This is what happens when you are dying for the toilet, but have no small cash for the cloakroom attendant, except for a £20 note, then end up racing in to see your wife who is helping out with a Tsunami charity event has any change, and she hasn't and you have a bright idea and buy a raffle ticket just to get some change, then one week later you discover that you've won the most awful clock in creation.
This is about two foot tall and made entirely of plastic. It also has a pendulum that doesn't actually swing, but is held in permanent 'over to starboard'. Any ideas as to what I should do with this horological disaster?

Cheltenham Festival 2005
Just what I needed to lift the Winter blues. Eliza Carthy was just great. Vicky Swan played a lovely set of tunes in the local library. Hariet Bartlet, just 16 years old but already a really amazing player....piano accordian. Best of all though, without a doubt,Flook.

Tsunami
Ever since Boxing Day our T.V. has been more or less permanently tuned to news channels. My son asked me today, "Has anything like this ever happened before?" I knew about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Holocaust and I knew something about the 'flu epidemic following the First World War. This one though appears to be of a totally different order. It's even got the Archbishop of Canterbury pondering on the meaning of life. One thing I've done to make my statement is added a load of links to charities on my first page....and I'm adding this link
http://www.jacobsen.no/anders/blog/
Anders is going to donate a dollar for every Blog link. Good luck Anders

Just when you think you've seen it all, along comes an unexpected but totally useful Christmas gift. It will wheedle the blighters out of the tallest jar. Probably would prove to be useful as an eyeball gouger too.

I love experimenting with angle in my photography. This is the Coal Exchange building on Cardiff Bay. Believe me, this photograph hasn't been adjusted for colour. It was a late Winter afternoon, with the sun low in the sky. It really was that colour.

This one was taken using the Canon telephoto lens. My advice:- buy the Cokin adaptors. They are so easy to use, small and the results are just great.

Pretty much the same shot, but without the wide angle adaptor.



Santa brought me a couple of new lenses for my Canon A80. I asked him for a Canon telephoto lens first of all. This costs about £60 here in the UK. To get it to fit though, you have to buy this adaptor ring thingy which has got to be the biggest rip-off you've ever come across. It's a piece of black plastic, no bigger than an aerosol lid and costing about £15. After I'd bought the telephoto lens, Cokin came out with this really nifty idea, a tiny lens that sticks to the front of your existing lens with a magnet.
This shot was taken at Llantwit Major beach on Boxing Day. I used the Cokin magnetic wide angle lens. Although it was mid-day, the sun was very low in the sky making for really interesting light conditions. I know it's a lousy picture. Never mind the quality, feel the width

Another wonderful cartoon.

My new bagpipe drone. This really transforms a mild sounding instrument into a wall of sound.

Love this.

Seen on an Autumn walk. His name is Oswald.

My latest piece of drivel......for non Welsh speakers around the world, chwarae teg means 'fair play'. It is a concept that most Welshmen hold dear.

On Reflection.

Mirror mirror on the wall,

Who’s the fairest of them all?

Who is kind to honest folk,

A truthful, forthright, decent bloke?

Who can provide the fiscal means

sustain us with a plate of beans,

Clean water, food and warm dry houses

Free from vermin, rats and mouses.

Could it be that Texas George

Someday soon a peace would forge

Release the throat and clutch the hand

Create accord throughout the land.

Shall we pray that London Tone

Perhaps one day will take the phone,

Call the soldiers way out East

“Come home lads! Lets have a feast.”

Eastern Sheiks, are they aware

That they could take their wealth and share.

Princes from the lands of oil

pacify the desert soil.

Find me the soul who thinks compassion,

Is not emotion out of fashion.

Find me a heart to understand

the feelings of the common man.

Show me kindness, show me love,

show me rainbows high above

Please mirror mirror show the way

Find me some chwarae teg today.

Phil

I really love my Canon Powershot A80. This is probably my best shot of the Summer, taken from the window of the bar at the Atlantic Hotel, Hugh Town, Scilly Isles.

O.K. Here's the problem. My house has solid fuel (coal) central heating. That means that every day, I have to go to a bunker in the garden, fill a bucket of coal, then feed it into the boiler in my kitchen. No problem most days.....until November comes around. Picture the scene:- I've come home late and tired and the boiler needs coal. The rain is coming down sideways and it's pitch dark. I can't find a torch, and if I could, the batteries would be flat or the bulb would be missing.

Solution ! Take one of those solar powered garden lights. Cut a hole through the lid of the bunker and place the light in the hole. It's little solar panel collects sunlight all day and the little bulb shines on my coal all night.....especially in November when the rain comes down sideways.

