Devon Only Knows How We Weird Up The Olympic Torch Relay

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 I've been meaning to write this post since last Sunday but some how life has just got in the way this week.  Anyway.  The Olympic Torch came to Exeter, and being Devon we decided to weird it up a notch or two....

We thought to ourselves, we'll do a parade!  We'll make a giant scone with cream and jam (cream first then jam, it's the Devon way).

We'll have a man with a taped plastic bugle and a good hat, best give him a wooden stick. "But Why??",  "Who cares?!" we cried out!

We should probably have someone dressed up as Sherlock Holmes, you know just in case... 

 "But who will represent the Met Office?", don't worry we have a man with a jacket that is just right for the occasion, and if I'm not mistaken he also has a beach ball that looks like the world.  "Does he look surly?", he sure does!

 "What about boat hats?  Weymouth is near by isn't it?", not only do we have boat hats we have girls doing INTERPRETIVE BOAT DANCES!  It's a serious business it takes a lot of concentration.

 "The Wind Trapper?  There is no explaining that away is there?", no you're absolutely right I have no justification for this just pure unadulterated love and pride for it.

"A Black Dog?  Isn't that symbolic of depression?", well yes.... but surely the bitter blow of defeat should be represented?  "You're making this up", hush now. 

"The Olympic Torch, I was wondering when you were going to get round to this", well yes there was the torch, it was very gold and very shiny and the man carried it very well but where is the face paint, glitter, interpretive dance?

Allotment Geekery

Sunday at the allotment, the butternut squashes have gone in...

the strawberries are flowering...

the lavender is on it's way...

the peas seem to be liking their new home and have started to produce pods already...

carrots!

too many tomatoes...

...and finally kites and shadows.  MozzyMr and I were suffering after a Birthday celebration at the Double Locks for friend Charlotte.  Too many ciders made us a bit broken, so we crawled to the allotment in the hope it might be restorative, a bit of sun and digging sorted me right out not sure about MozzyMr he seems to want to eat all the cake and sleep in his armchair.

The Buttock Clench of an Observer of Nature at Work

To many of you this post will be of no interest at all and the two pictures above are of a lovely dog having a lovely frolic in a river.  Well, that ain't no river, that's the flood relief valley in Exeter, and usually it it bone dry.

Believe it or not but these photos show how well the flood prevention is working after the non-stop hard ass rain we've been having in Exeter.  The water is being channelled away from the housing and out through the River Exe.  You can see in the photo below just how close it was getting to these houses.  It was this scene that inspired the title of this post, because if any one of those houses was mine, I would have the buttocks of an Adonis right now from all the clenching I'd be doing.

The photograph above (taken from the Environment Agency's Flickr page) shows the flooding that took place in 1960 on the road that runs perpendicular to where I live now.  Of one thing I'm sure, engineering is rad!

The Day the Queen Came to Work

Liz and Phil made a visit to work today, the above footage was taken about a 2 minute walk from my desk so you can imagine how excited we were about the visit.  We had flags and EVERYTHING!

There were phones and cameras...

Ice creams...

Union flag sunglasses and the BBC...

A Queen mobile....

Police with guns....

...and the Queen!  (Yep good photo I know, the good thing was they got the big yellow arrow out of a bag and carried it just behind the Queen at all times like a giant helium balloon for those of us who couldn't get close enough to take a good photo, such forward thinking.)