Confessions of an inadequate skier

Posted on January 18, 2013 by BarryH

And so to the skiing. Up at the Crack of Doom on Monday morning (05.30) in order to make an 06.30 start for the 2 hour journey from Calgary on the Trans Canada Highway westward past Banff and then to the ski resort of Sunshine Village at more than 7000 feet.

The snow was in perfect condition with runs freshly groomed. Shame I wasn’t in good condition myself. It was like having planks strapped to my feet as I cumbersomely slithered and slid all over the place. On the second run down an easy ‘green’ the planks kept falling off so when I eventually reached the bottom I made my excuses to my patient hosts, who had been hanging about waiting for me for ages, and took the skis to the repair shop to have the bindings adjusted.

Another run down, this time on my own so as not to further inconvenience others, and it was clear that the adjustment hadn’t sorted the problem. So I adopted the technique I use when the car breaks down. I poked and prodded and pulled and banged ….. and it worked!. The planks now stayed firmly fixed to my feet. Which meant that the only excuse I had left, apart from general incompetence, was the altitude: less oxygen getting to the brain to send messages to the underperforming limbs.

I guess that my technique is not quite right. I tend to adopt a skiing position which can perhaps best be likened to using the old-style French hole-in-the-floor loos. Put both feet firmly on the pedestals and stick your backside out while leaning forward to maintain equilibrium. The steeper and more icy the slope the more I crouch down and stick my bum out, digging the edges of the planks in on tighter turns to slow my downward progress. It’s a bit like adopting the foetal position when under stress.

But after 3 days of practicing this technique at Sunshine and Lake Louise I think that I am now approaching the level of incompetence and overconfidence which I achieved 2 years ago. Which is worrying because it means that I get more gung-ho.

But I’ll persevere and hopefully my daughter and son-in-law (both qualified instructors) will tell me to stop being a nerd and show me what I’m doing wrong. The problem is that the foetal position is so comforting, even on skis.

Truth of the matter is that, no matter how hopeless I am, the skiing is just the means to an end. It means that I can be up in the high mountains in winter which is fabulous. Highest I’ve been so far is Lookout Mountain at Sunshine, just short of 9000 feet. Very windy. Very cold. Great views. Very enjoyable.

Just a few photos to give an impression of the place. So far I’ve concentrated on the skiing not the photography.

On the way down ‘Banff Avenue’ at Sunshine, a great run for practicing turns

Trees were heavy with snow

Looking up ‘Easy Street’ at Lake Louise, the pleasant straight glide back to the main lodge

Posted in Canada, Health and humour, Mountains, Winter | Tagged Banff, Lake Louise, Lookout Mountain, skiing, Sunshine Village | Leave a comment

Calgary: from the Eddie the Eagle to the Stampede via Downtown by Barry Skywalker

Posted on January 16, 2013 by BarryH

On Sunday my hosts, proud Calgarians, took me on a tour of the city. As I have said before, although brought up in a city I’m not a city person. But I was very impressed with Calgary.

Until now the only things I had connected with Calgary were Eddie the Eagle and the Stampede. Fitting, therefore that we began at the Olympic Park. Apparently the Calgary winter Olympics in 1988 were the first to make a profit and the ‘COP’ as it is known has since been added to and refurbished. On Sunday morning it was bustling with participants in many sports, parents with young kids, spectators, and the just-inquisitive’. Calgarians took Eddie the Eagle to their hearts. No-one remembers who won the ski jump but everyone knows the gallant amateur who embodied the now long-dead Olympic amateur spirit. To my mind the International Olympics Committee brought shame on itself when it reacted by changing the entry rules so that enthusiastic amateurs like Eddie could nolonger take part.

