Film about the life and times of Serge Gainsbourg. The film is quite well done with flashabck to his youth to try to explain the reasons behind his actions in later years.
The guy that plays him is a very good likeness so it the person who plays Jane Birkin. I learnt some things about his life that I did not know.
Interesting film about a your girl who lives with her father in the deepest tundra. Hanna is a trained by her father in preparation for when she goes back into the real world and is likely to be tracked down by a CIA agent who started a program to genetically modify human embryos to breed stronger humans for military purpose. The CIA person wants all traces of the program eliminated to cover up her mistakes of the past.
Hanna returns to civilisation and the action starts, as she travels from Africa across Europe with baddies after her. The film is very artistically filmed and there are some great scenery shots.
Thanks to C&A we got an invite to see a film at The Rex, the film is called Submarine. It centres around a young lad who is awkward and unpopular at school, he fantasizes about his own death and other things. He thinks that is dad is depressed and his mother is having an affair with a hippy and old flame who lives next door. He embarks on a misguided campaign to bring the family back together while attempting to impress a classmate , a straight-talking, eczema-suffering pyromaniac who “hates any place that could be termed romantic.
Filmed entirely almost entirely on Barry island it is a funny film but not that funny hence only 3 out of 5.
Thought I would try out my newly found butterfly id skills, so Helen and I took her mum up to Dancersend NR, to see what we could find. We parked up at the pumping complex car park, and headed into the reserve. Dancersend is notorious for Duke of Burgundy butterflies so there was the potential to see a very rare one.
We headed round the reserve taking our usual route along the field to the bottom of the hill with steps, then turn left at the top[ and come down into the reserve via the foot path and over the large log. We stopped to take some pictures of some of the wild flowers for later identification, although I think Nancy had already figured out what most of them were. We did not see too many butterflies but I spotted a Cardinal Beetle. There were lots of Blackcaps or Garden Warblers singing.
There were some volunteers working in one of the paddocks, it looked like they were chopping the young hawthorns back to stop them taking over. We then headed back up hill back toward the car and got a few of the butterflies I learnt about yesterday. We sat for a wile on the Susan Cowdy bench, she was obviously an important person in BBOWT as there is a hide at Weston Turville reservoir. We then headed back, but on the way there was a spot that seemed protected, we could see two types Orchid growing, one was Fly Orchid.
We were soon back at the car, the weekend almost over, although I had one last appointment with my camera and the church, I needed to get a complete 360 degree panorama of the church, watch this space for the results. The final tally of butterflies was Common Copper, Common White, Orange Tip, Green Veined White, Brimstone, Peacock, Blue something, Grizzled Skipper, Speckled Wood, and finally Red Admiral.
Helen spotted a butterfly walk/meetup on the BBC website, so she made enquiries and we arrange to meet at the lay by near the Aldbury Nowers (Grid Ref SP949128). Helen had other things to do but I went anyway and took Helen’s dad with me.
After hang about in the lay by waiting until the intended start time, and whilst listening to all the butterflies we might expect to see, we set off round the edge of the field. It soon became apparent that Butterfly miles are far slower than Bird miles, but the act of looking down at the ground and walking slowly means that you have time to take a lot in, and it is surprising what you find when you take the time to look. As well as some of our intended butterfly species we saw spiders, beetles, and a lizard.
After a look round the edge of the field we headed into the woods, which was not as productive, but when we then headed out on the chalk slopes that had been cleared/managed we again started seeing butterflies.
The whole evet was about 3 hours from arrival to departure and it cost us nothing, real value for money. We saw the following butterflies: Dingy Skipper, Brown Argus, Green Hairstreak, Small Copper, Small Heath, Grizzled Skipper, Brimstone, Large White, Green Veined White, Orange Tip, Common Blue, and Peacock,
Thanks to the British Butterfly Conservation Society
Here is some interesting information about the Vodafone mobile phone network during the Royal Wedding.
