Freddy’s Flatulent Feast of Featured Monochromatic Fotografia

July 21^st “Who’s Freddie?” Well, the paranoid android is called Marvin so I thought the faithful Fuji deserved a name too, and what better than Freddie. Freddie is capable of far more than Marvin, unfortunately his operator, i.e. me, doesn’t have much idea how to get the best out of him. As promised a few weeks ago and again last week, this week’s photos will all be black and white, Fuji’s ACROS filter, with maybe some contrast adjustment from Picasa.

Today should have been one of Huan’s singing days and hence a long walk for me. However, Huan wasn’t recovered enough from yesterday so we had a joint walk around the river instead, staying mostly under the trees and out of the sun.

Walking round taking black and white photos got me thinking of all the photos I took back in the early sixties, I started colour around 1968. Those early pictures bring back memories, which is what you expect them to do of course and which is why they were taken. What doesn’t come back in those memories are the colours, just the occasional ones where an item of clothing may be remembered, or the colour of a car. It also cost a fortune to take pictures in those days, buying films and having them developed, I take more in a day now, maybe even discard more in a day, than I would have done in a month back then. Once I’m in my dotage let’s hope those memories, and the more recent ones can still strike a chord.

Places can also look a lot different in black and white, while the ‘dirt’ may still show it is far less obvious as can be seen by these two pics.

On the downside of course, unless you have an exceptionally good lens, detail will be lost. This can be seen in this macro of an ant.

SWMBO, who by the way, doesn’t like black and white photos at all, I think her family never had a camera, still looks just as lovely to me. In her younger days, and the same is true for many older Chinese people, photographs will have been a luxury expense and would have been done in a studio. Oh, how times have changed!

I managed to sneak up on another little birdie again today, here the use of colour didn’t really matter so much. This is one of the birds we keep trying to get closer to, but they are mostly black and white anyway.

I took some flower pictures next but I won’t bother showing you them. How on earth did horticulturists know what they were looking at in photographs donkey’s years ago? I know looking at some of my old photos I don’t even know what colour the trees were in the background. I guess the people taking the photos must have taken copious amounts of notes.

The last one from Freddie for today is a little bit of Chinglish. I don’t know what a ‘Snowflake steak’ is supposed to be but I’m guessing a ‘Philip steak’ should be a ‘fillet’.

Marvin was not going to be left out today, Huan stole him out of my pocket to take the next picture, and a few others besides. She took them in colour so I’ve had to convert this one to black and white with Picasa. I love it when animals look into your eyes, you wondering what they are thinking and who knows, they wondering what you are thinking maybe!

Marvin got his way again when dinner was ready. Fifteen years ago, or more, I cooked roast duck in orange sauce for Huan and it was terrible. Kermit would have been happy singing “Rubber Duckie!” Today’s recipe, “Slow-Roast Duck Legs with Marmalade” was an English one from countryfile.com worked a treat, you should definitely check that site out. Of course, the picture has been changed to black and white again, not very good for Instagram I suppose.

July 22^nd ‘er indoors wanted to be just that this morning, indoors, so we didn’t go anywhere I could have gone alone but I didn’t want to leave Huan all alone, there’s always other times to walk. I finished watching an Australian series called ‘Murder Call’ so a replacement was needed. That turned out to be another Australian one, ‘City Homicide’, thank heavens for Youtube.

Huan decided that an after dinner walk would be in order so I got the chance for some more black and white picture taking. The first couple were of Huan in the lift and they were terrible, the shutter stayed open far too long and my hand didn’t stay steady long enough! This next one had to be taken. We were passing the pet clinic when I spotted a forlorn face in the window.

Our next photo was another little creature that almost seemed to be watching me as I walked round the small pool it was in. Perhaps it was waiting to be fed.

Walking back through the outdoor market we did have a talk to a few geese who, as is usually the way with geese, gave me the evil eye. However, I guess you don’t need any more geese just yet. How about the evening sky instead? There are some lovely textures in those clouds.

July 23^rd Good news, Huan was back to normal today so off to school she went, with me to walk her there. I was too late for a long walk, I had planned the dusty road to Changhao village, alone, to save Huan from the dust. Instead, on the way to school, we passed the stairway to heaven, or, the lift and walkway to Shangri La, it saves the snowbirds walking up the hill.

I walked today down the main road to the traffic police turn off to come back by the river. There’s a public convenience on the corner where the ‘resident cleaner’ always had her dog with her. The last few times Huan and I went past, the powers that be had stopped her doing this due to ‘complaints from the public’. The little pooch was back today, all three and half legs and a big cheesy grin, he recognised me from afar. I took a lot of photos, all with my left hand while trying to keep him happy with my right. Only this one was any good.

