Book Review: The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig: ISBN: 0-434-96050-0
Posted by Alex Briffett in Book Reviews, Children's Books on June 10th, 2009
This is more of a recommendation rather than a review. Eugene Trivizas and Helen Oxenbury(illustrations) have collaborated on a true comedy masterpiece. The book is basically the Three Little Pigs turned on its head with hysterical comic effect. Despite possibly aimed more at putting a smile on adult faces, the topsy-turvy nature of the story, compared to the original, should not be lost on children as young as 4 or 5.
Although the violence of the story is updated, with mentions of dynamite and ‘the pig went and fetched his pneumatic drill and smashed the house down’, do not let this put your off. There is an unexpectedly happy ending. The Penguin version is actually far more violent with 2 pigs being eaten by the wolf and the wolf himself is boiled to death in a cauldron.
Wood Nymph
Posted by Alex Briffett in Artistic Photos, Photos on June 7th, 2009
First Decent Egg From Ex-Battery Hen
Posted by Alex Briffett in Blogs on June 7th, 2009
Our ex-battery hens have laid us a decent egg or two after just a few days in their new coop. This photo shows a camparison between our hen’s egg and a shop-bought free-range one. Maybe after some more time, grit(crushed oyster shells), vitamins, greens and exercise from our garden, our chucks might produce a darker coloured egg.
Earlier attempts at egg laying produced eggs with very thin shells or even one with no shell at all.
Ruddy Darter On Strawberry Leaf
Posted by Alex Briffett in Nature Photos, Photos on June 1st, 2009
This dragonfly, most probably a ruddy darter (sympetrum sanguinum) landed on a strawberry leaf in my garden and rested long enough for me to take this photograph with a Sigma macro lens on my Pentax K10D.
Brighton Pier In The Fog
Posted by Alex Briffett in Artistic Photos, Photos on May 13th, 2009
On a very foggy day on Beach, I took this photo of Brighton Pier. I used a Pentax K10D with a Sigma lens. Although the photo was post-edited in GIMP, I didn’t have to use and black and white filtre as the image colours made it look that way.
Sofia On The Beach
Posted by Alex Briffett in Artistic Photos, Photos on May 13th, 2009
Photo taken with a Pentax K10D into the Sun on Brighton Beach. Features Sofia, my daughter, looking out across the English Channel. Post-edited using Gimp.
DJ Stylie
Posted by Alex Briffett in Music on May 13th, 2009
Inspired by the Endtroducing album by DJ Shadow. I have left the mix quite bare but it seems to work quite well.
Ray Of Sunshine
Posted by Alex Briffett in Music on May 12th, 2009
Inspired by the works of Air and Zero 7. I managed to find a brilliant female vocalist to record the lyrics. That sort of talent is hard to come by. If you know or are a talented female vocalist, who would like to sing this song, please contact me as I would like to produce a modern version.
Chicken Coop
Posted by Alex Briffett in Blogs on May 12th, 2009
I bought a chicken coop with a view to keeping 3 chickens and we adopted three ex-battery hens. The manufacturers of the coop suggested it was big
enough for up to 4. I considered this a little mean, so decided to extend their coop by building a chicken run. I fox-proofed the coop by digging a hole about a foot deep underneath it and placed a wooden frame underlaid with chicken wire and placed the coop back on top.
I did the same for the chicken run itself and used 2 by 2 wood which I coated in wood preserver. The wood was tanelised but reckoned that every little helps. The run itself required 5 frames of timber covered in chicken wire and I screwed this together over the top of the sunken frame.
It required about £40 worth of timber, £25 worth of chicken wire (just over 20 metres) and around 200 screws. I suppose nails would have done just as well.








