After Dropping Diana Off At Work,

I made my way to Norwood Lakes, 

rain was forecast, 

but it was bright when I arrived, 

popular with dog walkers, fishermen and boaters,

it has a nice selection of birds, 

these are just a few I have posted at random, 

one of everything I saw today, 

but I have a few that are worth playing with, then it happened with a crash of thunder, or three, the skies opened up,

a huge storm passed overhead unleashing quite large hailstones, I made my way back under cover,

although it looks bright, the hail had turned into huge drops of rain, lots of them!

I and the camera were by now thoroughly soaked, so home I went, but here is one shot of a grebe in the hailstorm that I played with and printed out on a A3 piece of paper,

below are the three I played with and printed out on A3 size paper, 

a brown headed duck, the hailstones falling around the grebe, and a moorhen,

next I was out, the Beckenham Photographic Society was having the end of season get together, so past the snail mail box, 

I walked into town, it had rained so much the pavement was flooded in places, 

past a very wet green, 

and graveyard, 

into M & S for a couple of slices of fruit cake, 

and into here, Deli Nene,

there were going to be about 15 or so of us, 

and here we are, I started with chicken strips, 

and a mixed kebab, 

followed with baklava, a with a bottle of wine my bill came to £65.00, but before that on our table we chatted away, from book binding and my apprenticeship as a ruler, 

the machine I learnt on was a 4 carriage Shaw pen ruling machine, in the video above, 

also my travels in India and a series of videos I made and sold in the shop, for some reason the narration made by myself has disappeared and been replaced with music, it is a bit long as it is the complete video, below are a few shorts from it and other videos I made for the shop,

back to my apprenticeship we also chatted about fore edge pictures, I made a post about it many years ago it is here, and a then a coincidence I mention that I had bought Diana a early Christmas present, a hover, the one we bought 7 years or so ago when we moved back to the UK had failed, so when she first used I reminded her to remember this at Christmas, and then today I received this:

what a coincidence! speaking of Christmas I mentioned another present, a step ladder, which will come in handy to repair this, 

one of our three ceiling lights has come adrift, 

it looks serious but at least we have a step ladder, but we are running out of time, tomorrow in the afternoon we have tickets for a Midsomer Murder at the Churchill, and a meal afterwards, the next day Diana is off to Krakow, so I will get a electrician in to put it back whilst she is away, so back home I beat Diana by about 20 minutes so we settled down to a Bangers & Cash before we were off to bed.