On the bend of the river I tried a few landscape photos which turned out pretty good. Of course, in years to come, I may forget the colours I saw! For you though, another panorama, which I think came out reasonably well too.

Not much else lent itself to photography today so my last picture is of my route under the trees to avoid the sun. It is near a road, but not a very busy one so it’s quite a pleasant avenue.

July 24^th No singing for Huan again today so together we went, downriver and then back through the countryside. I thought I’d start with two photos of the bridge to nowhere, remember, Huan said it would have to be knocked down because of mistakes in its construction. Both of these are views you haven’t seen before.

Our walk started off well but before long Huan became the director, the producer and at one stage even had her hand trying to position my camera for me. What would I do without her? Some of what she was trying to get me to photograph would not have worked well in black and white, for example, some kind of jumping insect against a dirty sandy background. Sometimes I listened and sometimes I went my own way, like this one, I think it’s a wonderful shot.

We saw the ‘silkies’ again today along with a lot of other chickens, strangely, they were not running away from us. We think they may well have been looking for food. The goats were missing for a while and then we spotted them all in the middle of the river, they do like hopping around of those big boulders.

I was forced into taking photos of many butterflies next, for which I had to change the camera to colour mode, black and white would have been no good. That means you don’t get to see them this week, sorry! Shortly after that we got to the stairway (not) to heaven. My knees do not like going up things like this any more!

While I’m wandering around taking pictures of anything and everything, what does Huan do? Well today she was carrying a plastic bag she had found at the side of the road and filling it with coconut husks she was picking up here, there and everywhere. It seems they are good for putting into your plant pots and stopping them drying out so quickly. The things you can see on her arms are ‘sleeves’ to protect your arms from the sun. We got three pairs free with our hats; needless to say I will not be wearing mine!

Next up was a video of ducks in a field, they had probably just been let out for the day. In fact a few yards further on we bumped into some of their compatriots. They also seemed less wary of us than usual but not quite as brave as the chickens earlier. Look how cute the little one is.

Just around the corner we came to the byre, where some of my friends usually hang out. The farmer was there today and as they all came to the gate to see me he told us that they loved me! That may not be quite true but I do manage to get quite close to them. Here are two of them having a sniff and a lick, thankfully not a bite.

Another panorama of the countryside, it can look pretty good in black and white, probably not for the youngsters of today though.

As we approached home we passed one of the local schools with lots of coaches outside and more turning up while we watched. I surmised “School’s Out For Summer”. A lot of the schools locally do take boarders; it’s much more common here than it is in the UK. I was going to show you a picture of lots of buses but then thought I’d let you see this one instead. At least you know who he is and that he’s a cool guy. The writing says “Please add #” where the number is not specified, maybe the owner is supposed to add the octane rating there.

That’s it for our walkies but not for the day. I was cooking today, something else from countryfile.com, supposedly “Wild Garlic and Chorizo Tortilla”. I was wondering why it seemed more like an omelette than anything else and a quick Google showed me that this recipe had a mistake in its title. It should not have said ‘tortilla’; it should have said ‘frittata’. Not having any wild garlic available I substituted it for what we call garlic legs, it worked well. As is par for this week, the photo is definitely not Instagrammable!

July 25^th Today’s plan was not a long walk, Huan was off to singing school so I thought I’d walk the ladies there and then check out the Saturday riverside market. When I arrived I thought there was no market, the road was fenced off with a couple of policemen ‘on guard’. However, as I got further along towards town there were the usual stalls, just not as many. We had fruit, vegetables, chickens, ducks, pigeons, rabbits, pork, Chinese medicine and all sorts of odds and sods. Now I know you’ve seen the market before but I was busy clicking away to get you some black and white scenes. As I went back along the main street I even tried a three level panorama, in other words one made up of three rows of five pictures. I may have been to close to the subject for that to work though. I’ll never know because when I got home, all the photos I had taken were far too dark, in fact too dark for me to sort them out on the computer at all. The only problem I could find on the camera was that the ISO was not on automatic but on 4000. How I changed that setting I do not know, but I’ll check next time won’t I?

What this means of course is that we have no pictures of today’s walk at all. All you have is the ‘before’ photo of today’s dinner. I had arrived home early because Huan had decided today was to be another soup day and I was to be the chef. As you have seen many soups, I decided to show you the ingredients instead, although I forgot to add the tomato.

You wouldn’t think that so little food could do so much. We had a very tasty and filling bowl of soup each leaving enough for tomorrow and possible even for Huan’s lunch on Monday. Both of us thought that this was one of our tastiest yet, possibly due to the tin of stewed pork so we will definitely be doing it again.

Oh, I forgot, the other reason for the short walk was our planned TV walk, or ‘lockdown walk’ this afternoon. This month we are still on one mile, maybe next month we can get back to two.

