May Day 2020 round up

Hi. Today is May Day, which normally is a "bank holiday" but because the groan ups decided they wanted to mark V.E. Day which was seventy-five years ago instead decided to cancel May Day bank holiday and make Friday the V.E. Day  a bank holiday in its place.

They were somewhat late in doing so so many diaries and calendars are not actually correct and not as much of was planned for that is actually going ahead anyway.

 From my point of view then I'm running with what we'd normally do such as holding events in town or village greens and schools such as Maypole dancing which I loved for the music and dancing  spectacular it is as illustrated here by the girls in lovely blue dresses.

Unfortunately like with most things this year Covid-19 has been a party pooper spoiling to such events so in many places we've not been able to do this but I insist on holding to the tradition and the memories.

 While I was out exercising under the current restrictions this weekend I came by this lovely specimen and captured it with my Sony compact camera with the air much cleaner than usual so I could hear and smell the countryside rather than car fumes and the roar of the motorway nearby.

 I was pleased to see the return of Holly Hobbie on CBBC in the second series last Tuesday following the story of the teen schoolgirl country singer her friends and trying to "be the change" in her small country town.

The series has a good heart, does raise some interesting ethical points along the way but above all is entertaining with well drawn good characters avoiding stereotypes.

I seldom watch groan up television cos it does nothing for me .

More Fairy Tail

Back to the guild after a gap with Collection Five covering episodes 49 through 60 of this sword and magic centred anime.

To begin with, the first few episodes on the disc are just  the conclusion of the Fighting Festival and the arrival of a reporter from Sorcery Weekly magazine.
We also see more about Lucy worrying about her love life, learn about about her father and Juvius attempting to use a potion supplied by a dodgy dealer.

The main theme running trough Series Two is the the uniting with Blue Pegasus, Lamia Scale and Cait Shelter to take on the powerful Dark Guild that marks the commencement Oración Seis arc where they are looking for a powerful weapon to spread darkness and this where more characters to the series are introduced.
The series remains gripping and very funny in parts.

Timed perfectly for this has been the demise of my five year old  Philips  multi-regional dvd player which wouldn't step up the disc to play anymore because the motor that did it died.

So coming soon will be this, a Toshiba SD1015 dvd player that is also multi-regional as I have a number of discs from North America that won't play on European (region two) specific players although my television like most over here can handle NTSC colour.
It also features a co-axial  digital output for better quality sound through a outboard digital to analogue convertor to my stereo unit.

The fox report

Oh hewwo there peoples. I was seriously zonked out yesterday with one thing and another so much so I wasn't sure if I'd be up to posting anything today but anyway I got past the night.
Some of us may remember seeing something with a bright bushy tail when we were younger and also some of us have seen the 'real' thing.

Boom! Boom! Yes it's Basil Brush the anthropomorphic red fox star his own BBC TV show starting in 1968 though 1980 and in a slightly different form from 2002 through 2007.
A somewhat mischievous sly creature he was really funny taking the mickey out of his fellow characters in the series with some measure of his popularity being how many times he was referenced in other British tv shows. Whenever he was on tv I couldn't stay still!!!

Unfortunately real foxes has been in the news in the last few days with one ripping off the finger of  baby when it entered a house in Bromley, Kent resulting in sensational articles appearing in the popular press.
Everyone can understand the distress the mother felt when she discovered this but what need to remember here is, the fox got in through an insecure rear door that the Council hadn't repaired and this door could easily allowed anything a cat, dog or even child snatcher in.  All would of put the baby at risk. Had it not been for the Councils inaction, the baby would not of been injured.
Mr Fox is who he is  and he will come looking for food near humans so we need to make sure our doors and windows don't allow him in, don't leave him dinner outside and in some areas the numbers may need to be controlled in the absence of natural predators.
He's just being himself and certainly isn't evil.

Blue Peter

 There's a fair chance some of you may well remember having these annuals during your childhood as avid viewers of the BBC TV Blue Peter program. It may surprise you to know I also have a number that are co-related to the period I was (officially) a child having not just information about what was shown during that 12 month period, but also on the news of the day such as with this edition information about the US space carrier, Skylab and some good illustrated bits about British History.

It all helps to jog my memory back to the year and what mattered to me as a child during it such as the arts and crafts which at all the schools I attended we did.

As far as I'm aware that's John Noakes a Northern English presenter during most of the 1970's with Shep, the Boarder collie to the left of him.