Photos!

Today has been an absolute scorcher (as has the whole weekend really), and I took the opportunity to go into the garden and Richmond Park to wave my camera around. I had a £2 off 1hr processing voucher at Snappy Snaps so I bashed the film in there in the afternoon, and here are a selection of pics I got.

From my Mum's sweetcorn plant. This little anemone is, believe it or not, the part of the plant that will grow into the cob.

A ladybird I spotted while patiently waiting for a damselfly to land on the patch of grass by my feet.

Another silly photoshopping escapade


This photo is less focused than I had expected. I used a macro lens at 70mm, 1/1000 sec, f/32. Should have had enough depth of focus (maybe a few cm anyway, which is all I needed!). I'm not sure why it's so blurred!

My lab coat out drying in the sunshine a few days ago.

Diving geese.

A few weeks ago, I took my Grandad's old Minolta SLR to a repairers in Ilkley (Annings), to fix the shutter (which would open but not close), and to replace the blackouts on the film casing. I took it along to Derbyshire earlier this week, and also waved it around on our trip to Coton last week and really enjoyed playing with it.
I finally took the films to Boots to be processed, and there are some lovely pictures. However, I opted for a boots photo CD only, as I didn't urgently want the prints as I usually store my pictures on my computer, and it was much cheaper to just get the CD. When I got home I excitedly opened the CD, and the pictures looked great. That was, however, until my eyes got attuned to the photos. Within a few seconds the photos appeared incredibly grainy, and extremely poor quality. In fact, the whole CD (24 photos) is only 22mb in size. I've put some up here - they're fine for the internet etc, but they're nowhere near as nice as the originals would be (even if scanned from a print), so I'm going to go have to go back and get some prints made. Will not be using the photo CD service again!

Christmas trees were sold, once again, for the 4th year, though this time at a *new* site in Richmond. Under the dappled shade of leaf-less trees, and the new found comfort of a portacabin we sold and talked-up trees until darkness fell and then beyond. Usefully, all of the local chains sold out early, which caused a cascade of customers which kept us busy and distracted from the huge job of raking up bales of muddy straw.

I worked in Northallerton (north Yorkshire) for a few weeks at the start of the Christmas Holiday, and it was cold. Not cold like we get in London. Proper, consistently in the negatives cold. I got snowed in, and spent one morning digging Mercedes drivers out of the snow in a small village with a few police men and women, and all the villagers. It was very rationing-time community spirited, and I for one loved it! Plus the vetting was fun too. I tried my hand at surgery for the first time, and managed to a reasonable job of cat castration and spaying, so hopefully all will be well.

London was also pretty cold, though nothing in comparison. Luckily, I managed to buy some leather (pimp) gloves for driving in after Christmas, which has staved off the frost bite. Luckily, it provided ample opportunity for some more seasonal photography, which included this tasty snap of a crow in Richmond Park a few days after Christmas. I love the colour of the sky.

My Photo in the Telegraph Online

Dear Blog,

Today I got a photograph put on the Telegraph online website. Huzzah!

Click here.

They may have got the location wrong, but my name is still there!

¬0ӎ

Autumn

We're having an absolutely beautiful autumn at the moment. It's appeared all of a sudden, but all of the trees look absolutely beautiful. I'm taking my camera out with me whenever I leave the house to take some snaps before they all drop!

¬0ӎ

I went out yesterday to take advantage of the autumn sunlight in our garden and took some snaps. Some artsy (I especially like the one of the garden glove in the plant pot - it was like that when we arrived at the house, and none of us have moved it), some gruesomely green (our pond looks like the Amazon... crocodiles anyone?), and others just general garden snaps - you can see how gorgeous it is. All photos are on my flickr account, recognisetheview.

Birthday

I haven't posted for a while - my apologies!

