A Brit in the US

I was invited by my good friend Glendoria to visit Hampton with her and the famous Watermalon Parade. Each little town in South Carolina appears to have a special parade day. This was the watermelon parade. On this occasion I took only an elderly zoom compact that suffers from some appalling shutter lag but the photos turned out quite well. Sometimes, these old camera can be just what the doctor ordered. Given that this was in the sweltering heat of summer - a time when sunglasses and hats are really needed - the least weight one carries the better. The other issue is that taking photographs necessitates the removal of both hat and sunglasses. I am certainly glad I was not one of the early settlers to the United States, from a time before they realized they couldn't just go around in heavy woolen tunics. Watermelon Parade, Hampton Watermelon Parade, Hampton Watermelon Parade, Hampton Watermelon Parade, Hampton Watermelon Parade, Hampton Watermelo...

Together with my good friend Dorathy and armed solely with our trusty cameras, we went for a wander. Lexington, Columbia and Irmo are in a very much land-locked area, 120 miles inland with no sea or ocean to dip so much as a toe into. There is, however a beach. The local parks service decided to install a beach on the shore of Lake Murray. Now Lake Murray isn't really a lake in its own right. It is in fact a huge dam that was built in the 1930s to provide water and hydro-electric power to the emerging city of Columbia.  The dam comprises a huge wall about a mile long that snakes between what were originally two hills. The valley that became the dam used to be populated and apparently those that dive beneath the surface of the waters can find buildings and roads still in existence.  More recently there was a successful attempt to remove "The Lake Murray Bomber" which was a 2nd world war bomber that crashed into the water on a practice low-level bombing run over wa...

I had a telephone call. It was a deep, husky but alluring voice inviting me to go for a walk. With invitations like that, what man can say no? It was the voice of Dorothy. I readied myself with the speed that only a man can. No need to primp and preen - men don't need lipstick nor eye-shadow not mascara. We face the world as we are - whether the world is ready or not. I slipped into a pair of jeans and a comfy polo shirt - I'd been lounging at home in my lounging at home jeans and tee-shirt (the kind of clothes that one really shouldn't be seen out in lest one be considered a hobo). I grabbed my camera and climbed into my SUV. Starting the engine of my SUV empties a small Persian oilfield and I'm sure there can't be very many left by now.  20 pollution belching minutes later I was at Dorothy's house, ready to go. Needless to say, she still had her nails to paint and her cosmetics to apply. She wasn't even quite dressed when I arrive, having stepped ...

I bet you thought you were going to see pictures of Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and the usual boring tourist icons from London. Well, surprisingly enough, there's a lot of Britain that's actually outside of London. I went to London in March to see my parents whom I had not been able to see in seven years. While I was there, I tried to resurrect my old PC to get them online so that they could send me emails and possible do video Skype with me across the Atlantic. Sadly, I failed. It was simply too elderly. The 4 gigabyte hard drives are totally laughable these days as terrabyte hard drives are now standard. It reminds me of what the computer technician in college once said, holding up a 40 megabye hard drive that was very heavy and quite large. He said "in ten years this will be the size of a postage stamp and will contain ten times the memory". How right he was.   Local vegetation - Gorse. Now this is a plant that grows wild. I wasn't there in time to c...