Picture a day

Tuesday, 1 May 2012

111. 30.04.2012 Man on the Edge

John is always telling me that I’m pushing him closer to the edge. To be brutally frank I’ve no idea what he’s on about. But it’s mutual. There is only so much plucking of hairs from ears that a person can take.
After combing through the small print on the insurance policy, I thought a trip out to the Horseshoe pass was on the cards and some shots for the picture of the day of him dicing on the rim of the chasm (innuendo not intended) The sort of picture that could be framed in a tasteless gold frame above an urn on a mantelpiece, perhaps with a string of alternating fairy lights for ambiance with some personal nick-nacks like his Vicks nasal stick (which to my knowledge he’s had for the last 7 years) or the congealed bottle of Compound W or his favourite callus file, or his electric jumper-bobble remover – personal and sentimental items.

Anyhow, the spoil sport was sulking and wouldn’t pose and spent half an hour stamping up and down the lay-by whilst I skipped up llantysilio mountain with the agility of a Great Orme goat. (it’s the new fitness regime you see)

The pass is oddly enough horseshoe shaped but in Welsh it translates as Pass of the Cold Stream (Bwlch yr Oernant) - think of it like having a wee in the Irish sea but with the stream being cold and not warm.

The pass was built in 1811 and was originally part of the turnpike road. It’s often closed in winter due to snow and landslips or bikers protesting about the price of fuel.

The bikers love the thrill of speeding up and down it two or three abreast on the wrong side of the road, maybe because the white line in the middle of the road doesn’t actually apply to them, I don’t know. They don’t seem to be put off by the many bunches of roadside flowers along its length. Years ago I used to pillion ride a friend with a motor bike (no inuendo intended) and to be brutally frank, I got through more pairs of underpants than I care to think about.

There’s a cafe at the top – The Ponderosa which is where all the leather clad bikers head to to have a bacon butty and a cup of tea in a polystyrene cup standing around in groups pointing at each other’s bikes. To the untrained eye one bike looks very much like another to me, unlesss there’s a peg with a bit of cardboard stuck to the mudguard or those coloured beads in the spokes that make a noise when they ride past.
The Ponderosa, just like every tourist hot spot in Wales sells just about every item of tat that you could find in just about every other tourist shop in every part of Wales. The tat that Welsh people don’t actually buy – fridge magnets with dragons on them, pencils with dragons on them, notepads with dragons on them, dragons with dragons on them and dragons with dragons with little dragons on them as well as the much sought after Welsh lady ass. fudge. Oh and the very flimsy traditional Welsh cookery books filled with classics such as Welsh rarebit, Welsh cakes and Bara Brith and ermm other traditional Welsh fare like that.

110. 29.04.2012 Place your bets on another drought warning

Betfred Llanrwrst. The throbbing Mecca for men with purple noses, plastic trainers, pouches of tobacco and smoker’s phlegm donned in mismatching sportswear and other forms of casual wear.

“Just sit in the car and don’t mess with anything whilst I pop into Spar for some essentials” said John. So I did just that. As good as gold I was. I didn’t bib the horn, I didn’t flash the lights, I didn’t engage the reverse gear, I left the handbrake as it was, I didn’t climb from the front to the back and the back to the front again. Neither did I rummage through the glove compartments in search of lost mints. Neither did I run the battery flat listening to the radio at full pelt and neither did I lie on the parcel shelf and pull faces at passers by. I didn’t even daub the wet windows. Like I said, I was as good as gold. To be brutally frank, I just wasn’t in the mood today.

I just sat there taking pictures of people going in and out of Betfred. I live an exciting life, but there again, what else is there to do on a wet day in April in Llanrwrst when everything has closed down for the rest of the year? It’s a glorious place in the sunshine when the place is a hub of local activity, less so in the rain.

Anyway, without being too tenuous, I reckon that all the purple nosed, white socked men going in would be placing bets on the odds of yet another drought and hosepipe ban being enforced on the same day that flood warnings, gale warnings and yellow rain warnings were issues with those little red triangle things that pop up on the forecast.

It transpires that it’s the wrong kind of rain in the wrong places at the wrong time of year. But seeing as the entire country is being yellow rained on, just where is the right or wrong place for it to be raining? Even sub-Saharan London is getting a tipping. There really is no winning with these panic merchants.

