Category Archives: ramblings

photography, pleasures, ramblings

Roses

Where there’s an image, you can click it for a bigger view.

I walked round the garden this afternoon and it is absolutely awash with roses. I’ve never seen such a profuse display.

Our Lady Hillingdon, once it took off 20 years ago, is always prolific and provides flush after flush of apricot coloured roses from May until Christmas &ndash’ There are usually a couple of blooms out in Christmas Day.

The Buff Beauty did nothing for many years until we moved it under the birch tree, since when it’s gone berserk. It’s now 3-4 metres up the tree and hanging over providing swags of pale creamy yellow flowers.

One swag of Buff Beauty; about 1.5-2m long
A trio of Buff Beauty

There are dog rose suckers growing from the Buff Beauty too. They’re smothered in flowers – small, single pale pink roses – right to the top of the birch tree (higher than the house) and as much sideways. There are great weeping branches of it over our neighbour’s garden!

Dog Rose

The old roses down near the pond are also going well rambling up the trees. One is the pink Anne Boleyn; another slow starter.

Anne Boleyn

And the two climbers rambling up the supports where the apple tree was taken out are also doing well after a couple of poor years. Lots of pink-blushed white roses. One is Albrighton Rambler (see Unblogged May); although this is a newly developed rose it is of the old Bourbon style but sadly not very scented.

Albrighton Rambler
Albrighton Rambler, which fades to off-white very quickly in the warmth

There’s a standard rose down by the pond which is a hoot. For a standard it is vigorous with branches extending a good 2-3m (because we let it when it went native, rather than bother trying to prune it). It is clearly grafted at standard height (so about 1.5m) but the graft has thrown off at least two different colours of tightly double roses – some a dark purply-pink, others almost white. Heaven knows what’s been done to it, but it’s very “Alice in Wonderland”.

There are a few other roses yet to come. The small Maiden’s Blush is now out and it’s being nurtured from being neglected in a pot for some years; if the other roses are anything to go by it’ll take off in a couple of years. And there’s a pink rose also down under the birch tree which is usually also prolific. That was sold as a patio rose (so miniature) but is another that has grown naturally into a 1.5m round bush. Once it starts it usually just flowers non-stop through to the autumn – although it had an off year last year, maybe as it got cut back too hard away from the path.

If you walk down past the birch tree to the pond, especially on a nice sunny day like today, the garden is just a heady haze of rose scent, and a visual haze of roses. I have never seen them so abundant.

Moral. If you want great displays of roses, leave them alone. Don’t prune them into silly little bushes, but let them climb and ramble – after all that’s what roses do naturally.

amusements, memes, ramblings, topographical

Things What I Done in London

Last week London blogger Diamond Geezer posted a list of 100 Things I have Done in London. Given that he spends his life out and about in London it is naturally an eclectic and interesting list.

Despite being essentially a Londoner, I can’t compete with DG. However I thought it would be interesting to see what I have done within the bounds of Greater London. And there are some unusual things.

First of all I share just these five things with DG (I’m surprised it is quite so few):

  1. Voted for an MP who actually won
  2. Done jury service
  3. Been underground to watch Mail Rail while it was actually operational – and in my case long before it was branded Mail Rail
  4. Bought my first top shelf magazine
  5. Endured a pandemic

Then I can add:

