Big paws… Nice bally, nice doggy

Soppy

Tough

Playful

The Dog can also be followed on Twitter – @MyYourTheDog. Parental advisory though, he does have a potty mouth sometimes.

And?

Got lots of  photos of The Dog. He is the perfect test subject, particularly for dynamic autofocus and tracking on the F5.

Trouble is, at 8 FPS, it is possible to get through 36 frames in 4.5 seconds… Oh well.

Somewhere near Madrid, 2005

Not exactly Deptford but probably just as hot as Deptford at the moment.

Gizmo lays into the US of A

Some of the trees looked like they had been tagged because of the contrasty shadows patterns. And yes, these have been PP’d a bit…

As usual in Oxleas we met a huge number of dogs, especially at the cafe, and Gizmo had a whale of a time. A lovely day

EAT ME! – the fab EGP cafe fairy cake. Lewis Carroll style. If only…

Is EGP a well kept secret or something? I’d heard of it but it isn’t exactly easy to stumble across (or spell for that matter) tucked away behind the Woolwich Road.

I am roaming further with The Dog because I am heartily sick of the petty dog politics and cliques and squabbles of Greenwich Park, particularly a (very) small group of sanctimonious dog owners (the spell checker replaced wankers with dog owners…). Though why I should let them spoil the park for me is something I need to sort out. Typical addiction mindset. Focus on the 0.1% negative, forget the 99.9% good.

Well, EGP is part of the 99.9%, definitely! It has an ace cafe that serves really good reasonably priced espresso and fairy cakes. These can be ordered and paid for from the door so no need to leave The Dog (I don’t anyway and would forgo the coffee if I had to do that). The staff are super friendly and chatty and best of all, The Dog gets to run around with normal dogs walked by normal people (ie like me… lol). This could all change of course, we’ve only gone there three times.

Slightly disturbing is the plaque near the exit/entrance informing us that just behind us are the buried remains of 3000 pensioner seamen… Don’t turn around, go directly to the exit! Brought The Amityville Horror to the forebrain.

Exit pursued by The Dog

Richard Moore, Manager, Harefield Rehoming Centre, The Dogs Trust

Read more…

These had all been left to die.

Read more on hangbitching.com

Oxleas Wood is one of the few remaining areas of ancient deciduous forest in London dating back over 8,000 years. So never mind the Styrofoam, feel the age.

Bagpuss

To me this log looks like a cat, specifically Bagpuss (RIP). Log cat lol cat. Whiskers, one eye and ears. What more does a fevered imagination need?

It is a curious place and a dog walkers’ heaven despite the giant cat. Some of it really does feel 8000 years old. Despite being audibly sandwiched between major trunk roads (and thus with the obvious temptation for car-centric governments to make the drive to work and productivity quicker via a shortcut), and, despite the uneasy manicure of the ‘walks’, at this time of year the twisted leafless ancient trees makes it feel somewhere further away than it really is. To me anyway.

Get off the paths and there are some treats. Just behind the cafe we found this bench.

The Fuji is a bit big for the diminutive tripod I was carrying and this needed 1/2 second at f/8 (or f/11, can’t remember) and there is the tiniest bit of unsharpness here, though the discarded can of Guinness beneath the bench belies that slightly. Was somebody really sitting here drinking Guinness? Whatever, a top ten bench for the Knossers of Benches.

And of course there is always the d-i-c-h-o-t-o-m-y (love the word) between managed and unmanaged woodlands:

If you are the kind of council/land owner to erect a tasteful concrete-slab fence in 8000 year old woodland then I think you could have possibly foreseen that it might look a bit shit in context. Especially if you don’t maintain it.

This shot should have been in colour

White translucent carrier bags half filled with a deep turquoise/renaissance-ultramarine coloured liquid. I think. It was really hard to tell. Hopefully they’ll be there next time so I can do justice to them. The colour was so rich and seriously out of context.

The Dog was in heaven, except for one shitty boxer and his owner in funky gurly wellies. I didn’t like them and neither did The Dog and nor did the people at the cafe who were jumped upon (by the boxer).