I'm In a Quandary

I never seem to be able to get myself into a position whereby I have enough items upon which to blog and then when I do have the items and the time I seem to just do them all at the same time instead of scheduling them.  Hence as I was having dinner tonight I was wondering to myself what I could find to blog upon which was quick and easy and interesting enough to have at least the first paragraph read.  I had plenty of ideas for blogs but nothing quick.  It has to be quick because I have a load of emails to reply to and arrangements to be made in New Zealand.  The time difference means that I have to make my calls early morning my time to get people in the evening or in my evening if I need to speak to them during the day.  

Anyway I needed some information for a decision on a Croquet Tournament when I get back to New Zealand.  So I went to my Hebridean in New Zealand blog.  As I was reading what I wanted to know I realised that I had 20 followers.  Now I knew that when I left New Zealand and stopped that blog I only had 12 followers and apart from a couple of my new Blogger pals they were people I already knew.  So why the increase I wondered.  Anyway it made me think.  I return to New Zealand soon and need to think about my new blog.

Questions:  Do I simply alter my old blog and use it for this year too and just alter the title a bit?  Do I amalgamate my existing two blogs (one for each of the last two visits) and continue?  Or do I start a new blog for this time in New Zealand? Decisions.  Decisions.  I'll just have to work out which is the easiest for my readers and for me.  The second option I suspect will win the day.

A Refugee in the Kitchen

I had a refugee this afternoon.  He (or she?) found his way into the house and decided to be a bit of a nuisance.  Now despite my detestation of killing things had he been a wasp he would be dead.  As it was he is a Hover Fly Helophilus pendulus.  Leastways I'm pretty sure that he is but if the first comment is from Scriptor saying that I'm wrong then....   Anyway they like damp places and are fond of sunbathing on waterside vegetation.  Anyway I though he was a rather splendid fellow and once I had spoken softly to him he posed for me. Or perhaps in the absence of any pondside vegetation in my kitchen he just decided to sunbathe anyway.

 OLYMPUS   SP550UZ   ISO: 50  1/125 sec Aperture: 5.0   Focal Length: 9.8mm Super Macro

I'm Back Again

Hello.  I'm back in Blogland.  Apart from a few minutes yesterday when I posted a quickie on a news item I've not really had the opportunity to read or write much since Sunday morning.  I've had friends for dinner every evening and the days have been equally busy.  Yesterday we had a storm with gale force winds and the sea in the bay below the house boiled:

 

  

Today the sun shone.  The washing dried on the line in a stiff breeze and I cleaned all the windows to get rid of the salt - I can now see through them again.  In the afternoon it was warm enough to be in the garden in shorts trying to clear more weeds and prune back some of the bushes.  My decision as to what to do with some deciduous trees I'm growing but which will eventually obscure my neighbour's view was partly taken for me when the storm snapped the top two feet off a 9 ft high tree. And down in the bay the lobster fisherman tended his creels.

 

A Cinema on Shetland

There is no race on earth quite as eccentric as the British.  On the basis that this item of news is unlikely to have made it to the televisions of the rest of the world I thought I would share a bit of that eccentricity with you.

A new record-breaking cinema has opened in Shetland (Islands to the North of the Scottish mainland) to critical acclaim.  It is not only Britain's newest cinema, it is also the country's northernmost and its smallest, with accommodation for a capacity audience of two.  The cinema complete with projector and screen has been set up in a bus-shelter in north-east corner of the island of Unst (one of the Shetland Isles). 

The bus shelter is already internationally famous for being decorated each year in different colours by a band of volunteers.  If the visitors' book is to be believed, it is now one of the most visited tourist attractions in Shetland.

One of the Country's top film critics Dr Mark Kermode said: "I've been to premiéres. I've done Hollywood. I've done all that sort of thing.  But it pales into insignificance when you're in a bus shelter in Unst.  It's a remarkable place to see a film. I can't think of anywhere more extraordinary."