Eddie the Eagle flew here

Young tots get ski training in sight of the jump

But the COP is not without controversy. Occupants of the new houses built, and still being built, on the top of the hill behind the ski-jump towers are complaining about snow blowing across the road to their properties when the snow-making machines are operating. Strange that there should be snow coming from the Winter Olympics site. And it’s all getting a bit messy because it seems that the houses may not have the relevant development permissions anyway. Oops! But great to see so many people enjoying such a variety of outdoor winter sports

From the COP we went to the ‘Downtown’, known as the city centre to Brits, or the Central Business District to us urban morphologists. If the COP was impressive the Downtown was far more so, very clearly reflecting a growing and dynamic economy.

First stop was Chinatown. Many Chinese came to western Canada to build the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the ties with China are very close. Chinatown not only has an architecturally impressive Cultural Centre, opened in 1992 at a cost of $10million and modelled on the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, many restaurants and shops, but road names are in English and Chinese.

Chinese Cultural Centre against the backdrop of Downtown skyscrapers

Inside the dome

Then we headed for the ‘+15 Skywalk’ a 16 km network of covered walkways linking the many glittering glass skyscrapers and covering most of the downtown area. The walkways are mostly at first floor level and negotiate the inside of the buildings with shops, and coffee shops and professional services clustered at strategic locations. All closed On Sunday but apparently thriving the rest of the week. There are also internal open spaces with seating, sculptures and gardens. No vandalism. No security guards or police in evidence. A few skateboarders getting out of the cold, wishing us happy new year and offering advice on how to get back to the car through the elevated warren of corridors and spaces.

The ‘airlock’ doors to one of the sections of connecting corridor between the buildings

Looking down from the ‘+15’ walkway to the foyer of one of the skyscrapers

Glass sculpture in one open space

…. well furnished with comfortable chairs

Open spaces are also provided outside as skyscraper reflects in skyscraper

Some reflections are a little distorted

There are also many sculptures outside the buildings … and none are defaced with graffiti or adorned with traffic cones

None of the open spaces is more impressive than the Devonian Gardens. Tropical plants covering a hectare and planted with 550 tropical palm trees and tens of thousands of other plants plus huge coy carp in the ponds and water features. It is strange to go inside from the subzero temperatures and have to, shed outer clothing, stranger still to see tropical plants against a backdrop of glass streaked with snow and ice.

One of the tropical beds in the Devonian Gardens

One of the wooden carvings by the Salish Indians on dispaly

Wearied by urban walking we headed back to the car at the edge of Chinatown and then back to the suburbs via an elevated view of the Downtown from a bluff overlooking the Saddledome, Calgary’s main ice hockey stadium, and the stadium where the annual Stampede is held, apparently the second largest rodeo in North America and therefore the world.

Looking across the Saddledome to Downtown high rise

I’ve done 2 days skiing now but that can wait for another post on Barry’s Ramblings. Calgary deserves a post of its own.

Posted in Canada, Winter | Tagged Calgary, Calgary +15 Skywalk, Calgary Chinatown, Calgary Downtown, Calgary Olympic Park, Calgary Stampede, Devonian Gardens, Eddie the Eagle, skyscrapers | 2 Comments

Following the sun: from the M25 to the Trans Canada Highway

Posted on January 13, 2013 by BarryH

Quick shower at 05.00. Good strong cup of coffee. Last things stowed for travelling and just after 05.30 we were heading north up the A21 to join the M25 heading west in light rain and heavy road-spray, Gatwick-bound. Thanks to friends in Sussex my arrival at the airport would be timely and in comfort and style.

Check-in is always boring, three-hours for North America 50% more so than usual. But I tracked down a free-WiFi spot which helped. MacDonald’s may not pay their UK taxes (not that they are on their corporate own in that) but they do set a good example by providing free WiFi at Gatwick Airport.

As I settled back in the newly refurbished leather seats for the 9½ hour flight the rain streaked the windows as we took off and I thought, with much pleasure, that this may well be last rain I see for a month.

