Rosey and the football final

I love Rosey dearly but sometimes she can be so damn childish.


A couple of our friends begged us for our support on Sunday because they were playing in a football match down on the green. Village footie is not very well supported, so the more people there to cheer them on the better!


So off I went with Rosey with our friend Amanda in tow.
Now our mates take their Sunday football very seriously and this week they were playing in the final of the Sussex Inter-village Cup. It was quite an achievement for them to get that far.


We stood along the touchline with a crowd of bored looking wives and girlfriends who shivered and chattered without even glancing at the battle being fought out by their loved ones. I don’t know what Rosey and Amanda were finding so funny but I got the feeling they were hatching some kind of plot.


There was about ten minutes to go and the score was nil nil. One of the players kicked the ball out of touch and it rolled towards the girls.




I just knew what was about to happen.It was my worst nightmare. Rosey and Amanda took control of the Ball and started running away from the pitch kicking it to each other whilst almost hysterical with laughter.


I was SO embarrassed. I tried pretending that they weren’t with me.
‘Come on lads’ shouted one of the blue team, and with that all twenty two players thundered off the pitch and went in pursuit of Rosey and Amanda.


I have to admit it was a funny sight. The girls were so skillful. They were passing the ball back and forth and running, twisting and turning whilst leaving the boys confused, exhausted and in total disarray!


Then they started heading back in the direction of the pitch leaving the players gasping for breath.


‘Now’ shouted Rosey. They were twenty yards from the goal. Amanda sent the ball high into the sky, and as it began its decent Rosey leapt into the air and with a flick of her head she butted it straight into the net!


Suddenly there was an enormous cheer from the wives and girlfriends who had suddenly found football the greatest game on earth.


Although the game resumed, Rosey's goal remained the only one scored all afternoon. As a result the contest will have to be re-played next Sunday. You will not be surprised to learn that as a result of their prank Rosey and Amanda have been barred from attending.

I just knew this would happen. Rosey found out I was writing this and she's written her own biased account of the goings on that day. In the interest of fairness I invite you to take a look - just click HERE
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monochrome monday

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Tower Bridge, London

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Click on photo to enlarge and see every nut and bolt!

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To see more contributions to Monochrome Monday click HERE

Growing old disgracefully!

Isn’t aging wonderful! Gone the inhibitions of youth, caution thrown to the wind!

Once I cared what people thought, now I don’t give a damn! Once I agonised over what looked cool, now I couldn’t care less.
Yesterday image was everything. Today I’m content to blend, to disappear, to be invisible.

No longer do I tread the catwalk of life. Happening has happened! Fashion has flown and style matters not.
Now I am the audience, not the attraction. Now I’m the critic not the criticised.
Isn’t aging wonderful!

"good health!"

I enjoy a pint of ale. Beer is good for me, and that's official!

Recent studies have shown that beer is high in B vitamins, particularly B6 which prevents the build-up of homocysteine, a common cause of heart problems.

Beer contains no fat, no cholesterol, and very little carbohydrate or sodium. It has no caffeine or nitrate.

It can help you to sleep and has a diuretic effect on the body which helps get rid of toxins and waste.

Beer is also 92 per cent water, and was called liquid bread many years ago when water was often contaminated.

The elderly can also benefit from a daily pint. It aids urination and helps with blood vessel dilation.

So, all in all that’s good news for us beer drinkers. But these benefits only apply when beer is drunk in moderation, and that's not always easy to achieve! Drunk to excess it can cause the classic beer belly. It has an effect on the senses and can have a negative effect on ones judgment. Excess alcohol can cause damage to the kidneys and liver.

But the fact remains that beer, when enjoyed sensibly, can have a beneficial effect on health.

And that's good news - isn't it chaps!

My thoughts on beige!

Our challenge on True Colours Thursday this week is to build a post around the colour beige. Not easy! However I've done my best.