Last week was my birthday, and I proudly entered my 23rd year (22nd birthday) with a stylish MCR formal followed by cellar-time (i.e. Bar) with friends. 15 people came to formal in the end, including Linguists, House people, school friends and some vets, and we all had a great time (for a low-low price!). Rahul came up from London, which was exciting; it was good to see him. The linguists were in the midst of their exams, so I think they enjoyed the brief ability to escape the pains of exams.

Photos:

CAMS Open Mic Lent 2008

Alex and me played at the CAMS (Clare Alternative Music Society) Open Mic Night on Sunday. We played two tracks, Proof by I am Kloot, a classic that we've played once before, and the more adventurous Lover, You Should Have Come Over, by Jeff Buckley. He's got some really impressive chord progressions, and it was a challenge, but I like to think we made a good stab of it! The open mic nights have been really impressive recently, and it was really satisfying getting such an amazing response from the audience - the cellars were pretty packed. Plus, Alex was mistaken for "Amy Buckley", Jeff's non-existent sister... she must have been singing pretty well to be mistaken for a blood relative of the man himself... and I suppose Buckingham does sound a little like Buckley.

All of the other musicians were fantastic, including Davy, Ruth and Paddy who played some cool Irish ballads, and The Staircase Band who got my blood pumping with their European folk accordion, brass and violin tunes. They sound alot like A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and I seriously suggest that anyone who has ever come in contact with an accordion and thought that it was possibly the sexiest instrument around to check them out (both, though you'll need to look out for the Staircase band in Cambridge). I have added a photo of Alex and me at CAMS, I hope the people responsible won't crucify me for stealing it, but it's an amazing photo. If you are from CAMS and you'd like me to take it down, email me, but I'm linking to your facebook group!

Red sky at night...

... shepherd's delight.

And, considering I'm being a shepherd tomorrow afternoon, this is excellent news.

I didn't have my camera with me as I crossed Jesus Green bridge so I only have a mobile pic. I'll have to carry it more often.

Just found this on my camera...


Now I didn't take it... Good old Andrew.

York

York is a beautiful town of ancient walls, cathedrals and cute little streets paved with flags and filled with quaint little shops. It has buses that bend in the middle, a ferris wheel and an Ask pizza house in the stunning assembly hall. Conversely, York University is made out of concrete. Some of the buildings are quite impressive (central hall for example), while some are just plain mad (hedgehog buildings for example), and others just ugly. However, in its favour it does have a huge lake (filled with ducks, and, I am reliably informed, Trevors*) and Heslington Hall, a lovely Elizabethan mansion house which stands opposite a slightly creepy topiaried Yew garden (Alice in Wonderland springs to mind).

As you can probably tell, I visited my sister at York this weekend. We had Friday off (shock horror, thanks to some smart lecture shuffling) so I went up in the early afternoon having gone down to the Corpus Playrooms in the morning to teach some actors the ChaChaCha. I don't really know the ChaChaCha, but mine and Alex's rudimentary knowledge of the basic, new york and turn steps proved useful in forging a bond between actor and actress. Anyway, I digress. Went up to York on the train (which only took 2 and a half hours!), and Hannah met me at the station. Pretty soon toad in the hole was being devoured at a local pub (the Cross Keys if anyone knows it), and Hannah was working through a steak (much to her boyfriend's gall later on!). We then toddled back to campus (on a bendy bus, oh joy of joys!), and sat in her (pretty nice) kitchen for a few hours chatting to her friends. Thinking about it, they are probably reading this, as Hannah often subjects them to this torturous site, so I suppose I'd better say something nice. Teddy Bears.

And so, we went to McQ's (it's a bar, not an exam**... I know, I was confused and slightly worried) and had a few drinks before coming back home. Hannah's house is... functional. Long corridors, no plaster (painted breeze blocks) and mildew, but it's homely now it's lived in and everyone looks settled.

The following day, Hannah took me on a tour of the campus (see above), and then she, George and me walked into town. We got some lunch (Ask - see above), and then came home again, because, like a great big retard, I forgot my camera. Arses. Really, though I convinced anyone it was because I was stupid, this was infact because I figured that was better than admitting that all I wanted to do was ride on a bendy bus again! So unnecessarily fun.

