Pig Sty Avenue

Surely the coldest day of the year so far. There's the mixed feeling that we're in the depth of winter, but yet that it's drawing to a close, and Spring's only weeks away. Thoughts are turning more and more to the allotment, and what's to be planted. I can't really say "it's good to be back at work". I mean, I like my job but work's work. It is good to have shaken off the last of that 'flu or chest infection or whatever it was. Above, is a photo I took this morning at the Benwell campus. Looks like those workmen are painting the frost onto the tree, though actually they were mending a streetlamp. And here's another photo I took today, which I really like.

After Her First Porridge , originally uploaded by Pigs Ahoy, aka Pig Sty Avenue . This has been a big day for us: Molly took her first solid food - porridge. She loved it. After the first spoonful, I was amazed to hear her wee stomach rumbling, as if to say, "at last! I'm sick of milk." Her mouth worked every spoonful. And in between each one she gave me a big grin: "this is more like it!" She enjoyed it so much, she wanted to eat her bib, too, look. Or maybe she's just for wiping her own wee chops? It's important for lots of reasons but, because she still refuses to take a bottle, geting her onto solids menas that we can begin to think about all going out together. The next part of the conundrum is to work out how she can get a drink. Oh yes, and now I've to get to grips with the food processor, so that she can have some of our meals, pureed. It was bought months ago for this very purpose, and has sat neglected on top of the fridge ...

the three of us , originally uploaded by Pigs Ahoy, aka Pig Sty Avenue .

All this about Simon Hughes being gay came as a shock to me. Not that he's gay. I thought everybody knew. I've distrusted him for twenty odd years, since the Bermondsey by-election , when the right wing, Thatcher-supporting press crucified Peter Tatchell because he was gay, and the openly gay (I thought) Hughes kept quiet. Apparently not, we now learn that he's been in the closet all his life because he didn't want his Mam to find out . Hmm. I was listening to talk about this on the Today programme whilst I was in the bath yesterday and got to wondering: how did I know Simon Hughes, MP was gay, when apparently even his own mother didn't? And then it came back to me, as things do sometimes in the bath. It was 1983. I was a law student at Newcastle Poly (now Northumbria University). I was having an end of term pint (several pints probably) in The Concert Bar, just across from the law school with a gang of mates when we were joined by a couple of our lectur...

foghorn and the lassies , originally uploaded by Pigs Ahoy, aka Pig Sty Avenue . The hens are going from the allotment. The fox - a vixen we are presuming, with a late litter to feed, - is becoming incredibly bold, taking hens in broad daylight. The Old Man's been spending whole days there, armed with an air rifle and a vengeful attitude. But it's all too stressful, so tomorrow they go to a new home. And we're to concentrate on vegetables and herbs this coming year. Dad's downcast, I can tell.

A wee trip for the forty-something (+) UK reader. And whilst I'm being foolish, here's Magical Trevor . Yes, I know I've linked to him before, but he always cheers me up.

My HP laptop went kaput back in November. It went back to the shop, who had to send it back to the manufacturer, and I got it back a fortnight later, with a new hard disk and CD/DVD RW drive. It was practically a new laptop, as the woman in the shop observed. (She's called Heather, and was in my class at school... But that's another story.) Hmm. I don't know what exactly was wrong to make the drives go awol like that - but I suspect it had gotten clogged up with the omnipresent dust of Libya. Anyway, whilst my faithful friend was away, I had to start using Herself's laptop, a Toshiba. I didn't like it. The keyboard and mouse seemed to have minds of their own, selecting text unasked. And the monitor wasn't too good either. But by the time mine came back from the shop, I'd done a load of work for my MA on it, and it would have taken too much time to transfer it all over to mine, as well as setting mine up - we all know how long a brand new computer t...

Went to the doctor this morning: I've got a chest infection and I'll be off work until next week... Feeling really washed out and have a sad cough. She's prescribed antibiotics. Hopefully I'll be feeling better soon. This picture cheers me up.