Oh and yellow rain alerts are real. Check out the met office website. Those of you with disgusting minds will automatically assume that yellow rain is something to do with poor plumbing on a busy Saturday in a Wetherspoon’s urinal. I don’t.

109. 28.04.2012 Valle Crucis

The vale of Llangollen was in medieval times the ideal place to set up an abbey. It was remote and wild and before coach loads of cagoule clad daytrippers discovered it, it was on the edge of the wilderness.

The monks who lived here were of the Cistercian variety. In other words they looked like monks, wore white dressing gowns with hoodies held together with one of those posh curtain cords people in detached houses have and they all had bald spots.

In fact the Cistercians only admitted fat, balding middle aged men into their fold. If only I had been born 800 years ago.

They founded their abbey at Valle Crucis in the 13^th century and added bits to it for the next few hundred years including in the 15^th century a new hall and a heated private apartment for the abbot, which went somewhat against the Cistercians basic way of life. Like the majority of abbeys it was dissolved in 1537 but was by accounts at the time in a poor state of repair before this.

Valle Crucis, or 'Valley of the Cross', is named after Eliseg's Pillar, a 9th century Christian memorial cross which stands nearby.

People often ask me about the various orders of monks. “Tim” they ask, “tell me about the different orders of monks” In fact people come up to me all the time and ask me. To be brutally frank, it can be a bit tiresome, but for the umpteenth time, here is a quick résumé

Cistercian – bald, fat jolly monks. Friar Tuck might have been one of these, but his dressing gown was the wrong shade

Belgian – were good at making chocolates in the shapes of seashells for some unknown reason.

Nasturtium – wore gowns of bright orange and were usually covered in caterpillars.

Amphibian – spent most of their time praying at the bottom of ponds

Coercian – usually used pressure to do things like making cheese or pressing grapes through thin mesh to make wine

German – known for their hilarious sense of humour. Usually tall and blond with a liking for towels and poolside sunloungers.

Gluten – an intolerant order.

Insertion – generally popular with nuns

Frisian – favoured black and white dressing gowns. Known for their milk.

Piston – also generally popular with nuns

Grecian – there were more than 2000 orders of Grecian monks, Grecian 2000 being the best known. As a rule the members of this order had unnaturally dark hair.

Roentgen – this order wore very thin robes, practically see through.

Piston – not to be confused with the other Piston order, this order was famed for their honey mead and traditionally brewed ales. Usually preferred to pray in silence on Sunday mornings.

So there you go. Don’t say I never teach you anything.

108. 27.04.2012 Drought conditions.

Drought? It's pissing down as it has been for the bulk of the week. And yet, or so they tell us it's the worst drought since The Brotherhood of Man won the Eurovision Song Contest with Save all your raindrops for me. Or something like that.

This week I got wet several times, perhaps numerous times or maybe even more than that and some of the occasions weren't even bathroom related incidents. And in a week when I had more bad hair days since the days when I actually had hair in 1988, to be brutally frank I've wept on and off like a festering wound. Not quite like I wept when Peacocks went into administration but it wasn't far off and I only made that Middle Eastern noise like a yodelling sound very briefly on the tram on Wednesday. Not quite inconsolable, but not far off.

Today's picture was taken on the 3.50 to Llandudno somewhere near Newton Le Willows.

Newton Le Willows; the place that conjures up images of a settlement surrounded by majestic weeping willows on the banks of a slow, fish rich, meandering river. There are fresh green pastures dotted with cows, (real cows, not the Fresian types , but real ones) . salix trees and perhaps a pollarded wood with an old house where the basket weaver and his family live.

I have friends who used to live in Newton Le Willows but they were driven out by the locals for being too upmarket. Apparently they did their weekly shop at Bargain Booze and Blockbusters and as such were considered a bit snotty for the locals who preferred the skips behind the back of Aldi and the Kebab Shop. There's more nourishment in kebab meat that moves than people actually realise.

Anyway, culture and culture aside this field of rape did its best to provide a splash of colour on a drab commute home that was more akin to a miserable afternoon in January fueled by a migraine, headache and baysea than a hopeful spring afternoon like the ones we were having exactly a year ago.

Right. Just popping round the back to pick something up for tonight's tea.