We landed in a snow-covered Calgary with outside temperatures around -10^oC. A painfully slow 1 hour journey through customs and baggage collection, the latter more tedious than usual as there were skis and boot bags to wait for as well as the Big Bag, but I was finally through the doors and met by friends who were picking me up. After breathing the artificial, fuggy mixture in airports and plane, walking out into the cold fresh air was like drinking in a refreshing elixir. It helped stir the brain into motion again after 13 hours of putting it on standby in order to avoid becoming a gibbering wreck.

Calgary is a large, sprawling city of more than a million people, Canada’s second largest after Toronto, French-speaking Montreal with more people being classed as a ‘ville’. As we sped under a near-cloudless blue sky through gently undulating, snow-covered low-density urban landscape the roads seemed very wide and open after Britain, everywhere made to look clean and fresh under its white blanket. We swept under Highway 1, the Trans Canada, longest paved road in the world, and on towards the suburbs. The towers of ‘Downtime’ were off to the left, the snowy peaks of the Rockies ahead in the distance. The last time I was here it was dark for both the arrival and departure so I saw nothing of either Calgary or the airport.

After a light snack we went in the car the few minutes to Fish Creek Provincial Park, an area of natural wilderness 13 kilometres by 9, preserved within the city limits with trails running through the forest of pine and poplar bordering the frozen, snow-covered creek …… and ‘washrooms’ left unlocked because there are no worries about vandalism. We stood on a low bluff (cliff) and watched the sun turn the few clouds in the distance a delicate pink.

I had followed the sun westward for 9 ½ hours and still hadn’t caught up with it. It’s still leading me on.

In temeperatures well below freezing the snowfall of days before stays on the trees

Looking across the frozen creek to the sun setting beyond the Rockies

The sun settting, framed by branches bowed by snows over many years

Pink beyond the trees

Posted in Canada, Grey Britain, Winter | Tagged A21, Calgary, Canada, Fish Creek, M25, sunset, Trans Canada Highway | 1 Comment

Go west young man, and do it without a list

Posted on January 9, 2013 by BarryH

I don’t make lists. To do so would be, from my warped perspective, to admit that my mind is failing. When I went to Greece for a long summer for the first time in 2010 I was urged to make a list as there was a lot to take other than stuff for just a normal 2-week holiday. As I checked the kitchen for the last time before closing the door on it for 5 months I smiled to myself as I spotted it, still welded to the bread maker with a magnet, still with just the one item on it: “Australian Heel Balm”. I had long since bought and added that to the pile.

Nowadays I have got the Greece packing down to a fine art. Each time I cut back on what I take having discovered that they have shops which sell things like shower gel in other countries besides Britain. My technique is to throw things in a pile on a bed in the spare room and then the day before I leave home I split them between my Big Bag and camera rucksack/hand luggage. Job done.

Packing for winter in the Rockies is quite different in terms of amount and nature of what I need to take but the technique I use is just the same. The pile has been accumulating for a couple of days: thermal base layers; mid layers; ski trousers and winter walking trousers; neck-tubes and hats; socks; tidy casual for wearing in the evening for my not-so-mad social life …. you know the sort of stuff. Today I distributed it 4 ways: Big Bag, ski bag, boot bag and hand luggage. Jumping on and off the bathroom scales I juggled the weights a bit to conform with the airlines limits and by early afternoon I was finished sufficiently to go out for walk in the sunshine.

Yes, SUNSHINE. I passed one of my neighbours on the way out and had one of those conversations which is so typically British, rejoicing in a kind of understated, laid back sort of way in a brief day of sunshine which occasionally interrupts the general greyness.

And it was great. I was heading for an evening meal at my son’s house on the other side of the mountain and timed it to get to the top of the ridge as the sun was going down behind the ridges to the west. With a distinct chill in the air and frost pending the sky was crystal clear and I sat on a stone wall for half an hour watching the sun dip down and disappear. Magical.

As the sun sank in the west pursued by a series of pink vapour trails I mused that in just a couple of days I’ll be heading west myself. Hope I don’t forget anything.

