Archery

 Yes I know this is a staged picture but I couldn't persuade the archery instructor to take a picture with us using the arrows. Apparently he was afraid we might try to kill his or something.

I leaned many things whilst doing archery.
One is that I have very little feeling in my arms as I capt catching them with the bow string on firing an arrow and not noticing... Only now has my arm stopped looking like that of a light heroin user.

I also found that my aim is good if I don't aim for what I should be aiming at, if that makes sense.
Plus that left handed people need to use different bows and that it is bloody hard to find arrows if they miss the target!

There were no fatalities in our group which was surprising as someone at one point turned around with an arrow knocked in his bow, waving at us all, saying is this right?

The experience was an enjoyable one. The feeling of standing with one foot forward and your body side on to the target, pulling back the bow bow and feeling the string resting on your cheek.

I have no idea weather or not any of the words I'm using to describe the bow are correct but never mind.

 This is what the bow did to my arm.

Volenteer

I'm off on this sunny Monday from work and to Hardwick Dene (cornforth close. T19 8PZ) to do some voluntary work for the Wildlife Trust.

I'm expecting to be digging around paths and clearing overgrown areas. You know that sort of thing.
On a day like this I'd usually be out with my camera but I'm looking forward to doing something more group orientated today as walking out with your camera taking pictures can be fun but is also not very social.
Then again this may not be ether  :) .

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I've come back from my day volunteering. from 10:15am til 3:00pm.
We were digging a path and then putting down slag (tiny bits of what is a little like stones)
It's amazing how long it takes to do what looks like a small amount of path.

There were only three of us though.

I'm looking forward to doing this again.

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link

http://www.teeswildlife.org/new/

contact them

http://teeswildlife.org/new/address

Clay shooting

I was on a stag do at the weekend. Now you have to do some kind of activity right?

I mean yes, sure, you can go away somewhere and get so drunk that someone is sick on some strangers head and another one in your group buys a dog off a Gypsy while someone else punches the prostitute someone payed to eat a wild rodent just as THAT MATE (and apparently most people have at least one) takes a nice long relaxing poo through a hairstylists letterbox and you wrestle the two lasses from Salford and their camp Chinese friend for supremacy over a toy monkey.
But why not do something you haven't done before!

This year I'm trying to do a few of the things that you may think of trying but often don't get round to.
That's why I was happy to be going to the Manchester clay pigeon shooting club on this stag do.

I've done Air Soft and paintball and fired I've BB's but I've never actually fired a gun.
I remember one of my friends coming back from America and showing me the movie of him shooting a Desert Eagle and a P90. That looked fun!

I highly recommend giving clay pigeon shooting a go.


Due to the time we arrived, which was late,  we had a quick safety briefing, got kitted up with safety gear and headed out.
There were 4 places we got to fire. One where the clays came toward you which was easy, one where they came in from the right which was hard if you are left handed because you can't see it coming, one that had them flying straight up and one more where they were heading away from you and that one was the best.

As we only got 6 goes at each place (because we were late) the highest score you could get was 24.
I think my score was 15. Going    6    1    2    6 .

Oh and the gun guy we had was really winding up one of our group. I mean he was being harsh with everyone but one lad wasn't taking it too well.

Is he being too harsh?

At one point he said something like ~ my American friends would say your as nervous as a virgin at a prison rodeo ~ you just can't buy class like that.

*    *      here's a link to the one we went to in Manchester      *    *

http://www.manchesterclayshooting.com/

by the way. That stuff about the stag do things when drunk. As far as I'm awair, only the monkey thing has ever actually happened.

make a mask

I needed to make a mask at short notice of a pigeon head.
Sadly I couldn't find a tutorial that exactly showed what I wanted to do...
so I winged it!
There are loads of step by spep things on you tube for other, simpler masks though.

It is not right.
I still need to glue in some sponge to keep it in position when worn.

It's a bit freaky

That took about 5 hours but I've never done one before so I think I could make one in under that time now.

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Since making this it has been no a zombie morphsuit in manchester

write and publish a childrens book

(Image from children's book Denall's Adventure)

I have recently finished writing and illustrating my own children’s book.

http://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/152428446/childrens-book-fairy-story-denalls?ref=shop_home_active 

I had no idea how much work was involved in such a venture.

Getting down a premise, developing a story, checking and rechecking and editing.

Then working out what the characters are going to look like and what the place is like around the character. Then keeping continuity in the pictures.

Now that is all over I need a publisher.

… Actually I thought I’d self-Publish and see how that goes.

In the end it came down to choosing between two options. Self-Publish with someone local or choose somewhere on line.

I decided to go with a local printer but also after I’ve done that I’ll go and put the book out on the Kindle! Why not.  Might as well since amazon have a self-publishing section.

As a Dyslexic I find it hard to find the info I need on the internet but after reading threw amazon’s information, it seems pretty good.

As for the local side of things I Emailed Quoin publishing as it is a place in the Teesside area.

The quote I was given was:            

£50 for set-up on my pictures and a choice of matt or silk for the finish on the inner pages.

The children’s book is 28 pages long and A5 size. This therefor comes to £1.44 per print with 5% off if 250 are ordered and 10% off with 500.

Quoin publishing also do a proof reading servies which, with the small size of my book would cast £53.

I think I’ll get a small amount done first and then look at the amazon publishing.

Amazon self-publishing link:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A37Z49E2DDQPP3

(Concept art for book)

eat something new

A friend of mine has pointed out this website.
I might just have to try some of that!

http://www.exoticmeats.co.uk/llama-meat.html

Could you eat a Llama?
I might.

I've been thinking about the animals I've eaten.
I've not tried snail but I have tried winkle! and isn't that just the sea version?  NO!! I need to at least try eating a snail.
In fact I've pretty much left the entire insect world alone.... might have to rectify that!    = )

I ate a plate of frogs legs in France. Believe it or not they were quite nice. like rubbery chicken.
you know what else has that sort of consistency? Alligator! They must shared a common and tasty ancestor with a certain widely eaten bird.

In york I tried Boar and that wasn't that good. Tough is what I mainly remember or it but maybe that was just due to the where I tried it.

 pheasant was something I looked forward to for a long time but when I finally tried it I found it too dry and the taste was, well, like Game.

Never the less, I must eat more animals 

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Update 20 / 06 / 2013

I tried venison stake and then venison sausages last week. They tasted better as sausages than they did as a steak.
This week I tried lobster. It was better than crab I have to say. The this is it's like rubber. No that's not quite right but as close as I can get. The consistency of frogs legs was better.
If I was really hungry I could eat lobster again but I'd need to be really hungry.

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enter a photo competition

I almost forgot to entre the Natural History Museum's wildlife photographer of the year competition 2013!
I've been sorting through my nature photographs for months, trying to find the ones to enter.




I think I've chosen some good images.

     

Here are two of my entries

For the last 3 years I've gone to see the tour they do and I am always amazed at the shots that some people are able to get.

(I sell also on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/Matteesside  )


It would be great to go to other countries and take pictures of interesting animals doing bizarre things, but that are probably quite mundane things to themselves and there own species.
For example there is an amphibian in japan. The Japanese giant salamander it's called.
It grows up to almost 1.5 meters or 5 ft. Wouldn't you want to see that! They also apparently make a sound like a crying child.
I want one! I'll call it Collin and it can live in my fridge... after I turn off the fridge and put it on it's back and fill it with water.


Got a bit off topic there. The competition is:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/wpy/index.jsp

and you can see past images entered into the competition in years passed.