Whit Bank Holiday Edition

The break before last that had a Bank Holiday Monday was strangely enough warmer and sunnier  than much of May which we exit at midnight today.

You might recall the Easter Egg featured that great girltastic animal, the Unicorn  which is a real creature and not just a pony with glued on horn, well this a outdoor creature of mine who lives in the front garden.

While it has been sunny I was out taking  a bit of exercise and enjoying the fresh air with sunshine which beats the pants off rain any day of the week where I spotted this lonely Alpaca who had been left all on his own by the others.

While I was there, he went on to find and chew a carrot with the others looking on.

Nearby the wild berries are starting to come out which have always fascinated me from childhood although I had to be careful of the many flying small insects some of which can make me very ill quickly.

Classical Music sacd Round Up 19 - Beethoven violin sonatas

 This disc is  part of a a complete set of Violin Sonatas by Beethoven that although they'd come out in 2014 I had missed out upon.

Over four discs it covers in order of composition each violin concerto being performed by Thomas A. Irnberger and Michael Korstick who are well captured in a warm setting by the recording team carefully monitoring the performance.

This was well worth getting and given the wet stormy weather we've had across the week a great thing to relax to on my sacd player and stereo equipment.

I also played my four discs of Haydn's London symphonies performed by the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jeffrey Tate who performed on that Mozart cd I mentioned a couple of weeks back.

Summer Fun with The Beano

While I take a bit of a break with the weather being all over the place anyone looking at their calendars and diaries bought just before Christmas and fingers being crossed I do get to get away this year will sense Summer is almost upon us. 

Summer in times gone past meant we bought or were given things to help us as kids pass that time away and in the heyday of The Comic that tended to mean a deluxe full colour expanded edition with all new stories.

Well, it's that time of the year again and so the sole survivor on the street of the comics some of us were brought up with returns with its special edition.

It bills itself as a Summer Activity Special which gives us a clue as all modern comics have a social side not just a collection of new individual comic strips but incorporating fun things to do giver like stickers to stick anywhere you wish, joke pages, quizzes and competitions as part of the mix.

Like modern Beano Specials like the annual and past Summer editions, this runs with a seamless storyline, this year seeing everyone going on a school trip of a lifetime, with a creepy castle, missing jewels, a mysterious monster, all served with twist in the tale!

Unlike some years they haven't dispensed with the individual page strips for Rubi's Screwtop Science, Minnie the Minx, Dennis the Menace and naturally enough the Bash Street Kids whose coach they are all on although there are some common pages.

Nobody has got an older over the years although we are clearly in 2021 and not 1971 and the world the modern girl or boy inhabits for whom this is really aimed and perhaps some of us remain.

Why don't you...?

It's awful wet and windy this weekend so I won't be going anywhere until Monday at the earliest unfortunately so I'm having to entertain myself indoors this weekend.

The idea of a picnic with animals under the tree is something of an idea I had when I was younger, just thinking how it work out, the food we'd have and how to communicate with a duck as one would climb a tree.

There may of been something in the idea that represented a place we could all at peace with each other when things were not so good.

I'd lost a bunch of cds a good many years ago during a tidy up prior to decoration and while everything else was found, a group had not so I managed to buy replacement copies cheaply  and have been playing them this weekend.

I missed those performances.

I read some old annuals and comics too from more simpler times which I really much prefer when you made things and used your imagination to make up activities on the fly rather than using someone else's.

 An imagination is a wonderful thing.

Spring Bank Holiday edition

 

Goodness, it's a May Bank Holiday and don't you just feel like spending all that free time going down the country lanes, in the woods and along public rights of way with the sweet smell of fresh spring flowers on top of fresh air.

I cannot think of anything rather do to be honest on good day.

Some places have Bluebell walks where you can see and photograph them , planted in an ordered way rather like amateur gardeners often do which I have seen around here and yet others may grow in a very organic way in the woods. 

Of course in more normal times it wouldn't be spring without maypole dancing either in town and village centres or at spring school events such as fairs where as girls and boys we'd spend time practising the plait to music.

Surprisingly I wasn't bad at that given my co-ordination and ability to keep in time with others.