Well it's quite easy - you join up, create a member name, icon, profile if you want to, and start posting loads of pics (which I'm not exactly short of) and other people view them, sometimes comment on the (usually complimentary!)
It gets very addictive, when you get other people praising you and you feel part of a group and so you join in and post back, have conversations, etc etc. Before you know it, you actully give a damn whether your photos are removed from such-and-such a group because they don't fit in with the group moderator's idea of what the group is all about.
So you set up your own group, (sod 'em!) and invite other people and they post pictures to your group and comment on each others pics and it's all one happy family.
Then, you start reading the more political threads about whether you should support yahoo really, or who owns the photos and read the small print etc etc ... all gets a wee bit involved.
So anyway that's where I'm at - when I log into my computer, the first thing I do is check to see if I have any Flickr comments, and if anyone has joined my group or posted more photos, etc etc ...
great stuff!
Makes me wonder where the future lies for this sort of repository. The day all the electricity dies, will all these photos cease to exist? How sad would that be?
Well it's quite easy - you join up, create a member name, icon, profile if you want to, and start posting loads of pics (which I'm not exactly short of) and other people view them, sometimes comment on the (usually complimentary!)
It gets very addictive, when you get other people praising you and you feel part of a group and so you join in and post back, have conversations, etc etc. Before you know it, you actully give a damn whether your photos are removed from such-and-such a group because they don't fit in with the group moderator's idea of what the group is all about.
So you set up your own group, (sod 'em!) and invite other people and they post pictures to your group and comment on each others pics and it's all one happy family.
Then, you start reading the more political threads about whether you should support yahoo really, or who owns the photos and read the small print etc etc ... all gets a wee bit involved.
So anyway that's where I'm at - when I log into my computer, the first thing I do is check to see if I have any Flickr comments, and if anyone has joined my group or posted more photos, etc etc ...
great stuff!
Makes me wonder where the future lies for this sort of repository. The day all the electricity dies, will all these photos cease to exist? How sad would that be?
I was incredulous when I read this report on the BBC website.
It talks about an experiment undertaken to see how microorganisms are affected by being in space, in micro-gravity. The result was that "the bacteria were almost three times as likely to kill infected mice compared with standard samples held on Earth".
It contains the paragraph:
"These bugs can sense where they are by changes in their environment. The minute they sense a different environment, they change their genetic machinery so they can survive," Professor Nickerson said.
What a complete load of rubbish! Microorganisms don't have brains - they can't think for themselves. And even if they could - do you think they'd know what to do, in order to make themselves better? GAH!
I can't believe that a Professor could speak like this. It's against any true scientist's instincts to come out with this sort of crap - and if she didn't, the BBC have twisted her words and portray her as a daft blonde, or worse, they consider their readers to be thick. Hmmm yes that could be it.
What is much more likely is that the cells less likely to reproduce under micro-gravity conditions are dying without copying, and the ones which move well and reproduce successfully, survive. Thanks to their quick life-cycle the effects of natural selection will become apparent quicker than in other, slower "lifeforms"*. The Hfq master regulator could be important in this process, according to the Arizona University website. Hmm that makes the story much more interesting and informative.
*I'm allowed to use this word because it's a space story.
Yeah, so it's day two and I still feel a complete spare part. It's starting to remind me vividly of the two days work experience I spent at Robert Ferguson's Printers in December 1986. I filled most of the time spinning on a wonderfully free-moving spinny lab chair, but also managed to get a tour around one of the last Victorian factories left in Carlisle. It was worth it for that. I watched the huge fabric-printing machines and visited the design room and peeked inside the director's office, all this impressed my Mam no end because she worked there as a telephonist in the 1960's and was amazed it was all still there for me to see. It's been converted into flats now.
I suppose should make the most of this quiet time, while I can still go home at 5pm without feeling guilty.
I start my new job today. If it goes really bad at least I'll have my enamelling class to look forward to tonight - I've bought some copper blanks from eBay so I won't be going empty handed this time. I've had lots of ideas!
We went across to Northumberland on Saturday, and yesterday was spent sorting out the photographs we took. I'm quite addicted to Flickr - so much so that I was gutted when I got thrown out of one of their groups for not following their (hellishly bloody) complicated rules! Well they can sod off. I started my own Carlisle group cos there wasn't one - I have civic pride even if no-one else does.
I made a lovely byriani last night. The way I've spelled it there you'd think it was Italian. Suppose I must get ready.