I found wall in London made from beige bricks! I thought I'd show you my best piece first. It's downhill from here, but please bear with me!

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The shingle on Eastbourne beach is kinda' beige. Isn't it?
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This pub table was probably brown once! Now, after literally centuries of wiping up spilled drinks it's turned beige! Look, even my glass of Scotch looks beige!
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I am so glad that's over. I'm quite excited about next weeks colour, infact I took my photos weeks ago in readiness! It's Scarlet.

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Little Greek fishing boats

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Wordless Wednesday
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About Beachy Head

Beachy Head is cliff on the south coast of England. At 535 feet high it dwarfs the famous lighthouse below. Thousands of tourists visit this spot each day all the year round.

But Beachy Head has a darker side. It has the dubious honour of being the country’s most notorious suicide spot. At least twenty people take their lives here each year. A team of chaplains patrol the Head to provide counselling to those who come here in distress. Up to 40 folk each month benefit from the words of comfort the chaplains provide. There is also a prominent telephone kiosk which connects directly to the Samaritans in Eastbourne.



At the cliffs edge sits a tiny yet symbolic memorial comprising a few stones which have been carried back up the cliff from the rocks below.
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Farewell to The Bulls Head

I have just come from an emotional event. Although I only worked at The Bulls Head for three years, the time I spent there and the people I came to know have made a lasting impression on me.

The Bulls Head has been serving ale and sustenance to passing travellers since 1750.
Originally a coaching in, it found itself at the hub of a community as the village of Boreham Street grew around it.
Tonight it closed. Tomorrow wooden boards will be nailed to its windows and doors and The Bulls Head will become part of the history of this most beautiful part of England.
Tonight it was packed. If only it could have always been so busy then just maybe it could have survived the financial crisis which has afflicted our rural pub trade so dramatically..
Tomorrow it will be a statistic. It will be one of thirty five rural pubs which close this week and every week across our country.
I left an hour or so before it was due to close its doors for the final time. I didn’t say goodbye to anybody, except my dear friend Tia who was the only remaining person I worked with during those heady happy days. No, I just wanted to leave with the sound of merry laughter and clinking glasses ringing in my ears, the way in which I wish to remember The Bulls Head.

Going green!

I'm staying close to home this week. These first two photos are part of a set I shot on a walk across the Seven Sisters cliffs which rise and fall along the Sussex coast. You can see these and the others in higher definition by clicking HERE -I hope you have a head for heights!
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A few days ago I took a stroll on an area of marshland which centuries ago formed part of the sea bed. There are about six more in the set and if you'd like a see them all in high quality click HERE

wordless wednesday

Pevensey marsh

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To see these and four other marsh picures in

higher quality click HERE

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Happy tiddley-pom day

It’s tiddley-pom day today! Begorra begosh, it’s the day the Irish and the rest of the UK celebrate Paddy himself – Saint Patrick!
In England Saint George is pretty well ignored despite his heroic slaying of the dragon. The Welsh have a saint too, but for the life of me I can’t remember who he is. But on Saint Patrick’s day the British party party party!

