One of the less endearing characteristics of the British character is our love of self-righteous indignation. Give us something to go “tut tut” about, and we are content.

Which can be the only explanation for the massive coverage given to a fifteen year old student and her teacher who ran away to France together last week. Would make for a rather romantic story if the girl had been sixteen or over. but she was fifteen; and was therefore classified as a child. This meant that her rather foolish boyfriend was classified as a child-molesting creep who had “groomed” the girl into running away with him. Oh, and he was married, which gave the story an extra salacious twist; the bounder!

Beautiful day today; blue skies and fluffy clouds, with no sign of tropical storm Gaemi which is on the way.

Thought I should take advantage of the weather and headed out for an afternoon of shooting; only to arrive at my first location to discover I had left the camera battery on charge at home. Well done me.

My only shot of the day is another unnecessary sunset; but it was a good sunset and there was a convenient fishing boat in the way.

Included in my list of many afflictions over the years has been sinusitis. This was a particular problem when I went diving, requiring the ingestion of pills known as “diver’s chocolates” before each dive, to ensure my nasal passages could cope.

Has not been a problem recently, but last week I went for an SUP paddle on a afternoon when there were massive waves breaking more than head high, and storm warnings to shipping in effect. Well, not really, but there was a bit of a swell and I fell off the board several times and Mr. Gravity ensured that I was inserted into the Gulf of Thailand at a speed sufficient to send a mixture of Russian pee and boat oil (with a small amount of sea water) straight up my nose and into my nasal cavities where it festered for a few hours before signalling its residence with a throbbing pain above the eyes.

Most unpleasant, and even though it subsided after a few days, I can still feel a certain evil presence lingering in my sinuses which I wish I could dispel. I mentioned this to the owner of the windsurfing club and she said she had had major sinus problems for many years, but had found a cure; apple cider! She said something about it not tasting very good and just putting a small amount every day on her food; but I was already on my way to the shops.

I have happy memories, and memories of having no memory, of cider drinking summer days in the UK. Light, refreshing and sometimes potent, how could something so pleasing be a cure for anything? This was good news indeed and I resolved to immediately cure my sinus problem with a massive dose of medicinal cider.

Off to the local mall and all I could find on the shelf, at a depressingly high price, was this:

The world doesn’t need any more sunset shots; but I quite liked this. Olympus 75mm F1.8 as usual.

Sat down this morning to edit some shots I took at the windsurfing club a couple of weeks ago.

The early part of the session had seen reasonable wind, so I used the 300mm lens on the Canon, with a 1.4 extender to give me 420mm and took a few jump shots at 1/1000th second.

Or as Rovio call them, “Bad Piggies”.

The title is somewhat unfortunate, inferring some mindless pastime for infants, when in fact it is a challenging delight for infants of all age groups. But they had to reference pigs in the title because this is the spiritual follow up to the ultra-successful Angry Birds.

Angry Birds has been around for nearly three years and has been downloaded over a billion times. Apart from the original game, there has been Angry Birds Rio, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Space; and each of the games has been subject to regular updates over the years. The objective of each puzzle in the game is to catapult birds into structures and thereby terminate pigs with extreme prejudice. Assuming all pigs have been destroyed, you will earn up to three stars depending on how many points you accumulate in the process.

Having breakfast with my beloved and she points to an abandoned poster out on the street. “That looks like your photo” she suggests, and indeed it does.

This was my photo, included in a post in March of this year:

Prague has just announced that it will set up an area of the city which will be free from the plague. Visitors can rest assured that, within this area, there is no chance of them catching the plague. Prague is now wondering why its tourist arrivals have suddenly dropped.

Not true of course, but Pattaya has just announced a similarly themed guarantee of tourist numbers suicide; safety zones.

A number of “safety zones” are to be established around the city, the first of which is Walking Street. The idea might be commendable, but to potential tourists around the world the message will be that Pattaya is so dangerous that it has had to establish safe areas for tourists. Step outside one of these areas and you are likely to be met with a hail of bullets and a shower of ladyboys intent on mischief (the latter is actually likely). Now, do you still want to book that holiday?