After Dropping Diana Off At 04.45 AM, I Had A Quiet Day,

I was going to spend some time on my photographs, 

but I got side-tracked by Deep Ocean: Kingdom of the Coelacanth, I have been fascinated by this fish since I was a kid, I first heard about him in the mid 1950s and ultimately when one was put on display at the Natural History Museum I visited him as soon as I could, this is at a time when wild life television programs were de rigueur, series like, 

Hans & Lotte Hass,

  Armand & Michaela Denis, and of course our own,

 David Attenborough, all of whom I watched on a small black & white television all of those years ago, anyway back to the program, first aired last year in September I found it fascinating, the fish is a true living fossil, the coelacanth, the fish was thought to have become extinct some 66 million or so years ago, but one was discovered back in 1938 of the coast of Africa in the western Indian Ocean,

if you are interested in the story behind this fish I can thoroughly recommend A Fish Caught In Time by Samantha Weinberg, it is a great read and of course factual, I have made a number of posts about this fascinating fish, one for instance feature this question, is a cow (a mammal) or a salmon (a fish), the coelacanths closest living relative? have a look here for the answer, by now I was comfortable so I continued watching wildlife programs until Diana returned home, after our evening meal and a Outback Opal Hunters we watched another of the series of Call My Bluff, so funny and witty, then our film for the evening, 

Little Shop of Horrors, great fun and with a surprisingly well known cast, a musical similar to Rocky Horror, but with no real rememberable tunes, still great fun, after which we rounded of the evening with Poirot before we were off to bed.

It Was Diana's Day Off,

but I had to stay in,

unfortunately everyone in the flats where we live could only make today for all of our front doors to be measured, new fire regulations had been announced, meaning that all of the fire doors to our homes that were fire certificated, no longer were, so at about £3,500 plus 20% VAT each, every door has to be replaced, the problem being there are so many companies that make fire doors, that is not the problem, the problem being each door has to be certificated by the fire door supplier that the insurance company will accept for a multi family dwelling, and as far as we could see, there only 2 companies that are able to supply doors are approved by the insurance companies, and of course both quotes were just so similar, it is almost like they talked to each other! as if, so the girls had a day out to Ravenscourt Park, I stayed at home and played with a few more photographs and also popped into town for some shopping, 

luckily the cherry blossom was out in the park, 

from left to right, Kai, her friend Joy and Diana,

and a close up of Kai and Diana,

Kai taking a pose, 

the blossoms just starting to shed some petals, another week and it could have been too late, 

snack time,

croissants and coffee around, next window shopping, what else?

in the late afternoon/early evening the girls felt a bit peckish, so off to The Great Thai Kitchen, where they meet up with a couple of Kai's friends, 

lots of Thai street food, 

was the order of the day, the girls had a great time, in the evening before Diana returned and after my evening meal I decided on,

 Seven Worlds, One Planet, I watched the one that featured South America, one of the many places I would like to visit, after which Diana returned home, so it was a coffee and a chat as well as we watched a very entertaining,

Call My Bluff, a great quiz show, basically two teams of three alternate between giving and guessing the meanings of obscure English words, all of which are found in the OED. (Oxford English Dictionary), for a little more detail of the game, the game comprised two teams of three (a captain and two guests) who would compete to earn points by identifying the correct definitions of obscure words. 

The teams take turns to give three definitions, one true and two bluffs, while the other team attempted to determine which was correct, examples of words used in the show, taken from a 1972 book published in connection with it, include queach, strongle, ablewhacket, hickboo, jargoon, zurf, morepork, and jirble. 

The word queach was defined by the contestants as "a malicious caricature", "a cross between a quince and a peach" and "a mini-jungle of mixed vegetation" (with the last definition being the true one), it was great fun and amazingly Diana did in fact choose the correct definition more often than I did, the program was broadcast between 17 October 1965 to 22 December 1988, I have to admit I enjoyed it at the time and so did many others as can be seen from the number of shows that were broadcast, there were 12 series shown on BBC1 and 25 series on BBC2, BBC1 showing 469 episodes and 542 episodes in BBC2, just over 1,000 episodes, amazing! we then spent the rest of the evening with Poirot, after which Diana was off to bed, a 05.00AM start for her tomorrow, for myself a Bangers & Cash before I too was off to bed.

The Second Post Of Sunday

this is where we went, 

Cliffe Pools, 

next to the car park a handy place if you want to hire/buy a cherry picker,

 

I had a slight problem, the longest lens I had was a 100 - 200mm zoom, above fully zoomed in, out of the camera,

I cropped the image, 

and then a tad more, which made a nice print, but any more cropping and the sharpness was starting fail,

the same here, 

it is as if the birds know that they have to be as far away as possible!

a reminder to use the brakes, 

a few birds on the waters edge, 

again cropped to see more of the birds, 

a walk along the River Thames, revelled long abandon jetty's and liquid fuel unloading stations,

a bit of a plumbing nightmare, 

we were lucky, 

a few butterfly's, out and about, 

Diana getting used to her binoculars, I took over 180 photographs, all similar to the ones here, so many birds all so far away, we must save for a longer lens, and it is a long way to Christmas, 276 days as it happens! Still looking on the bright side it is my birthday in April, you never know!

I Am Splitting Today's Post,

into 2 parts, 

the first all from Diana's telephone, the second post from my camera, as my camera takes an age to download and edit, so for today we were off early,

driving for about an hour or so, 

to Cliffe Pools a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds wild life preserve, we were meeting up with the Bromley RSPB, I would have put a link to the RSPB, but for some reason I am not allowed to see it, every time I try to look at it I receive the message "Service Unavailable" back to Cliffe it is a reserve of over 1,700 acres, there is a lot to walk around!

we all meet in the car park, 

I was soon snapping away, 

I had bought Diana a pair of binoculars, 

some of the members had also brought spotting scopes around for us all to look through, which was kind and very thoughtful, to see the birds that were mere spicks though my camera lens in such detail and close up through one of these scopes was amazing,

all set for the off, 

I forgot my hat, so a hood it was, at first it was more than a tad chilly, 

but with these almost clear blue skies, 

it soon warmed up as we made our way to the estuary of the River Thames, 

in the distance a long disused coaling dock,

one thing was soon apparent as with my visit to the Sevenoaks Nature reserve, 

my 100 - 200mm zoom lens even with a 1.4 converter was not up to the job, looking around and chatting to other photographers in the group a 400mm lens was a minimum, with a number of the people there having 500 or 600mm lenses plus a convertor, 

at lunch time there was a break, we had not brought a packed lunch with us so we started our walk back to the car park, as we left the group we learnt that we had walked 3.5 miles and we had another 1.5 miles to walk back to the car park,

at this point only a mile to go! we arrived home famished, 

so a read and a sherry, 

for our starters a huge crisply vegetarian spring roll, 

which was delicious, 

for our main course a roast chicken, with gravy for Diana sans gravy for myself, 

'Cheers!', after our meal it was feet up for some television, in the evening as there was nothing we particularly liked we decided to spend our evening with Poirot, after which Diana was off to bed, for myself a Shed & Buried before I too was off to bed.