Trying to refocus out of serious mode into silly mode reminded me of some incidents during my recent weekend away in York…
When I was walking in the museum gardens I noticed an unusual coloured pigeon and thought it would make an interesting photograph. The pigeon obviously had other ideas!
Take One – (now you see me now you don’t)
Take Two – (I hope you weren’t expecting me to pose for you!)
The title was inspired by Tom Lehrer – Poisoning Pigeons in the Park
Something tells me that pigeon was one step ahead of the game
The Government ended its £750m border security contract with a consortium led by Raytheon yesterday, saying it had no confidence in the US company.
The contract was awarded by the previous Labour administration to a group of companies [also] including Serco, BAE, Qinetiq and Accenture in November 2007. They were asked to develop and implement a scheme to collect and check passenger details against police, security and immigration watch lists.
The Home Office said Raytheon, which provided technology to carry out security checks on travellers, had been in breach of the e-Borders contract since July 2009. Although the cancellation comes amid austerity measures, the Government, which has spent £188m on the contract to date, said it would seek alternative providers for the project.
This is interesting news in light of the fact that The Minister for the Armed Forces, Nick Harvey, when speaking on the decision to move Defence Training to St Athan, stated in Parliament recently that to change course now “would undo a great deal of investment that has already been made and add considerably to the final cost.” The preferred bidder for defence training is the QinetiQ/Sodexo-led Metrix consortium of which Raytheon is a member.
A further article on the scrapping of the borders contract can be found here.
This was one of my favourite sweet treats when I was a youngster, I especially liked the taste of the perilous green ones. The pink Quality Street tin on the right also brings back memories, with it’s Victorian images and chocolates double wrapped in foil and cellophane. I used to try and smooth the foil out as flat as possible, hopefully without a single crease and I used to have fun experimenting with the cellophane in front of a camera lens
So many Christmas memories unfold and roll back into one happy memory. Family, friends, fun, laughter, the occasional tear, frost, snow, school concerts, singing at Ironbridge on Christmas Eve; which reminds me we did the same in the local pubs, hospitals and old peoples homes. So many happy faces over the years…
They even remind me of the class bully at junior school and my inadvertent comment which much later led to the sharing of chocolates.
All those years ago I didn’t appreciate how many memories a box of Mackintosh’s Weekend could hold locked up inside…
An area at the back of the minster was displaying some new stonework and a board near to the carvings informed that:
New stonework copies the original stone and this is carried out by our 24 Masons, Carvers and Apprentices.
Occasionally the removed carving is too decayed to see what it used to be. When this happens our carvers use the same form and dimensions for the stone but create a new design inspired by their own research.
If you look closely at the labels underneath the carvings in the second picture you can see what each one depicts.
It has come to my notice that the second annual Blogger’s silly week is upon us and I nearly missed it!!