We went across to Northumberland again yesterday, to allow B to try out more photography techniques, and because we have to go back there every once in a while cos it's the law. I love it over there - and it was great to see those pink roads again.
We arrived at Chatton Park first, and climbed the small hill past the old shallow quarry, to the rock art located in surely the most spectacular positions in the UK. The view opens directly over the pale glittery sandstone surfaces towards the outline of the Cheviots, across the Till valley inbetween. It's an extremely memorable sight, and one which I always treasure.
It was very windy up there today but at least the sun was trying to get out, the weather on its last chance before autumn set in properly. We continued down the other side of the hill to Kettley Crag, and one of my favourite pieces of prehistoric rock art anywhere.
After a while, my eyes were drawn down to a nearby red field, which seemed to have poppies growing in it - and I felt the urge to get a closer look. It would certainly make a potentially smart photo. Only one problem - there was a farmer-type walking the fields, and I wasn't sure if he'd let me onto the land. After a while I decided to see how close I could get without crossing the boundary. As I approached, I could hear him shouting and cursing at the broken fence (proper c-word and everything, mind!). I was behind a tree at this moment, trying not to laugh out loud. He was taking all his frustrations out on this poor inanimate object and as I turned heel without him seeing me, he cracked on the chainsaw and let rip on the fence. Maybe the poppy question wouldn't have gone down very well after all...
On my return I occupied myself with puzzle and camera until B was ready to move on. We hauled ourselves eventually back up the hill and down again towards the car, and drove onwards to Bamburgh.
The first view of Bamburgh Castle along the road from Belford is always wonderful. The village was really busy - lots of tourist types (ahem) making the most of the good weather. It was between lunch and tea time so we couldn't visit our preferred cafe-bar so visited the Copper Kettle instead, which was fine. After a couple of gifty shoppies we continued on to the church, where Grace Darling is famously buried. Here there are some rather smart old gravestones there but sadly a lot of them have been completely sandblasted to bare rock by the unforgiving sea winds. Discovered that the Grace Darling Museum opposite the church is being completely rebuilt with lottery money - it used to be housed in what felt like an old garage!
We took a good look at the church and I got some good photos of the plants and insects. Then, back to the car and to the little carpark near the beach. The plan was to hang around until sunset to get some great skies, but there was some great people- and dog-watching to be done first. As the sun lowered it became clear that the sky wasn't going to be as spectacular as promised so we made do with the shots we had and headed off back home.
Meanwhile we got some great shots of the beach and the dogs etc, here are mine - enjoy!
It was my last day yesterday. Rather than throw me out and shout abuse at me while throwing rotten veg, they were quite nice and wished me well. No tears, no looking back. I took them a gift but for some of the office staff this was the first they'd heard about my leaving so there was no pressie for me - what's all that about?!
It felt good - not only to leave a job that wasn't right for my future, but to have all ends tied up (or most of them anyway). There is a continuing cleansing process going on in my home office... stuff was returned to it's original home and some will be heading for Mr Skip.
So today it's more reorganising, sorting, chucking, cleaning, shredding, bagging, throwing, dusting. I might watch a DVD or two.
New job starts on Monday.
A couple of days ago, I watched a leak in the road develop into a gush and later the men with tools came to repair it. There's still a hole with a little blue fence round it. The whole drama was enough of a distraction for me to actually take photos of it. So if you'd like to see the story, it's here.
I dreamt last night that someone told me that Ozzy Osbourne had died. At the time, I was sitting on a table of strangers some who turned out to have known him well. One brave soul wandered off so we couldn't see him cry (he used to work with him). This is all because I was listening to a Roy Wood interview on the radio last night.
On the way back from ... my very first enamelling class! Wooooo! A new hobby.
It's very inspiring. I've had lots of ideas.
A few years ago I used to go to a stained glass-making evening class, when I lived in Northumberland. It was just to get me out of the house and talk to people instead of being stuck inside; as well as something I'd always fancied trying. It was very enjoyable - I made a few bits of "art" including a landscape for my Mam and Dad, a little beach scene with real pebbles, a huge tulip picture, and lots of little danglers that were used for Christmas presents (I still have some up in my living room as a simple chandelier). I had to stop going when I moved away, but I've still got some of the stuff in a cupboard.
