Crab War!

My day job has been really getting me down of late, but I finally found the time today to crack on with my upcoming Guy N Smith zine. This is day 60(?) of my 100-day project to get this book published, so I really need to crack on with it. Here are some pics of today's photoshoot depicting the GNS battle between the army and the giant crabs in Night of the Crabs. I hope you like them:

Crab!

I picked up this little fella from our hilltop house this morning and ordered myself some little army figures to do battle with him. Hoping the upcoming photoshoot would have made Guy N Smith proud.

There is going to be one hell of a battle ahead..! But, today, he rests.

Feeling Low

 This picture of my shadow caught on the bedroom wall yesterday evening kind of represents how I feel at the moment. Life seems brutal, and my options are limited. I need a long, long holiday...

The Morning After

A sun-soaked morning forces me and the pwscat from bed to face the day... Can't face work today.

My reward for taking the day off? This cracking thunderstorm:

Reading and Writing

A chilled middle day of my 3-day weekend. Popped up to our house at the top of the hill as we waited for our laundry to wash. It was nice to find the electrics are all sorted in the house now. The landlord is just waiting for the surveyor to complete their report now and then he can start getting the place fixed up for us.  Our garden there is now in full bloom and it is such a shame that we can only enjoy its colourful splendour in fits and starts.

The weather is a bit too hot for me at the moment, but I managed to get the bulk of my Tricho cacti out in our temporary bottom of the hill garden so they could sunbathe with The Mont.

I spent the hottest part of the afternoon indoors, catching up on some reading...

...and finally managed to do a little more work on my Gut N Smith zine in the night. Noting that I am already 51 days into that particular 100-day project, it felt great to get stuck into that again.

RHS Malvern Show 2024

After two late nights, visiting the RHS Malvern Horticultural Show meant an early start this morning, no matter how exhausted we felt. 

The showground estate was massive, full of colourful plants, busy crowds, food and drink vans catering for every diet and taste, gardening talks from top TV personalities and even music.

This post cannot hope to capture the full breadth of the show's atmosphere, but I have given it a try with a handful of snaps, some ambient audio field recordings (including a couple of the talks), and some of the gardening purchases I made on the day.

All in all, a day well spent and a pleasurable conclusion to a bit of a hectic weekend:

 

Ambient Sounds from the Malvern Horticultural Show 2024:

My Gardening purchases from the show:

My favourite purchase of the day, however, was this vintage Coca-Cola crate offered by one of the vendors in this show. At just £15, it was an offer I just couldn't not resist.

Hermon Chapel at Night

Mobile phone camera technology is getting pretty insane. The following two photographs were taken on my pretty old Samsung phone in complete darkness using a hand-held six-second exposure. And this is why I only use camera phones for my photography and left behind 'real' cameras many years ago.

 

A Night Down Rhossili To Remember

With my better half's Aurora-Watch app kicking off big style this evening, we decided to head on down to good old Rhossili, where we arrived just in time for a perfect sunset.

Free-roaming horses on Fairwood Common

Settling ourselves on the top of Rhossili Cliffs for the evening, we then waited for dusk, then the darkness to fall. 

The weather was perhaps the warmest it's been all year, and the sky was clear. Our hopes were high for a good Aurora display, as it was for many other people who later filled the clifftop until, by 11p.m., it was busier there than on a hot Summer's day in August!

And then, around 11p.m., the skies suddenly came alive with colour! And not just in the northern portion of the sky. These lights literally filled the sky in a phantasmagorical display!

It was one of, if not the best, natural phenomenons I have ever seen and definitely a night to remember.