doof.me.uk

Cows. On their own they’re placid enough but it’s a bit unnerving to encounter an autonomous column of them marching down a narrow lane.

Where are they going? And why? Bringing up the rear was a man who might have been a farmer but who was controlling who? I reckon the cows might have been exerting powerful MIND CONTROL.

Later on, having narrowly avoided enslavement to the cow legion, I found this nice statue hidden in a wood near Mapledurham.

Pylons! They are so awesome. This one idling in a field somewhere near Pangbourne.

It doesn’t seem very long since this blog declared that it was officially Spring. Now the weather has sorted itself out it is very much Autumn. I went out for a walk in the hills today, roughly here:

View Turville, Oct 2011 in a larger map

Here are some suspiciously friendly horses near the start:

The weather was a bit grey but I think that’s preferable to the weird heatwave we had last weekend.

This is a village called Turville which may seem strangely familiar as it’s often appeared on TV and films as Generic English Village. Most notably in the Vicar of Dibley. Given that, it’s surprisingly hard to find somewhere to take a decent picture of it. I’ve never ventured this far north into Buckinghamshire so this is all pretty new and exciting for me.

This amazing machine is the NOMMER4000: the latest in harvesting technology. It drives around a field gobbling up everything, digests it, and then spews it out of its spout into the accompanying truck. So voracious is its appetite that it doesn’t stop eating when the truck is full: instead the farmer just brings in a fresh empty one.

Green and pleasant land and what not. This is a village called Fingest. Has a weird shaped church.

It turns out that if your bank uses Verified by Visa and you use Firefox 5 or newer then you need to enable the “accept third party cookies” option or payments will mysteriously fail .

Not sure if I’ve posted a picture of this bridge before:

It’s over the Thames between Cookham and Bourne End where I went for a wander this morning. If they painted it it would look quite nice.

For some reason Tesco are currently selling 4.25kg boxes of “big value” Persil non-bio washing powder cheaper than the otherwise identical 2.5kg boxes. Stock up now!

I’ve been in Norway for a few days for our annual company conference thing. We stayed at this Butlins-esque convention centre on the coast about an hours drive from Oslo.

The chalets are very cute. Weather wasn’t great but at least it wasn’t -20°C like last time.

Fresh evidence has recently been uncovered supporting the existence of distinct left and right socks. This hotly debated topic has been featured previosuly on this blog. This image of two socks seen in the wild clearly shows distinctive “left” and “right” markings:

Quite how sceptics can continue to claim that left and right socks are interchangeable in the face of such compelling evidence is beyond me.

I spent last week on the Isle of Wight with my family. It was awesome! If you haven’t been, the Isle of Wight is one of the best holiday destinations in the world. In no particular order, here are the amazing attractions we visited.

Hovercraft! As previously documented the Isle of Wight has the UK’s only commercial passenger hovercraft service. And even better, it lands just five minutes away from where we were staying. I spent many an hour hovercraft spotting, as you can see from the photos below .

Multi-coloured sand! Alum bay is famous world-wide (maybe) for its multi-coloured sand that you can fill little models with from convenient trays. I still have the one I made when I was a child (about 19 years ago). Here’s the one I filled this time:

Donkeys! For some reason there are lots of donkeys on the island. And everyone likes donkeys, right?

Crazy golf! Sooo many crazy golf courses. My favourite was multi-level jungle adventure golf but also played pirate golf and dinosaur golf.

Steam train! How many islands you do know with their own steam train, eh? This one is short and tidy with two little trains that trundle back and forth.

There’s loads of other good stuff too like a castle and lots of places to go walking. It’s a wonder people go abroad on holiday really. Here are some photos I took of the things mentioned above:

1234►

The pier in Ryde is sooo long. Looks very pretty when the sun goes to nap behind it:

Nice evening to go for a walk…

…and spot some hovercraft.