This new craft opportunity comes because I wanted a stained glass replacement but there was nothing exactly the same available locally. This course was the nearest and the most interesting, and also has a subtitle - "small silver work" - which is incredibly attractive to me. When folk ask what my dream job is, I answer "silversmith"...
It appears to be more flexible than stained glass, as you would imagine. I love the materials and the end result so yuuummmmm I have been totally inspired and I drove home with a smile on my face!
It's a gorgeous clear frosty morning - the first of the autumn ...
Radio Two - the lesser of the mainstay evils of the Beeb. Local radio doesn't work for me when I travel so much.
Radio One is full of shouting numpties, but I can get quite involved in the stuff on Radio 4, except for the Archers, which I never saw the attraction of even in my soap days.
Gah! But Johnnie Walker should sue his dentist, those new false teeth keep whistling so much that I can't listen to him any more. I bet you'll notice this all the time now.
And the more they play Katy Melua, the more often I'll switch over (or off). She's almost as bad as Tanita Tikaram for annoyance factor. I can honestly say I can sing better than both of them. Melua wanders her vocals until she finds the right note - surely that's not how it should be?!
Chris Evans (kennel name Christoff Lammy Pie) - there's a reason to keep the dial in place. What a star. His blog is quite good reading too. I've been a fan ever since the Zig & Zag days, and TFI - ahhh yeah, great memories. I still remember a great live performance of 'Bulimic Beats' by Cerys Matthews which had me in tears, then the next time they'd be tears of laughter at someone swearing their head off when it wasn't allowed.
He made being ginger cool! For a while anyway ...
PS - Christoff opened the show with "Last Christmas" tonight - what's all that about?!
The adventurer Steve Fossett went missing 12 days ago ... it's all very mysterious, and the situation has now developed into a possible modern-day Bermuda triangle incident.
Now I can't admit to being a huge fan - I was aware of him and his exploits but to be honest can't really understand the mentality of people who like taking such risks or "challenges"; it's just not me.
But this morning, when I realised that the story had disappeared from the headlines without resolution, I investigated and found a link on his website telling us how everyone can take part in the search.
They have split the satellite photographs of the search area into little patches, and by signing up through Amazon (of all places?!) you can review patches of ground for his plane, by comparing it to a photo of what it would look like. Obviously, this one's a "no".
This interactive haystack-searching allows people from all over the world to take part and at best makes them feel like adventurers themselves, giving them the satisfactory feeling of being some help, or at worse turns the whole thing into some sort of online game.
Ach - I played the game for a while, not really knowing if I was being helpful or if they were just making us push buttons to make us feel heroic. After all, if he crashed there's not much chance that the wreckage would be plane-shaped...
I signed up for broadband today. Not that I don't already have it - but I'll be sacrificing it when I leave my job and I can't stand the thought of being without it, so took the plunge. BT have promised me that no, there's no problem whatsoever with the fact that I have a dacs-split on my line. No problem at all. Just for the record.
See Cadbury's has recalled some more chocolate no for being crap but because they forgot to put the "maybe nuts" label. But what about those poor souls who are allergic to elephants? I think they need another label, just in case they are sued.
The sun is shining and the chavs are loitering. Summer is here at last...
I had a dream about this foot last night - I dreamt they were trying to repair it, and the new bit had long nails, painted different colours. I blame Dexter.
The other bits of my dreams involved my boss being nice to me - this is surprisingly based on reality. I spent a large part of the day with her yesterday and she is being incredibly nice to me. Not sure of the psychology of this, but my last boss did it too, and the one before that...
Said goodbye to some more people yesterday. I'll miss some of my customers as much as the folk from the office, because it was my job to be nice to them and many were nice in return, and I enjoyed their company. None of the customers know yet, so if you're one of them don't be offended (not that I have to keep you sweet any more!). I hope to keep in touch with some - perhaps through this blog - but everyone knows that usually this doesn't happen. It's one of those facts of life things that no-one tells you, you just have to learn by experience.
It's like a story I heard about Richard Harris - how when he finished a play or film he would announce, rather than be subjected to cast and crew members vowing to keep in touch: "it's been nice, and goodbye".
I've decided that I want to talk even more shite, but pebblesfromheaven-the-blog has turned into more of a diary of what we've been up to. It takes ages to write cos of all the pictures but is still worth it - but as a result there's not much space for those little snips of twitterings, or it doesn't feel like it. I know what I mean.
So I've started another blog, for quick-fire stuff. Cos I can.
