It is a wonderful day here. There is wind as one climbs the hill but it is dry and sunny. It’s a touch nippy to the fingers and nose but that is what winter is all about. It is a beautiful day.
Whilst I was editing the pictures I had an altercation with a southern mummy. She didn’t speak quite like the queen but then nobody speaks quite like our queen. I suspect our queen has a speech implement or something. It is a problem with being a king or queen. the sycophants say I love your clothes or voice. She’d be a ‘Special Needs’ in Tideswell.
I digress; her three children were playing round my van, just being kids, throwing snowballs at each other and trying to tempt the dogs out; nothing I couldn’t ignore. Then the mater from hell appeared.
“ CHILDREN, CHILDREN. Has one checked one’s snowballs for stones? I hope you aren’t bullying Louisa, Tasmin where are your gloves?”….On the tirade went and not a yard from my van.
I lost my presence of mind half way through the harangue. I stuck my head out of the window and suggested she take the kids sledging while she flattened the piste. She ripped into me all la-de-da. Saying words to the effect that I was an intolerant, ignorant northerner. I suggested she take her children, her big mouth and enormous arse back to play round her own van. The youngest piped up saying.
“ Daddy doesn’t let us play round our van. Can we take your dogs a walk please?”
I have got rid of the dogs for half an hour. Uneducated ignorant dogs that they are.
Todays pictures are mostly trees. The light was harsh but it was good to have light.
The dogs are back and Tasmin said one was bad and pooed in the woods. I told her not to worry…Bears do and the Pope kisses Tarmac…. What a polite little girl. She said thank you. Her brother said nothing. Louisa asked if they could take them a walk tomorrow. I said ask your mother or mater. Okay she said. Not all children are as bad as their parents and they are young enough to be trained proper.
It has been an entertaining day.
Have a really good week.
Adrian you're all worn out but they are beautiful pictures, become s.
ReplyDeleteYes, a good but hard day.
ReplyDeleteAdrian, I bet that's not the first time that you've been put in your place by a female who thought that she was a little more superior?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure your charm will work wonders before she takes her brood back home?
Cracking pictures of the pines in the sunshine and snow, looks like a beautiful place to walk, minus the ciggies of course! The summits look rather bleak and inhospitable though.
Stay safe...[;o)
Trevor, no and I doubt it will be the last.
DeleteI wish I were fit enough to find out how bleak.
I began reading with my glasses off but put them on to see the pictures. You have fine group of them this time. I can't decide which I like best, I love 'em all but the last is the most interesting.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the dogs liked the children as much as the children liked the dogs?
David, the dogs love children. I think they are on the same wavelength.
DeleteAdrian, so nice that you and the dogs made some new friends LOL. You crack me up. That light is really harsh there compared yo your duller images from days earlier. I had to put my sunnies on inside :)
ReplyDeleteCarol, I remembered to take mine off when I got back. It was a beautiful day.
DeleteI really like the first three images; the trees have a lot of detail. Which lens did you use?
ReplyDeleteMaria, I left them unsharpened as Unsharp mask was making them really too sharp.
DeleteThe lens is 50mm f1:1.2 L.
It is good but not as good as the 27mm T.S.
When you get so much good contrast and light it's not that necessary to sharpen. You're right.
DeleteMaria, not for the internet. Prints will usually still need about a pixel at 80% even in this sort of light.
DeleteHI Adrian It looks a beautiful place to walk although very cold bit you got great shots. I love the pine trees with the snow topped mountain behind them.
ReplyDeleteMargaret, it is a wonderful place to be.
DeleteI too like the images of the scot's pine. How weird was the women, one minute all up in your face then the next she allows the kids to take your dog for a walk, last time i met a woman like that I had to change the locks on my front door :o)
ReplyDeleteDouglas, I suspect she decided that anything was preferable to taking them back to her husband.
DeleteBueno, después de la discusión, se llevaron un rato los perros y te dejaron tranquilo ;)
ReplyDeleteLas cuestas son muy malas y nos hacen resoplar, ten cuidado que hay mucha nieve!!!!
Me gustan mucho las dos últimas.
Que tengas buena noche Adrian ;)
Un abrazo.
Laura, sí tengo un poco de paz.
DeleteLas pistas tienen mucha nieve este año.
I love the lavender look of the next to last image! if this were mine, I'd frame it and hang it where I could view it daily.
ReplyDeleteNorma, all my images are free. If you would like it sent fit to print then let me know what size.
DeleteSuperbly beautiful series, Adrian!
ReplyDeleteThank you Laura.
DeleteI'm glad someone else suffers when they climb hills! Looks like to was worn the huffing, from where I sit it was. Nice to see the dogs making friends and doing you a favour at the same time.
ReplyDeletePauline, it isn't too far or too steep but it was getting close to being. It is a great area to wander in. The dogs soon make themselves at home.
