Beaky's Back!

 Gah! Beaky's seen us. Run for your lives!

 If you've been fortunate enough not to cross paths with this unspeakable imperialist monster, his Pest-of-a-Thousand-Decibels wife, their various nefarious offspring, not to mention their clones, then your luck's run out.

 Brace yourselves everyone. The Tippi Hedren Imperative is now in full effect!

The Witch Piercer of Smallhopes Hill

 I've already introduced you to the Witch Wringers, but there are more horrors than just those infernal devices (no relation, all though this one is) on Smallhopes Hill in Overstrand. May I present: the Witch Piercer.
 This ghastly torture instrument is basically a compression coil spring that was released into the accused witch upon judgement during the witch trial. 
 The Witch Piercer originated from the witchfinder's traditional pin, but after a couple of centuries of just annoying suspected witches by poking them with a small dressmaking pin, it evolved into the despicable gut-twisting mechanism you see before you. Only a lot less rusty.

Oatcakes from Chatsworth

 This weekend just gone, Inexcuseable and a couple of her friends went to Derbyshire to visit Chatsworth House, and she brought back... Oatcakes!
 

 These oatcakes are not the horrid, dry, biscuity affairs that originated in Scotland. No. These are Derbyshire oatcakes: a pancake-like form that must be fried, ideally in lard, but I suppose some sort of vegetable oil will do if one can't stomach rendered animal fat...

Weekend Wildlife

I had to remake this sigil as it had been
completely destroyed
(see 2nd & 3rd photos from the 29th March set)

 Just a quick photo-post of some of the wildlife I saw from afar on this afternoon's drift*.
 These were taken with the new camera - I took it with me in an effort to try and get used to it - and have been reduced in size considerably, as they were absolutely gigantic! If I'd used Phone, all these creatures would have been tiny, blurry blobs in the distance (which is why the previous two or three years' photos on this blog are mostly of things I can get very close to without scaring them off - like flowers, buildings, and the like)!

Words & Pictures

 After Music & Words, come words and pictures, and what do you know? I've only gone and read as many non-fiction as fiction books this month!
 I say "read", but in actual fact, the texts of the three non-fiction books were mainly skimmed through due to their nature (I did read parts of these properly), as it was the pictures that I was most interested in.

16. The Mitchell Beazley World Atlas of Birds (1974)

 This beautifully illustrated book (along with number 17, below) was one I poured over as a child. I loved the flamboyant birds-of-paradise, the long-tailed pheasants and peacocks, and the large flightless birds such as the ostrich, cassowary, and rhea - probably because they weren't to be found in the garden or on the bird-table.

Music & Words

 Mistress Maddie has graciously bestowed upon us this Music & Words Award, for which we are extremely grateful as we now have something of consequence to post about!
 However, on reflection, it's less of an award, and more like hard work! With that in mind, we're going to pass this one over to The Host.
 Great. So I have to fire up the old musical memories, scour You Tube for the relevant videos, then combine everything into a coherent blog post?
 That's about right. Ta ra! I'm off to play in the copper telephone wires as you need our body for this.

Something and nothing

If this was gratuitous,
he wouldn't have any clothes on!

 You might be wondering what I've been up to this past week - especially as I haven't been around blog-wise?
 No?
 How rude!
 Well, I've just had a look back and have discovered that I haven't been up to much at all! Still, I've done enough to blog about it, so: Ha!
 Oh, and the image of Chris Hemsworth is not gratuitous as will become clear a bit further on.

Weekend Walkies IV (map trial)

 Quick! To the Aerodrome!

 Well, I say "quick" - it took me an hour to walk there, which isn't too bad considering it's about four miles away.
 Anyway, the purpose of this walk was threefold: 
 1) To make the most of a splendidly warm, sunny Spring day
 2) To see how long it would take to walk to Northrepps Aerodrome - somewhere I've been meaning to walk to (rather than take Broom) for ages
 3) To try out a map & photos combo that I've concocted. Following on from the previous post, I've come up with an alphanumeric system of linking my photos to a map of the walk.

To map, or not to map...

Sunset from Castlette DeVice's doorstep.
Nothing to do with this post - I just like the
colours and needed a header image.

 I've realised lately that this blog is leaning towards becoming some sort of walkies blog, much like the dear departed Spike's: This Isn't Sydney (he's definitely departed from blogging, and the consensus is that he's departed this mortal realm as well). This isn't intentional, it's just easier to slap up some photos than actually sit down and write something of substance!
 However, I'm not going to let the walking take over. Besides, it'll be getting warm soon, then I certainly won't be intentionally walking anywhere and getting hot and bothered as a result. But before the walking bits dry up (until Autumn/Winter, I expect), I'm toying with the idea of constructing some sort of map to show where I've been (as inspired by Spike's various maps, and Hound's recent psychogeographical map). I've had a couple of goes at it so far, but don't really know where I'm going with them as I'm not quite sure what I want them to show.
 Anyway, here they are (and I'll warn you now: the first one is absolutely enormous, so you might have to open it in a new window or something so you can magnify it):

If you clicked it: See! I told you it was big!

 This colossal map is based on the basic Ordnance Survey map. I was going for different coloured dots to show the different walks I've undertaken. As it's a work in progress, I haven't added any colour scale/chart/key yet. However, the more dots I added, the more out-of-hand it seemed to get, and then I wondered just what the Hells I wanted it to show. It's so big to ensure that all the place names show up (especially for Hound so he can see that I didn't pluck them from Cold Comfort Farm, and that they really exist).

No, I didn't fly Broom high enough to take this photo - I'm not bloody stupid!

 This one is much more managable. It's based on Googlemaps' satellite view hence all the lovely green. However, because of that, I couldn't decide what colour/s to mark out my walks, so I just went for plain old white.

 I quite like having a map to show where I've been, but as I mentioned before, I'm not exactly sure what I want them to show. I've toyed with the idea of adding some sort of marker everytime I've taken a photo so you can see where it was taken, but that seems like a logistical nightmare now. I've also thought about having an individual map for each walk (in which I can show where photos were taken), which might be easier? As I can't really decide, I'm going to turn it over to you.

 What would you like to see? What would make it easier for you to work out what's what, and which way I went? More importantly, do you even care? 

 Answers, suggestions, derision, and complete tangents in the comments, please!