Yesterday I visited my friend’s pub The Five Ashes Inn. Preparations for today’s festivities were well under way with inflatable Guinness glasses hanging from the ceiling and bright green bunting draped around the walls. A dray delivered tubs and tubs of the black stuff in readiness for today’s half price Guinness promotion.
Today there will only be one dish on the menu. Irish stew. Landlady Chris started cooking a vast cauldron of the stuff a couple of days ago and it’s just about ready.
Unfortunately I won’t be joining in the celebrations due to work commitments, but Rosey will be there keeping everyone amused!
As I was leaving yesterday afternoon Chris presented me with a little container of Irish stew so I can at least have a taste of Paddy’s day tonight.
As usual I jumped on the bus outside the pub for my journey home. I think I’ve mentioned before that I am prone to bouts of tiredness when on the bus. I have been known to pass my stop completely, but yesterday I managed to keep more or less awake. I got off at the right stop and all was well until I realised I’d left my little pot of Irish stew on the seat on the bus which was now disappearing off into the sunset.
Nothing else for it! Dash home and get my car!
I drove as quickly as I dare and after five miles or so I saw the bus ahead of me. A couple of miles later I managed to pass it. I carried on towards the buses final destination where I managed to find a parking space, then I rushed down to the bus terminus.
Unfortunately, just as I rounded the bend I saw the bus trundling off into the distance!
A somewhat disinterested official shrugged his shoulders and told me the bus and my stew were off to the garage for the night, some three miles away.
So, back to the car, searched around for some change for the parking machine then sped off towards bus garage. When I arrived, there were about twenty almost identical buses lined up! I explained my predicament to a guy in a blue uniform who pointed me in the direction of my number 52 and allowed me on board to search for my stew!
Bingo! I found it exactly where I left it, still warm and smelling delicious.
So, in a few hours time I’ll tuck into it along with some Irish soda bread and glass of Guinness or three!
Anyway, Ronan was tooling along the road one fine day when the local policeman, a friend of his, pulled him over.
"What's wrong, Seamus?" Ronan asked.
"Well didn't ya know Ronan, that your wife fell out of the car about five miles back?" said Seamus.
"Ah, praise the Almighty!" he replied with relief. "I thought I'd gone deaf!"

Monochrome Monday

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Beach huts at Cooden

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To see more of this weeks pictures or to join in, visit Monochrome Maniacs.

What next?

If I was to ask you when it was you realised that you had a flair for writing, what would you say? I bet most people discovered a burgeoning talent when they were at school. Perhaps theirs was the essay which always got read out in class or during assembly. Your pieces were probably published in the school magazine and printed in the yearbook.


Quite often the distractions of those heady teenage years mean that writing gets put on the back burner. After all it’s not considered particularly cool to be hunched over a piece of paper with pen in hand while the rest of your mates are out doing what mates do best – having a good time!


The explosion in blogging has no doubt brought many a decent scribe out into the open. It offers a chance to show off your skills to a usually appreciative whilst invisible audience. Certainly it’s less daunting than sitting in a circle at a writing club facing the direct criticism of your fellow struggling authors.


I’ve often been asked when I started and I can remember quite clearly. Not for me back in school. In fact I didn’t exactly shine in things literary back then. I failed my final English exam with aplomb! It wasn’t that I couldn’t get to grips with grammar and Shakespeare, I simply wasn’t interested. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I never read a book from cover to cover until I was in my forties.


I can pretty well put a date on when I found words tumbling from my head. It was one day in August 2002!


At that time I had my pub, the Brewers Arms in remote farming village miles from any main road in the deepest Sussex countryside. Our community and that from the next village had a joint Village Diary which was published monthly and popped through the door of every house in our area – about 160 in all. I used to advertise each month, and gradually my copy was becoming more and more wordy.


It was suggested that I take a whole page each month and use it as a pub newsletter, and that’s what I did. Virtually everything that happened in the village took place or started in the pub. We had no village hall, my public bar doubled as that. We had committee meetings for this, annual general meetings for that, never a dull moment. We were always putting on some function or other and now I had the perfect place to shout about it.


Suddenly the Village Diary was eagerly awaited each month. Not for the date of the mobile library visit or the neighbourhood watch report, but for the account of the goings on at the Brewers Arms!


It scrutinised very closely too. One month I mentioned that the pub would have been serving beer for 250 years without missing a single day since July 5th 1753. I got a call telling me I was wrong. It actually opened on July 6th 1753!


So much for the past. Where will we all go with our writing in the future? Who knows? For my part, I hope I will still have my enthusiasm for scribbling for as long as I can string a few words together. If I could just get one small piece published without having to fund it myself it would at least be a form of ratification, proof that I have not been suffering some form of self delusion over my writing ability. I the meantime I’ll carry on spending far too much time here with my keyboard, and of course with you dear friends!

