Wrens (Troglodytes troglodytes) do it:

Blue Tits (Parus caeruleus) nest in old stone walls to do it:

I’ve been watching another Blue Tit nest in another of our walls for a couple of weeks, so when I narrowly avoided treading on an over eager fledgeling this morning I popped it back into the nest hole, much to it’s indignation. Ordinarily I wouldn’t interfere with Mother Nature’s plans but it was marginally too young to leave the safety of our crumbling masonry and I happened to find it first. For the record, when you’re only about an inch long you can be as indignant as you like I’m afraid I’m inclined to take charge of the situation before passing cats, lawnmowers, squirrels, magpies or crows do.

Talking of Grey Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) they’ve been at it too and there are generally four of these sturdy little tykes tearing around our Maple tree at the moment:

Love ‘em or hate ‘em you have to admit they’re endearing.

Sadly a bit past it’s best but it does have the added frisson (at least for those of an entomological bent) of having an ant crawling about on the flowers.

Wikipedia has this to say about this unusual native flower.

I’d also like to say a special thank you to everyone who attended Mum’s funeral in Newent. We were a little worried to begin with as my parents had only moved up to Gloucestershire in June and hadn’t had time to make any local friends. In fact we originally told the funeral directors that there would probably only be about a dozen mourners, so we booked the small lady Chapel at St Mary’s in Newent.

As it turned out there were alot more than 12 on the day, indeed unbeknown to us my cousin Russell had to hastily put out a load more chairs whilst we were outside waiting for the hearse!

Mum would have loved to think that so many people would make the effort, particularly the D’souza contingent and some of our group of friends who she’d got to know over the years I’ve been with Rachel. At this point there should also be a special mention for Gwyd, who made it to the church service despite being at death’s door himself with the flu and to Louise for coming to the memorial service a month later in Barry, where my Mum and Dad had lived before.

By way of a small memorial here are a couple of my favourite pictures of Mum.

This first is of her as a girl, I’m not sure how old she was here but I’m guessing it was taken before her accident during the War.

The second was taken the day before Rachstock with the delightful Jemima Hill.

I’d like to apologise to anyone to whom I’ve not given the news. I’ve tried to be pretty thorough but inevitably a few people will have fallen through the net.

Finally I’d just like to draw people’s attention to the post below dated back in January, especially with regard to using the gallery or sending me any pictures or movies of Rachstock so I can get round to uploading them.

Rest In Peace Mum, I love you.

As many of you will know, my Mum Mary Black, was diagnosed with a brain tumour at the begining of September and a great many things suddenly became less urgent as a consequence, this site being one of them.

We were also greatly saddened by the deaths of two of the feline southerners in the run up to Xmas. Trevor after a wonderful innings of 18 finally passed away pretty peacefully, but Trixie was very suddenly taken away by a potent infection only a fortnight later.

Looking back at 2006 on New Years Eve, I felt that I really didn’t want a series of tragic events to eclipse the wonderful time we had at Rachel’s 30th party so I thought it’d be good to gather as many photos and videos of the Rachstock together so we can all relive a little of the magic.

Thus if anyone has any thing they’d like to contribute to the funky new gallery, which is a vast improvement on the old one in both style and ease of use, I urge you to visit it register and try uploading them. If this is a daunting prospect or you just don’t want to do this, please contact me by email so I can advise you about how best to furnish me with the files. Incidentally if you have any multimedia files you’d like to share with us, drop me a line as I’m going to give them a seperate section all of they’re own.

We picked up the T shirts yesterday and loved them so much we thought we’d have a little fun, doing a little fashion shoot

Without further a do here’s the girls skinny fit Tees modelled by the birthday girl looking, well…
HOT actually!

Note the fabled aspen logs, pressed into service as scenery.

Ahh wood, is there no end to your versatility?

Speaking of versatility - here’s me, expanding on my repertoire of catalogue model shots in the gents shirt:

incidentally the men’s ones make you strong,
strong like the lion:

So there you go, get yer orders in, numbers are limited!

Anyhoo - I’ve decided to launch a new category called ‘people’ because grudgingly, I must admit that thay can do interesting things on occasion. Clearly not as interesting as small feathered/furry/foliaged things, but their cute little antics can actually turn out to be quite amusing!

Anyway this is the inaugural ‘people’ post, but actually, in all honesty it’s not even a proper post, just a link to a set of photos I took at the excellent ‘Voices in My Head’ gig at Oliviers Jazz Club in Greenwich. The whole evening was a huge success and featured some amazingly talented people, all of whom will go on to have staggeringly impressive careers in the music industry.

If you don’t recognise them now, stare long and hard at them for soon they will be household names, faces and sounds:

Proceed to the full gallery section either by clicking the above image or by clicking this link:

http://southerns.net/gallery/VoicesInMyHead

Rest assured normal service shall be resumed shortly, when I shall be featuring more rural rural ramblings.

N.B. Some of the artists featured in the gallery have their own web presences and an entirely un-exhaustive, list follows in no particular order:

http://www.sallyjjohnson.com

http://www.myspace.com/badsciencerecords

http://www.myspace.com/IndiForde

http://www.myspace.com/annaphoebe

http://www.myspace.com/andymooremusic
By the way if anyone wants to use the pictures from the gig they’re welcome - but please let me know which ones and where they’re going to be. If you need hi-res versions just contact me

here’s the business end of the equipment:

you can just about make out the pinhole if you stare hard
and here’s the meticulously crafted viewing window:

Naturally the clouds and rain were right on cue, but there was a brief gap in the showers and I managed to get a single shot of the penumbra taking a little chunk out at 11.42:

presented here with an uneclipsed sun (top picture) by way of reference for the non scientifically minded.

Incidentally the Sun’s image is not perfectly circular in these photos, because I had to take a picture of the projection surface through the viewing window at the side.