Clouds - February 2023

This month's theme of "Clouds" brings up the half century of topics - well done to you all for sticking with it!

How about, to start with, you have a go and see if you can remember the first 4 lines of this famous poem?  It starts with:

 " I wandered lonely as a cloud .... "

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Ken - amazingly, we had a cloudless sky for our vets' match at the start of January!

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At various times during January (and without actually looking for anything), I came across 3 different clips on the BBC to do with specific cloud formations:

there was this very strange cloud formation in Turkey:

BBC clip - a UFO perhaps?

...... and then nearer to home, there was this recent cloud inversion in Derbyshire:

Mam Tor, up in the Peak District

......and even further north, there was this clip of a mother-of-pearl formation:

Mother-of pearl cloud

  

Anyway, enough of my digressions for now, here are the photos you sent in - enjoy!

Sue - "monitoring clouds"

Ken - clouds behind our silver birch

Stacey - on a short winter break in Venice

Kate - smiling cloud

Kate - tank cloud

Kate - "snow stopped play" cloud!

Don - flying through the clouds (and beautiful sunset) whilst landing at Houston!

Don - The Cloudveil Hotel at Jackson Hole, Wyoming 

(where we stayed over the New Year)

John - the best clouds in Alton!

Here are three from Steve - "weather closing in on a walk round Chichester harbour"

Keith - clouds/sunset over our back garden

Rosie - I really liked this but unless the collective name for a group of 

snowmen is a "cloud" it may not make it through the vetting process!

Here are four from Gill's winter break to Lanzarote:

Sue - from the hut on the IOW

Gaynor - from Aotearoa, “the land of the long white cloud”

Gaynor - stairway to heaven

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Here is another non-photographic bit for you all!  

It is a lovely paragraph (linked to clouds!) that was in a book called

"What I talk about when I talk about running"  by Haruki Murakami:

"The thoughts that occur to me while I'm running are like the clouds in the sky.  Clouds of all different sizes.  They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always.  The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky.  The sky both exists and doesn't exist.  It has substance and at the same time doesn't.  And we merely accept that vast expanse and drink it in"

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....... and our topic for next month, to think about as you "wander the world" is: 

"Glass"

Red - December 2022

It has been over 4 years now since we started all this!  Here are all your submissions for the topic of "Red" - as usual, in the order they were sent to me:

Sue

Jan - lots of "reds" at Wisley!

Rowan & Eden - a winter visitor to our garden

Ken - one of nature's baubles (on the tree opposite our house)  

Here are 4 from Steve:-

During the cold snap a flock of redwings enjoyed some apples I hadn’t bothered to pick up (plus an imposter). Which goes to prove that we should all be happy to have an untidy garden!

Kate - Teddy (age 5) - a Christmas gift 2022 school photo

Kate - the big freeze from Windmill Hill

Don - there is nothing like a twirl when you have a pretty new red dress!

Don - waiting for Santa in Houston with our son and 2 granddaughters

Here are three from Rosie:

Keith - reindeer on parade

Gill - "Seeing Red" - with strike action and many things not arriving before Christmas!

😠😠😠😠😠  

A picturesque post box in Seaton.

Andy - though it isn't him in action!

Gaynor - red/read/ready 

Rosie

........ and a late entry taken just before midnight over in Jackson Hole, Wyoming:

Don - a torchlight parade by skiers coming down Snow Mountain before the firework display commenced

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Our next topic, the 50th so far and the first of 2023, is:

"Clouds"

Nursery Rhymes - November 2022

Another month and another collection of your various interpretations on a theme.

This month it was Nursery Rhymes.  Some people have included descriptions/clues, some photographs don't need anything and there are a few that you might struggle a bit with - in which case please ask the relevant photographer!

Here are two from Andy:

Followed by a couple of quite tricky ones from Sue:

Jan

.... and two from Ken (taken in Bakewell):

Here are a couple from Kate - garden ones to highlight the unusual November weather:

 

Kate says that this one is a not entirely accurate "silver bells & cockle shells".  

...... but that she has never had snowdrops in her garden in November before!

Don was being indecisive - so he sent in four!

Gaynor - Identifies as Little Miss Muffet. They, the spider, yet to descend. 

Gill

..... and finally, a different "take" from John - and one that hopefully won't offend anyone! His advice is not to translate it and just to think vaguely phonetically.

(the book where he found it)

..... and so, as we start the month of December, our 49th topic is:

"Red"