Photo de famille

Right, all look at Albert to your left … Steve, Arthur, Norman, Algernon, Sid and Brian, that's your left, not your right … *rolls great white egret eyes*

Better seen large to see the rebellious ones looking right :)

What a grey day, as Larry Grayson may have said if he had had meteorological tendencies …

It seems like the combi household will be hibernating for the winter, as long as there is a tv in front of them, plenty of things to forage and a warm place to carry out the said hibernation. Two of them had managed to reduce their body temperature and their heartbeats down to about 8 beats a minute.

How popular was my offer of a walk in the afternoon …. well about as popular as something that wasn't at all popular ..

So I set off rigged out in fully camouflaged waterproof gear I'll have you know, courtesy of that nice man Mr E. Bay - and a good bit of kit too for skulking in bushes waiting for a buzzard to come along, as it did, but too gloomy for a decent shot.

It threw it down at one point - great it was, I was completely dry in my waterproof gear - which, I imagine is the point of such paraphernalia - I just need a camouflaged hat, for when it isn't raining.

So here is a group of white great white egrets.
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Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria mori is from Horace. Owen wrote in a letter to his mother: "The famous Latin tag means of course It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. Sweet! and decorous!"

Wilfred Owen died exactly one week before the Armistice was signed.
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Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria mori

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.