Weekly Chat Sunday 26th June

Hamish McNab seems to have been an extremely well liked person in his lifetime Tiger. What a lot of tributes.

Shame about your compound X.

Oh, Lynette , I'm just too late to wish you happy hols ! But I do. Have a wonderful holiday - and you'll still be able to keep up with the Family on you laptop now

Terry, I don'tknow the circumstances of the funeral you are attending but just to say, I so hope it isn't anyone very close to you.  My sincere condolences

AQ - I appreciate the heads up on your holiday diary. I've already visited your Flr site and look forward to my next visit

Annette - Bucks Fizz for breakfast!  Not bad-worth being put to sleep by successful book. Sorry your roses have taken a knock, like mine.

oh dear Patriciat  - sorry you are so poorly . Pain is a perfectly dreadful thing to have to live with.

Ooo Trish, a Scottish adventure , lucky you. Wishing you great weather for it

There are indeed some lovely pics on Marie Winns blog , Tiger

Oh OG so do I  - hope another job turns up really quickly.for son. I've been made redundant three times and the signing on and job apps are such a pain in the Proverbial

Neil Diamond was always my favourie Lindy. Unfortunately, your link didn't work for me.But Tiger's did :)

Lucky you seeing a Hobby Diane, wonderful

Wee thing, Tiger, feeding in the heavy rain. I wonder if it was a first time mom. At least its feathers were wet proof

It's good to have family time Heather . I envy you that. My only sister lives in Cumbria and since my nephew is now back living at home there is no space for me to stay. They don't want to trek down here so we rarely get family time. Enjoy Monday.

Well, Diane. I seriouly doubt we could do anything about an asteroid collision !!  And I'm pretty sure Bruce Willis wouldn't sign up for the trip into space anyway.  :) But thanks for the information and link . All very interesting. INSIDE our man made satellite ring - ye gods !!

Your comment on putting out water for your Jackdaws gave me a moment of mental pause about my garden birds JSB -  but I remembered checking all the containers before I went out this morning.  A high of  27 C here.

 Oh, Tiger , well, I found hearing about Compound X very interesting !!  But I'm sorry about your friend. Yes, life is very fnite. We all need to live it as well as we can.

Overnight min here at West Beach was 2.3 C just after 6 am, currently 14 C. Light breeze. Blue sunny sky. I'd much rather be here than your humid weather!

Continuing holiday saga. Evening of day 3 the bus group gathered - we came from Aus, NZ, Canada, England, Singapore, Malaysia & USA. Dinner was a buffet - lots of choice, roast, ravioli, fish, variety of veg & salad. (We didn't know yet about the E coli.) I had to turn away from the "3 kinds of chocolate mousse" out of respect for my aching sinuses. Instead mixed berries.

First full day of tour (Sun) we drove to Frankfurt where we had 45 mins to wander the city centre. I found it disappointing after Mainz. Then on to Heidelberg. Uphill on cobblestones to the castle, a long walk. Warm sunny day. Amazing view over city. (Pics later) Then the difficult (for me) walk back down. Lunch in city centre but I was feeling very miserable and not hungry, kept drinking though. Then driving on to the Black Forest, a visit to a cuckoo clock shop, and finally our hotel in Titisee. A beautiful spot beside a lake but I was simply too tired to wander the village before dinner.

Next day was another long one. A visit to the source of the Danube, a fountain that claims to be The Spot where the river first emerges. Another long drive, wonderful scenery, along the Bodensee (Lake Constance) to Lindau for a lunch stop. Then back in bus, driving, arriving in Munich in time for an hour wander before meeting for dinner. Green leafy salad. Roast pork, dumpling & sauerkraut. White choc mousse. I would have liked time to "wash & brush up", even to change before eating. Hotel at last, fell into bed.

Next day the group was visiting Oberammergau & King Ludwig's castle, both of which I had seen on a previous trip. So I had planned a day of exploration in Munich on my own. Well, first stop was the chemist where the girl not only spoke English but she knew exactly what I needed (decongestant). I dragged myself around for 3 hours then went back to hotel to sleep off the nasty virus (didn't work). At dinner the waitress informed me that salad was not available. By now we knew about the E coli scare & that the Spanish cucumbers were not to blame but not what was.