DeleteI wouldn't trust my dogs with that loony outfit! You've shown us some beautiful scenery today. You have to work hard to et up where you get a good view.
ReplyDeleteRed, the dogs can look after themselves. The mother was a mother from hell.
DeleteAt your entertaining best as usual and, doubtless getting away with it. As you said some kids are far better behaved than their parents. I wonder why their father bothered to have children? Mind you I often wonder that about people. As for the light that is one area where you and I disagree one with the other (or with one another - I'm always anxious when commenting on your blog in case I get a public reprimand for incorrect grammar). I like the more vibrant light. The light you call harsh. Good job we are not all the same I suppose.
ReplyDeleteGraham, were I to post a picture of the mother you would not wonder why he has children but admire his bravery.
DeleteThe pictures are too harsh for me. I could have toned them down but decided to leave them pretty much as shot. Some are HDR which usually soften images but not these.
No words, all beautiful pics. I like especially the one in the wood with snow and sun.. Remainder an my childhood, i can smell the air belive me... Thanks for sharing with us
ReplyDeleteLaura, pine forests are wonderful places or can be when they are not planted as a commercial crop.
DeleteLovely classic views and not sure what your fellow travellers are doing there, they need to somewhere on the continent.
ReplyDeleteJay, I am fortunate to have all the time in the world to wait for the right weather.
DeleteI wish they were on the continent. I wish they'd stopped at home.
You said: "I’m about buggered" - Was that by Tasmin and Louisa's pater? Great pictures - giving a real sense of the big, natural and wondrous world around you.
ReplyDeleteYP, just a figure of speech.
DeleteWondrous is what it is here.
I really like the 3rd picture. I has a kind of 3D look to it.
ReplyDeleteMonica, I have several similar. I think this was the best.
DeleteBelas fotografias....Espectacular....
ReplyDeleteCumprimentos
Obrigado Fernando.
DeleteI love the sunny day and the sharpness of the trees and especially the snow-covered hills.
ReplyDeleteBob, it's a good job I got out as yesterday was vile again.
ReplyDeleteAdrian, I am glad that you don't let the obvious chaos just outside of the frame infest the wonder in your pictures, but I am equally glad that you are so willing to share that chaos with us. Whenever I have witnessed a parent such as the one you described talking to his/her children in a manner that I have felt was disrespectful (for I have always been of the somewhat unpopular opinion that respect for one's elders should be a two-way street, and both ways should be earned rather than forced) I have been at a loss for words. Fortunately, my fiancee has been there in the past couple of years to supply the words for me. Even more fortunately, we have police in our country who are relatively quick to come to the scene of the most egregious abuses, or else I would have been forced into a physical altercation with someone for whom violence has always been a first resort rather than a last. In other (and shorter, and probably better) words: I'm glad I haven't yet had to defend myself against a child abuser, but I'm even more glad that my fiancee hates violence against children so vehemently that she is willing to risk her own safety in order to end it.
ReplyDeleteOn a much, much lighter note: great shots as always. I have not mentioned this before, but I am amazed at these trees, and how the forests - were it not for the snow-capped mountains in the distance - could easily be mistaken for those just outside my father's house. Pines are so prevalent in this area in fact, that one local hamlet bears the name "Spruce Pine." Of course, I know very very little of trees, in spite of the fact that I spent much of my childhood attempting to scale them, which perhaps explains my otherwise inexplicable antipathy towards the noble Pine: bare hands and feet were clearly never meant to climb its bark, but as a child, I stubbornly refused to admit defeat. I suppose that is my longwinded way of saying that I can see every brutal, scratching piece of each tree, and it takes me back to my childhood, for better and for worse. Lovely details, even if they do bring out some rather mixed feelings!
Nathaniel, it is both rewarding and a pain in the arse rearing children or animals. They have to have freedom to find their own way.
DeleteIt can end in heartbreak and disaster but I think back to my father. He was fighting a war at just nineteen years old.
You mustn't coddle them.
What you say speaks directly to a struggle I have had since my child was born (or really, long beforehand) - my mother was definitely not the coddling type, though she was certainly not abusive either. I've always been softhearted, which she has often confused with being softheaded - or maybe she was not confused at all. It is a struggle, and I always go back to Orwell - in so many ways, he despised violence, yet he fought in wars when he thought it necessary. The wars that my countrymen have fought in my lifetime have felt so like wars of choice rather than necessity that it is difficult for me to imagine how it must have felt to take up arms against a true existential threat. Of course, I am just a parent - but you hit on something that I think about every day: what is care and what is coddling? It is difficult sometimes to know the difference - but I agree with you completely about children and animals: without freedom, we have nothing. Still, whenever my little girl is attempting to climb something she has not climbed before, my impulse is to snatch her away and put her back in her crib - I only hope I can tame that impulse sometime before she hits puberty!
Delete