Saturday 31 August 2013

What I love about this picture: 1. It captures a beautiful, end of summer, blue-sky day; 2. It could be heathland out in the countryside; 3. It's actually North London and in the far-right distance are the cloud scrapers of the city. All going to prove that the best urban places have plenty of green lungs to make them livable. Good-bye summer - you were blazing hot and too brief, but lots of fun.

Monday 26 August 2013

To the uninitiated, cricket is completely baffling. This is a sport in which there are rarely more than two or three people running at a time, there are all sorts of rules and practically a whole other language to learn (silly mid-off, silly mid-on and square leg are just the start). Some games go on for five days. That's not a typo.

Then there's the scoring, which can look complicated. However, like most of life, it's easy once you know how! So, the screen above is displaying the following information: the team currently batting has made 271 runs and lost 6 wickets. Simpson and Harris are currently batting, and their individual runs are under their names. The last wicket fell after 257 runs, the batsman who was got out was Wilkin, having scored 20 runs. He was caught by Raine, and the ball was bowled by Buck. The batting team is currently getting 7.1 runs per over, and they only need 2.2, so they're doing well. It's a 40 over game and 38.1 of the overs have been played. I could go on, explaining the rest of the board, but I think I'll stop there. Simples – and not bad for an American...


Sunday 25 August 2013

Who says south-east England isn't pretty? It really is. Yesterday's walk through a rainy Ashridge Estate in Hertfordshire proved it. Mist like cotton wool caught in the tree tops, spatters of rain showers provided a musical backdrop and we stopped to hold our breath now and again, hoping to see a Fallow deer, as we did last week. Though we weren't so lucky in that way, we were treated to sudden views like the one above.