Reaching the top of the ridge

The last section of path up to the Folly Tower bathed in golden evening light

Looking back from where I sat on the stone wall.

The sun begins to dip below the mountain, reflecting off the cloud over Somerset and Devon in the far distance across the Severn Estuary

Last glimpse as the sun continues on its way westward

I wondered somewhat whimsically if this pilot had changed his mind about going

Sunset on Saturday I’ll be in Calgary . Two weeks after that I’ll be heading further west again, still following the sun but never catching up.

Posted in Canada, Greece, Grey Britain, Mountains, Pontypool, Wales, Winter | Tagged brecon beacons national park, Calgary, Canada, Greece, lists, Pontypool, Pontypool Folly Tower, skiing, south east wales | 2 Comments

A New Year, portents, traditions and looking forward

Posted on January 5, 2013 by BarryH

I’ve never been impressed by the hype of the ‘New Year’, never regarded it as a portent or a time to make ephemeral resolutions to change bad habits, never felt the urge to stand around with arms crossed, holding hands singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ with emotional inebriates who I have never met before and will never meet again. At midnight I was soaking in a hot bath listening to the fireworks going off outside and muttering ‘Bah Humbug’ once more. A glass of Metaxa (Greek brandy) before bed was my nod to tradition.

Monday 1 January 2013 was much the same as 31 December 2012 except I had to remember to put a new year on any cheques I might sign (which I didn’t), turn to the front of my perpetual diary to record the day’s activities, and, for once true to forecast, there was cloudless blue sky from the outset. Perfect for walking up the ridge from the house to meet up with my son for a pub lunch at the Goose and Cuckoo, the only pub in the area to have evaded the zeal of the campaigning teetotaller Lady Llanover in the mid 19^th Century. The walk and the meet is in danger of becoming a New Year’s Day tradition.

The walk was into a strong, cold northerly wind but was great. As were the bean soup and the leisurely opportunity to chew the fat. Walked many times the ridge still affords new photo opportunities.

New Year's Day and the sun set fire to the cloudless sky as it came up over the ridge

New Year’s Day and as the sun came up over the ridge it set fire to the cloudless sky

The walk began alongside the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal in reflective mode

High on the windswept moorland ridge

The Goose and Cuckoo, archetypal country pub has eluded many trying to locate it.

The Goose and Cuckoo, archetypal country pub, has eluded many attempts to locate it.

But the sunshine was no portent of the days or the year to come. Since then the weather has been dominated by grey cloud and general clag on the mountains. A brief two or three minutes of brilliant cloud-illuminating sunrise was spectacular on Wednesday before the gloom and drizzle settled in for the rest of the day and the grey cloud lowered for the rest of the week.

For barely two minutes the clouds went blood-red

… and then bands of gold appeared

With temperatures pegged at around 10^oC day and night for days past and forecast for days to come I’m becoming focused on the fact that in a week’s time I’ll be in Canada with a couple of days in Calgary before moving on to Banff for two weeks and then Whistler and Vancouver. Proper winter at last! Something solid to look forward to, no wishful thinking.

It’s about time I started to focus on getting my stuff together and packing. Where did I put my thermals?

Posted in Grumpy Old Men, Monmouthshire, Mountains, Pontypool, Reflections, Wales, Winter | Tagged auld lang syne, banff canada, brecon beacons national park, brecon canal, Canada, canadian rockies, Goose and Cuckoo, Lady Llanover, New Year, Pontypool, pub lunch, south east wales, unpredictable weather | 1 Comment

Rambling through 2012, a year in pictures: Part 2, Greece

Posted on December 31, 2012 by BarryH

The task of selecting a bakers’ dozen of images from the hundreds I took in Greece this summer was more daunting than choosing those for Wales. This is partly because many of the places I went were new to me and were very photogenic. Again, the ones I have picked are not necessarily the best photographically but ones which hopefully summarise the experience.