The hyperactivity and vitality I felt on Friday night were short lived. I'm still poorly. But Dad tells me the chickens are still healthy! More when I'm feeling better.

And you know you're on the mend when you suddenly feel the need to get out of bed at 1.00am, make a gorgonzola and onion sandwich, wash it down with red wine, and catch up on your blogging. Ha ha! That strange vitality - or possibly hysteria - that comes when you've recovered from three days of lying in bed, feeling like shite. The Old Man tells me that the hens are healthy, so I've just had a wee bout of ordinary 'flu. Nothing's mutated round our way. Yet. Blogging's a funny thing though. I wrote (what I'd considered to be) a rather thoughtful post on my last full day in Libya, seven months ago. And in the last few days, some genius has commented "I don know who are you, and I really don't care. I guess, you are a white blond female from Blighty, UK. However..." And so it goes on, a wee window facing onto a whole vista of ignorance, bigotry and xenophobia. Not to mention a somewhat misplaced misogyny - "blond female", forsoo...

thumb sucking , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . She's been chewing her fists for a while. Tonight was the first time we've seen her sucking her thumb; it's much more decorous. I'm on the mend. Proper post tomorrow.

Not feeling well. Been in bed for a couple of days. 'Flu, probably. Normal Service will be resumed asap.

There were lively scenes at the allotment the other day. The Old Man was refurbishing one of the greenhouses, getting it ready for next Spring's tomatoes, when he heard a big kerfuffle from the hens. This is broad daylight mind, midday. He came out of the greenhouse and there's a fox, with a hen in it's mouth, trotting away, quite the thing. He gave chase but, as you'd expect, Urban Reynard was sprightlier than a man in his late 60s, and got away - with the hen. We're down to 11 chickens now. A few days ago, two of them we're found with their heads chewed off. This may have been a mink, or perhaps a feral cat. We're beginning to question the future of poultry keeping down our way.

Tunnel Road Motion Blur 2 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . I've been wanting to take photos like this for ages and now, at last, I can! The lights are wee bit wiggly because it was very windy, and the camera was wobbling a tiny bit. For the technically minded, this was a 6 sec exposure, f25. I was using a pocket tripod. This road is going north, towards the Tyne Tunnel. You can just see the lights from the river on the left hand side there.

Molly's 1st with the d50 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . I'll blog some gritty social realism soon.

That Hand Thing , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . See what I mean? Her hands are beginning to work in tandem now. This was 1/30 of a second, and is a wee bit blurred. She's still cute, though, eh?

I bough the Nikon D50 with its kit lens today, which is a wee 18-55mm zoom. Already sensing that the non-photographers' eyes are glazing over, I should explain that this is bottom of the range so far as dSLRs go, but it IS a Nikon, and when finances permit I can get more and better lenses, and maybe one day a really posh Nikon camera body to go with the lens collection... There's been a fair amount of dialogue in recent weeks, especially with Brendadada, about the best sort of Nikon to get, the D50 or D70, and what lenses to get. The fact is, though, I couldn't really afford the D70 and the better lens. And I'm still really a n00b at photography, and I'm moving up from a compact digital: walk before you can run. The thing with the Olympus compact was that it was great for ages, and then I got to a stage where it simply wasn't sophisticated enough to do what I wanted it to do, for that I needed a better lens and control over DoF and shutter speed. It's ...

Gary explains to Oli , originally uploaded by Sam Judson . Crazy, eh? Good photo, though, isn't it? The first draft of the assignment's done, and ready to be emailed to my tutor. I've a couple of smaller assignments to do, but essentially, I'm out of the woods now. This photo was taken by my mate Sam at a Flickrmeet at Bob Trollop's by the Quayside in Newcastle. My photos are on film, and won't appear here for a week or so. More nonsense later.

Cool, eh? Right, now, I really am getting on with some work...

All the best to regular callers and casual passers by alike. With the end of the holiday is the realisation that I've got to have a 4000 word assignment done within the next couple of weeks. So it's eyes down for that now. I won't be doing much blogging - or buggering around on Flickr, either - until the end of this month. Until then...