Frosted Fungi.

[JohnP]

I came across these fungi when I was out for a walk this morning, there were frozen as solid as rock.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ100

1/80s f/3.8 at 30.6mm iso100

[Heather]

interesting textures on these John

[Kobione]

interesting textures on these John

Absolutely!

[Guest DaveW]

After working outside a good part of my life John, usually wet and cold since I usually got outside jobs in winter, I now enjoy the luxury of staying indoors when it's cold. So like all sensible mammals I now hibernate for the winter, certainly for outside photography. You must be braver than me walking out in it for fun!

Nice interesting picture.

Misty cold and damp here at the moment, typically British!

DaveW

[JohnP]

After working outside a good part of my life John, usually wet and cold since I usually got outside jobs in winter, I now enjoy the luxury of staying indoors when it's cold. So like all sensible mammals I now hibernate for the winter, certainly for outside photography. You must be braver than me walking out in it for fun!

Nice interesting picture.

Misty cold and damp here at the moment, typically British!

DaveW

After sitting driving and delivering soft fruit samples for around 8 months each year ( 1000 to 1500 miles a week) I love a long walk whatever the weather... well not when it's tipping down with rain... pretty much anything else is OK. I've just entered my quiet period and it will be March when it all get's going again... so time to get the walking boots on now and again.

[Guest DaveW]

Ah well you were "greenhouse grown" sitting in a warm heated cab John. If you had been treading or kneeling in mud, wet and cold with frost on the ground in winter, grubbing out holes for gate posts with your frozen fingers, you would not be so enamored with frosty days!

DaveW

[FUJI]

Ah well you were "greenhouse grown" sitting in a warm heated cab John. If you had been treading or kneeling in mud, wet and cold with frost on the ground in winter, grubbing out holes for gate posts with your frozen fingers, you would not be so enamored with frosty days!

DaveW

Been there done That Dave......not like at 17 years old nailing twenty foot rafters thirty feet up standing on a single plank bouncilly stretched between two pairs of six foot trestles that used to be balanced on open ceiling joists......mouthful of frozen nails, hammer in mittened fingers, whilst struggling to ensure both rafter ends came together exactly opposite each other......whilst dressed in any old Army Surplus gear.....no helmets, no steel toe capped boots and no handrails.......Happy Days.

Great pic by the way.....see what memories you've stirred John?

FUJI

[JohnP]

:laughing: .. It's only since 2000 I've been sitting in a warm cosy cab, prior to that I was in the electrical trade for 39 years, not always rewiring a nice warm house in winter. I spent plenty of time working on building sites wiring houses with no windows or doors yet fitted, up to my arse in mud and freezing cold... no to mention wiring farm building in winter with only an hay bale or my tool box to sit on at lunch time and then there was the odd communication tower on which to install cabling etc... would I do that now... no bl**dy chance... :no :no

[FUJI]

Y'know......Our younger members have no idea.....we did a regular 54 1/2 hour week for £22...... Later 61 1/2 became the norm......and,if we had an trades or antiques show to erect ....75 hours working through from midnight Saturday to Sunday 5 pm, then up to start again at 07:30 on the Monday.......all for circa £85 less Tax.

FUJI

[Guest DaveW]

Not sure Health & Safety would let us do that now Fuji. A friend of mine who was a plumber a decade ago had a lad come from an apprentice training scheme who first put on a hard hat, steel toe capped boots, goggles and kneeling pads to drain and unblock the U bend on the sink! Took him longer to dress up than do the job!

My dad told me a bricklayer in the 1930's on site he was on wore a pair of woolen gloves on a bitterly cold frosty day and the boss sacked him saying, "if your hands are too cold you are not working fast enough". Nowadays if you don't wear protective gloves they sack you!

I think when I started work Fuji an employer could require a woman to lift not far off a hundredweight and a man about a hundredweight and a half. (miller's and farmer's in the past used to carry two hundredweight sacks of grain) Now cement is only packed in half hundredweight bags since the women came into the industry. We were both born in the wrong age.

"The British Industrial Health Research Board in 1927 made a study of 14 industries employing women and young persons on weight-lifting jobs. It was found that women in the sanitary pipe industry lifted as much as 6.6 tons a day and in the tin plate industry, 3.25 tons. In the paper industry women lifted "loads equivalent to 57 per cent of their body weight. In the cotton industry the percentage was 56 and in the tin plate industry, 55. Examination of the women and young persons employed in these industries revealed that the women did not appear to be suffering any ill-effects from such work but many of the young persons had poor physique partly attributable to the nature of their employment."

Think I will go in for one of those cushy office jobs in my next incarnation, not starting work until I am about 20 years old and then expect to retire at 60 claiming I am suffering from exhaustion and stress!

There was even a suggestion years ago that comfortable working conditions should be considered as part of the wage when comparing take home pay across industries and professions, plus manual workers who started work at an earlier age, therefore starting to pay NI stamps earlier, should be allowed to retire at 60 on the State Pension, with those starting work later going on to 65. I wonder why the office bound politicians in nice warm Parliament killed that off?

DaveW :laughing:

[JohnP]

I'm enjoying this... I started work as an apprentice electrician three days after my 15th birthday in 1961... pay was £2- 10s -7d for 42 hours. The thing that always annoyed me was another lad who was 12 months older and started the same day was paid the rate for a 16 year old and he was always one year in front of me and because you couldn't be made up to an electrician before the age of 21 years he did a 5 year apprenticeship and I did 6 years... grrrrrrrrr. I also remember when I got married in 1971 (just before we went decimal) my pay was £20-11s-3d before stoppages which amounted to take home pay of just over £15 for a flat week of 40 hours.

[fuzzyedges]

Where is my violin

Ive just found vyleda cloths are no good for tears

[Guest DaveW]

One thing that inevitably happens Fuzzy in war time, or when productivity is needed and a nation is in dire financial straits and in debt abroad, is that all the working time, safety red tape and rule books get torn up again in order to compete internationally with countries having no such rules, as Greece, Spain, Italy and France's labour forces are now finding out, and ours may yet do. You are forced back to the days and type of system and practices when your labour force actually were competitive.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-03/why-france-has-so-many-49-employee-companies

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/9470711/New-EU-employment-ruling-could-stifle-British-business.html

If such workplace rules put firms out of business by making them uncompetitive abroad there will be no jobs or money anyway for present workers, so no taxes to support public sector ones either.

Nobody ever said life was easy, or people and countries could get by forever in debt and not working hard! The dolce vita is over for a generation or so I am afraid.

Still I suppose we may then have more time to go out looking for frozen fungi, but probably to eat not photograph!

DaveW

[NannyFerret]

Nice pics.

They look like they have just come out of the freezer.

I wonder how fragile they are when they are frozen like that.

[JohnP]

Nice pics.

They look like they have just come out of the freezer.

I wonder how fragile they are when they are frozen like that.

They were actually as hard as rock and not at all fragile in the frozen state, I bet when they thaw out they will just disintegrate.