D.I.Y. buffs please note....I also used two screws and some silicon sealer.

Spotted along the Taff Trail bicycle track. Took a ride from Brecon to Cardiff (South Wales...U.K) Looked up and saw this. It has a solar panel on the top and a small wind-turbine underneath. This was in a little back street area of Merthyr Tydfil near a rather nice pub.

Thought you'd like a progress report on our new neighbours. They moved in about 6 weeks ago. They now have a family of four with the biggest beaks that you've ever seen. Their parents, who we've Christened Spit and Swallow, never stop. Our garden looks like the holding pattern at Heathrow airport. They are just brilliant parents....they bring in some food, pop it in a beak, then pick up some poo from the bottom of the nest and take it away. Sometimes, the baby birds actually turn around and point their bottoms at the parents, and their parents actually take the poo away as it pops out. Now isn't that clever.

Scarlet Sheets

To the tune, “The Red Flag”

For many years in Sadam's day,
I tortured folks in wicked ways,
I’d electrocute and poke about
‘til they were left right up the spout.

But now Sadam, his days are gone,
Yet strangely my old job goes on.
‘twas globalised quite nastily
The good guys stole my job from me

Oh raise the blood stained sheets on high
Beneath their folds they still will die,
But my torturing days they are no more,
Migrant labour’s taken o’er

© Philip Edwards 2004

I was browsing around a bookshop in Truro, when I felt something prodding me in the back. When I turned around, I nearly died on the spot. When I was a lad, I was one of the kids who'd hide behind the sofa when Dr Who came on.

This is what a diabetic birthday cake looks like.

1 x 425g can of mango slices in natural juice or any other fruit I guess

500g mixed dried fruit

1/2 cup water

1 1/2 tsp bi-carb of soda

1 1/2 cup S R flour

2 eggs lightly beaten

Method

Grease a 15cm x 25 loaf pan line with paper

Combine first 3 ingredients

Bring to boil

Simmer, oncovered for 1 minute

Cool

Stir in combined dry ingredients - add a tsp of cinnamon powder if you want to

Add beaten eggs

Mix well

Pour into baking tin

Top with almonds or any nuts

Sprinkle more cinnamon if you want to

Cook in mod oven 160degrees - for about 1 hr - usually takes 45mins

Enjoy

Actually it was really delicious. Thanks Carole.

It happened :O(

Phew...........Just got out of the bath.
There were 12.........that's TWELVE barrow loads of fine sifted top soil in
there. My borders now look great. But, no sign of any wildlife at all.
There's a hole in the side of the bunker adjacent to one of my Dalek compost
heaps and there were a few...just a few scraps of food in there. Other than
that, nothing....not even any worms and because of that, I think I have a
highly industrious mole. Still, there is no mystery behind how he managed to
shift so much earth.............because I still can't find my bloody spade

Now here's a peculiar thing. Today, the day when the clocks go forward and the rugby internationals end and the first day of the year that I reach for my garden spade. I nip down to this wooden bunker at the bottom of the garden, where some of my tools are stored. I haven't been inside this bunker since about November. I lift the lid, and find it half full of really nice top-soil. I have no idea where it came from. All of my tools are burried underneath.........I think. Going to find out more tomorrow during an experimental dig. I think there's about half a ton of earth in there. Any ideas? Rats? Badgers? Moles? Wombats?

Had a quiet afternoon at work. Most of my time was spent ordering a piece of software for school; a copy of Dreamweaver. I phoned the company and spoke to a charming French lady.....My name eeez Marie Claire........like zee Magazeen.

It took quite a while going through the formalities ...you get a discount being a school, but have to prove that you are a school ordering. Eventually, I finish talking to her and give her a chirpy 'au revoir'. Just in time for my coffee break. Get to the staffroom, pour my coffee, settle myself down and Jan the secretary walks in and announces, "Phil, there's a phone call for you. It's Marie Claire.......I didn't know you wrote for them."

I left the entire staffroom gobsmacked and wondering.

Lad in my class..........let us call him OJ. Has dreaful behaviour problems. Can't sit still, constantly in trouble, can't concentrate for longer than 30 seconds. Tried everything with him short of changing his medication, all to no avail. Then, as of Monday, totally transformed. Quiet, sitting, reading, working, as if I had a new boy in class. He suddenly becomes popular, everybody wants to be his friend. This morning, I praised him to the stars over a wonderful piece of writing........and I wasn't even acting. It really was good. I said to him, "This is SO GOOD, I'm going to give you a prize. On my desk there were a few pieces of fruit, because I'm on a healthy eating thing. I gave him my satsuma...the one I was really looking forward to having after lunch. The look on his face was a picture........broadest smile you've ever seen.

