Robot

You must have come across the security device shown above. Very often, I have to keep clicking the curly arrow thing until I find a verification combination I can actually make out. If you don't get it just right you end up repeating the process. Why can't the numbers be clear and why do the letters often merge together so that you can't quite work them out? To paraphrase the great British Olympian - Sir Steve Redgrave - whoever invented this form of verification needs shooting!

If they really do want me to prove that I am not a robot, I can think of other ways of doing so. For example, I would be happy to send them a small plastic bag filled with toe nail clippings or even a stool sample. Failing that, I could take a scalpel and carefully cut in to my abdomen to fish out one of those unnecessary organs that wobble inside us - a spleen, the second kidney or the appendix for example. But that seems rather drastic - perhaps there are other ways of proving I am not robotic.

I know, I could send them a photograph, examination certificates and fingerprints, perhaps poems I wrote as a boy or the panda that shared my cot when I was a baby and which still sits next to our bed. Written depositions from upstanding members of the local community who are happy to testify that I am not a robot? A small vial of my blood? A bank statement?

But the thing is - who is actually asking me to prove I am not a robot? I have a strong suspicion that it is probably and ironically a robot - sitting in Blogger Control in front of a massive computer screen with coloured lights flashing on its sheet metal head. Maybe it's known as Robot Brague! Should I bounce a question back, asking the sender to prove that it is a robot? Perhaps requesting a bolt or an electrical circuit?

Loyalty

Mostly, I shop for groceries in local low-cost German supermarkets - "Lidl" and "Aldi". Nonetheless, occasionally I visit high-price supermarkets like "Tesco", "Sainsbury" and "ASDA". What begins to irritate me in these palaces of commerce is that at the checkout I am always asked if I have that store's loyalty card. It's the same in petrol stations. "Have you get a Nectar card?", "Have you got a Shell card?", "Have you got a Clubcard?"

Well to all of these people I would like to say - No I bloody well haven't! Why would I even think about showing loyalty to a supermarket or a petrol provider? For a measly few pence and a bunch of "privileges" I don't need? No way! And besides it is patently obvious that these loyalty cards represent cynical trickery - to capture your business and via computer wizardry to investigate your buying habits.

In coffee shops and some pubs you will also get cards that can be stamped. Ten stamps and you get a free coffee or a free bag of crisps or something. Do they think we are stupid and so desperate that we are going to play that demeaning stamping game, fishing out the cards from our pockets every time we visit? They can get lost.

If I am going to show loyalty to anything it will not be to  a damned supermarket or a coffee shop. Loyalty is a precious asset and I prefer to show it to my family, my beloved county (Yorkshire), the natural environment, my football team (Hull City), The Labour Party and to the memory of all the young Englishmen who died in past wars for our freedom. Is there a plastic card for that kind of loyalty I wonder?

Eat your heart out Victor Meldrew!

Statistics

Like my good blogging chum, R.Brague in Canton, Georgia USA, I occasionally look at my blogging stats. Now I have been churning out this fascinating blog since June 2005. I was a young man when I started - not this old fart you see before you now. I have enjoyed so many "hits" I feel like a punch bag in a gymnasium. Blogger lets you know which are your most visited blogposts and here are my top ten:-

1. Chavs (Sept 2009)
2. Waxwing (Feb 2011)
3. Mistake (April 2012)
4. JCB (August 2012)
5. Mimicry (Dec 2010)
6. Baxinsky (Sept 2013)
7. Pith (April 2012)
8. Bamber (Dec 2011)
9. Nilsson (Aug 2011)
10. Desman (Sept 2012)

There appears to be no rhyme or reason why these blogposts have made it to my top ten. The "Chavs" post is ridiculously popular with over twenty six thousand recorded page views and I wonder why "Baxinsky" - posted only last month - has crept in at number six. If I were asked to select my ten "best" posts I doubt that any of these ten would have been picked. I'd have mostly picked posts that have recorded my various travels both abroad and at home - all accompanied by my own award-winning photographs.

If you are a blogger and not a passing voyeur or government snooper - what is your own most visited blogpost I wonder?...But before you answer I must get my fat arse into gear and travel over to my son's house to continue with the kitchen decorating that I began yesterday. Ceiling done - walls and woodwork to go. I am surely living the retirement dream...

