Barrow Hill

It's a distinctive small hill near Ashleworth in Gloucestershire. Click photos to enlarge.

From Tirley during the recent flooding

The North Face

Looking North-West

It's Ok to discriminate against volunteers?

Well, it may be legal. See an article in my other blog

Ot Moor and Sunset Photography

I first found out about Ot Moor from an Ordnance Survey map of Oxford around 40 years ago. It was unusual in that it had no contour lines.and was crossed by a number of bridle paths so I could legally ride my bike. Somehow, I never seemed to get there.

The Romans had chosen Ot Moor for part of their Dorchester-on-Thames to Bicester road project and in 1980, the government decided it would be a good precedent and planned for the M40 to cross it. The "Friends of the Earth" disagreed, bought a vital piece of land and sold it off in small parcels to 3500 supporters making the process of compulsory purchase by the government an administrative nightmare. The government retreated and changed the law to prevent future stunts of this type.

On Saturday, I got there!  I was on the way to a dance, the sun was out and I diverted to Oddington and walked to the centre of Ot Moor where a bridleway cross roads is celebrated

Like many flat places, it's wet with lots of slow moving watercourses  that wander around rather than do the conventional spring-stream-river-sea thing.

Bridleway crossing the water

Some parts are just flooded

It was the sky that offered most to the photographer

 I've always tried my luck photographing sunsets and my Panasonic Lumix TZ20 even has a "Scene mode" for sunsets (but not sunrises). Sure enough, this yielded a spectacular "sky on fire" picture but as I compared the image on the LCD with what I could see in front of me, I was dissatisfied - the contrasting blue streaks in the sky were washed out. So I used the exposure override to stop down and got a more true to life result than the program wanted

What the camera wanted ISO100 F5.1 1/30

ISO100 F5.1 1/60 is more realistic

Reflection of the sky in a flooded field

The moor itself is uninhabited but its surrounded by villages such as Charlton on Otmoor

A trick for that special dance

You know how it is when a dance goes so right? Maybe the music was just magic, your partner inspired or your body gave more than you remembered it could.

It's so easy in your enthusiasm to jump up for the next dance, but it can never match the magic one. It's an anticlimax.

So, instead, sit and savour that fresh memory. Or walk out into the night air for a time. You know how wine experts talk about "aftertaste", it's like that. A good dance lasts longer than the music.

Another fine dancing experience

Had some really fine dances with a friend recently. She's always been an inventive and fun dancer with loads of power and stamina but over the last year or two she's sharpened up on what you might call "precision". She is exactly where she wants to be - and it matches what I'm trying to do so well.

Superb! :-)

Dancing and power steering

Extraordinary experience at a ceilidh last weekend, I danced the final polka with a male partner. It's not the first time I've done that but it could hardly be called a habit. My partner/follower was a young man I know as a wild and athletic dancer and I expected a bumpy ride.

To my surprise, he didn't "lead" at all and neither did he "follow" in the conventional way. It was as if I'd bolted on a power steering unit. He was adding power in exactly direction I wanted to go.

This is quite different to most female partners. They tend accept the lead fairly passively - or steal it!

So how was he doing it?

I think he might have been sensing my steering and responding fluently with extra power in the same direction - just like power assisted steering on a car.

I also wondered if as he's a man used to dancing the man's part, he was making steering decisions very similar to mine. However, it seems unlikely that there wouldn't have been some dissonance.

I don't think he's a telepath but you never know :-)

Insurance, Gender and Marketing

The story that young women are going to have to pay more for car and life insurance due to a European "equality" ruling is moderately interesting. As is the related issue of annuities used to provide pensions - men will get less than they used to.

"Womens-rights" people may be suffering some cognitive dissonance - equality has given women a worse deal! Myself, I tend towards a "fairness" approach - I don't want a particular group or person  to be discriminated against unless there is some real justification. So as a man who is likely to die before my hypothetical twin sister, I'd like a better annuity deal thank you!

No, to me, the really interesting thing is what insurance company marketing people will do about it. If women are going to have higher premiums despite being lower risk, a profitable business strategy is to attract lots of them. You can't actually turn men away but it would be silly to advertise at football matches.

We might find car insurance websites coloured pink and borrowing a lot of content from women's magazines. How many blokes of the male gender will go for an "offer" on car insurance that includes a free packet of tights?