My 1500 kilometre trip at the beginning of the summer began and ended in Athens. Though born and raised in a city I’m not a city person but the craggy centre of Athens has a lasting appeal and I have not yet tired of climbing up the Areopagus with its views over the Acropolis and the rest of the city.

First stop was Meteora with its famous once-secluded but now much-visited monasteries set on the top of towering rock pinnacles, rope windlasses replaced by wooden bridges and steps and tunnels hewn out of the rock.

Famous though the monasteries rightly are, equally impressive are the rocks themselves, 1000 foot weather-gnarled sculptures.

Famous though the monasteries rightly are, equally impressive are the rocks themselves, several hundred foot high weather-gnarled sculptures.

The nest stops were Parga, Paxos and Corfu where between squally thunder showers of early summer the sea was mirror-smooth and Greek-blue.

The next stops were Parga, Paxos and Corfu where between squally thunder showers of early summer the sea was mirror-smooth and Greek-blue.

Then the long journey south to the Mani Peninsula, the principal objective of the trip and a month of fascinating exploration on well-mapped and marked paths into the mountains and a liberal scattering of ancient villages and Byzantine churches in varying states of preservation and decay, the most neglected perhaps Likaki monastery.

Some tiny kalderimi-side family churches have well preserved frescoes … and small colonies of horseshoe bats.

So impressive that I went back again and again was the Viros Gorge with vertical rock crags dropping down more than 1000 feet to the washed-white rock of the dry riverbed.

Having moved further south to Areopoli I climbed two of the local mountains both with monasteries on top named after the Prophet Elijah, both with surreal views of the world on the coastal plateau far below and the sea beyond leading to the edge of the flat-earth.

The vernacular architecture of the Mani Peninsula is the tower house, not for defending against invading forces but for inter-family blood feuds. Areopoli was the base of Mavromichalis (Black Michael), a key player in the Greek War of Independence, but nowhere was more typical of ‘tower house’ culture than Vatheia, now largely deserted and derelict.

A month on the active volcano which is the island of Nisyros for my second visit to Greece towards the end of the summer gave plenty of opportunity to go ‘off-piste’, exploring the ‘backcountry’ on ancient and long- abandoned pathways. This included some of the rarely visited ‘hot-spots’ on the caldera floor giving new perspectives on one of the most dramatic locations in Europe.

Within the hot spots gases hiss and boiling mud rumbles in fumaroles in the thin crust. The gases deposit exquisite sculptures of bright yellow sulphur crystals. Just don’t delay too long over a shot, the soles of your feet will tell you it’s time to move on.

Everything on this island is volcanic in origin. Walking along the north-facing shoreline was characterised by rough seas and a huge variety of bits of lava bubble and other volcanic boulders.

Symi is one of the most photogenic islands in the Dodecanese archipelago but I chose this group photo on one of the many ‘Hochlakos’ pebble-mosaic floors as it was the first time in 4 months that I had been here with family and friends. A real pleasure.

Happy New Year

Posted in Greece, Mountains | Tagged Areopoli, Athens, Greece, Kardamili, lava, Mani, Meteora, monasteries, Nisyros, outdoors, Parga, rambling, rock pinnacles, Symi, Taygetos Mountains, Viros Gorge, Volcano, waterfalls | Leave a comment

Rambling through 2012, a year in pictures: Part 1, Wales

Posted on December 30, 2012 by BarryH

At the end of a busy year it seems appropriate to look back and remember the places I went and the things I did during 2012. Far too much to cram into a blogable number of words so I decided to do it with images pulled from the thousands of photos I took. Far too many to cram into just one set of images so I have divided it into two parts. Today images from my ramblings around Wales. Tomorrow images from my ramblings around Greece. Just a bakers’ dozen of images from each, not necessarily the best photographically but ones which hopefully summarise the year.

A long time ago now but at the beginning of February the temperature dropped and snow fell above 1000 feet, perfect for going out to play on the ridge.