Network Wide Statistics
• Voice:
– entire Day attempts: 63,350,126 – down 2.17%
– calls between 09:00 and 12.30 – 12.4 million – down 17.4%
– calls between 11:00 and 11.30 – 1.65 million – down 31.6%
This is to be expected due to the metric focusing on the network as a whole and being a bank holiday where we have lower traffic than a normal working day. This fact makes the next set of statistics so impressive
• SMS:
– entire Day attempts: 138,446,608 – up 12.3%
– between 08:00 and 14:30 – 20.3 million – up 16%
– between 11:30 and 12:00 – 2.14 million – up 33.4%
• MMS
– 8am to 1pm – 185,108 – up 28.8% compare to last week
– peak between 11:35 and 11:40 – 4580 MMS submitted – up 53.59%
• Data
– 10:00 to 15:00 – 12.85 Terabytes sent/received – up 20.5%
Looking now at two of the primary online news sources we see significant uplifts in traffic driven by our data subscribers:
Mobile Website Traffic – Network Wide
• BBC News
– 161,350 Megabytes of traffic (entire day)
– 36.69% increase from the previous week
– peak between 11am and 1pm where traffic increased 219.47%
• SKY News
– 29,041 Megabytes of traffic (entire day)
– 45.27% increase from the previous week
– peak between 11am and 1pm where traffic increased 462.52%
Focussing in on the Royal wedding route we see some impressive results
Royal Wedding Location Statistics 08:00 – 15:00
• Voice Traffic
– total Attempts: 1,102,834 – 26.96% Increase from the previous week
• SMS Traffic
– total: 1,487,014 – 67.22% increase from the previous week
Royal Wedding Statistics – Bucklebury 08:00 – 15:00 (Katherine’s home village)
• Voice Traffic
– total Attempts: 14,027 – 6.27% Increase from the previous week
• SMS Traffic
– total: 29,953 – 12.12% increase from the previous week
Looking in general across our top sites that covered the Royal wedding route we can see that we carried a staggering amount of additional traffic with a very impressive call performance.
Top Site Traffic 08:00 – 15:00
• Temporary site at St James Park
– voice Attempts: 36,561 – Previous week site was not live.
– dropped Call Rate: 0.55%
• St James Park
– voice Attempts: 25,424 – 456.81% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 1.63%
• Hyde Park
– voice Attempts: 25,383 – 377.66% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.83%
• Knightsbridge
– voice Attempts: 37,197 – 152.34% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.8%
• Buckingham Palace
– voice Attempts: 22,138 – 503.87% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.75%
• Hyde Park
– voice Attempts: 23,086- 157.43% increase
– dropped Call Rate: 0.5%
I’m not really one to go crazy over royal weddings, I was probably Elite on my BBC computer when the last one was on, but I do enjoy big events. I floated the idea of going up to London on the night before with Helen but she does not like big crowds. On Thursday morning I thought sod it I’ll leave work at 1600 (I had been there since 0730) and head up to the big smoke and have a look round. I might even link up with A&C who had decided to spend the night outside the Palace to ensure a view of “the kiss”.
I needed to get the car so I went home at lunch time and would you believe the Golden Plover I had see earlier on the way to work was still there so were 2 Curlew. Any way I got the car and grabbed my camera and went back to work. I managed to get to a mile stone in a project I am working on at work so did not feel guilty about skipping off.
I got to Berkhamsted, found a place to park and was on the 16:30 train to Euston. I went for a 30p pee, grabbed a sandwich and headed for the Northern line and headed south to Charring Cross. My plan was to head straight to Westmister Abbey then kind of follow the route back to Buckingham Palace where A&C were under canvas with the Canadians. There were plenty of people about but it did not seem more busy than usual.
At the abbey things were a bit tighter there were people camped out on the pavement with chairs and tents, it was hard to get by we had to go single file. I got a few pictures of the tent city, and then headed back to Parliament Square to get a picture of Big Ben surrounded by flags. From there I headed the park that is next to The Mall, there was not much space left at that point, you could have fitted the odd tent in but it was clear that if you wanted a space earlier Friday morning would be too late.
I wandered down The Mall taking in the party atmosphere. At the end opposite the palace were the usual media village that gets erected for these occasions. It was a very busy place lots of traffic, and people out to see what it was all about just like myself.
It did not take me long to track down A&C the Canadian Maples were easy to find. They seemed pleased to see me and it was good to catch up with the Canadians again. I was offered a seat and settled in for an hour or so chatting and watching the world go by. From time to time some darkened windowed cars went past often followed by Range Rovers. We had lots of enquiries by Canadians asking us from which province we came, they had never heard of Buckinghamshire province!
I made my excuses and headed back down The Mall, when I got to the entrance to Clarence House there were lots of police telling people to keep out of the road, it soon became clear that someone was going to leave or arrive. I hung about and to see what was going on. First a very large Mercedes pulled up with Canadian flags on the dash board, a police man stopped the car and spoke to the man in the from who wound down the double glazed window. The policeman then called back to base to report that the Canadian Governor was coming through, and should he be allowed. After a mexican stand off as the car edged towards the policeman waiting for instructions, he eventually go the OK and the policeman stood aside.
