Yer what?

Alan Bennett famously memorises surreal snippets of overheard conversations which later become the inspiration for dialogue in his writings. And I - much less famously - don't. I can barely remember where I put my sunglasses an hour ago, nevermind what I overheard Mrs. Blackpea saying to Mr. Sidecramp in the queue at the Post Office eight years ago. But some things stick in the mind.

This morning, two boys of about 10, riding BMX bikes. "You're weird," one said to the other as they floated past me. "You're getting as weird as Guy Ritchie". Quite how Guy Ritchie - film director and husband of Madonna - has come to epitomise weirdness for a 10 year old, I do not know.

Overheard in Ledbury, Herefordshire, a few years ago: "I was just saying to Trevor, Margaret hasn't been the same since her goat died".

In Bristol:

Elderly woman 1: "Oh hello, Lilian! Back from your holiday then? Did you you have a nice time?"

Elderly woman 2: "Lovely, thank you, until I got ill. I had to go to the doctor and then I was sick in bed for the rest of the week."

Elderly woman 1: "Oh dear. What was the matter with you?"

Elderly woman 2: "He said I had that anthrax."

Elderly woman 1: "That anthrax that's on the telly?"

Elderly woman 2, nodding: "That's what he said."


The weirdest conversation I overheard was on the Bristol to Penzance train. The ticket inspector was a wide-boy in his early 30s. In between stations, he sat down by two kindly-looking middle-aged women across the aisle from me and proceeded to tell them, in complete deluded seriousness, that he was really a Hollywood stuntman who'd had a run of bad luck. First his wife - a "well-known actress" he declined to name - had divorced him and claimed all three of his houses in the settlement. So he'd had to come back to Blighty and move in with his mum in Plymouth. Then, as if that wasn't tragic enough, he'd been caught speeding in his Ferrari (the only thing left to him after his divorce, apparently). As a punishment, he claimed, a judge had sentenced him to spend a year working as a ticket inspector for Virgin Trains.

The two kindly women listened to his tall tales for about half an hour, their polite smiles gradually freezing into grimaces.

The Magic Compass and other strange patents

I have always loved that little Innovations catalogue that gets pushed through the letterbox every now and again. Amongst the leaf-vacuumers, laundry drying devices, and nasal hair trimmers, it has offered gems such as the Big Slipper (a huge round fluffy slipper that the whole family could slide their feet into at once), the "Teflon coated armchair", and the amazing Besk (it's a desk! And a double bed! All in one!).

Free Patents Online offers similar marvels of shed-dweller ingenuity:

The Magic Compass - an odd device that "gives the illusion it defies the laws of nature, providing usage as an aid for locating the direction of prayer as well as a novel promotional device for companies, having a magnetized compass needle which is attached via a linking means to a non-magnetic pointer. This linking means [...] allows the non-magnetic pointer to be angularly displaced from the magnetized compass needle [... and] provides the means for the non-magnetic pointer to rotate and pivot freely via the inertia of the magnetized needle. A partition hides the magnetized needle below, and simultaneously creates a compass face for the non-magnetic pointer above. The non-magnetic pointer is designed and shaped to appear identical to a true magnetized compass needle."

So basically, it's a compass that lies. Exactly how it assists with "locating the direction of prayer" is a mystery. Pirates, treasure hunters, and world record seeking Polar explorers could benefit by gifting it to their rivals but this seems a very limited market niche.

The Two-in-One Handbag - a handbag that's really two handbags held together by "magnets, snaps, velcro". Genius.

And from the Inventor Spot website:

The Retro Wooden Mobile Phone - it's a mobile phone. Made of wood.

The Neanderthal Feather Walker - "the only bird that can fly with its feet, not its wings". Brilliant. I definitely want one of those.

The Elephant Earpick Cell Phone Charm - an earpick shaped like an elephant that dangles charmingly from your cell phone. How useful.



We won't be getting the creepy speakers below because Charlie is horrified:

How to Lomo

The Lomo effect originates with the Russian Lomo LC-A analogue cameras produced in the early 1980s. These cheap and cheerful snapshot cameras produced distinctive images, with high saturation, high contrast, and vignetting. Original Lomo LC-A cameras now fetch relatively high prices on eBay. An updated version - the LC-A+ - was released in 2006. The distinctive Lomo look can be simulated in Photoshop by several different methods. I've tried and experimented with most of them but I like the method below best.


I'm using Photoshop CS3 Extended for this. CS2 will be much the same but you might have to experiment a bit if you're using Elements.


