The Fire-Pigeons of Peterborough

To the ancestral homeland at the weekend, where various relatives showed us equally various artifacts originally belonging to my many-greats grandmother - Eliza Payne - including a notebook containing diary entries from 1835 to 1837 and a battered notebook containing many exquisite watercolours of butterflies an example of which is above. The writing in the diary, although beautiful, is very small and unreadable to my suddenly-ancient eyes. Daughter was happily able to read it and described the untaxing life of a lady of leisure based somewhere near Colchester we think. It is begging to be scanned, blown-up and pushed to make it readable. I will keep you posted.

Modern art in the deWeyden family this weekend has consisted mostly of me taking pictures of clouds with this IR one being the best. Dig those three-dee clouds hey?

Anyway - short one today. Back on heads.

Trees in Blue

Infra-Red Trees
Originally uploaded by Steinbeck

So here is another picture through the new IR filter. How cool is that? It was taken at sunset last Saturday and has been pushed a little to get that particular colour. Looks better in blue than in grey scale though my wife thinks the raw image looked even better. Everyone asks whether having an IR filter means I can take pictures at night which I cannot answer - it hadn't occurred to me before so I might see what happens.

Unspeak has been ditched in favour of a selection of Notes and Queries from the century before last. It doesn't pretend that the answers are correct, just that they are interesting - now where I have heard that before? I always thought that Notes and Queries in the Guardian was the original but it turns out that there was a 19th century version designed it seems to keep the idle rich from doing anything stupid (it didn't work - ed). While the profession of interest in and responses to previously submitted queries was tediously expostulated by the virtuous elite of this fair and verdant land, the actual content of the replies was indeed quite interesting. I find myself thinking (and indeed voicing) "I did not know that" at regular intervals. Thanks to the magic of Goooooooogle, you can find scanned copies of the original publication online. Isn't the world wonderful?