... tonight. She was making a howling noise and the wooden windchimes were rattling against the curtain. Checked to find her guarding something on the coir mat which looked like a small black octagonal flat mouse.
It had its claws stuck into the mat, so I couldn't pick it off so I picked up the whole mat, and took it outside.
Today we drove down to the Robin Hood's Bay area, to meet up with the NEWalks group who'd organised a trip there today.
We were there primarily to see the rock art panels, many of which have recently been rediscovered after a fire cleared most of the heather in 2003. Our guide was Graeme Chappell, who's spent many years wandering the moors in Yorkshire looking down at his feet!
After setting off intending to visit the beach at RHB and failing miserably, we arrived just in time to set off across the grassy moor. It's grassy now, but used to be a few feet thick in heather and peat, all of this was burnt off in the fire. The grass was sown in order to prevent what little soil was left being blown away as dust - but in many places the heather is already recovering.
After the fire, there were many cairns and features visible which are already started to be hidden again. Read some more about the fire here.
We walked at a leisurely pace, enough time for everyone to see some decent panels - and quite a few of the smaller rocks inbetween had carvings, often individual cups (someone decided that people who didn't bother with these were to be known as Cup Snobs!)
We did Stoupe Brow first, and headed south towards Fylingdales proper. There were plenty of stones to see, although some of them were sadly quite faded now.
After much wandering and wondering we ended up visiting Judith, so named after a misheard conversation about camera techniques! She's a cracker.
We enjoyed some more moor-scrambling and headed off over to a standing stone, and the place where a lot of our party headed home. We had one more pilgrimage to a small stone resembling either a chewed toffee or oyster shell, strangely unlike anything else in the area and very interesting...
Then a walk up towards the communications mast and the carpark, passing areas which had not been touched by the fire, illustrating what the depth of the heather had been before (approx 5 feet in some places).
We drove next to see some sites at Allan Tofts, but although some cairns were visible, the bracken was very high in some places so we didn't see as much as we'd hoped. Another excuse to return!
Gave up on the idea of chips (next time!) and headed home into the sunset.
So after we had breakfast at our snug, clean B&B and visited a gorgeous prehistoric viewpoint, we headed south to Inveraray to the Connect Festival.
Connect was organised by the same people as T in the Park, and having been to that one (years ago) I had a certain expectation about the atmosphere, in that it would be completely different to our local festies at home. I was expecting teenagers and mud - and that just about sums it up! Boutique festival, my arse (I pity his lordship).
We arrived about 11am, slightly apprehensive about the parking arangements because they were trying to encourage people to get the bus there (not really practical for us on our way back home). There was in fact plenty of space but on marshland. They'd put temporary metal "roads" over the grass so far but after that - good luck! The trick was not to stop. We found this out the hard way and got stuck reversing into a space, requiring three burly blokes to lift the nose up while I backed in, splatttering the car and myself because I had the window open to shout "heave!"
We then started the long long long path to the main gates and festival entrance. We were fighting against a tide of weary, hungover, laiden people carrying their tents and worldly goods back to the cars after a wet night. They looked tired and miserable and were mostly determined to hog the central higher ground of the muddy path, travelling headlong into us if we didn't get out of the way. "Take no prisoners!" ... this was a bad introduction ot the festival and made us almost as miserable as they looked.
When we arrived in to the main area, we found the stalls to be very tacky and predicable, I swear one of them even had a Kiss me quick hat.
The first food stalls we found were dire. We didn't realise there were more burgers vans to be found at each of the stages so had to take our chances with the ones here; the Stoats van had the longest queue we'd ever seen (apart from the one to the toilets) because most people by now realised that porridge was by far the best food here. I bet the Stoats boys made some huge money that weekend.
Enough moaning! We came here to enjoy music.
Well our first target was to familiarise ourselves with the location of the two main stages, then to find ourself at the right one in time for Newton Faulkner... the "Guitars and other machines" stage was at the opposite end of the patch to the "Oyster Stage"... with a narrow bottleneck inbetween, again a very muddy path the opened into an even muddier space where the game was to find the high ground.
I kept telling meself it wasn't as bad as pics I've seen of Glasto. That's OK, then. I couldn't get round the fact that not only were there people here wearing white shoes and trousers, but that some of them managed to keep clean! they should have got a special prize.
Enough moaning!