1. Open your original photograph in Photoshop. I'm using a shot of Charlie. It's quite a nice shot but the background is a bit washed out and I want to give it more intensity and depth. The Lomo effect is perfect for that. So here's what I'm starting with:

2. Next, select the Elliptical Marquee tool from the vertical toolbar on the left of your screen. Set Feather to 250 px, make sure the anti-alias box is ticked, and leave the Style setting at the Normal default. Drag an ellipse or circle around the middle area of your picture. You can make it as large as you like, provided that you some space outside the ellipse. Also, it can be off-centre if you prefer - it all depends on where the focal points of your image are. When you have selected your area, go to the horizontal toolbar on the screen. Then go to Select > Inverse. This will automatically invert your selection so the frame outside the ellipsis is selected.

3. On the horizontal toolbar: Layer > Adjustment Layer > Levels. This will open a Levels Adjustment Layer.

The Levels Adjustment box (see above) will appear. Below the histogram there are three sliders: the black point slider on the left; the midtone slider in the middle; and the white point slider on the right. Take the midtone slider and slide it to the right. As you move it, you'll see the numbers in the box below go down. Depending on your own picture, move the slider until the numbers are somewhere between 50 and 40. I've taken them down to around 40 on my image. The selected outer area of your photograph will darken but don't make it too dark at this stage because there are more processes to go through yet.

4. Go to Layer > Merge Visible (or Flatten Image). This will merge your background and Levels layers into a single layer.

5. Go to Layer > Adjustment Layer > Curves

Tweak Curves a bit so that the diagonal becomes a flattened S shape. This will further darken the borders of your picture, brighten the middle area, and increase contrast and saturation.

6. Go to: Layer > New to create a new layer. Make sure black is selected as your foreground colour (see the two little squares towards the bottom of the vertical toolbar on the left of your screen). Now select the paintbucket tool from the vertical toolbar (if you can't see the paintbucket tool, it's usually hiding behind the gradient tool so right click on gradient tool and select the paintbucket). With the paintbucket tool, click on your image. It should go completely black.

7. On the bottom right of your screen there's a panel headed Layers/Channels/Paths. Under Layers, you'll see Normal. Click on the arrow next to it to open the menu. From the menu, select Hue (fourth from the bottom). Your picture will now magically reappear, in horrible bilious colours. To the right of where it now says Hue, you'll see Opacity 100%. Click on the Opacity arrow and move the slider leftwards to bring colour back into your picture. For my image, I took the Opacity slider down to around 25% but it's up to you how far you take it.

8. Layers > Merge Visible (or Flatten Image)

9. Now in the horizontal menu bar at the top of the screen, go to Image > Mode > Lab Color.

Go to the Layers/Channels/Path panel, at the bottom right of your screen. Select Channels. Under Channels, select Lightness. Your image will become monochrome.

Now go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Set the Amount slider at around 50% and the Radius slider at around 50 pixels. Leave the Threshold slider alone on 0.

10. Go to Image > Mode > RGB. Your picture will be colour again. This is your completed Lomo effect image. Save it and you're done :)

One day on the beach

We were sitting on the sand when we heard them, whispering voices back and forth among the dunes behind us. We fell silent, holding our breath, listening. Nothing save the suck of the waves along the strandline and the yelp of distant gulls. Overhead, the sky was thickening. We packed up and walked back through the dunes to the car. And there, carefully placed on the bonnet, were a perfect scallop shell and a single stalk of marram grass.

Shroom

There was a Cornish piskey sitting on this just seconds before I pressed the shutter button. Damn pesky piskey.

Mussel microcosmos

A mussel on the strandline. Going in closer ...

Tiny barnacles attached to it, one alive and three dead.

These shrimplike sand hoppers feed on rotting seaweed and, presumably, dead mussels. They are usually active in the evenings and at night, but millions of them were pinging all along the strandline this afternoon. They have amazingly complex navigational systems, using sun and moon, gradient, horizon level, sand moisture content, and sand grain size to orient themselves.

Seabird

A darkening day

Great weather we're having here ...

Porthleven Sands this afternoon. Ice-cream, bikinis, gallons of sun lotion ...

Just the ocean.

Um, a sewage pipe ...

Anchor chains at low tide in Porthleven harbour.

This is the closest I've ever got to a wild raptor. The kestrel stayed on her perch and let me take 20 or so shots from just a few yards away.

A juvenile Herring Gull in the rain.

Early morning visitor

First thing this morning, this handsome fellow was snooping around outside the window. He's a green woodpecker, the largest of our native woodpeckers. They are sometimes locally referred to as "yaffles", because of their laughing cry or "yaffle".

Apologies for the poor picture quality - hastily snatching shots through glass while still half asleep doesn't make for very good images.

Little wading wotnots

As there are dozens of wader species, minutely different to one another, I'm not sure which these are. They look like Little Stints to me but Little Stints are rare this far south in the UK so who knows. They're cute anyway. They scuttle around at the sea's edge, winkling out worms and molluscs.

It's all going on in the garden

Hidden lives among the nasturtiums.