  1. Been through the red channel at Heathrow
  2. Had lunch with a Herald, and paid the bill
  3. Had tea tête-à-tête with an Earl
  4. Been in A&E at Barts Hospital
  5. Had lunch at the Mermaid Theatre (aged 11) – and was served a whole trout as a starter
  6. Been aboard RRS Discovery (which carried Scott & Shackleton on their first journey to the Antarctic) and the Cutty Sark
  7. Travelled from Charing Cross to Greenwich and back by boat
  8. Travelled down the Thames (and back) from Tower Pier by paddle steamer
  9. Seen Shakespeare performed at the Globe Theatre
  10. Caught the last train home
  11. Caught the first train in from home
  12. Been to the old Billingsgate Market before dawn
  13. Been to a Buckingham Palace Garden Party
  14. Been to exhibition openings/private views at V&A and the V&A Museum of Childhood
  15. Been to an exhibition opening at the Wallace Collection with Simon Russell Beale
  16. Sung in a choir in St Pauls Cathedral
  17. Been to a play reading at the College of Arms
  18. Run conferences at the Wallace Collection and Naval & Military Club (the In & Out)
  19. Been on a tour of the Houses of Parliament
  20. Dined at five London clubs: Garrick, In & Out, Reform, Oxford & Cambridge, Travellers
  21. Had Sunday Lunch at the Ritz
  22. Eaten prunes & custard in a Lyons Corner House (aged about 4)
  23. Been part of a group who formed a literary society, which is now a registered charity
  24. Been to the Chelsea Flower Show (twice; first aged 8)
  25. Rescued several cats
  26. Caught a train to or from every major London rail terminus (of all the London termini I think I’m probably missing only Blackfriars and Cannon Street)
  27. Been “back stage” at Wallace Collection, V&A Museum of Childhood, College of Arms
  28. Been shown round the research labs at the Royal Institution by the then Director, Prof. Sir George (later Lord) Porter
  29. Had sex in a Bayswater hotel
  30. Been to a Christmas Lecture at the Royal Institution
  31. Travelled the old North London Line to/from Broad Street
  32. Had (and used) a BL Readers Ticket, when they were hard to get and gave admission to the iconic BM Reading Room
  33. Drunk a pint in the Pavilion at Lord’s
  34. Been to a Test Match at Lord’s – several times including the one when Bob Taylor was allowed out of retirement to keep wicket as 12th man against New Zealand on 25 July 1986
  35. Played cricket against the Bank of England
  36. Written computer code for Lloyds Register of Shipping, OCL and Thompson Travel
  37. Met Ian Rankin, having arranged for him to speak at a conference
  38. Got married
  39. Been the guide on a coach tour of London
  40. Been in the audience at a conference to hear Prince Charles speak

And I’ve no doubt N will be along and remind me of curiosities I’ve forgotten.

personal, ramblings

Advent Announcement

Marvin, The Paranoid AndroidToday is the first Sunday in Advent, so it’s that time when I, like many others, would normally be running an Advent Calendar of blog posts. And then for a few days either side of New Year have a series of posts summarising the year past and looking forward to the year to come.

However I’ve decided that this year I’m going to do none of that. I just don’t have the stomach for it this year, and cannot make myself invest the time in something I see as increasingly pointless. What price predictions in this increasingly dystopian world? I’ve also struggled to find a suitable and interesting subject for an Advent Calendar – at least in terms of something that sufficiently captivates me and which is not hemmed in with copyright etc. restrictions.

At the end of the day that’s probably all down to depression, and having the brain frazzled by recent illness.

Life! Don’t talk to me about Life!

Nonetheless my monthly posts are planned to continue through next year. So you’ll still have regular quiz questions, quotes, links to interesting items and my unblogged month. In addition, next year I’m adding, on a single (variable) day each month, an “On This Day” post for 100 years ago – yes, just one day a month something from 1923 that happened on that day.

So, sorry, but whatever the reason, the brain isn’t going to hack it all this year. Hopefully at least the Advent Calendar will return next year.

ramblings

Rugby League

During October, while I’ve been ill, I’ve been watching some of the Rugby League World Cup on TV.

I cannot understand the game or its attraction.

Think upon it thus-wise …

  • It’s a game with effectively no competition and no invention.
  • The only tactic seems to be to get the ball and run straight at the nearest three opponents, so they can throw you to the ground.
  • The set plays are all uncontested: the play-the-ball, the scrums, the restart from the ball in touch – you know the outcome in advance.
  • The scrums, as they are defined as uncontested, are pointless – you might as well just give someone the ball and say “Go”.
  • Meaningful penalties are almost non-existent; the vast majority of penalties are effectively no different to the play-the-ball.
  • The opposition only get the ball when you make an error, not by competing for it.
  • Players (and referees) are unable to play without a continual supply of water, with extraneous bodies wandering on and off the pitch to fulfil this need.
  • The referee spends half the time running backwards.
  • Referees seem unable to make decisions – so many of the decisions, especially tries, are referred to the video referee for a decision.

The game is totally sterile and pointless.

And then they try playing it in wheelchairs!

Compare with Rugby Union, where the scrums and line-outs are properly contested; penalties mean something; the tackled player-with-ball sets up ruck and maul which become a contest for the ball; and much more invention in passing and kicking flows from this.

I just cannot see why Rugby League even exists, let alone why anyone would want to play it.