In the afternoon, there was quite a serious incident involving 5 other lads........funny thing is, OJ wasn't involved:- nowhere near in fact........nothing to do with it. Amazingly, none of the usual suspects were there at all. By now, I'm really starting to think that OJ has had some sort of road to Damascus moment.

Hometime came and off he trotted with a copy of his work to show Mum.

Then, 5 minutes later, one of my nicest Mums appears and asks, "Is OJ in your class?"

"Yes," I reply, "Why, what has he done?"

"He just threw this at me, and it landed on my head."

'twas the satsuma :O(

Recent school visit to the Cardiff Millennium Stadium. Hannah, one of my school children took this. Pretty good hey? She'll be doing weddings on Saturdays next.

Just diagnosed as having type 2 diabetes. No more chocolate fudge cake for me then.

First attempts with my new camera. This is a local derelict farm called Ty Llwyd.

A friend gave me Photoshop Elements to try.

I really think I'm going to like using this software.

One of my favourite books. Written by a guy whose life obviously depends on botchery. Full of instructions on how to build stoves out of just about anything; even how to build stovepipes from marmalade tins. This book has been loaned / lost more times than I can remember, but it is back on my bookshelf now and that is where it is going to stay.

Just had my photographs back from my Florida adventure. I think this was the best shot of the trip.

I don't think I can ever remember deserting my dessert....but this fudge cake defeated me.

I've just returned from a trip to the Kennedy Space Centre

One of the most amazing things that happened, we were given free reign to rome their filing cabinets. There amongst so many amazing things, I came across a file marked "Letters-Unusual." There amongst letters telling of UFO sitings and telepathic messages from space, I found this true gem.

Phil

Jordan

The other day in school we were learning an old English folk song, "The Gypsy's Wedding Day". This has a reference to fortune telling. A few of the class had stories to tell about fortune telling. Jordan....one of my class naughties.........slowly, steadily puts his hand up. Now, you should now that Jordan has a wonderful lisp and looks a bit like.......a bit like .........well, a Neanderthal I suppose.

"Thir," he says," The other day my mother took me to a thpirithualithst church, and they all knew!"

"They all knew what Jordan?"

"They all knew that I'd been naughty witthh Dale Edwardth and that I'd been put in detenthion. It wath really thpooky Thir."

Visited the Rainbow Warrior at Cardiff today. She was encouraging people to support the construction of an off shore windfarm at Porthcawl. We signed to support. We've recently moved our electricity supply company to "Juice"....wind powered energy :O)

Real wealth from my garden. Pears....loads of them.

I bought this mop. The Vileda Magic Mop. I've tried "Shazzam," "Abracadabra" and even "Izzy Whizzy lets get busy". Kitchen floor still looks a mess and the mop does nothing. Should I take it back to the shop?
It appears that I have a new pet, and it's subterranean

These things only ever happen to me.

Wednesday night, I went to bed early. I felt really tired, Sue stayed up a while. I alwaus read before sleep. At the moment, I'm reading a book called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haden............brilliant book, all about an autistic lad who finds a dead dog on his lawn one morning. The dog has been speared by a garden fork. He decides to investigate. Anyway, there I was, lying in bed, reading, when I felt a bit lonely. I turned on the radio. After about a minute I suddenly realised that something really spooky was happening. The radio was reading my book !!!! It was "Book at Bedtime" on Radio 4 and it was reading the same book, same chapter, same page !

I've just written this nice little parody on a song called "Bright Shiny Morning". It will eventually go onto the National Grid for Learning website as a school lesson. :O)

One bright shiny morning I rose from my pillow,

One bright shiny morning, so early one day.

Who should I meet but a six legged stranger,

A six legged stranger, a-waltzing my way.

Come dearest Mother, come sit down besides me,

Oh come dearest mother and comb through my hair.

For my scalp it is twitching, my skin’s sore and itching,

Infested with wildlife, it’s simply not fair.

Send for the lotions to sort out my problem,

Send for the lotions before its too late,

Send for the lotions , the creams and the potions,

The chemical solutions to sort out my state.

They say they’re not fussy for blonds brunettes or red-heads,

They say they’re not fussy, so why did they pick me.

Crawling and creeping and antennae peeping,

There’s simply no sleeping until I’m nit free.

To the tune “Bright Shiny Morning”.

Words © Philip Edwards 2003.

Something really funny happened to me last Friday. I was on my trip to the Milton Keynes bagpipe festival. I stopped at a Motorway service area. I had to visit the gents. Strangely, as I was washing my hands, I noticed a charming young lady there by my side. Ask me what she was doing.......

