It took a lot of nerve as I hate looking out of the window.
 

Yesterday Lord Goldsmith put forward the idea of extending citizenship ceremonies to all young people at a 'coming of age ' event at 18 with an oath of allegiance to the Queen or simply to the country. It does not seem appropriate to me for the man who gave the opinion which led to the invasion of Iraq to be advising on this or any other subject. People like me feel a sense of shame that the country was led to war on a bogus prospectus. Proud to be British will be the watchword only when the politicians who followed George Bush's lead are well and truly out of office.

More cloud pictures here ...

With the Easter break not far away I thought I might stimulate the photographic mind. Those of you who are going away might like to take a pic of a local person.

And those who are staying at home how about sheds and huts.

I hope it gives you a new outlook on photography.

I was sitting thinking of pics when I thought of Usky the other day and his lack of sun flare. I looked out of the window and there it was, right at the end of my drive. So I took a couple of shots (with my new Fujifilm s5700 all singing all dancing) camera. Played around with a couple of filters and came up with these. What do you think?

This is the original

The last one had the addition of a star filter

Such good posers they were, erm, on the 30th attempt of course!

...for those who are not visitors to my personal blog.

You may want to look at the larger version to really get what it's all about.

'Where the bee sucks there suck I ' I'm not very happy with these images.... they could be better but best I could do hand held last year. I hope to try again when the Foxgloves are in bloom.

Honest guv, this isn't snow it's spume in each of the 3 pictures. They aren't as good as I would like as I took them in a monstrous gale, but  I think you can get the idea (they get bigger and look better if you click on them). There are a couple of video links here too, but turn your speakers down as they're noisy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQKfGjhLJfo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHe9DiRd2HE

At least some people are enjoying the windy weather, although I don’t know if I would like to kite surfing with the weather we have been having in the last few days.

In the back ground is a section of the Mulberry Harbour which the allies used in the WW11 after D-day, it was brought to Southend on Sea and has been left here in the estuary.

Rabbit

For davidjohn - Thanks for the advice - Is this the kind of blurred background you meant?

View from my friends balcony hopefully realigned.
Not sure if quite level but is it ok for my very first attempt?

These are my favourite flowers, not necessarily this colour but I do love lillies.

Time to sup a glass of wine and watch the sun go down. Not as warm as my friends in Spain but equally as charming?