Flock

I'm in a really cranky mood today, my knees are aching so much for some reason - it's painful to walk. So bad that I might have to cancel my caving trip tomorrow (sob).

Often when I'm cycling home from work a flock of pigeons zooms back and forth over head - every time it passes I feel so happy and uplifted.

Photo by The Pack, from Flickr. Click the image to be taken to the photographer's page.

Video of flocking parrots on the BBC

Whole Flickr group of bird videos

Property crush

Sometimes it's nice to run off to a fantasy world in which you can afford to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on 1970s properties.

Like this one in Gloucestershire:

Or this one in London:


Or this one in Kent:

This would be your theme tune.

Whitby weekend part 2

After getting up early to go surfing we went to Scarborough on the Sunday afternoon. The sun was shinning for a change and it was crammed. We couldn't find anywhere to park near where we wanted to surf so decided to have some lunch and a mooch around the town and wait for some parking spaces to free up.

From experience vegetarianism is not well supported up North; we ended up going to Ask, the chain-restaurant and ordering one of two veggie pizzas on the menu.

We walked down a little street just of the front to get there. Past these massive murals - the work of 4 (I think...) artists over 7 days.

Giving up on Scarborough altogether we headed to Cayton bay where I beach combed for glass that had been rounded off by the tides.


My haul filled both my jacket pockets.

Whitby weekend part 1.

The haul

Charity shop tourism: Monday's haul in Retford, north Nottinghamshire

An old embroidered bedcover with cutwork, probably linen.

makes a good chair cover

2 1/2 meters of stripey cotton fabric: thin, good for making summer dresses.

Two poison bottles! One's already being utilised as a vase for a poppy.

It's a shame that I got a parking ticket while I was there.