Category: little fluffy clouds

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Lesnes Abbey

Another top photo expedition suggested by Neha which took place on a beautiful sunny day. Many pictures were taken. I find this one, of part of an ancient mulberry tree, entirely unintentionally spooky:

mulberry branch

It’s taken me quite some time to sort out the pics, but I’ve had fun messing around with effects in black and white:

cigarette

I love this one of Neha in typical pose:

no hat

The Abbey itself is an ancient, fascinating and extremely well-kept building. I was most interested, however, in the juxtaposition of the old and the new:

fern

The most important part of the day (apart from eating, of course, which happened in a particularly delicious fashion) was the handing over of Neha’s hat.

hat3

I have to say that I’m extremely impressed by her choice of colour. It suits her most excellently.

Have I mentioned how much I love knitting things for people? There’s currently another pair of socks for my father underway and I’m so happy to have a picture of their construction!

Neha’s photoset here, my photoset here.

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Colour

It was so ridiculously sunny and warm today. And it was the first day back at the shrink after the Easter break occasioning a couple of miles of walking equipped with the camera. What I notice most about the pictures I took today is the vibrant colours. Sunlight and flowers. A winning combination.

forget-me-not

Forget-me-nots were my favourite flower as a child. Small, shy, retiring, a brilliant blue and signifying the sort of love and tenderness I believed might exist somewhere.

keria

I still remain stubbornly convinced (despite the evidence of this picture) that keria blooms are orange. F claims they are yellow.

pink stuff

I don’t know what this stuff is called, but it’s gloriously, fabulously pink and what after all could be more important than that.

I saw men wearing shorts and innumerable individuals of all ages and sexes in diaphanous, truncated tops. The weather forecast is for snow over the weekend.

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Drying bird

drying bird

Bad phone pic of print drying in dark corner of the study. It’s beautiful! That’s me reflected in the glossy silver paper. It’s pegged to last year’s calendar which is too lovely to get rid of.

A print! a print! It’s amazingly satisfying having a physical entity. Now it just has to dry quickly enough to make it into the frame before the framing shop shuts.

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A week (or so) in pictures

I keep forgetting my camera and then forgetting I’ve taken pictures on my phone instead. Here are some I discovered earlier.

birthday lunch

Birthday lunch at Cubana.

idli sambar (another birthday meal)

Another birthdayish meal, this time the long-lusted-for idli sambar at the haunt of my student youth Diwani Bhel Poori House. Their card machine wasn’t working, it was cash only, but they gave me half a free lassi since I didn’t have enough. Absolutely scrumptious and well worth the wait.

for acb (double impaling)

The single became double and then both disappeared overnight.

taking a bow

I like this elegant creature all the more for its not being all over my jacket.

big hips

One of the blustrous sunny days.

This is all displacement activity from actually printing out a completely different picture. But I must now bite the bullet.

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A loop in the fabric of time

Those instances where, when you’re in them and realise it and think, through the delight, that this moment, this particular configuration of the universe as apprehended in this instant is so exquisitely beautiful that it will live in me and be a constant source of joy available at will, like a rare scent to be unstoppered from the bottle of memory and stroked on the pulse points, conjuring on the brain’s skin and in the brain’s eyes and ears a waft of re-being in that pure ecstasy.

Or (of course a poet says it so much better) a Wordswothian time spot:

There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence–depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse–our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.

Thus early this morning when SecondSpawn sat cross legged on my bed, the diffuse brightness lighting his cheek and brow and lips and features of solemn concentration as he bent over his knitting, I curled and warm beneath my duvet gazing gazing gazing and so full of love that time and space and every dimension and all meaning converge and are held motionless in that moment.

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Form filling

Today is my birthday.

morning flowers

To mark both the occasion and the rather unusual fact that I feel good about it I have filled in and will today despatch two sets of forms.

The first is an application to train as a listening volunteer for the Samaritans. The second is to submit a photograph to the selection process for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Apart from submitting forms the day may include coffees with friends, stroking yarn at the new I Knit shop, lunch with a friend, post-school tea and cake with the spawn and in the evening (so I was told last night) friends have organised a small supper-and-get-together, babysitter included.

Gift to self? Neither an iPhone nor an Asus Eee, sadly. Not this year. But a ticket to Speed Dating for Artists at the ICA:

Those taking part talk to someone for four minutes at a time, the crucial difference is that each of you will bring a piece of your own work – a drawing, a sculpture, a design, an mp3, anything you can carry in to the ICA – to talk about.

How superbly thrilling/appalling might that be? I may or may not be moved to give an account of the experience after it’s happened.

And just in case anyone’s in any doubt on the matter, pisceans absolutely totally rock. Starting at the beginning of the sign and working through we have, in my small personal sample of gorgeousness:
FirstSpawn – polymath etc;
Friend T – architect, photographer etc;
Dave – writer, poet, photographer etc;
Friend F – painter, sculptor etc;
Krista – rhetorician, writer, photographer etc;
Dale – writer, poet etc;
Ivy – poet, artist etc;
Jeff – rhetorician, writer, photographer etc (and my twin – happy birthday!);
Me – etc 🙂

Have a wonderful day whatever date you were born on!