July 26^th Did you know that today is famous for many things? I didn’t until I was looking for something to write about today and stumbled across a site called daysoftheyear.com. Just to pick out two of them, today is “Coffee Milkshake Day”, something that we both like very much but, we didn’t have one of those today. For some reason an insane bout of laziness hit our house this morning and neither of us really wanted to do anything so I was searching for “Couch Potato Day”. It does exist but it’s not today, it’s either in August, October or November. However, our second choice for today was “All Or Nothing Day” so that’s what we celebrated, not quite in the spirit of how it’s meant though, we just did nothing.

We did plan an after dinner stroll but just before we decided to get ready it started raining, that’s our first photo of the day.

Having taken that shot I decided to sneak into the living room and take one of Huan studying her new music book. She wasn’t, she was on her phone! She has become very adept at watching the TV and scanning her WeChat at the same time.

A few minutes later Huan got her revenge and took one of me playing the guitar. You can see how lazy we were, I hadn’t even combed my hair. If you look more closely you may spot that I’m attempting to play an ‘F Barre’ chord, the photo can’t tell you whether or not I was successful! Sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not, much more practice still needed.

July 27^th Monday again, shopping again, no Freddie but Marvin was along for the ride. As you can see, this is one of Huan’s favourite days.

I tried to get some Chinglish on the way up the escalator but we were moving too fast for me to control my feet, the trolley and the camera all at once, another time maybe. On our way out I spotted this booth and I got the urge to leap behind it and be the salesman. It looks like the ‘formula’ is the wrong way round, Huan tells me that “if you buy a Baijiahui shopping voucher for ¥1,000.00 you get a phone card worth ¥129.00”. I didn’t get any ‘sales’, do you think the mask put them off?

I suppose the mask at least hides the wide open mouth! Despite the fact that there are no rules saying we have to, we still wear masks if we go shopping or to other crowded places. We read the news from overseas, especially the USA but increasingly in the UK now as well, where people are refusing to wear masks for all sorts of stupid reasons. I just see the world getting crazier and crazier day after day.

Anyway, that’s enough preaching from me, see you next week!

Chillies, Firemen, Snowboarding, Paddling, Speedy, Hot

April 28^th We had our first nearly mask free walk today! At the beginning and end of the walk we followed what I like to call “mask etiquette” whenever other people were around. Before long though we were out of the city and into the country roads. Once there we left the roads and headed to the fields, something we haven’t done for a while.

Before too long we were chatting to the farmers, they were no longer afraid of ‘the foreigner’. This one was picking chillies.

Today was a good day for butterflies, we saw a lot, and, we both took a lot of photos, me with the Fuji and Huan with her phone. Unfortunately, none of Huan’s came out well enough and mine were all of the same coloured variety, this one.

Sometimes going off the beaten track means we have to find new ways to get back to the right place. We can get stuck in places like this. It’s a good job I have a fairly reasonable sense of direction, if I relied on Huan’s we’d never get home.

My sense of direction did not fail me and we exited the woods to this view.

Soon we had crossed the road and were once again headed across country looking for the road that I knew would take us home.

Two nature photos for you next, the first is flowers that turned out quite well I thought, the second is something I like to see, nature reclaiming humankind’s garbage. There is some kind of farm machine in that bush.

Another road was then crossed to keep us off the beaten path as long as possible. Coming up to the place that we now know to be a failed airport we spotted a whole load of firemen leaving there, mostly on motorbikes. Huan told me they were forest fire fighters and as we could see no sign of fire damage anywhere, we surmised that they must have been training.

Further round the hill we took this shot of the ‘old airport’ and what is supposed to be an apartment complex in the future. Such a shame, I will miss this view.

Next up was an unexpected hill! We were heading back through one of the last villages before home when our way was completely blocked. Luckily, or not, the village does have an upper road so that we could get home.

And on the subject of hills, we saw two children trying to snowboard down a dirt hill. They were finding it hard going and when they saw us they stopped what they were doing. This was the only photo I could get, notice the very narrow boards. Soon after they put back on their school “Young Pioneer” scarves and went on their way.

I couldn’t avoid it; I had to play peek-a-boo with the animals. First it was with the cows who probably wondered why I wasn’t feeding them today, Huan had gone ahead, and then it was a goat, playing hide and seek.

And then finally we were home, absolutely parched. The last village shop hadn’t had any bottles of water in the fridge at all, and only enormous ones outside the fridge. She was also a miserable person but I guess she may have had her reasons.