So, much fun was had. I ended up waiting ages for a bus back in Cambridge (as I didn't check the timetable until I'd been waiting for 30mins - I was too engrossed in "To Kill a Mockingbird"), but was greeted when I finally arrived by requests for chinese takeaway... so we did! Huzzah!

*Trevor is the name given to a black Swan that attacks Hannah's kitchen window every day. Due to their rudimentary undergraduate swan differentiation skills however, this results in every black swan being named Trevor despite the fact that many are infact named Charlotte.
**MCQ = Multiple Choice Question.

Has been a busy morning already! Alex and Andrew have gone off to rotations (Post-Mortem and Small Animal Studies respectively), and Mary and me have been left to our own devices, which in my case has involved making phone calls and writing this blog, whilst Mary is hunting for screws for her new pannier.

Phone call wise, I have phoned our letting agent as my room has started smelling of sewage every time Andrew flushes his toilet, which is a little worrying to say the least! "I'm upset you thought I could make a smell of raw sewage!" he said. Sorry Andrew! Hopefully they'll send out a plumber today to take a look at what's going on.
I have also rung an abattoir in Halifax, and have arranged to go there for a week in August. I now have 9 weeks of EMS organised (10 if the BSAVA congress is allowed to count), and can hopefully book another 2 weeks small animal in summer to get myself up to 11!

I also have new shoes (shock-shock-horror!) to replace the infamous "Davy Shoes" given to me by Davy in 1st year. Unfortunately they have walked a fair few 100 miles in their time, and are giving up the ghost so I got a replacement pair of loafers from M&S with my Xmas voucher. However, as they are slip on, insoles were required, and what better way to use the cut off insole bits than giving them to Alex with a pair of scissors. Meet 'Shoe Shrimp' who has taken up lodging on my clock.

Pics from Cambridge Christmas

I've just unearthed some Cambridge Xmas pics:

The AMAZING Sheep

It is done! The photo of the finished sheep is on flickr.

Busybusy

Have somehow not blogged for 2 or 3 days, despite this being exam term. I have been pretty busy the last 2 days with this and that, and trying to cram work into every moment in between doing stuff, eating or drinking tea/coffee. Plus it's been bloody freezing (as mentioned in my previous post) and it's going to be the same all week. How depressing!

Sunday night was Open Mic Night (photos). Alex was pretty nervous all day but calmed down while the guy before us was playing, while I did the complete reverse. Hehe. We played "Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, "Proof" by I Am Kloot, and "The Fear" by Travis. It went pretty well, and Sam (who was running the CAMS (Clare Alternative Music Society night) apparently enjoyed CYHSY even though he's a great fan of theirs, and the 1st year medic I met at the Medic's dinner who said "Proof" was her favourite song on the I am Kloot album also seemed to enjoy our rendition. Hurrah! It was good fun!

Yesterday was a pretty full day, so much so that I did no work! OOer. I'll have to have a purge today. Mary came round for coffee in the morning and we sat in the kitchen chatting to her from 10am until gone noon. I then rang Rahul (who was still in bed) at almost 1pm to get him up and out to snooker, and we went to WT's for a few hours. We played 5 games, drank 4 pints (in total, not each) and he pipped me to the post 3-2 on the last black. Nnnrgh. For some reason we got a free pitcher of beer when we got the table, so, not to turn down a bargain, we happily obliged. "It's a little early" I said. "It's never too early" she replied... Fair enough!

