March Winds (Strike ‘Winds’ Replace with ‘Snow’)

March did get off to the promise of a bright Spring. Our first journey was to Nan and there we met with Damaris, little Iris and their dog. It was a real pleasure to meet them.

On the way home the sky was blue and the condensation from the cooling towers rose almost vertically in intertwined spirals.

But then it happened. On the 11^th the ground received it’s covering of snow and the spring flowers tried, bravely, to keep their blossoms in the air.

The snow was fairly short lived and by the time we went to visit our friends, Jim and Janette it had pretty much gone. Jim is a great keyboard aficionado and Janette enjoys her gadget. So, while Janette and I played with her iPad Jim gave Irene further keyboard instruction.

Actually the snow was still in small piles. Janette and Jim were having slabs laid and as we reversed out we were aware of being lifted up and feeling a lot of crunching which turned out to be the effect of going over a pile of frozen snow.

Mostly, our visits were going to be indoors. On Sunday after church Irene and I set off to yet another model railway exhibition. This was the Nottingham one. Normally it is held at the Harvey Haddon Leisure Centre. However, during refurbishment it was held at the neighbouring Oak Hill school campus. This is quite a new building and the exhibition was held in three separate parts. Having had our sandwiches in the car we paid our entry fee, we were fitted with red wrist-bands and sent through the icy rain to the first building. I am always amazed at the infinite care and patience shown by true railway modellers.

There was only one model that I had seen before. The new venture in modelling seems to be Czechoslovakian railways. Apparently the engines and rolling stock are readily available as they were all made identically in Russia and simply had different liveries painted on. One model particularly caught our eye. It was a vast ‘n’ gauge. I asked the three men standing behind if they were part of a club. Two of them pointed to one man and told me that ‘it was his’. I asked him how long he had been working on it. He explained that he had been forced to take early retirement and had decided to take up railway modelling all of two years ago. What an achievement. You simply could not count the number of people or even the road vehicles adorning his baseboard.

I had planned that we met up with other friends called Paul and Mary to go on a photo-shoot. As the weather continued bitterly cold we decided to just spend time at their home. After one of their very tasty and generous lunches Paul and I did some quick flash photography. My aim was to show Paul the benefit of using ‘RAW’ files. We both used flash of the same subject at the same ISO setting. My next problem was to download the files from the cards to ‘Adobe Elements’. There has to be a way of telling these machines to use ‘Adobe’ rather than ‘iPhoto’.

With the files loaded it was possible to do the manual processing of the RAW images to jpegs. Here was the surprise. The images from the Nikon were generally brighter than the ones from the Canon. Plus, there was practically no difference between the Nikon’s camera processed jpegs and the manually processed ones. Whereas the different quality of the Canon’s images was significant. I am glad I went for Nikon.

Keeping to the subject of products, I felt obliged to post a picture of the packaging that came with a single cartridge of Canon ink from Amazon. The picture that I used did not do justice as the ink cartridge only occupied less than a quarter of the space in the box. I have received similar cartridges in packages that could be put through the letter box.

On Friday 22^nd Irene and I put on a ‘Tea and Talk’ for the residents of Leicester House. We began with egg decorating which they all thoroughly enjoyed. As part of the talk Irene was going to invite the residents and the guests to roll an egg. However one of the dear folk did not wait to hear the word, ‘gently’ and with gusto … No harm was done.

Tim was with us from Friday for a few days. He made it just before the snow of the afternoon. The following morning he decided to go down to the leisure centre for a sauna. I drove him down and took what I think are some of the best images of the season.

By Sunday more snow had fallen and was thick on ground. It looked as if it might take about half an hour to clear the car and the drive so Irene and I abandoned our attempt to go to church and instead walked with Tim to the leisure centre. People were enjoying the opportunity to sledge down the gentle slopes and I was impressed by the traffic light bravely trying shine through snow filled eyes with long icicles hanging below pointing in the direction of the traffic flow.

The much looked forward too replacement of the garage started on Wednesday when members of the New Stapleford Community Association gathered to empty the Association's garage of its contents.  After they departed I was left in the bitter cold to direct traffic into suitable safe spaces. Then came the demolition guys who made short work of the old building.

So far so good. I had expected the new building to arrive between 7.00 and 7.30 am. It arrived at the latter time. Having asked the men to make sure that garage was sufficiently far from the hall to be able to open the side door I was told that the new door could not be opened. I said, ‘Take the garage away then.’ I was then told that they could come back later to cut an opening in the overhanging facia. I said, ‘Take it away then.’ (I had a feeling that later could mean …) The boss said he could cut it roughly and tidy up later. Acceptable-just. Then came the killer blow. The delivered garage would not fit the base.

At this point my two friends/fellow committee members appeared. After tea and discussions the builders disappeared. Our estimate for work on the base stands at £850. We are not best pleased.

To back track. While waiting for the builders I took shots of the slowly disappearing snow and the blackbird which is busily removing our loft installation, making a mess and trying to build a nest.

We decided to use what was left of the day to go in search of camellias in the camellia house at Wollaton Park. This meant a stop-over at Wollaton for the ‘Cheese Cake Shop’ and hot chocolate.

At the park younger and older deer were roaming separately and then together. 

The camellia house was sparsely populated.

At the lake the reeds made a golden splash in the sun and in the reeds the moor hens made a splash as they vied for mating territory.

The following day (Good Friday) meant that the churches were supposed to be taking part in the annual ‘March of Witness’. But, due to legal reasons was reduced to a freezing cold service around the ‘Cross’ in the town square and an informal saunter to the ‘Baptist Church’ for hot cross buns and a drink.

David Mansfield
Leader of the Haven Church

On Saturday we made our trip to Milton Keynes. Nan was in good form and we enjoyed a game of ‘Scrabble’. We left earlier than usual to visit Tim, but Nan hardly noticed as she sped out of her room to feed a pair of dogs that were sitting in the lounge.

We had lunch with Tim who was on his own and then we set off back through heavy, but broken blizzards.

Joni and Fiona joined us for dinner. We played a game of Utopia, watched some television, ate some chocolate, drank some wine and went to bed.

Sunday followed our traditional plan. Irene went down stairs and out into the freezing morning air to pull some flowers out of the snow. Having set the table we had our morning tea before going back down to start on the chocolate from her Irene’s beautifully prepared table.

Irene and I went off to church and returned for or boiled eggs. Joni and Fiona once more joined us for the evening which went as the previous night except that we played ‘Ticket to Ride’ and the young people left us at the end of the evening.

It is now 1^st April and there are still a few pieces of frozen snow to be seen.