A few minutes later the police got a bit stricter and some more turned up then all of a sudden a car left, then a few minutes later another and then another, I tried to get videos of the cars going past but the results were not very impressive. I had enough of seeing large cars with darkened windows at that point so headed back to the tube station, but not before using a portaloo, I was not about to pay another 30p to pee. I was soon back on the tube and heading towards Euston.
I had just missed the 2024, but the next train was at 2034 so just had time to grab a snack before heading to platform 8. When I got there confusion reigned there were two trains on the same platform, one was the 2024, which had the 2034 queued up behind. It turned out I could get on either so I chose the front train, and was soon back in Berkhamsted, where I found the car a drove home. All in all a great adventure.
Weather was still great so we thought we would have another trip out. After some discussion and a phone call to Hillside, we eventually settled on Otmoor again as we felt we had not done it justice last week. We set out and got as far as the holiday in when we got a phone call and had to do a u-turn and go and pick up John, who preferred out trip to the other trip that was on offer, basically a day at Hughendon grounds sat in a blanket.
We went the usual way i.e. down the A41 then left at the Brill turn off, then cross country to Beckley where you turn off the main road to get to the reserve car park, where we were lucky enough to find a space. We decided to do the walk that skirts round the outside of the reserve. The countryside different to the Chilterns, very flat and open pastures basically a flood plane. The birds were really singing Whitethroats were everywhere, Helen could heard Grasshopper Warbler, and we saw the odd Reed Bunting. The walk round the reserve took about 2 and a half hours and as it was the middle is the day really hot. We wanted to stop for sandwiches but could not find a place in the shade until we got to the new hide.
Suitably refreshed we headed back to the car park, we heard Cuckoo and saw 4 Hobbies flying around our first this year, and a few Sedge Warblers doing their stuff in the reeds. Whilst we were walking back I checked my phone, would you believe it there was a Purple Heron at Wilstone Reservoir.
We noticed in the new hide at College lake a Bucks Bird Club outing to Wendover woods, the start time was 08:30 a bit early for a Sunday but it is only 10 minutes drive so we got up, and got ready. Helen did really well 40 minutes up and out of the door a new record.
We meet the birds at the free car park end. It turns out the guy leading the group had lead another party at 05:30 the same morning that is what I call dedication. We set out down the road toward the cafe but went straight on at the 90 degree bend and made out way down to the scrubby area at the bottom of the bowl on the hale side of the woods. On the way down people were hearing Gold Crest and Marsh Warbler, and even Crossbill.
The group was about 8 people in the group and all the eyes and ears available to us we had a lot of success. In the scrub we got Garden/Willow Warbler, Goldcrest, Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Wren, Marsh Tit, and Sparrow Hawk.
We then headed up the hill again then took a detour via Go Ape where a Firecrest had been seen earlier. On the way we saw what might of bee a Green Finch but somone said it sounded like a Siskin, and there it was at the top of a tall pine looking very greeny yellow, a Siskin alright. When we got to the Go Ape area and Rob heard a Firecrest we all got our binoculars out and searched, then eventually it was spotted by Helen it was trying to pull a bit of string or plastic from a branch, presumably for nesting material. It was surprising to see the bird so close to humans it was literally just above one of the Go Ape platforms attached to the tree.
We then headed back towards the car we saw some wild strawberries in the grassy area that overlooks the bowl. We were soon back to the car. We really enjoyed ourselves and would return again.
Decided a local trip was in order, so we invited Helen’s folks for a walk round College Lake. The weather was really sunny and hot, we got there at about 11ish so not the best time of day to see birds. The usual suspects were on the water and island adjacent to the entrance. We walked on round the side twards the far end.
In the wooded are just pas the sand martin nest area I spotted an unusual plant that looked very primitive as plants go. It was a long stalk (6 inches) with with 4 regular buds on evenly spaced up the stem, topped off with a blobby bit. It turned out to be a Shady Horsetail (Equisetum pratense).
We were soon down to the field where the shrubs are planted. I scanned the fences ofor birds and spotted what I thought mightbe a Cuckoo. IIt was distamt so I got a bit closer and was more convinced. When it flew closer onto another post there was not doubt, later on on we all heard it call one time. In the filed near the cuckoo were 4 Whetear.
We finished off the walk with Ice Cream for some and a soft drink for others.