We then went to our 1st "Improver's" dancing class in the evening, which was pretty hard. We'd missed last weeks lesson, so we had to catch up the Rumba and the "hestitation" in the quick-step, which was really hard to get our heads around. Still, good fun though, and we got take-away icecream on the way home (at 10pm - hooray for La Margherita). Then, we had coffee in the kitchen with Iona, and I discovered Horlicks... a strange malty concoction that should probably be avoided at all costs, but somehow tasted slightly pleasant. Don't think I'll be drinking it again though. I also somehow got on to the topic of "gene knockouts" and tried to explain the "cre-lox" system for knocking out genes in specific tissues... I wasn't wholly successful, but that was mostly due to my poor explanatory skills. I left in where devils fear to tread... should have gone for something more simple like mRNAi or oligonucleotides. Nevermind!

Adieu,

Tom

Sunshine!!

The sunshine is beautiful. I sat outside with Iona, Tom and Louisa for about 4 hours on Monday, revising as best we could in the glorious sunshine. Even in April, sitting directly in the sun is tough - we found ourselves shuffling around with the tree's shadow. Alex and Vicky auditioned for 5 1/2 hours over two days, and had a lot of auditionees - we'll have to wait for the results to see who gets selected! They're due a week of sleep pretty soon!

In other news, we went to formal last night, in celebration of Ella's birthday much past, but missed. The food was awful, but we all had good fun. Ella was properly chuffed with her presents (A space hopper, a murder mystery, a purse, some earrings, some chocolates and 2 DVDs - we split off into boys and girls for her shopping, guess who got what...). I've put some photos on flickr.

Photos

I've joined flickr as an attempt to make my photos more easily available online, as blogger is often a little unsure of which photos it'll keep, and not everyone has access to facebook. My URL is http://www.flickr.com/photos/recognisetheview/ with the username recognisetheview if you just want to search for me from the main page. All the pic resize to 800 pixels, so if you want a BIG original copy, then just email me!

Enjoy!

I've just finished going through Module 3, and am not far off making lecture notes for the other 3 modules. Getting there...

Last Friday was the "What you wanted to be when you were younger" bop, which was really really good fun - probably one of the best bops for a while. Vicky, Iona, Erika and me went shopping (yes, I was a girl for the afternoon) for costumes, and I picked up a hard-hat from an army surplus store for £7. I need more use out of it, so no-doubt next year whenever I do any sort of DIY I'll be putting on my hard-hat. "You need a plug rewiring? Of course, I'll just go and get my hard-hat".

One never can be too careful.

But yargh, bop was good fun and photos (with my exciting new camera!) are available on flickr.

"It's nice to see a natsci... over there... leaving," were the words Alextheboy used to sum up our formal last night. Surely tongue-in-cheek and slightly confused - no doubt he didn't expect to give a speech on Tom, Reece and Iona's birthdays, but when none of them would stand up after a round of "Happy Birthday", the onus fell first to Alexthegirl to say something, followed by Vicky, and then, not to be out-done, Alex. He was, of course, refering to TomT's englingness, despite two years as a natsci. Was pretty funny.

Formal was nice - the food was amazing (Fish-cakes to start. Really tasty fish cakes. Then we had some delicious beef for main, and a white chocolate and amaretto chocolate cream cake for pudding. Wow!)

Oh, and I wore the pig cuff-links that Hannah got me for Christmas, and amazing they looked too!

Three Strikes...

I have mining heritage. My father is from Lancashire, which is not very miney, but, though I may have forgotten when reporting on Bop-Japes(TM) to my Mum, most of the people on the Welsh side of the family were infact miners. As would be expected. So, when I donned charcoal and STRIKE NOW sign (lovingly penned by Alex) last night for our 20th Century bop I poked those saddened Clareites from their slumbers, and got a few "Solidarity" shouts (mostly from those wearing hammer and sickles), and a few "Strikes" from Reece. Yes, strike has two meanings. Ouch.

Bops are fancy-dress, and the theme was 20th Century - hence the hammers and sickles, and minerisation. Reece went as a cowboy (with Aviators), Alex went as a flapper (complete with bright lipstick and MANY coats of mascara) and Vicky went as a beatnick (complete with beret).

Yaaaaaargh.