Over the last few years it has been usual for us to attend the Battle of the Prom open air concert held at www.hatfield-house.co.uk with my wife's family.
Through the course of the evening we are entertained with orchestral music and operatic singers singing rousing patriotic songs such as Rule Britannia, Jerusalem and the like. They have people dressed in battle dress from the Napoleonic era walking about the place and uniformed 'cavalrymen' riding on horseback charging around within a fenced off area demonstrating their respective skills by knocking cabbages off the tops of sticks poking out of the ground with their swords. They also have an old Spitfire flying over the area doing loop-the-loops and flypasts. (When I hear of so many accidents at other air displays I am consistently concerned that one day it's going to crash fortunately we have so far been spare such an incident.) The evening concludes with a firework display which is set off as an accompaniment to the music being played. This picture was taken of one of the fireworks. It reminded me of some form of stellar constellation you might see through the Hubbell telescope. Many just sit on blankets however my father in law insists that we sit within the gazebo he takes there, which you are permitted to erect in a dedicated area at the back.

It's not just stuff that I need to get rid of, we also have quite a few Easter eggs that were given to the children that we need to dispose of. I volunteered to help where I could.

Dear Posterous

I have been considering events that took place a few evenings ago when I was looking through the Twitter accounts that I follow. One particular tweet caught my eye:
http://twitter.com/jessicamullen/status/6020988783
At the time I believed that it had a direct reference to points that I had set out in an email sent to the writer two weeks previous. I wrote an tweet alluding to this and following a brief exchange of messages read:
http://twitter.com/jessicamullen/status/6037707489
No one starts a sentence with "Dear World, please credit...." if they did not feel a sense of outrage, annoyance and injustice. I had not anticipated such an outburst and might have thought twice about expressing an opinion if I could have imagined what would follow.

I am reminded of a recent Twitter event that occurred at the end of October prompted by the follow tweet:
http://twitter.com/brumplum/status/5312147091
which resulted in:
http://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/5314166600
and followed up by:
http://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/5314228762

I have re-read my "a few thoughts on Lifestreaming" and consider that the main emphasis of the email was on "recycling" and "recyclability" of digital content; we "consume" digital online services which result in what I termed as the the creation of digital "waste" and concluded that "The more Recyclable we make our digital content, the less Digital Waste-ful it will become."

Later that day Jessica posted the following:
http://twitter.com/jessicamullen/status/6042417053

I feel that I need to express an apology to Jessica, as I'll be honest and say, that I am still having trouble reconciling any similarities between the two. Those that might read this will probably form the same view. Jessica's is clearly inspired to a level far removed from my own. Her visual imagery demonstrates this and would bear no resemblance to anything that I could generate to demonstrate my expressed opinion.

To conclude, it greatly concerns me that through a hasty or inappropriate word on my part, inspired creativity could be stifled in others; those you follow through online services such as Twitter and have developed a form of friendship and respect for. It is right to be myself and have my own views on matters, but I will need to take a greater care as I express my thoughts and opinions on the material that other people post online, in it's various forms, in the future.

Kind Regards,

David

..... and this is the beginning...