The high point on the ridge is known locally as ‘The White Stone’ because the trig point used to be painted white but when ground survey was abandoned in favour of using satellite data for mapping purposes lack of maintenance meant that it became grey and shabby. So I painted it.

Through the year there were many spectacular sunrises, the sun lighting up clouds, or in this case vapour trails, before appearing above the ridge on the opposite side of the valley.

And at the end of the day a brisk 30 minute walk up to the Folly Tower was sometimes rewarded with spectacular sunsets.

But summer in the Grey Britain 2012 will be remembered as very wet and very grey with a dire consequence for much-trodden footpaths.

True I photographed the greyness of the experience but I also tried to look for colour and usually, though not always, managed to find some.

The rain also meant that the waterfalls in the Brecon Beacons National Park were at their most dramatic as I re-acquainted myself with the area after many years absence.

When I got back from Greece in October I went on a week-long course at the National Writers’ Centre in North Wales, learned a lot, and ambled along the coast near Cricieth with the camera.

Emboldened by the course I submitted a proposal for a compendium book describing bus routes in Britain and was commissioned to write one of the chapters. So taking advantage of one of the rare sunny days I set out to photograph some of the key points of interest on the route including Big Pit Mining Museum.

I also took the camera for a walk on the few blue sky days to try to capture some of the autumn colour including the American Gardens above Pontypool Park.

On grey, claggy days I sometimes went down to Cardiff to meet up with friends but even then autumn colours added a brightness to the gloom in Bute Park around the castle.

With the sun low in the sky as winter drew on much of the garden was in shade but towards sunset it lit up features including this construction of limestone pebbles and fossils.

Then in early December winter cold returned, briefly, leaving spectacular whispers of hoar frost on trees high on the ridge. Before it warmed up again to give us a Grey Christmas.

Posted in Autumn, Grey Britain, Monmouthshire, Mountains, Pontypool, Wales, Winter | Tagged American Gardens, Big Pit, brecon beacons national park, Cardiff, Cardiff Castle, Cricieth, hoar frost, Pontypool, Pontypool Folly Tower, Pontypool Park, snow, waterfalls | 1 Comment

Windows of opportunity and a mountain playground on the doorstep

Posted on December 27, 2012 by BarryH

We moved to our present house from Cardiff in 1975 in order to be closer to my work, thereby significantly reducing the daily each-way commute from 20 miles to 4, 45 minutes to 8. The reasoning was that out of 24 hours each weekday 8 were spent in work, 8 asleep so why spend a minimum of 1½ out of the remaining 8 hours sitting in the car in traffic. And, with a sharp increase in the world-price of petrol at the time, it was a lot cheaper.

The wrench of leaving friends behind soon passed as we made new friends and discovered the pleasures of having the countryside and mountain range as a playground on our doorstep. The house is a mere 100 metres or so from the southern tip of the Brecon Beacons National Park with the landmark Folly Tower half an hour’s stiff climb to 300 (1000 feet) metres and the top of the ridge a further half hour away and 125 metres higher.

This meant that rather than having to get in the car and drive to the mountains we could just step out of the door and be on top of the local world whenever the mood took and circumstances allowed. A gap in the clouds, a brief sunny window of opportunity, the exhilaration of getting high in a thunderstorm, the prospect of a breathtaking sunset, a heavy dump of snow, or a shower of freezing rain meant the same walk was rarely the same.

And it still isn’t. Confined indoors over the Christmas period by low cloud and dismal weather there would have been no appeal in having to get into the car to drive to a mountain but waiting for the right moment, I put my boots on on the doorstep …. and was gone. Cobwebs blown away, blood pumping through the body, I was back while the bread was baking and the fire still glowing.

In Grey Britain a great place to live.