So we found the Guitar Stage and parked in front of it; first up were The Kissaway Trail - never heard of them... from Denmark, young and rocky, quite entertaining but not really our cuppa... when they'd finished we made sure we moved away from the speakers a bit ...
Enough moaning!
Newton Faulkner came on to a smallish crowd which grew as people arrived to investigate. I'd heard his stuff on the radio and B has constantly played the CD in his car for the last few weeks, plus the album is number one. We were right at the front, got a good measure of the bloke - not as tall as expected, and not as hunky as some of his promotional stuff! Ginger dreadlocks - I mean, the PR people had their work cut out with that didn't they!
Newton was fab - good rapport and banter, on the stage alone with no band, held the audience in the proverbial palm. Fantastic! Brilliant guitarist and obviously used to playing on his own in much smaller venues, using his guitar as percussion as well as melody. Did that thing where the left hand plucks as well as making the chords, while his right hand slapped and drumed on the box. Wonderfully strong voice, perfect tone, explained the songs with a little story. Made a mental note to recommend him to people who like Nick Harper or Martin Stephenson. Great stuff!
Here's Newton playing "Teardrop" at connect:
So after Newton putting a smile on our faces, we hung around and watched Tilly and the Wall set up. Of course not having heard of them before either, we thought it was the roadies setting up but it was them; wondered what that round thing with the microphone was they were setting on the floor - turned out to be a tapdancing board! A joyous experience, helped by the student-types standing next to us who knew every word, I decided they must be well known and I go around with my ears shut. I soon realised why I hadn't heard of them though - cos I don't buy the right magazines but mainly because they are highly unlikely to be played ont radio cos of all the effing! Great fun, visually interesting and very entertaining. I would say they are somewhere between Riverdance, Steps and B-52's (they wish).
We next had to make our way to the main stage to check out Regina Spektor - I like her CD and wanted to see what she's like live - the answer is just the same as her CD - almost word for word and plink for plonk. Russian version of Tori Amos (she wishes). I enjoyed it, but we made the right decision to head off early to make it back to the Guitar stage in time to get a good pitch for watching Seth Lakemen...
Seth brought his band with him - I presume it was his brother Sean on guitar. Sean looks so much like Jack dee, he even has the sneery smile. Enjoyed Seth a great deal - we've seen him before at Solfest last year and this was better cos he drew a much larger crowd, including dancers who couldn't help jigging to the fiddling:
Now for the grand finale. There was nothing after Björk that we wanted to see, so this was gonna be it for us at Connect. I was sooooo excited, been looking forward to seeing her live for ages, I've danced round the living room like an idiot many a time to her mental music!
I was escatic! What a goddess... she did not disappoint! I was bouncing like a kid, pogoing and shouting the words, watching her from the corner of the stage doing her thang... fantastic show, new stuff and old. Enjoyed every second of it and I'm still grinning now just thinking about it :-D
I got B to take this pic of me - I know it's crap, I took my old camera with me, but I quite like it!
Found this great clip on youtube of Declare Independance, which was the finale and the crowd went insane, including me! What a crescendo! Lasers and exploding glitter! Screamin' "Raise your Flag! Higher, Higher!"
So that was it - I was on such a high and I can recall it so clearly now, that I'm not gonna bring it down by telling you the finer details of our painful traipse back to the car, or the 3+ hour journey back to Carlisle.
Did I mention how wonderful the Dunchraigaig House B&B was? This morning it was Mull cheddar and chive muffins to take for our lunch. Lush.
After packing and settling up, we set off slightly south and stopped at Dunadd fort. It's one of the sites on the Half Life tour so there was the obligatory poster at the gate, and we parked and set off on the short walk up the hill.
It was a clearer morning so the views were fab! We could see over to Ardfern again, and probably the hill that Ormaig hugs, if we knew which one it was. The nature reserves sit nearby, covered in heather patches and bog grasses.
Last night's moisture ensured that there was water inside the footprint. There isn't any cup-an-ring stuff here but there is a vague carving of a boar, very faint now but a cottage at the bottom of the fort has helpfully provided a modern copy of what it may have looked like.
We explored around the top of the hill - it's quite sheltered at the top and it's clear why someone would choose to use this place not only as a viewpoint but also as a possible home. There is an old well and some of the walls remain.
