What a sunset, Howie!

I had come here to post pictures from a recent trip but that will have to wait. All the lovely cats here reminded me of the ones I saw in different parts of Turkey. The place was full of cats.



Taken at Buyukada, one of the many islands near Istanbul. No cars are allowed here so you either walk, ride a bicycle or take a horse carriage.

You know what they say, one good tern deserves another as these white-fronted terns at Caroline Bay prove, also showing they are not scared of the cats

It must be my tern to groan...

Having seen so many cats here for a while and everywhere else I have decided the next homeless cat I am offered will be accepted, it's been too long now.

A thatched cottage in Brimpton, Berkshire

What beauties all the cats are! Thank you for them.

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I tried resizing a picture but it came out huge. Another time, another picture ... Maybe.

It's all right, I don't mind resizing it for you - send me the link to it and I'll do it later (it's just stopped raining so I'm going outside!).

The last photo from me for a little while as I am about to head to this part of the country for 8 days. Hopefully Mt Taranaki will have snow on it this time and it is clear so I can get some okay photos of the volcano. First time I will have flown into New Plymouth so hopefully not a howling northwest wind....

Have a great time... looking forward to the pics!

These are typical sixties houses, but built on a terrace up a hill which I've never seen before, in Selsdon.

I am waiting at the Christchurch Airport so went for a small walk (27 degrees and a strong nor'west wind) and this is the first photograph I took. I could very easily be wrong but this may be a USAF C-17 Globemaster plane awaiting an eventual trip to Antarctica. Please correct me if I am wrong.

What's a little dry weather among friends?



This is Lake Mead at Hoover Dam. The white on the rocks is caused by calcium deposits (we call it the bathtub ring). When this picture was taken three years ago, the lake level had dropped about 100 feet since 2000 because of the drought here. It's dropped about another 15 feet since then.

A farm on the southern edge of London in Addington

Mt Taranaki/Egmont across Lake Managamahoe this morning. Unfortunately the cloud returned quickly so by the time we left the lake and got to the North Egmont visitor centre to walk up to a lookout, the top of the volcano could not be seen....

Lovely view Aaron, our local cafe had a mural like that for years and used to look at it while having my lunch.

As it's Funtrivia who can tell me why I added this little arrow I came across yesterday?

Another clue, here's the other sign I came across completely by chance near the last one. Amazingly I'd gone for a sign saying parking prohibited on the green which had gone, and when I went on a local tour to make use of the journey this turned up a couple of miles down the road.

And luck comes in threes, here's an early version of a sign which was standardised in 1933 with the Transport Act, this is in Tunbridge Wells

That little arrow... is it pointing at a layby?

And a road unsuitable for charabancs! A word from my childhood. We didn't have a car so outings were either on the scheduled bus or train or on a charabanc. My dad's club would hire a charabanc and we'd go on an evening "mystery tour" ending up at a spot like Heaven's Gate (overlooking Longleat), or Portsdown Hill (overlooking Portsmouth), or the New Forest (overlooking a pony) - somewhere we could all get out and enjoy the contents of the boot, which meant boxes full of packets of crisps, sandwiches, lemonade for the children, and beer for the grown-ups. Then we'd go home singing "Ten green bottles".

I would say that these are the last of the summer's roses - except the next bush along is just forming more new buds.

A country road on the southern edge of London

The little arrow can point to whatever is above or next to it, but the design is the answer, it is the pre-1964 version, something I thought I'd never get when the only known one was removed from the centre of London before I could get there mainly due to it being within the congestion charge. It usually pointed to parking restrictions on poles, (as they still do using the newer type), showing which side of the pole they apply to. This is pointing to a road a little further along, I'll post the entire sign next.

These are my tubs of winter-flowering violas, waiting patiently for me to wrap the tubs with bubble-wrap so that they don't get frostbitten.

My camera died and I have only old pics , but here is one I liked. Its a moon gate at a nearby park they made when they pulled down the Kowloon Walled Village. (An interesting place to google, the Village not the park).

Looks like I have returned but I have to go through the photos and get some on flickr before I can post any here other than this closer up view of the summit of the 2518 metre high volcano, Mt Taranaki/Egmont (last major eruption was in 1854). This was taken from the same place as the previous volcano/lake photo.