Shooting Parrots

May

2013

That’s All Folk

Posted in: Entertainment, Family Life, Photography

Monday, 20 May 2013

I should say from the start that I’m no great fan of folk music and all the folky stuff that goes with it, but there is no doubt that folky folk know how to enjoy themselves as we witnesses yesterday at Shepley Spring Festival.

Shepley is a small village about a 45 minutes drive across the border in Yorkshire and the idea of a Sunday out came from Mrs P’s pal Lesley.

The event is held on the grounds of Shepley Cricket Club and the show ground is surrounded by a mix of marquees selling all sorts of things from incense and stuffed vine leaves to hand knitted ponchos and an energising massage, but at its centre is a flat wooden stage where the fun happens.

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Previously on Shooting Parrots

A Toast to Technology

Thursday, 16 May 2013

Despite my antipathy to mobile phones and ambivalence to Kindle (as mentioned the other day) technology is the living proof that mankind has clambered to the top most branch of the evolutionary tree. Take the self-stirring mug on the left. Think of all the energy you’ve wasted over the years clattering a spoon around your cup when all that was needed was a little ingenuity to save you all that effort. No this isn’t the information or communications age, it’s the Age of the Gadget and nowhere is this more [...]

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R is for Hans Redl

Wednesday, 15 May 2013

This is my contribution to Round Twelve of ABC Wednesday and again I am focusing on people, some famous, some infamous and some half-forgotten. I’ve written before about amputees who have achieved great things in sport despite their physical disability and another such is Austrian tennis player Hans Redl. Born in Vienna in 1914, Redl was a better than average player and made the Austrian Davis Cup team in 1937, but after the Anschluss he represented Germany in 1938 and 1939. Redl was conscripted into the German army at the [...]

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The Future is a Foreign Country

Tuesday, 14 May 2013

Despite being something of a technophile, there are two ‘essential’ gadgets that I have never really got the hang of – the mobile phone and the electronic book. I rebel against the mobile for the autocratic demands it makes on our lives. There is just no escape from the rest of the world when your attention is constantly distracted by calls, texts, emails and automated reminders. This particular technophobia goes back to my NHS days when I was forced to carry a Blackberry, a separate Nokia out-of-hours emergency phone and [...]

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Star Warsop

Monday, 13 May 2013

Word play and puns are a great joy in life, or at least they are in mine. I’m sure my long suffering family would disagree – they think that being with me is like living with a walking Christmas cracker joke. The reason I mention this is because of some fun on the Saturday Breakfast Show after the annoncement that the seventh in the Star Wars franchise is to be filmed in the UK next year. Listeners came up with their alternative titles with a UK place motif like the one [...]

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Cheers ye an’ fareweel

Thursday, 9 May 2013

I came across this photo yesterday of a much younger Alex Ferguson in his playing days. If it hadn’t been for the caption I don’t think I would have recognised him when his is one of the most recognisable faces in Britain. The reason it appeared online of course was that it was the day he called for the curtain to come down after over fifty years in football, the last twenty-six as manager of my beloved Manchester United. It was strange listening to the many tributes on radio and [...]

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Q is for Harriet Quimby

Wednesday, 8 May 2013

This is my contribution to Round Twelve of ABC Wednesday and again I am focusing on people, some famous, some infamous and some half-forgotten. I’ve written before about the early pioneers of flight from the exciting early years of the 20th century and some are less well known than they should be for all sorts of reasons. One such is Harriet Quimby whose greatest aviation achievement in aviation in a tragically short career was overshadowed by an event of even greater historic significance. Quimby was born on a farm in [...]

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Getting the Bird

Tuesday, 7 May 2013

Something strange happened yesterday – it was a bank holiday and the sun shone which isn’t what we’ve been accustomed to of late. My scalp was throbbing gently last night from the unexpected exposure to solar radiation which felt strangely healthy and good. The good weather happily coincided with a reminder of Christmas as we visited Stockley Birds of Prey, an impulse present that I’d bought for Mrs P through a Wowcher deal.

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P is for Oreste Pinto

Wednesday, 1 May 2013

This is my contribution to Round Twelve of ABC Wednesday and again I am focusing on people, some famous, some infamous and some half-forgotten. Once dubbed by Dwight Eisenhower as the greatest living expert on security, Oreste Pinto was one of the colourful characters of World War II espionage and the original ‘Spycatcher’ who created his own myth. Born in Amsterdam in 1889, Pinto was first recruited to the murky world of counter-intelligence while studying philology at the Sorbonne in 1911. He was living in the student quarter of the [...]

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