I'm Not A Racist But...

I just can't stand the French.

Now I'm not sure whether it's because they're an arrogant bunch of cheese-eating, wine-guzzling, garlic-munching surrender-monkeys...



...or because they nuked Muroroa Atoll in breach of local and international laws...



Perhaps it's because they sank the Rainbow Warrior, murdered a Greenpeace crew member and thought they could get away with it.



No, mainly I think it's because they like to eat snails, frogs and horses.



Nothing to do with today's 6 Nations rugby result, no sirree!

Rugby Match

Over the weekend, two of our grandsons had games at different ends of the country, so we had the pleasure of taking GS#2 to his match in Embra.

"So where exactly is this place?" we asked.

"Oh, you can see Arthur's Seat from it," replied mum.

Yep, that'll make it a whole lot easier. You can see Arthur's Seat from twenty miles away on a clear day. Let's see the old Google Maps...<clicky> Ah! That should read "you can see nothing but Arthur's Seat from it". So off we go.

The trouble with rugby, from a photographer's point of view, is that everybody wears the same clothes and they all run about a lot, so if you're trying to get a nice picture of your nearest and dearest, you're stuffed. Let's see if there's anything standing still.

{click to enlarge}

An old tree trunk burning

Hillend Ski Slope

A bare tree all on its own

Another tree, this one green

Someone at the top of Arthur's Seat

A bee on a flower

Wait...what does this button do? Oh, motion capture. That's clever.

A game of rugby

Flying Killer Monkeys From Hell

I've had to put my first movie script on hold for the moment, as Orlando Bloom has been too busy to return any of my 200 phone calls. Never mind; I've already had an idea for a sequel, and eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that this time I've come up with the title first!

We rejoin the tale one year after the first film ends. In a devastated Earth, the tattered remnants of humanity try to rebuild civilisation, but there are too few
survivors left after the mayhem caused by those pesky brain-eating zombies.

Working feverishly in a lab based in Hawaii (to get away from the zombies), with sweat from the tropical heat (and global warming, obv.) dripping down her front, Doctor Salma Hayek has genetically engineered a troop of flying monkeys¹.

These airborne anthropods (so I used a thesaurus, so sue me) have been trained to perform all the menial tasks so that the scientists can get on with the real work of destroying the zombies and putting the world to rights; simple-minded jobs like fruit-pickers, street-sweepers, taxi-drivers, database programmers, drummers and England rugby players (*ducks*).

At first, the results look promising - the new working class is literally prepared to work for peanuts. But then disaster strikes! El Nino brings an early monsoon, the world peanut harvest is decimated and starving monkeys run fly amok.

In a desperate effort to save the world, bigger, more ferocious langurs are trained to attack the original, smaller macaques and keep them under control...

Nah, come on, who would swallow a story as far-fetched as killer monkeys? That's just preposterous!

¹ You may ask why they need to be flying monkeys - the reason is, of course, that the title would make no sense otherwise. It's too late to change it now: deal with it.

A Black Day For Scotchland

I wonder just how many papers rags will have that headline on Monday morning?

I suppose it could have been worse; to paraphrase Igor in Young Frankenstein, "it could have been raining."

The way I see it, the All Blacks just got lucky - lucky that they were playing Scotland instead of a proper team like South Africa.

Hell, we did better than England: they only lost 36-0!

Scotland 0 - 40 New Zealand

New England Rugby Jersey

Martyrs

They had been trained. Coached. Some would even say brainwashed into believing that they could, nay would succeed in their attack. They had recorded their videos - just their names and a few words from each about their role in the imminent massacre. Something to justify their actions and encourage those who would undoubtedly follow in their footsteps.

The poor, misguided fools.

Of course, in the event they were stopped in their tracks. Rather than destroying their foes, they were the ones who were beaten to a pulp by the very people they had set out to annihilate. It was embarrassing to watch. I almost felt sorry for them.

Almost, but not quite.

Amateurs.

England 0 - 36 South Africa