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I’ve just been reading back though a few issues of the Village Diary, and much of what I’d written back then I’d forgotten about. I’ll finish with a few entries from all that time back.


August was a fantastic month for the Brewers with record beer sales and enough food cooked to feed one of the smaller nations! Thank you to all who visited this strange hostelry with its wacky staff and fine upstanding landlord


Another said


A For Sale board will shortly appear at the Brewers (who cheered?) No, I’m selling up and leaving (who groaned?) It’s simply a board on which you can advertise your unwanted items (no husbands please) and the best bit – it’s free to use!
I also used my page to publicly tease my wonderful staff and I’ve just found this
My bar and kitchen slaves have been somewhat critical of remarks I’ve been making about them in my previous jottings, I can’t think why. They were offered a Right to Reply but nothing was forthcoming thereby leaving me an open goal! I will however moderate my remarks lest militancy sets in.
And finally
I’m a little aggrieved that so many of you where heard to cheer and applaud when I recently tripped on the stairs and landed on my derry-aire on the floor of the bar. Remember – I know who you are and I pour your drinks. There’s nothing more dangerous than a landlord scorned!

Click on picture to enlarge - and read!

Violet

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This week True Colours Thursday is all about Violet. This is not the easist of colours to identify. When does violet stray into lilac or drift into purple? Violet can be a deep and soft, a vivid hue or a light and delicate shade. I can only hope that the pictures I have chosen represent this most enigmatic of colours.
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Relections. Sunset throws a pallette of blues, reds and violet at the glass panels of this art deco pavillion which displays mirror images of the structures that surround it.

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On the banks of the Thames a glazed office block becomes a wall of violet

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The mighty London eye looks down on Big Ben and the Houses Parliament.

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ps. Rosey has done violet in her own inimitable style! It's HERE

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wordless wednesday - small town shops

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Why not visit my photo gallery? It's right HERE!

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Monochrome Monday

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Low tide at a misty Margate harbour in 1972

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Taken with Practika SLR on Ilford HP5 film

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Listen to me, listen. A short story.

Let me read it to you. Single click on arrow

Many years ago something happened in the village. Exactly what it was, no one has yet discovered. If ever the village elders are asked about it, their faces drop and a strange mist comes over their eyes.
It’s said that several of them talk in their sleep. Whispering at first, then calling out louder and louder, eyes wide open staring at .. nothing. ‘Listen, listen to me, listen’. Their voices strange and unrecognisable. ‘Listen to me, listen, listen, LISTEN’It is told that long ago a strange man spent his days and nights wandering the streets and alleyways of the village. A bent and wizened old man, shuffling along, his clothes torn and dirty. He would sidle up to folk and say ‘listen to me, Iisten to me’ but no one listened.
Some say that entire families disappeared one night. Others that a deadly ailment swept through the village killing men women and children. But this is all hear-say, for the only people who really know what happened seem unable to let the words pass their lips.
The church stands unused. Its interior ravaged by fire generations ago. Its doors and windows are boarded up. Children are told to keep well away from the graveyard. They are told that the spirit of the strange old man drifts between the headstones. Sometimes the wind whistles through the churchyard when all around is still. Many claim to hear the wind hiss ‘listen, listen’.
What was it he wanted to tell them? It was important but nobody listened. I don’t suppose the truth of what occurred will ever be known. Except to those who were there. Those who will carry their secret to the grave.

Yellow

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This weeks prompt on True Colours Thursday Is Yellow

I have this picture on the wall above my computer desk. It's called Cattle in a Yellow Field and I bought it from the artist Trevor Kent some twenty years ago.

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I thought some yellow posts would be appropriate for my yellow post!

I took this picture on the village green a few days ago.

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No explanation required for this one......

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.......nor this!

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Stop stop stop stop stop

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Hallelujah brothers and sisters!

Next week we turn our attention to violet.

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Wordless Wednesday - an old French van

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