YesBut Thinking Aloud

2008-07-29T17:24:00.001+01:00

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2008-07-28T08:18:00.000+01:00

Bamboo haiku
Willow sonnet
Grass beat

Just a thought

2008-07-25T08:09:00.000+01:00

Hiku: Haiku for dyslexics?

Haiku Question

2008-07-21T07:29:00.000+01:00

What, where, when

how?

type click Google

Conforming pebbles

2008-07-18T07:05:00.000+01:00

You're so square

Pain

2008-07-14T07:02:00.000+01:00

Dentist smiles

open wide

does this hurt

Big and small pebbles

2008-07-11T07:10:00.000+01:00

Some join groups
others are loners
mean while they are watched

Yes, but what is it?

2008-07-07T08:58:00.000+01:00

What is the subject of the photograph? Is someone walking over my grave, (assuming I had a glass coffin lid)?

In fact it's someone walking over a glass rooflight/ smoke vent which allows a dim stream of daylight into the tunnel connecting South Kensington underground station with the Victoria & Albert Museums, Natural History Museum and Imperial College.

I was walking through the tunnel on my way to Kensington Gardens and a visit to the Serpentine Gallery- one of my favourite art galleries in London.

Pebble ranks

2008-07-04T07:17:00.000+01:00

March on

YesBut help

2008-06-30T07:26:00.000+01:00

This is a short but nevertheless sincere appeal for help.

Mrs YesBut is addicted to bags. Walking past a bag shop she can't resist, she must go in, its the same with market stalls selling bags. Unfortunately it goes beyond looking. She feels the world will come to a catastrophic end if she walks out of the shop having not bought a bag.

I open a cupboard door and I see rows and rows of bags. I open a bag at random and inside I see a bag. I open the bag and inside is . . . yes a bag.

Is there a mantra I can intone or a potion I can administer to cure her of bagmania.?

How I long to be Bag Less in Seattle.

Pebbles on the move

2008-06-27T07:54:00.000+01:00

Left, right, left right
keep in line

Memorial day - 55

2008-06-25T07:51:00.000+01:00

Today’s memorial is located in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, London; it was erected to the memory of Sir Arthur Sullivan.

In the nineteenth and into the twentieth century there were few more famous names in the entertainment world than Gilbert & Sullivan. Their names are still synonymous with Light Opera.

Gilbert as librettist and Sullivan as composer collaborated in the production of fourteen comic operas. H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), The Mikado (1885) and The Gondoliers (1889) are stilled performed today by armature operatic societies. Their productions were as popular and crowd pleasers then, as musicals are today.

Arthur Sullivan was born in London in May 1842. By the age of eight he could play proficiently all the instruments of a band. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, then at the Felix Mendelssohn College of Music and Theatre in Leipzig. He was an established composer before he joined forces with Gilbert in 1871. There partnership lasted until 1896. As well as operas he composed hymns, the best known being “Onward Christian Soldiers”.

He was knighted in 1883; and died aged 58 in November 1900.

His memorial is the work of Sir George Frampton, R.A., P.R.B.S. (1860 -1928). The most striking feature is the bronze partially clothed figure of a weeping woman. On the left hand side of the base are a lute and theatrical mask, the symbols of music and comedy. Sullivan’s bronze bust looks forward, a moustached Victorian gentleman.

Click here to see YesBut's Image of the day, and leave your caption.

Is this a proverb?

2008-06-23T07:17:00.000+01:00

We were walking along, when Mrs YesBut turned to me and said "If wishes were horses, man could fly".

I asked, "where did that come from?".

She said she didn't know.

Googled the phrase, while there are similar phrases, nothing exactly the same.

Can you help by providing an explanation?

I'm baffled - though that's nothing new, Mrs YesBut frequently confounds me.

Scattered pebbles

2008-06-20T07:07:00.000+01:00

Let's have some order. Form rows, biggest in the back, smallest in front.

Memorial day - 54

2008-06-18T08:01:00.000+01:00

The most famous memorial to Queen Victoria’s consort is the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. The structure designed in the Gothic style by Sir George Gilbert Scott is located just north of the Albert Hall.

However, the subject of today’s blog, is the less well known memorial to Prince Albert located on a traffic island at the busy intersection of six roads at Holborn Circus. To the east is Holborn Viaduct, the subject of this blog on 25th July 2007; while to the north Hatton Garden, London’s jewellery quarter and UK’s diamond centre.

Albert Prince Consort was born 1819 and died of typhoid in 1861.

The bronze statue showing Albert on horseback was unveiled in 1874 and is mounted on a granite pedestal. The statue, donated by the City Corporation, commemorates Albert laying the foundation stone of the Royal Exchange in 1842.

Isolated on the traffic island, one has to be both quick and reckless to dash between the traffic to take a close-up view of the plaques on the plinth.

On the north side the inscription reads “The Prince laying the first stone of the Royal Exchange 17th January 1842”

On the south side “Exhibition of all Nations 1851. Britannia distributing Awards”

On the west side is the figure of Peace, while on the east side the figure of History, holding a book dated 1851 - 1862.

Click here to see YesBut's Image of the day, and leave your caption.

First Thought

2008-06-16T07:57:00.000+01:00

When I woke up this morning, the first thought I had was "There ain't no books in
America".

Now in the name of green Jelly Babies, where did that thought come from?