There was a Half Life installation here but again we couldn't be sure if it was in its final format as it didn't officially "open" until the next day. What we saw was sheets of rusted metal sheeting shaped to slot into the gaps withing the natural craggy entranceway at the top of the fort. Perhaps there would be music eminating or lights projected in future - couldn't say - but the rust-red colour of the sheets fitted quite nicely with the autumnal bracken and purple heather.
Then it was time to head off to Inveraray and Connect ...
So we'd managed to blag ourselves some tickets for the Biggest Thing In Town... was it all hype? They'd done a very good job advertising it, every visitor to the Argyll area and Kilmartin in particular was very aware that it was happening, with suitably enigmatic posters up near all the major sites and fliers in the cafes and B&B's.
There were to be two evening perfomances, 8.30 and 10.30. The 8.30 was full so 10.30 was to be, due to get back at 12.30.
Our mission (should we choose to accept it) was to arrive at the meeting point in Lochgilphead to get bussed to the site, with instructions to wrap up warm for sitting outside. It wasn't made clear where the event was happening (or indeed what it was to involve) but we were fairly certain it was to be near Achnabreck, because there's a large forest around it and plenty of parking space.
So we drove and parked and found the tent and handed over our tickets and got a little book and sat and waited. The time came and everyone piled onto the old double-deckers, we could hardly all get on the seats for the fleecy waterproofs etc! It had been a drier day with nothing heavier than drizzle, but you never know up here.
We got talking (or rather talked at) by one of the people working on the show - a local woman who was getting rather excited. She said she wouldn't give it away but it was great and then (well, she kept giving stuff away!)
After a short trip of maybe 10 minutes, we arrived at the site. Everyone had been gossiping excitedly, all typical local accents of course (so most of them sounded like retired art teachers from Surrey). It was dark so we weren't really sure where we were! We were herded off the bus and up the hill, passed the shipping containers which presumably acted as dressing rooms for the performers.
The path was lit and we followed the leader until we reached the top, where we were handed a foam shape for our bums to sit on. The "stage" was there shouting at us, lit in red and yellow, all spikey and spooky between the trees.
The seats were wooden decks on a terrace which looked as if it was pretty permanent. The chatty woman on the bus had told us that they were keeping it here and they'd already had enquiries about weddings...
There was a small "shed" to the left of the "stage" where the musicians lived, they had just enough light to see what they were doing and we could see inside the netting - two people with what turned out to be strings and percussion.
By the way, when I say "stage", I find it hard to describe what we were looking at really. It was obviously the centre of our attention, clearly constructed from felled trees from the location, huge logs held together to form a raised platform with a thorny crown heading up towards the trees. Surrounding it were existing trees, moving in the wind.
I did my best to capture this without a flash, but it was difficult!
I won't be too specific about the performance, because we didn't know what to expect and were pleasantly surprised at what we got. There were three main actors, plus two characters which had it been Shakespeare would have probably been called "spirits". One star of the show who won't be in the programme was the bat, who was swooping to snack on the insects attracted by the lights during the show. Nice touch!
Ropes and pulleys and strong bodies were involved. References were made to the prehistory of the area, specifically rock art and burials and death and what it all means ...
The music was metallic and non-melodic, adding to the atmosphere together with the shwooshing of the trees in the quieter bits.
The play (for that is what it was, really, despite pretentions) lasted about an hour and there were a few gasps and chatters from the audience... the seating area was far from full but after all this was after all probably a dress-rehearsal.
After the ovation we filtered out, all handed back our arsepads and headed back downhill, past the frogs and logs and back onto the bus to Lochgilphead.
I was smiling all the way back, the bus was buzzing and folk were talking about the best bits; this was a great addition to the experience and something you wouldn't get from a normal night at the theatre (unless you spend your time in the bar)
Thinking about it now, I could have benefitted from a flask of hot choc for the bus back, or perhaps the "beer tent" at the start could have had more than booklets to hand out ... a wee nip to take the nip off as't'were ...
I would also say that if there's anyone coming to this event who doesn't know much about the history of the area, and they come just for this performance, it's a shame that they don't know how close they are to one of the most important rock art sites in the country. We were expecting this to play much more of a part in the whole thing, not just verbally but physically. But we're biased, perhaps.
So back to the B&B and ready for the next day, when we would visit one of the participating sites and stop off at Connect...
Last Friday, we travelled up to Argyll on a small break to Kilmartin Glen.
The drive up through Glasgow and around the Clyde was painless and quite interesting because I hadn't been past the Faslane area before (big boats!)
