Black Sky on a Sunny Day - Swansea

A Foxy Morning

A Little Sunny Reading Sesh

Teri

Teri, another garden nemisis of fudjcat: Don't know why, I find her a particularly friendly type:

 

Evening Tulips

I took a short wander through the garden this evening. And, wow, the tulips are really producing the colour right now, and certainly remain as the plant of the moment:

A Sight for Sore Eyes

 I have been a bit baddie over the last few days with my old eye problems. Apparently I should get my operation in about 12 more months! I saw the optician this morning as getting to see a doctor or consultant is next to impossible these days. Apparently the blood vessels in my 'good' eye burst as the it was overworked while my swollen eyelid kept my 'bad' eye closed for a day.

Anyway, it is starting to heal again - for now.

I do have some good eye news to share too, as I have added a few more eye talismans to my Glastonbury Speaking Tree Crassula ovata:

13th Armada Ghost Book

Feast your eyes upon the groovy 13th Armada Ghost Book, up there with Guy N Smith's Deadbeat as being next to impossible to purchase in the mid 2020's. I won't embarass myself by trying to calculate the time and number of dead ends it took before I finally located the book on the other side of the planet, in Australia!

I eventually found the book thru https://www.vialibri.net/. Unfortunately the person selling the antholgy had stated she would only post it within Australia. Frustrated once more, I contacted the seller who visited their post office and sent me a photograph off the shipping prices to the UK. I chose the cheapest of the postal services, paid the price and sealed the deal. I was now so close to this grail item. All the book needed to do now to join its brethen in rainy old Wales was to safely negotiate the vagaries of travelling around the globe through the Australian and British postal services.

Finally, just 2 weeks later, I received the package through my letter box:

Inside, you guessed it, I found this little treasure:

Disappointingly, the Peter Archer illustrations are low of scares or eerie atmosphere, but the stories titles are all new to me and I look forward to reading them all :)

12th Armada Ghost Book

 Isn't it always the way for book collectors? You start collecting cheap copies of a series, only to find that there are a couple you need for your collection that are as scarce as hen teeth! Such has been the case since starting my collection of Armada Ghost Books published in the 1970's and 80's.

A fellow collector warned me that the 12th Armada Book was the most difficult to get your grubby fingers on in the mid 2020's. With that knowledge, I purchased the one copy I ever seen offered for sale, but had to source it from Canada for an outlandish price (when Canadian postage fees were added to the equation).

Funnily enough, whilst costing me the most financially, this book wasn't the most difficult to source. The winner of that particular frustration goes to the next book in the season, which I will write about in my next blog post...

I wonder why these later editions are so difficult to find when others from the range are so easily found for a price between £5-10?

The 13th Armada Ghost Books takes us screaming into the 1980's with a luscious nightmarish cover:

Peter Archer is once again the artist for this collection of ghost stories, but as usual with this Armada series, most of the images he illustrates detail the more mundane aspects of the tale. In this particular book, only one scare drawing stands out:

I have not read any of the stories as yet, but the titles The Chess Set, The Cat Room and The Haunted Village hold enough intrigue to pique my interest:

11th Armada Ghost Book

The 11th Armada Ghost Book comes in x2 different cover edition. Both are great, but I think the style of the earlier edition (shown on your left in the pic below) is my favourite version:

Peter Archer produces his usual accomplished story illustrations, with a couple of real standouts amongst them (see below):

All in all another great addition to the series.

Lego W.i.Ps

X2 Lego horror builds I am working on: Guy N Smith's Hangman and Hammer's best movie - Vampire Circus:

The Lego Skull I have working on over the Easter weekend slipped and shattered across the living room in an explosion of tiny white bricks, just as I was setting down the completed model! I haven't got the heart to go through the instructions again so I am gonna rebuild from memory. I do not need the top of the head nor the back, so I can use those to elongate the skull's face and do some other detailing needed. Frustrating but, all well.

Tony

 Another of our neighbour's cats. This is Tony, and our fudjcat fights him everyday through the glass of our patio door.

Tulitopia

Well, with the garden looking as inviting as this ⬆️, I would be a sin for me not to catch some rays!

Need I Say it? These brightly coloured tulips are now my favourite plants in our garden:

Our Spanish Moss is back out in the garden to enjoy the sunshine too:

The peris has come into its own too 😎

Our Euphorbia Black Pearl is looking distinguished too:

And, finally, our Glass House is complete!

Lego Skull

 I spent the whole of Good Friday making this:

This is the 1st stage of the construction completed. There is still a lot of work to do on it, but this is what I am trying to create in a Lego:

War of the Worlds

Took my father to see Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds in Cardiff this evening 🙂🙂

I've been wanting to take him to see the show for years, as we both shared a love for the album.

My parents were away in Blackpool and bought me the L.P. that I'd been wanting since accidently coming across it being broadcast in it's entirety on my first ever radio as I kid!

We both thoroughly enjoyed it too 🙂🙂

Here is a quick snippet of the show, filmed by my Dad:

A Good 'ole Writing Day

I took a day off today to do a bit of writing. It turned out to be a great decision as the heavy rain outside provided my favourite mood for writing. With background music provided by David Sylvian and his old group Japan, it was a really succesful creative day.

Green House Progress

Our Glass House is now in situ in the spot once occupied by the chickens. All it is short of now is the actual glass. Unfortunately rain stopped play before we could add that final touch...

Work in Progress

Looking up through the unglazed Glass House roof

View from the Glass House Door

Caturday Smiler

One of the many cats who visit our garden. I call him Smiler.