Monday 22 March 2010

I Popped Round To See An Old Friend,

in both meanings of the word,
I have known Don for nearly 12 years, like me he likes fish and ponds,
Don poses for the camera, I do not know how old he is but has he had a colourful life as any that know him will attest, we had numerous cups of coffee and caught up with what we were both doing, then back home for a bit more on the railway, Diana had continued making trees so I planted a few behind the roundhouse, they look a bit sparse, but over the next few days as Diana's production line completes more of them they will grow into a small copse,
I also started to fill in the bits of track that I had dug up when looking for a wiring fault,
these were at the front of the layout,
I also put a couple of more bushes over one of the tunnel entrances,
a coating of paint over the new plaster,
a bit of ballast and a few bushes and it should look as good as new,
the two small copses looking a bit better from this angle,
then a treat for us both we went to Lotus, which was really crowded,
not for shopping, but for an ice cream,
a mango flavoured ice cream for Diana and a vanilla milkshake for me,
later that evening Steve called in for a chat, we have not seen him for a few weeks, the good news is that he has not been round because he is so busy with students at work, good to know in these recessionary times that some one is doing well,
and of course little Laura was here with him as well,
after they left as it was way past Laura's bed time and she had to go to school tomorrow, it was feet up to watch New Street Law, another series that Steve and Kai had very kindly brought over for us, based in Manchester it follows the trials and tribulations of a small law firm, rather like L.A.Law (which I enjoyed immensely and would love to have the whole series on DVD), but in a much smaller office with of course fewer characters, after a couple of very enjoyable episodes of that it was off to bed, up early in the morning to call back to Nissan as some spares we had ordered on our last visit had arrived.

2 comments:

jim lee said...

Stanley, a copse is 'small' by definition! You should eliminate such tautology.

PattayaStan said...

Dear Jim Lee, I was not using a similar meaning word twice I was hoping to convey small in number rather than the size of the trees, not as in converse of object, enter: As the track begins to curve to the left a small path enters a small copse to the left, more as a adjective modifier, small: These forest remnants take the form of small copses of Holm Oak where the total number of trees is less than thirty,
but it appears I am not alone in using small copse, Ian McCurrach who you may have heard of as he writes for The Independent on Sunday, also uses small and copse as I did to indicate small in numbers not in size, as the definition loosely of copes is of small trees when he wrote, “up the small slope passing a bank of trees on your left, after...straight on through a small copse and down past Keeper's Cottage...open field and into a dense copse. As you leave, walk straight...the streams and into a wooded copse with the stream now on your..." etc, etc, notice small, dense and wooded copse, but to avoid any further confusion I will refer to my copses as that and leave small out of the sentence, phew! best regards, Stan and Diana.