Bar coded playing cards

Recently at the bridge club I go to there have been some new packs of playing cards with these black marks on the top and bottom edge of each card.  I wondered what these bar codes were there for, and to be honest I found them quite distracting and irritating.

It appears that these are used in dealing machines when set hands are being dealt for duplicate lessons or sessions.  The machine reads the bar codes and following the program deal the cards to the correct position, i.e. North South East or West.

This saves organisers and teachers a lot of time that would be spent locating and placing the correct cards in the slots on the duplicate boards. A potentially tedious job.

Another Red Sunset

It's 10.15 pm, the temperature is 23 degrees Centigrade, and it's another red sunset.  I'm not complaining.  I love this wonderful weather with wall to wall sunshine day after day.

Just look at those little skinny clouds.....

Moth

This moth was on the monitor screen of my PC when I came to write this post.  It was tiny and I tried to put a ruler next to it but the ruler fell and scared the moth which disappeared and is probably looking for a flame or lightbulb on which to fry itself.

It measured about one centimetre from one wingtip to the other.  As moths go it was quite pretty. 

Giraffe

Jasmine

In this hot weather, the jasmine climbing bush in my garden has really thrived.  This was given to us as an anniversary present about twenty years ago.  This evening as the sun was setting the garden was filled with the lovely scent of jasmine. 

                                  About one-third of the length of the bush....

                                     ......and a close-up of the flowers. 

Parched

I was in London today, and on my way home I passed through Wanstead.  We have had a couple of weeks of hot dry weather, and this showed in Wanstead.  The Green is a shade of straw rather than green. 

Big Little Gems

I planted some little gem lettuces some weeks ago.  At first they grew slowly, but it's been pretty hot here the last couple of weeks and they've shot up.  It looks as if they think that they're giant cos lettuces rather than little gems.  You can see that the ones at the back are as large as the tomato plant at the front. 

Red Sky

                                                   Red sky at night........

Scorchio!

It was 29 degrees C in Milton Keynes today when I went to the supermarket.  Someone had lost or discarded their shoes in one of the parking spaces.  I popped back and forth between the different shops in the area and my car, and at no time did anyone park in that space.  Perhaps their first thought was like mine: "What if the owner of these shoes comes back for them and can't find them if they're under my car..."

This could be the secret of how to save a parking space.  Like putting a towel on a sun lounger, maybe throwing an old pair of shoes onto a parking space deters others from parking themselves there.

Raspberries

I wasn't able to pick any raspberries yesterday evening, so today's crop was quite generous.  There are still loads more waiting to ripen.

Today's crop

And still a lot left to ripen more

Smoking

I went to fetch my daughter and her new baby from hospital today.  While I was waiting in reception for her to come down, I noticed this poster on the wall.

I used to smoke like a chimney, but gave it up on 5 January 2002, 16 + years ago.  At the time I decided that I would give it up until I was 70, since I thought at the time that at that age it wouldn't matter too much if I started again.

As I get closer to 70 I realise that there is no way now that I would want to start smoking again.  I'm free of the habit and there is no way I would go back to it.

Drawing to Deal

Bridge with friends today.

To decide who deals first, you draw a card from the deck and the person with the highest card deals the first hand.  After that you take it in turns to deal in a clockwise direction.

Ace of spades is the highest card in the deck.

Bay Tree

A bay tree in a walled garden. There is a circle of leaves covered in gold leaf.  This is more obvious in the closeup below.

I missed a day yesterday.  I was distracted by the birth of my first grandchild.  

On the road, a rainbow

Starting tomorrow, at least a picture a day, with or without a blog post, for the whole year.

No picture today, just this quick intoduction to this blog.