Green Jelly Babies why are they so unloved?

All they want is to be eaten, instead they are pushed aside in the bag - how sad.

Blogging haiku

2008-06-13T06:59:00.000+01:00

Egotistical blogger

contemplating navel

me too

Memorial day - 53

2008-06-11T07:34:00.000+01:00

The City of London with a resident population of less than 10,000 is one of the smallest cities in the United Kingdom. The smallest being St David's in Wales with a population of less than 2000. The City is the financial heart of the UK and one of, if not the financial centre of the World. During the working week its narrow roads and allays come to life with the 350,000 bankers, financiers and investment workers, while during the weekend it is like a ghost
town.

The City is also known as the Square Mile, due to its physical dimensions.

To mark its boarder stand on its main thoroughfares the emblem of the City of London, supported by two dragons.

The bollard in the photograph at the top of the page, is one of two identical status that stand on the north and south side of the Victoria Embankment and mark the south western boundary of the City, adjacent to the River Thames. The dragons were formerly mounted above the entrance to the City of London Coal Exchange, which was demolished in 1963.

Just north and running parallel with the Victoria Embankment stands the Strand. The statue on the right stands outside the Royal Courts of Justice, opened by queen Victoria in 1882. When the ruling monarch visits the City, on formal Royal occasions, the Lord Mayor of London stands by the monument to great the monarch.

Shocking - heed the warning

2008-06-09T07:22:00.000+01:00

How have all these electric cables managed to accumulated under my desk?

Day of the Triffids.

YesBut no Haiku

2008-06-06T07:20:00.001+01:00

Three empty lines

on an empty screen

devoid of inspiration - bloggless

Memorial day - 52

2008-06-04T07:41:00.001+01:00

How quick the time has gone, a year since I posted the first Memorial day blog on 6th June 2007. The question was what memorial or public work of art should I choose for Memorial day 52.

The answer was obvious, it could only be - The Monument. The name is sufficient, no need to say what it is a monument too. As can be seen above, it even has an Underground Station named after it.

The photos used in the blog were taken last August before the Monument was clad in scaffolding for it to be given a multi-million pound makeover.

Visitors will have to wait until December, before they can once again climb the 311 spiral steps up to the observation gallery.

The Monument was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. Hooke is less well known by the general public than Wren, the architect of among other great buildings St Paul's Cathedral. But Hooke (1635 ~ 1703) was a brilliant scientist and engineer - his discoveries are well worth reading about. The question arises why isn't he better known? He quarreled with Isaac Newton who at the time was President of the Royal Society.Newton used that position to obscure Hooke's work.

Back to the subject of the blog, the flame-topped monument to the Great Fire of 1666 is the tallest free-standing stone column in the world, and was completed in 1677. The Latin inscription on the north panel of the pedestal translates as

"In the year of Christ 1666, on 2 September, at a distance eastward from this place of 202 ft, which is the height of this column, a fire broke out in the dead of night which, the wind blowing, devoured even distant buildings, and rushed devastating through every quarter with astonishing swiftness and noise ... On the third day ... at the bidding, we may well believe, of heaven, the fire stayed its course and everywhere died out."

You might recall the subject of last week's blog the Golden Boy commemorates the point at the north side of the City where the fire was brought under control.

YesBut its the same but looks different

2008-06-02T07:44:00.000+01:00

After blogging for a couple of months, thinking of subjects to blog about becomes more difficult.

Its the same with photography, you get a new camera and its click, click, click. Subjects appear to jump out at you shouting "photograph me". Everywhere you turn there are interesting shots to take. But with time those inspirational images seem to occur less frequently. Your left, camera in hand with nothing to photograph.

Suggestion:~ photograph the same thing! Familiar scenes can change dramatically with time and weather conditions. The light conditions are totally different at: dawn, midday and dusk. Also dramatic effects can be observed with varying weather conditions - storm clouds forming, blue sky and wispy clouds.

Have camera, will photograph.

Numbed brain

2008-05-30T07:25:00.000+01:00

Haiku, Soduko with words
figure that out
judo, aikido numbed brain

Memorial day - 51

2008-05-28T06:58:00.000+01:00

The subject of today's blog is, like the last two weeks, located in the Smithfield area of London.

Walking south from Smithfield Market along Giltspur Street, towards the Old Bailey - the Central Criminal Court, on the left side you come across an appropriately named road. Look up and you see the figure of the Golden Boy. It was erected to mark the point where in 1666 the Great Fire of London was stopped from spreading further north.

The figure of a fat boy was meant to signify the belief that the fire was God's punishment for Londoner's indulgence in gluttony.

The statue was originally erected in the front wall of the Fortune of War pub. The establishment was notorious for the part it played in former times in body snatching. The Resurrectionists would bring bodies to the pub to be purchased by the surgeons from Saint Bartholomew's Hospital located across the road.

Now for the final question. I made reference to the appropriately named road. What came first the Boy or Cock Lane?

Qashqai Challenge

2008-05-26T07:41:00.013+01:00

The London lap of the Nissan Qashqai Challenge was held on Saturday.

Brilliantly exciting mountain bike riding.
The riders demonstrated their skill and courage to the full.

Took some great photographs, unfortunately their is a problem with Google preventing uploading - will post them when I can.

ANYBODY ELSE HAVING PROBLEMS UPLOADING PICTURES?