The Bloggler

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favourite door photos from around the world.  It is hosted by Dan, see his Blog ' No Facilities '.  This week I am in Lancashire's Forest of Bowland - one of England’s 36 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).   We visited here last week for a few days to explore the hills, valleys, forests and villages. It was a nice break but would have been better if the weather had been kinder and we could have eaten inside the many fine dining establishments scattered across the area.   This is still a fairly untamed place, full of mystery and infamous as the home of the Pendle Witches who were tried and executed for witchcraft in 1612. Most famous for its links to the now notorious witch trials of 1612, Pendle Hill and its surrounding towns and villages are a truly bewitching area of Lancashire. The picturesque hamlet of Barley is worth a visit.  It is a great ...

It's been a whole year since I started this Blog so it’s time for my first annual self-appraisal. Here goes. I have published 39 posts. That's only one per week.  Hardly prolific!   Apologies to my six regular readers.   I feel ashamed at this level of productivity. I’ve looked at my stats and I noticed a few things: 1.       I have very few followers. I know followers aren’t the be all and end all but a few more would give me a bit more motivation.   I’m hoping that this may be because subscribing on ‘Blogger’is a bit of a faff, especially for most of my readers who use WordPress and see my posts in 'Reader' anyway. On the other hand I may have to accept that it is because no one thinks my Blog is worth a regular peep. 2.       Traffic to my older posts, including some once popular ones, has virtually ceased.  I need to review them and work out a strategy to promote them. 3.     ...

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favourite door photos from around the world.  It is hosted by Dan, see his Blog ' No Facilities '.  This week, my Thursday Doors are in lovely Lymm.   Lymm is a large village and civil parish in Warrington, Cheshire, England.  Its a lovely place about 30 miles from us and where my daughter and her family live.  It's Celtic translation is a "place of running water".  A stream runs through the village centre from Lymm Dam (an old reservoir) and runs down into a valley underneath the Bridgewater Canal.  It's a popular destination for canal dwellers and tourists as its not only very pretty, but also full of cafes, restaurants and pubs.  There is quite a celebrity contingent resident in Lymm including Ian Brown of the Stone Roses, Tim Booth from James and Matthew Corbett from the Sooty Show, and several other TV stars and sports stars....

I could write about my favourite guitarist, or keyboard player, drummer, singer or front-man/woman.   But I am going to write about a music hero of mine who is all those things - except a woman that is. This is a man who during his career played pop-rock, blues-rock, progressive rock, soul, rhythm and blues and psychedelic stuff.   He learned to play the piano at age four and joined his first professional group at age 15.   Though primarily a vocalist and keyboard player he is a brilliant guitar player and is a proficient player of the drums, mandolin, guitars, bass and saxophone.   He has played with many of the biggest names in music (helping out Jimi Hendrix, Lou Reed, George Harrison, Leon Russell, Muddy Waters, Joe Cocker and Howlin’ Wolf, Phil Collins, Sandy Denny, David Gilmour and many others). He is also well known for collaborating with Eric Clapton.   He started his professional career as a key member of the Spencer Davis Group, then co-formed ...

This week's photography challenge #Sunday Stills (hosted by Terri Webster Schrandt at her site,  Second Wind Leisure Perspective ) is on the theme, 'Water'.  "No water, no life. No blue, no green" - Sylvia Earle Marina (Reflections on Nice Marina, France) "Life is like the ocean. It can be calm or still, and rough or rigid. But in the end, it is always beautiful." Sea (Surfing in Cornwall) Sea (Fishing in Crete) Sea (Stormy sea in Minori, Italy)   "The still waters of a lake reflect the beauty around it. When the mind is still the beauty of the self is reflected" – B.K.S Iyengar Lake in Malaga District (Spain) and  Lake Lake Garda (Italy) Lake Garda, Italy Pond (Tatton Park Gardens, Cheshire)   “Who hears the rippling of rivers will not utterly despair of anything” - Henry David Thoreau River Tame, Upermill, Lancashire   "When you have the whole pool to yourself" Pool, Crete "It's nice, this. The canal." He looks at me. ...

I might have been having a bad day when I posted a rant about the National Day Calendar and the sillyness and pointlessness of 'special' days/weeks/months.  See - " Are you aware what day it is ?"  I may have been a little harsh in my criticisms and whilst some calendar events are annoying, others seem harmless enough on reflection. In any event, I can always - and usually do, ignore them. Most of them pass me by.   The other day, I accidentally clicked a wrong 'bookmark' on my laptop and the National Day Calendar website refreshed itself.  I was faced with April's calendar.  I couldn't help myself look through it and heck, what a month it is.  First up was .... Chinese Language Day, 20 April. Its purpose was to persuade people to learn the fascinating history of this old language and to learn to speak the language itself.  As you may be aware, it is the hardest language for westerners to learn and takes on average 8-10 years. Therefore it took me...

In January, I posted a rant ‘ Is the Internet broken ’ about the how the Internet was becoming less and less helpful (to me at least) and that we were all being forced to download more and more apps to do the simplest of things.   If I may, I’ll continue my rant, specifically in relation to Smartphone Apps which I think are ruling our lives, rather than improving the quality of our lives.  Apps bloat your phone My last smartphone told me I had run out of storage space.     It wasn’t old but it didn’t have space to accommodate the updates on the three apps I had downloaded and it wasn’t possible to delete the ten regularly updated useless apps it came loaded with.   So, I have a new one.   Initially the temptation was to try out various apps that took my fancy.   Some were too intrusive, some didn’t work, and a couple of amusing games were unplayable – because they could only be understood young people.   Other apps seemed hell bent on gett...

Hartlepool is actually the town where I was born.  It lies in the the County of Durham near the River Tees estuary on the north east coast of England. The first three photographs were taken in September 2016 at 'Hartlepool's Maritime Experience' - a major visitor attraction in Hartlepool, now the National Museum of the Royal Navy. The concept of the attraction is the thematic re-creation of an 18th-century seaport, in the time of Lord Nelson, Napoleon and the Battle of Trafalgar.  The site is within Hartlepool's Historic Quay which contained redundant docks and old repair sheds and timber yards.  It was regenerated in the early 1990's.  The original buildings have been restored, repaired and extended to show just how a working seaport like this would have looked like in the 1700s and early 1800s.  I have to say, it is one of the best 'living' museums I have been to.    There may not be many doors visible but you can see they are in keeping with authen...