When we passed Inveraray, we caught a preview of the situation at the Connect Festival, which we were heading back to on the Sunday... it's quite a small town and when we passed mid-afternoon looked quite civilised.
When we arrived at the Glen, our first stop was at Cairnbaan. Last time we came here (April 2005) we'd taken one look at the climb involved and decided life was too short! This time, we eagerly donned our walking boots and headed on up. Phew! Quite a sharp haul up a tight path now hidden behind some new houses...through the trees... and onto the hillside. The carvings were marked out by a fenced area. A short time later, after settling into the photographing bit, we were joind by a delivery van that had driven up a track. Doh!
I entertained myself looking at the views both back down across the Crinan Canal to Lochgilphead and up to Kilmartin, studying sedums and doing killer sudoku. See B's photos of Cairnbaan here
After returning down the hill to the car we drove towards Kilmartin itself, to check into our B&B, Dunchraigaig House. It's a cute little place, immaculate inside with nice surroundings and our room overlooked the Ballymeanoch stones!
Ballymeanoch stones
We ventured back out for dinner, fancied the Kilmartin House Restaurant (at the Museum) but found it closed, so went across the road to the Kilmartin Hotel. It's a traditional pub, which tries to do nice meals but we were a bit disappointed. Clean but basic, you might say.
Next morning we enjoyed a wonderful breakfast, fruit salad first then porridge and a fry-up - yum! Plus, home-made lemon & raisin muffins!
We got talking to a photographer bloke who was staying there, working on the Half Life project. We'd first heard of it from Janet at the Rock Art Meeting in June and were keen to find out more. The whole village seemed to be buzzing about it! It wasn't due to start until Monday night, but apparently there was going to be a preview of the preview, that very night... Locals who had taken part, helpers and limited interested parties had been invited to attend. Hmmm......
Well first we got our arses in gear and headed off to find Ormaig. Firstly, we needed a map, so stopped off at the Kilmartin Museum. A piece of art caught my eye which I resisted... for now!
The walk to Ormaig started at Carnasserie Castle carpark, and headed up the track behind and up the hill. It was made easier by the black arrowed markers, directing people to the planned Half Life installation at the stones ...
Carnasserie Castle
The weather was dull and misty - it had been raining and more was expected but the result was that we were carrying lots of gear and getting very sweaty in the humidity!
The walk took us up and through a forested area, the signs continued all the way, and when we reached about 3/4 of the route, we found a decent road which before long brought us at least three cars, one of them containing the photographer from breakfast! Doh again!
It took us about an hour in total to reach Ormaig. Yes there is a track through the quarry, but apparently you need permission to use it. Hmmm.... you're not telling me that all those folk asked first!
We descended down to a level where there was a nice view across Loch Craignish to Ardfern marina. The carvings were only about 200 metres from the track through the trees. Wow! Lots of lovely deep rosettes, cups and runnels, on several panels some still with trees growing around them. It's clear that there had been work going on to clear the area, but apart from the mozzie machine there was little sign of activity yet. No Half Life "installation" that we saw - too early perhaps.
Ormaig
B spent 2.5 hours taking photographs here! I spent my time reading the instructions on the mozzie trapper and watching a dragonfly, and occasionally being drafted in to hold the flash unit. Forgot my sudoku.
Up the hill again, picking and eating some brambles on the way. We stopped off at the Museum for tea and cakes (stopped serving lunch at 3, fair enough) and I bought the artwork that had been calling my name. It's done in embroidery onto silk and other materials, called "Rock Carvings (2)" by Christine Mackenzie. It's got Ormaig rosettes and mimics the fissures in the rock. Lovely!
So while we were at the museum, we broached the subject of tonight's Half Life show, and the girls in the little room serving as boxoffice told us that our B&B host had tipped them off that we might drop by for some tickets! Hoorah! Gratis! How fantastic! Very chuffed....
So we've just returned from a trip up to Argyll, fantastic it was too.
I have lots to blog about, and I still have to upload photos from other previous blogposts too, so I have decided to sign up to Flickr-Pro and link to photos stored there. Hopefully this will be quicker than using the Blogger photo-upload process which is pants, quite frankly. I've added a cute little gizmo on the right of the main blog page to preview pics too.
This is all because I really enjoy blogging but I want to be slicker and more economical with my time .... to be perfectly honest I equally prefer being out and about taking photos and enjoying life!! But can't help chuntering on here either.
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