There is a fabulous full moon illuminating the countryside tonight, with Mars nearby and clearly visible to the eye. I love the way you can see all the markings, especially Tycho the large crater near the bottom. But I think of friends and wonder if they are looking at the moon right now.

I have always loved pigeons (the street kind) and consider them an integral part of modern city life, busily pecking away at the remains of thrown away food and human garbage. Anyway I couldn’t resist a quick shot on my iPhone!

Switch your TV on and the talk will be of the trillions, billions and millions of pounds of debt that we are all in. If that doesn’t depress you, then news of Mexican Flu, Politician’s funding second homes and the ongoing wars, will. So I spend my saturday afternoon photographing in the local woods and a couple of fields of rape seed that are teaming with butterfly. A couple of hours here and the worlds problems seem to have vanished, at least until I turn my TV back on.

The countryside is bursting into life now. Orange Tip, Comma and Peacock butterflies flutter in and out of the trees stopping only to sample the delights of forget-me-nots, blue bell, wild garlic and nettles. My spirits soar on days like these, with a promise that summer is just around the corner, and the dark evenings are quickly becoming a distant memory.

Sunday afternoon was spent photographing at Howe Stean Gorge, near Lofthouse in the Yorkshire Dales. Walking back to my car I came across a group of lambs jumping on and off a couple of rocks. Cute!

It is officially the first day of spring today and signs that winter is over are everywhere, including a brief glimpse of a Red Admiral butterfly. Warm days will soon be here, bringing squadrons of Swallows and House Martins chasing midges over poppy-filled meadows. Can you think of anything more English?

Actually yes, I can. Summer has also come to mean following the British Shakespeare Company around the UK. Sitting out in the open-air on a summer’s evening, a glass of wine (or two), and the company of some of this countries best young actors. Can’t wait!

The clocks have gone forward, the nights will be longer, lambs are playing in fields and you have to feel it’s great to be alive! Why we fiddle with putting the time backwards and forwards is a mystery to me. All sorts of theories exist from Scottish farmers to the government wanting to save power during World War 1. In the days when there might have been one clock in house it wasn’t much of a chore. But I have clocks in two phones, a mobile, watch, microwave, oven, car, video, car, bedside alarm clock… Thank goodness my computers can sort themselves out.

“Sorry” to regular site visitors for not posting recently. I just haven’t had time, due to a number of new projects and I have been visiting my mum, who has just had a leg amputated because of cancer… but she’s doing really great! However, I will be launching a number of new sites this week and there will be a major announcement in my drive to find out who visits my website – this will be the first site in the world to use this new technology.

Corks, something to hold the wine in your bottle or a symbol of mankind’s inventiveness? A functional object and yet one oozing with character. There is the quality of cork wood itself in a wide range of shades and textures. Vineyards and designers add logos, illustrations of vines and chateau, country of origin, symbols and messages. The infinity of styles and ideas reflects mankinds ability to be inventive and constantly find a different way to do even the simplest of things. My favourite – the one that said “Enjoy” – like a personal message from the vineyard owner to the drinker.

Sadly corks are slowly being replaced with plastic stoppers and screwtops, in order to prevent corking. Less corking is great news for the wine drinker but you can’t help but feel a little bit of the pleasure of the wine experience is being removed.

Ever wanted to know where the people looking at your site are living in the World? I installed a bit of coding into my website last week and these are the first weeks results. The majority of people were from the UK and the USA, followed by Iran, Turkey, Hong Kong, Philippines, South Africa, Malaysia, Denmark, Lithuania, Mexico, Columbia, Jordan, Canada, Italy and one person in Cyprus. So I will be contacting them to arrange a free holiday.

The software also tells me which town people are living in. So “Hello” to the people in Bethel Springs (USA), Xalapa (Mexico), Linthouse (Scotland), Vilnius (Lithuania), Amman (Jordan) and the nine visitors from Loughton (UK).

So here it is…The Doomsday Clock. The famous “Doomsday Clock” is now two minutes closer to midnight and now stands at five minutes to the hour. Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind. Personally I think it is a greater threat (see 7th Jan post below) and Professor Stephen Hawkings agrees.

When I was at junior school in the 1960′s (yes I am that old), we had to practice sheltering under our school desks in case of a nuclear war. Those were the days before IKEA furniture….real furniture!!! How frightening was that to a child of 6? But don’t worry too much because Big Brother seems to be dominating the front page news, so all must be well.

UPDATE: 29th January 2007

Interesting article on global warming in The Independent on a day when the other papers ran the winner of Big Brother on their covers. Recent BBC programmes on the subject have raised awareness but the question is: Is anyone actually going to do anything about it, or are people going to get bored to the subject?