Firetop

An eleven day gap in blogging deserves an apology, so sorry folks - just been incredibly busy juggling all the duties of a Father, Husband, Employee, Business owner… and Halo 3 addict! One evening last week, after some extremely heavy rainful in Crawley, the drive home to Surrey delivered a stunning sunset which lit up the sky with vibrant pinks and reds. I was listening to the super new Armin Van Buren album which seemed to complement the moment perfectly, and as I hit the A24 at Ockley I looked right and saw the most unusual cloud formation. What resembled huge jellyfish (or enormous alien space craft) were floating across the eastern horizon - I drove home extra quickly to take some photographs before the formation vanished. (more…)

Having recently discovered artist father and daughter Stan and Georgia Peskett I’m beginning to wonder if I should have pursued my art studies beyond my GCSE A-grade. Initially I started A-level Art & Design but when the first semester (at a different consortium school) turned out to be ‘Basic Photography’ I dropped the subject because I’d just spent two years on GCSE Photography… the UK & US Politics lessons I chose instead regrettably bored me to tears. Stan and Georgia Peskett are both contemporary artists - and very successful from the look of their biographies (lots of exhibitions and works produced). (more…)

On bank holiday Monday we took the new ‘family size’ Peugeot 307sw for it’s first long drive down to Bexhill-on-Sea, picking up some family members along the way. My grandparents (Jack and Vera… yes they were a real life couple!) lived in Bexhill for most of my childhood and, with the eight year anniversary of my Grandfather’s passing coming up, we visited his grave which was surrounded by bright blooming flowers. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t too good down in East Sussex, a strong wind meant I had to hold on tight to my Gran to stop her blowing over, she managed her usual ‘you’ll be burying me here soon’ joke none-the-less though, before we all piled back into the car and grabbed some lunch. (more…)

On Friday Suzie_Q and I travelled back from our short overnight stay at Lulworth Cove in Dorset, but not before popping into world reknowned Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre in Wareham. Jim Cronin - the founder of Monkey World, sadly passed away in March this year (Liver Cancer) after creating Dorset’s refuge for monkeys rescued from the illegal pet trade, laboratories and other cruel circumstances. Hopefully Jim’s demise won’t see the closure of this wonderful centre though - it’s one of the only ‘zoos’ I can think of where the inhabitants are given lots of space and as close to natural habitat as possible following their previously traumatic lives. (more…)

After dinner this evening my wife and I made the short drive up Box Hill for a walk on the National Trust maintained network of public footpaths. I took my camera as I was expecting some nice sunset photographs… and I also took my Australian bullroarer. You’re probably wondering what a bullroarer is… it’s an Aboriginal painted piece of timber on a string - made famous by Mick Dundee in Crocodile Dundee 2 to ‘make a telephone call’. When swung it makes a loud roaring noise, which the Aborigines used as a sign for women and children to keep away from their secret ceremonies. Just for the crack I’d see whether the one I bought in Western Australia would freak anybody out on Box Hill or down in the valley (if the noise would travel far enough). Unfortunately as you can see from the short bullroarer video footage - all did not go to plan (and yes, I AM mad) (more…)

The more regular Firetop blog visitor may already have discovered the gallery of photographs I added last week. Having come back from my honeymoon with over 500 photographs I picked out the best ones for hosting in Flickr. I then found a useful wordpress plugin ‘FAlbum‘ to enable me to have the Flickr photographs displayed on this website - building the template was fairly straight-forward. I’m not planning on loading snaps of ‘nights out in the pub’ or ‘my Gran on a skateboard’, it’ll be more for things I consider to be a bit more artistic and well compositioned. You never know, I may even win the countryfile competition sooner or later… bring it on.

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