Pictures

Our lovely English summer is still refusing to die. Autumn and Winter have been kept waiting in the wings by The Summer of 2013 - and even here at the end of September she continues to take well-earned curtain calls. On Friday, I had half planned to begin decorating the kitchen at my son's house - craning my neck at the top of a step ladder to emulsion the ceiling with paint droplets in my hair and eyes. Instead, the weather forecast drove me out to Tideswell in the High Peak from where I walked down to Miller's Dale and then up the other bank to Priestcliffe and High Dale. Back down to Litton Mill and then back along Tideswell Dale to the car. It was another super, energising ramble - up hill and down dale - feeling glad to be alive:-

Old railway good wagon near Tideswell - now an allotment shed

View across the fields to Heathydale Ward

Deteriorating Meadow Farm south of Tideswell

View over the Wye Valley above Litton Mill

Back to the allotments at Tideswell

And then today, Sunday, Shirley was up for another walk with me. She often complains that I walk too fast and too far so I filled my boots with lead and planned a manageable stroll out of Ashford-in-the-Water, through limestone uplands to Monsal Head with its magnificent views of the Wye Valley. And then we'd walk along the Monsal Trail for a mile or so - through the Headstone Tunnel cutting south on the path back to Ashford which is where we were befriended by a black cat:-

Shirley with the black cat at her feet

Victorian postbox in Ashford

"The Bull's Head" in Ashford

Nothing

I have nothing to say today - nothing to blog about. I thought I might reflect on the horror of the fatal Nairobi shopping mall attack or the dignity of Dr Muhammad Taufiq Al Sattar who lost his entire family in an arson attack in Leicester. The return of Kiwi Katherine de Chevalle to the blogging fold or the amazing number of plums we have harvested from our Victoria plum tree this year. How to make something delicious from a bag of microwaveable rice or the tragic Tory privatisation of Royal Mail...

But I cannot muster the energy. Can't be bothered. Nothing to say.

Or maybe I could have written about last evening's journey up to Leeds to join our lovely daughter Frances for a celebratory birthday meal. Born twenty five years ago, she remains the apple of our eye. A young professional now. With five of her friends we dined on mince and slices of quince in Miah's Kitchen - an intimate up-market Indian curry house on York Place. One of the waiters even brought out a sparkling birthday chocolate caterpillar log and we sang "Happy Birthday to you...". I was pleased we had made the effort to join her in the middle of the working week. We drove back on a very quiet M1 motorway, now peppered with the evidence of expensive, slow motion road widening activity. Flashing lights and warnings about speed cameras...

But I'm not in the mood for writing about that. No way.

At the birthday meal we were asked to spill the beans about Frances's childhood - an embarrassing tale. But we had nothing to say for she, like her brother, was such a lovely child and our memories of her are almost entirely sweet. But we related the tale of a summer holiday in France when she was almost four years old. From the back of the car a little voice piped up out of the blue - "I want a fishing net". And that voice continued for the next three days. When she woke up, her first words were, "I want a fishing net" and at hourly intervals, the same refrain - "I want a fishing net". It wasn't a request, it was a demand. Finally, we relented and in a seafront shop in La Baule, ground down by her ceaselessness, we found the precious fishing net she had craved. And, as the tide was out, I took her straight down to the rock pools where we saw little French fishes and caught a lurking French crab called Pierre. She was very happy. Mission accomplished. What next?

But you wouldn't want to hear an unremarkable story like that one so I'll just say nothing and go back to bed for a bit more kip.

Frances last evening - just twenty five

Standout

Sheep mask

"Standout" - that's just one irksome expression that has leaked its way into modern English usage and is now becoming part of our common currency. I mean, why can't commentators say: "I thought Joe Bloggs's performance was outstanding" or "In my opinion the most outstanding player was Joe Bloggs" instead of "For me Joe Bloggs was the standout player". It is a term we have absorbed from American television - especially their sports coverage. Not so long ago you would never have heard that term in Britain - either on the BBC or in private conversations.

Another term that really irritates me is "gifted". "The paintings were gifted to the nation by Lord Snodgrass"  - why not simply "given to the nation" or "left as a gift to the nation by Lord Snodgrass"?  Usually, I'd expect "gift" to be used as a noun and it's only when referring to somebody who is especially talented in a particular area that I'd use it as a verb - as in "Mr Brague is a gifted organist" or "Helen has become a gifted quilter".

In language use, it is easy to be a sheep - going along with the flock. Language is forever changing I know and  I have happily embraced many new terms and expressions  - from "cool" to "chav", from "blog" to "boob" and from "software" to "airhead" but there are some developments that just get my goat. "Standout" and "gifted" being just two of them.

Perhaps I am a bit of a pedant but guess that I am not alone in being annoyed by and unwilling to absorb particular words or expressions. Are there any "new" words or expressions that irritate you?

Popcorn

Grab the popcorn and a bucket-sized cup of cola - it's time to snuggle down in your comfy chair and enjoy the latest blockbusting film from the renown, avant garde English film director - Sir Yorkshire Pudding. It is his fourth feature film and once again Pudding ignores normal film conventions to craft a unique and dramatic vision  of the Derbyshire countryside. Incredibly, this film is brought to you free of charge thanks to generous sponsorship from Yorkey's Knob Junior Football Team (Cairns, Australia) and The Tom Gowans Big Toe Preservation Society:-