Perhaps this hilltop farm should be called Ararat, but it’s just an abandoned boat with storm clouds behind

Livestock suffering in the extreme wetness of a Grey Britain winter

Advancing storm clouds blot out the prospect of a sunset

To the east, just layers of gloom

Dropping off the ridge towards the house as it gets dark

… and soon all that can be seen are the lights of the urban area to the south

Posted in Grey Britain, Pontypool, Reflections, Wales, Winter | Tagged brecon beacons national park, mountains, Pontypool, Pontypool Folly Tower, south east wales | Leave a comment

Solstices: looking back and looking forward.

Posted on December 23, 2012 by BarryH

The Winter Solstice this year began gloriously but soon went downhill weather-wise. Still, as it recedes into the background and the days begin to get longer again it’s maybe time to remind ourselves of what the annual phenomenon is all about and to remind ourselves that its Summer counterpart is just round the corner.

21 December, the sun comes over the ridge on the morning of the Winter Solstice

…. lighting up the room with a fabulous golden glow

With the sun at its lowest in the sky shadows are are at their longest even at noon

In contrast with the Summer Solstice when I posed for the Shortest Me on top of a mountain in the far south of the Mani Peninsula in Greece

While I wait I think I’ll sit round the Christmas fire and look forward

Posted in Reflections, Winter | Tagged Greece, Mani, shadows, Summer solstice, Winter solstice | Leave a comment

Bah Humbug!: debasing the language … and then a Christmas greeting

Posted on December 20, 2012 by BarryH

I regret that I’m going to do my Bah Humbug Pre-Christmas moan today. I hadn’t intended to be negative even though this is not my favourite time of year. But a flyer which came in a package of stuff I ordered over the internet went just too far.

It offered, amongst other things, a wine-making kit headlined as ‘Ultra Premium’. It has long irritated me that the use of superlatives to hype things which are somewhere between ‘Not Bad’ and ‘A Bit Above Average’ is debasing the language. Both ‘Ultra’ and ‘Premium’ are much overplayed in advertising, a fact which this particular vendor has clearly recognised in that he has taken the use of superlatives to a new level by combining the two. Bottom-of-the-barrel-scrapingly, appallingly abysmally, the absolute pits!!!!!!!

And what about the myriad signs which have now become standard in shop windows offering goods at ‘better than half price’? What does that even mean? Better for who? Presumably we, the punters, are supposed to infer that the goods are half price or less, so why not just say so. Similarly linguistically bizarre are the shop-window signs placading goods at ‘up to half price’. Presumably they were less than half price and the cost has now been increased.

I prefer understatement rather than hyper-superlatives. In mountaineering and climbing circles a climb or an in incident which scares the brown stuff out of you is ‘interesting’. Much better. It doesn’t do to regale the climbing fraternity with tales of ‘I nearly died up there’ …. even if you nearly did.

And while I’m in full flow, what about the turning of ‘like’ into an active verb? If you say that you like something it nolonger means that you are fond of/love/are keen on/enjoy/or are partial to it (Thesaurus synonyms), it means that you have clicked a box with a thumbs up sign at the bottom of a web page ….. or a blog. Advertisers appeal to us to ‘like’ them on Facebook or Twitter or some other of the social networking sites. It’s meaningless. Too many people simply ‘like’ each other in order to increase the size of their fan club and boost their ego or their sales. If I ‘like’ something it’s because I genuinely like it.

I know that the strength of a language is that it is dynamic and that those who complain about its debasement are generally grumpy old men, but where will it end?

Anyway, as my final bit of Pre-Christmas grumpiness I am doing away with the Christmas Robin this year and offer the following as my Christmas Greeting.

So what’s so great about robins anyway. They don’t even have proper red on their front, it’s kind of orangey-brown

As usual click to enlarge if you want to. This is really one of those on-line animated Christmas cards. Just squint, nearly close your eyes and imaging that beak hammering into the tree. See!! It works!!!

Posted in Grumpy Old Men | Tagged advertising, Christmas, Christmas Greetings, language, mountaineering, robin, superlatives, woodpecker | Leave a comment

Barry's Ramblings