Pics on my flickr page (I'm still posting Mainz!). AQ's pics

Evening all: Sorry the heat and humidity is such a bore; I'd hate it  too. Fortunately, humidity is pretty rare here on the coast, at least when it's warm. However, in the Southwest they're heading into their monsoon season , which means clear sunny mornings with huge thunderheads building over the mountains that turn into wild storms with masses of lightning by the mid-afternoons and also cause flash floods, sometimes miles and miles away.  Fed the roses this morning, then went to gym, then home for fresh fruit and yogurt and a couple of hours in the hammock.

Tiger: Sorry to hear about your former colleague; he looked like a very kind person.

AQ: Don't know how I missed yesterday's post about the first stage of your trip. Would love to have seen the Gutenberg museum. Too bad about the nasty waitress, but good you enjoyed the chocolate mousse. Those tour days are long enough even when you're in top form. Must be awful when you're sick.

Lindybird: I love Judy Collins; she was on one of our radio shows the other week. Her voice is still clear as a bell. Raspberry Jam!  Yum. One of the friends I saw on Saturday gave me a huge bag of plums from her tree, far too many for me and OH, so I took some across to the young family across the road and was thrilled to receive one of their own jars of homemade honey; got a tour (from a distance) of the beehive. The have chickens too, and we often swap eggs for oranges.

George! Great to see you. Hope you're doing okay.

Heather: Glad your family get together was fun; nice to pull something like that off then relax the next day.

Diane: Watched some of the Wormhole special with Morgan Freeman.  Apparently, that isn't the closest an asteroid has passed. I think there was one a couple of years ago that was within 3,000 miles of us. Thank heaven I have enough day-to-day problems to worry about things I can't control, like incoming asteroids.

OK guys, off to check AQ's pix. Hope Monday is better weather-wise for all the UK folks. Take care!

AQ: Those pix are fab - love the architecture in Mainz.

Annette: The record is held by Asteroid 2011 CQ1, which came within 3,400 miles (5,471 kilometers) of Earth on Feb. 4 of this year.

Small asteroids don't pose a threat to Earth, because they would likely burn up before impact, even if they enter the atmosphere. However, scientists have identified 8,099 Near-Earth objects, and about 827 of them are asteroids with a diameter of approximately a half-mile (1 km) or larger. About 1,236 of these NEOs have been classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs), and it's likely that many more exist. 

I believe we need to pressure our governments to cooperate in researching ways to avoid a future catastrophe, rather than squandering our collective intellect and resources figuring out new ways to blow each other up. Just ask the dinosaurs. No, wait, they're all dead! :-)))

Ah a real good news story. See firefighters free kitten.

Good Morning, Everyone:    In a dash as Son & Wife (& Sweetpea!) return to us today, on their way back home. Will read all of the above and catch up later.  See there is more from AQ on her travels, and so very sorry to hear that you have lost a good friend, Tiger. Life is short, indeed.

Here are your Monday Smiles for this week:  more animals!

ARE YOU SMILING YET?  - YOU JUST TURN UP THE CORNERS OF YOUR MOUTH.....

Goleeeeeeeeeeeeee  AQ -  you hol sounds really intensive !!  I'm so glad you managaed to enjoy it up to the point, at least. when he became really poorly.It's only because you are here I can be sure it wasn't Ecoli

LoL Diane, you've certainly got the right idea. (Although, I do know a dinosaur or two !! )

Enjoyed your smiles LIndy, except I an amazed the white kitty stood complacent in the sink - must have been traumatised

Glad to know you're around George  :)

Come to think of it, I do, too, Cirrus. LOL!

 Loved those pics, Lindy!

I'm very sorry about your friend, Tiger.

Be back later today to catch up with everyone. Have a good Monday, all.

EDIT: Morning news says that the E-coli outbreak has reappeared, now in France. :-O