This morning’s walk fair took it out of us. Going through fields and the forests and occasionally fighting your way through the undergrowth can be hard work. It’s not very good for my legs either! Maybe one day I’ll buy something else to hike in other than shorts. I guess the walk also took it out of the camera, there were 171 pictures to be sorted when we got home plus a sizeable number off Huan’s phone. With the amount I’ve posted here today I think I’d better leave the camera at home next time we go out!

April 29^th No cameras, no real walks, just two people with two missions. Huan was 100% successful with hers and came home with my ‘Proof of Life’ signed; all we have to do now is get it back to the UK. My mission was only 50% successful, the bread lady’s husband was there so baps could be bought. However, there was no sign of the sausage man or his daughter. I hope he hasn’t already moved back up North, what will I do!

The rest of my day was spent creating albums in Google Photos as it looks like access to the old Hainan forum servers is delayed indefinitely. This entailed reading all Blog posts and then finding the photos on my PC, creating the required album and then editing the Blog post to include a link to the album. It’s yet another long job but I’ll get there!

April 30^th Mission successful today, at least our part of it was. Now all we have to do is wait for EMS to start moving. We delivered my ‘proof of life’ to EMS at the post office this morning, and what a pain in the rear end that was. We were third in the queue, with one cashier, (remind you of the UK Post Office?) but we were #1 after fifteen minutes or so. It then took between forty five minutes and an hour to sort our little package out. If I tried to explain why I’d be writing for a few more pages! Anyway, our part is done, now we wait. As of this evening our little package has not left the local post office.

A walk to where we buy our baps and sausages confirmed my worst fears, there will be no more sausages this year. The man who makes them has stopped; the price of pork has risen too high for him to be able to sell locally. Soon, he’ll be off back up north. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that if he comes back in the cooler months that China may have more pigs!

On our way home Huan spotted this creature on the riverside wall near our place, it’s quite a biggy, maybe a centimetre long. Could it be a large flying ant?

Very close to it we almost stood on the next one. We do see some weird varieties of caterpillars here, Huan thought this one had eyes on stalks!

Being the last day of April this was also our last two mile TV walk of the month. For some reason I kept getting the timing wrong, possibly something to do with having an afternoon nap before. Anyway, next month we try and step up to the three mile TV walk, neither of us are sure just how much harder that will be but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

May 1st “Queen of months, supremely fair, Cloth'd with garments rich and rare, None in beauty can compare With thee, sweet May.” (Ode To May by Peter Burn)

Another mask free day, this time 100% mask free, we both forgot them! Our plan was quickly changed so that we could avoid people and downriver from home we went. The water level was quite low so we went a bit further and looked for a place to cross. This photo shows a tributary coming in from the left and the main river on the right then disappearing towards the centre.

Crossing the tributary was no problem whatsoever; however, crossing the main river was a different kettle of fish. The water was not deep but the bottom was covered in stones which we could not see very well. Huan coped better than me, I almost put the boots, the camera and the Bob in the water, more than once.

Huan tried to take a video of my struggles but managed somehow to press the wrong button on her phone and ended up with a time lapse. All it needed was some Benny Hill music!

May 2^nd Huan was out of sorts last night, better today, but not ready for walking. While she rested I spent ages yet again on Blogger. They have a problem with photos disappearing from posts and being replaced by a “no entry” sign. Advice given was to upload the missing photos again, Google know they have a problem and they are working on it. Luckily for me I not only have all the photos on my PC but also word copies of all my Blog posts.

An after dinner walk was called for today as we had been a lazy pair and what a fantastic walk it was. According to Endomondo, the first 3.36 kilometres was completed in 3 minutes and 13 seconds! Maybe we should start calling ourselves “Mr and Mrs Flash” (not in the pan), what do you think. Just to emphasise the stupendous speed of evening ramble we stumbled across a road sign, one we have not seen before despite walking past it many, many times. It is at the bottom of a walled off flight of steps, on the edge of an ornamental pond with not a road in sight anywhere. Do you think they had us in mind when they placed this sign? After all, we were travelling at something over sixty kilometres an hours.

May 3^rd Reverse plan for today, I slept pretty badly with some very weird dreams although I could work out where they came from. Huan suggested that as we had to do a TV walk today anyway we should skip the morning walk and go after dinner instead. I was happy to agree! So, today’s TV walk was equivalent to five kilometres in forty five minutes, not a great deal different to the previous walks but that extra fifteen minutes made a lot of difference. By the end we were both absolutely dripping wet and pretty worn out. Still, at least we know what to expect for the rest of the month.

May 4^th So that’s it for another week. Life is 99% back to normal, most of the snowbirds have returned to Northern Climes, we don’t have to go shopping at lunch time. We still wear masks when we go shopping, or there’s a chance of getting close to other people, that’s the 1%! The water company can deliver to our apartment again, no need for us to go there. And, the sun has once more got his hat on; this is the weather forecast for the next few days.