"What was she doing Phil?"

"Would you believe......and you may have to think about this.......she was putting her contact lenses in !"

Here's the site that greeted me on my return yesterday.

Now this is what I think Welsh bagpipes should look like. Sylviane played these at the Bagpipe Society blowout this year. In conversation, I discovered that although she's French, she lives in Scotland. Her job....and it is a shame that you can't type using a French accent; "I am decomissioning the Dounreay Nuclear Power Plant". With a few friends I hope.

I'm a big fan of Arthur Bickerton. He owns an ironmongers shop in Taffs Well near Cardiff. Actually, it is more like Aladin's cave than a shop. Sadly, Arthur announced his retirement the other day. He's 90 years old. He's decided to devote the rest of his life to his main love...making bow ties. I visited his shop last Friday to wish him the best. There was another customer just before me in the queue. He was complaining. The conversation went like this. "You remember those gas mantle glasses that you sold me the other day? Well, I put them onto the fitting, and as soon as I lit the gas, the glass shattered."

"Well, you should have known better than that, " answered Arthur. "You should have known that you always turn the gas on low first of all, otherwise the glass will always shatter."

"Oh my God," thought I......."I've stumbled through a time warp!"

May 3rd 2003
Photograph of an amazing bird....the Red Kite. It almost became extinct here in Wales. It has become one of the most amazing success stories as there are now more than 300 breeding pairs here. Do you know, I tried and I tried to get Paintshop to reverse the image, but I can't get it right. The bird keeps flying away from the camera.

April 27th 2003

Biggest Christmas suprise ever. The green things are brussel sprouts.

No, I didn't try it.

April 27th 2003

Still can't believe this happened to me. A suprise invite to a rugby match where I met Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennet, the two greatest rugby players that the world has ever known. If there was ever a good reason to continue research into cloning.

April 27th 2003

I've just spent the last three days fixing this small water feature into the garden. Cute isn't it. I call it "The Prostate Fountain."

April 17th 2003

Overheard a brilliant conversation at my local garden centre the other day.

"Do you remember that plant that I had outside my front door?.......the one that we could never find the name of?.......then we found the name and we never learned how to spell it?.......Well, it's dead.

Brilliant.

Originally posted April 14th 2003

hornpipe

Welsh Bagpipes.

There is a bagpipe revival happening here in Wales. There is evidence to show that it was a popular instrument here until about 1800, then completely died out. My set were made by John Tose.

They are delightfully easy to learn to play, but almost impossible to play well.

Now, the problem as I see it is this. To go to Mars, you have to take enough stuff with you to keep the astronuts alive throughout the voyage out, the visit period and the return flight. You also have to take enough fuel and technology to be able to lift off from Mars.

Well, what if you don't want to return? That reduces the payload by probably miles more than half. So, what you do is ask for volunteers from the scientific community from people who are ....getting on. Tell them straight....."Look, one day you are going to die....just like all of us. Well, why not die on Mars? Wouldn't that be cool?" That way, they can go on the mission, undertake all sorts of scientific work when they are there, then eventually....die. How proud we'd be of them, giving their lives in the cause of extending the knowledge base of humanity.

If nothing else, it would make for a good movie plot.

I would like to name this hypothesis, "Phil's Mars Visit Theory".©®™

Originally posted April 2003

Originally posted April 13th 2003

I went to see a film last night. The Core. Synopsis.......

1) Everybody with a heart pacemaker dies.

2) All the pigeons in London go mad.

3) The spaceshuttle lands in L.A. thousands of miles off course.

From this, the scientific guys hypothesise that we're all doomed.......so, they build this huge wormy device that takes all of the scientific guys, including the token woman scientific guy, the token black scientific guy, and the token French scientific guy down to the centre of the Earth.....(Helped back on the surface by the token computer nerd with the big nose)

They set light to five nuclear weapons and put everything back in order again. There, that's probably saved you about three hours of your life and about £5.......ANYWAY, it set my mind thinking.

If you did have one of these huge wormy things, and set it up on the moon, then drilled a hole exactly through the centre of the moon, going straight down without any deviations, hesitations or repetitions, then dropped a cricket ball straight down the tube, what would happen to it.

I think, it would fall straight down, accelerating all of the way until it passes the centre point. It would then continue to move through the tube, using momentum, until eventually it starts falling back down the tube again. This process would go on and on forever, because there is no air to slow the ball.

Am I right?

I would like to name this hypothesis, "Phil's Moontube Theory".©®™

All the best,

Phil

Scilly Webcam