Hello, you lovely people! Well, it’s been a long, long while since I last posted, hasn’t it? Truth is, I’m a wee bit disenchanted with the Deppster so it doesn’t feel right continuing with this blog.

I’ve set up a new one at The Sparking Synapse, where you’ll find very similar stuff to the stuff you found here. Maybe the emphasis will change a bit, but there’ll still be greyhounds in it, and OH’s conversations, and so on.

Come over and take a look. There’s not much there at the moment, but that will change!

Well, there you go. It seems that the Morrisons supermarket chain is struggling to make a decent profit in the cut-throat world of big corporate supermaketing. Apparently they are in real danger of going under and are becoming desperate to keep the customers they have and win back those they’ve already lost.

So what have they done? They have hi-jacked one of Britain’s most famous sculptures – The Angel of the North – and projected a bloody bread advert across its 54 metre wings.

I’m not actually a fan of this particular piece of artwork. I find it clumsy and disproportionate and, quite frankly, ugly. However, it was placed there as a reminder that for 200 years miners worked in near-intolerable conditions under the ground in that area and many died doing so, and I would have thought that the teeniest, tiniest smidgeon of respect would have prevented anyone from using it in such a crass, self-serving, and quite frankly, highly intrusive way.

The more I think about it, the more offended I am by Morrisons’ actions. This advert, projected onto a public piece of artwork, is tasteless and does not show Morrisons in a good light at all. Far from winning customers back, it is a hair’s breadth from driving this particular customer away.

I spend a lot of my shopping budget in Morrisons. Not least because it’s one of our nearest supermarkets, it’s in a convenient locations, it has a big, free car park, it has a petrol station, and it sells a damn good selection of offal which is great for the dogs. I mean, where else am I going to get ox-heart conveniently ready-diced for me? Actually, they sell ox, pig, and lamb hearts, too, and a wide variety of kidneys and livers, ox tail and whole turkey legs. Doggie heaven.

But there are other sources – for instance, Waitrose sells whole ox kidneys, I can buy turkey legs in other supermarkets and Abel & Cole will deliver chicken carcases to my door. Ha! Take that, Morrisons meat counter!

I have to say that if I lived within sight of the Angel of the North, I’d be livid. I loathe the commercialisation of every little corner or blank space in our environment almost as much as I loathe the increasing amount of light pollution we are subjected to. So this baguette ad (which lights up the night for miles around, by the way) offends me in both ways. And what I want to know is this: who allowed it to go ahead?. Did they get planning permission? If not, why aren’t they being made to cease and desist, and if so, why aren’t the planning committee concerned being asked to explain themselves?

I guess that one of the motives behind the wince-making Angel of the North ad campaign is to get people talking. Well, OK, they’re talking. And I’m talking about boycotting them.

Disgusted of Peterborough

Yes, yes, I know our Beloved Leaders would like us to forget all about being English and St George’s Day, but I was born English, I grew up English, and I still feel English, OK? In fact, I take every opportunity to fill in official forms with ‘English’ as my nationality, if it’s an option. I’m bloody-minded like that.

So, happy St George’s Day. Even though he was not himself English, we adopted him, and now he’s ours.

I no longer have a St George window flag for my car (they get torn by the wind, don’t you know?) and it isn’t looking like rain today, so the little doggies won’t be wearing their St George raincoats, but here’s a picture of the Princess Renie and Captain Jack Sparrow in them from a previous year.

And that chair up there? I spotted that at the Motorhome Show one year. Shows a startling lack of respect, don’t you think? Rubbish stuffed in the drink holder and some kind of plastic bag attached to it … It’s symptomatic, you know, of how the government scheme to abolish England is working all too well.

So keep waving the flag, if you want to stay English!

A walk in Cuckoo’s Hollow is always interesting for one reason or another. It has a lot of plants, insects, birds, etc, and it has a lot of dog walkers and school children walking through at various times of the day. It used to be a seasonally flooded meadow at one time, surrounded by dykes, but the Development Corporation tidied it up in the 1970s.

They dug a lake, planted trees, laid footpaths and built little footbridges. Now it’s a lovely walk with the dogs at any time of the year, a restful shortcut between houses, schools and shops, and well, just a rather nice, irregular shaped – and quite large – green space on the edge of the city.

Swans regularly breed here, as do other water birds and birds which like belts of trees. In those trees are some unusual species, not native to Britain, like the one at the top, which I’m pretty sure is a Norway Maple. Such pretty green flowers!

Here’s a blackbird, who serenaded us for a while.

Unfortunately, there are often dog owners who believe that their dog should have the right to annoy others, like the large hairy animal who kept running between our two, annoying Sid and scaring the pants off Jeffie. The owner watched with a complacent smile until I stopped and gazed at him. Actually, he didn’t even call his dog then, not till Sid had got fed up with the loose dog barking at him challengingly and told him what he thought of his rudeness with a single, loud, deep-voice growly bark. Then, miraculously, the owner was able to get control and call the dog away. Funny, that, isn’t it? Seems to me as if he could have done that at any time he liked, but simply didn’t bother.

What is it about some people that they think others like their boisterous, wet dog rampaging up to them and harrassing their elderly, well-behaved, ON leash dogs?

Ah well. I was happy with my own dogs’ manners anyway. They were very patient, and Jeffie in particular has come a long way since we got him. At that time he’d have been trying to get a mouthful of his tormentor in sheer self-defence. Now he tends to let us defend him.

The dog in the picture, by the way, is not the one who was annoying us today. This photo comes from Morguefile.