
Any of the linguists know what the expression is elsewhere?
I’m not sure I do have green thumbs, fingers and certainly not a hand, to be honest. But I’m as ridiculously sentimental over plants as I am over animals.
I can’t stand that people treat them badly.
Locally there is a supermarket that sells plants, not many, but they are displayed on stands outside the shop. They are low priority for the staff and often they forget to water them and they start to dry up.
I’ve sometimes allerted them… thinking that if nothing else, the thought that they will all die, be unsaleable and that will reduce the day’s profit margin will spur them into action.
But no, they don’t care, so I buy a few bottles of water and soak them myself. Not because I give a stuff about Lidl’s profits. But I can’t stand to see neglected plants.
Mad?
Me?
La la la la la la la la la
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Mad? Not at all! Just respect for living things.
Interesting about green fingers, hand, etc! I’ve never heard anything other than green thumb here in the States.
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I wonder what it is in Bulgaria… John?
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Ahhh Salzburg, I have fond memories. I used to live just over the border in Marktschellenberg Germany. Saltzburg was our place for shopping and caffè und kùchen culture.
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Austria has the best ever cakes…
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Goats and owls this week.
You spoil us.
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Well, it’s not like Munguin laid on Ferrero Rocher…well, certainly not for free.
🙂
I did remember that you like goats and owls…
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Especially for Danny
Ted Cruz tells it like it is…
Who knew!
They’re really dragging this out, we know where it goes because they didn’t eat the breadcrumbs (Hansel & Gretel).
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My Kiwis aren’t flowering yet. Loads of buds, though.
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Have you ever had much in the way of fruit, Derek?
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Yes, I get fruit, but it’s generally too hard and bitter to do anything with – and someone’s picked all the flowers off it over the last couple of years; there’s a couple of kids in the stair above that I suspect! If it’s spared this year, I’m wondering whether some form of chutney or some experimental brewing/winemaking might be in order.
It depends on the variety you have, too; some modern ones are hermaphrodite, but older types are mostly male plant/female plant. The growth rate’s quite something at this time of year.
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Ah this one is definitely hermaphrodite.
I’ll be interested to know how it goes.
Kiwi jam would be excellent though…
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