Thursday, 26 April 2012

107. 26.04.2012 Peacock

107. 26.04.2012 Peacocks

Ah....peacocks. The day it was announced that Peacocks was closing, I cried and cried. After that I wept and wept. After that I behaved like a recently bereaved widow in the Middle East. I walked about screeching and screaming, beating my chest, breaking down in front of any camera that showed interest, gesturing to the heavens whilst making that funny noise that sounds like a yodel but not quite. In hindsight, I must have looked like a right pillock, but at the time I really was genuinely and truly distressed to the core. Not that I am a drama queen or anything.
The thought of not being able to drool over nylon garments or rummage through off the misshapen peg items of misshapen knitwear or marvel at the two for £10 winter jackets was, to be brutally frank, one of those low points in my life, one that I thought I would never get over.

Peacock’s had a lot more going for it apart from having a finger on the pulse of yesterday’s nasty fashions. Due to the quantity of nylon goods on the racks, Peacocks actually used to produce enough static electricity to light their shops, power the tills and allow the staff to warm up Pot Noodles in the microwave round the back. In fact on some days the busier branches of Peacocks were actually feeding electricity back into the National grid. Under the right atmospheric conditions it was also possible to re-charge an i-phone simply by holding it next to the racks of sports wear, something I used to do on a regular basis in the Llandudno branch before receiving a nasty shock when I put my phone in my pocket. Apparently my testicles acted like electrical nodes and could quite easily have fused my manhood. Fused it to the nylon 5 pairs for £2 boxer shorts I was wearing at the time that is.

Anyhow, all was not lost and Peacocks has now been taken over by Edinburgh Woollen Mills, another mecca of fashion items for the less concerned, short sighted, colour blind and/or clinically confused British public.

Mind you, it wasn’t the first time the demise of a peacock sent me over the edge. When poor Ashley Peacock was crushed to death on that awful December evening when the tram hit Weatherfield I was the same. That episode lasted for a week. Well the episode was actually only half an hour with “Tonight but Not with Trevor McDonald again” in the middle of it. Dreadful, and such a waste of a talented butcher with a funny voice. I say, such a waste.

Anyhow, this Peacock is one of several that live on the edge of Gwydyr forest. Not sure why they call them peacocks. They don’t actually look like peas. Neither do they look genitalia either. Well not the ones I’ve seen anyhow.

106. 25.04.2012 Springing trees

105. 24.04.2012 Where the forest meets the moors.

A special place, so special I’m in two minds as to keep on banging on about it. Part of me wants people to know of it’s beauty, but the selfish part of me doesn’t want anybody to know about it. A bit like the long forgotten ancient stone circle in our woods. other bit of me would prefer nobody else knew about it.

Gwydyr Forest, or Gwydir forest if you like, is what the guidebooks would call a magical place.

There are huge towering Douglas Firs and Norway Spruces some of them more than 180 year old. Shirley Bassey can remember when they were saplings. Apparently. Swathes of the forest contain some of the most important areas of native Welsh oak woodlands.
If you know what you’re looking for you could see buzzards, peregrines, merlins goshawks and black grouse, but to be brutally frank I’m no Iolo Williams - for one I don’t look that good in shorts and secondly with the exception of the black grouse I wouldn’t be able to tell one from the other. As the ten year old Tim once wrote on a project about them “ a bird of prey is like an owl that doesn’t look like an owl but has claws and a big beak”

As well as the countless mountain streams, lakes and waterfalls, there are three major rivers in the forest, The Llugwy, Lledr and the Machno which all drain into the Conwy at some point or other before it reaches the flood plain near the sea.

Occasionally you’ll glimpse the mountains of the Glyderau, Carneddau and the peaks of Snowdonia.

If you’re lucky, you might see a red squirrel, if you’re dead dead dead lucky you might see a pine marten as this is one of the few areas on this little island where they are still found, Scotland being the other bit. Nobody has actually seen one, but they’ve found their droppings and done DNA tests on them. I stood in something, but once again I’m no Iolo Williams and I’d left my pine marten DNA kit at home so who can say what it might’ve been. All I know is that John said it was nothing to do with him.

Today’s picture was taken on the very edge of the woods with the wild and empty moors rolling into the mountains in the distance. Magical.