Richard's new toy!

It has been a busy weekend for me.  I have had a few days off work at the end of last week, after catching another bug from my students.  I have caught so many since being here!  Not sure if it is different bugs in the UK or the fact that I am teaching younger children and they have a tendency to sneeze and cough all over you more than teenagers!  Anyway the result was three days home in bed and then a decision to have a laid back weekend to give my body time to get over it all. 

Yesterday Richard was out for the most of the day with his last game of the hockey season and then the dinner with the boys for the final night.  I had a very peaceful day, firstly getting the housework and some washing done and then enjoying myself.

I spent about an hour and a half playing the saxophone yesterday.  I bought the sheet music for Leonard Cohen's song 'Hallelujah'.  I can play the first bit reasonably and will continue to work on it!  The hard thing is getting back to the sax after having played the recorder daily for the past few months!  I had to look up a couple of the notes because I was confusing them with playing the same notes on the recorder.  Just a gentle reminder that I need to practice more! 

After the sax I decided to spend some time drawing.  I found an activity in Carla Sonheim's book 'Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists' and drew the following:

There is a photo of an eye in the book and the task is to draw it using four different media.  The first one in pencil only, the second and subsequent drawings you do a basic outline in pencil and then use pen to finish one (the second one above).  I used three different thicknesses of Pitt Pens.

The third drawing was finished with charcoal.  I used Derwent charcoal pencils in light, medium and dark.  I also used a drawing stub to help with the shading!  The final drawing was finished off using Derwent watercolour pencils.  I had so much fun doing these!  I have continued to paint and draw for much of the weekend and have really enjoyed it.  I have finally added a lot of the bits and pieces from Paris into journal pages.  It is amazing what you find when you tidy your desk!  Now there are just the ones from Greece to sort!

While I have been doing all my art lately, Richard has often found himself at a loose end.  He decided a couple of months ago to get himself a 'project' to work on.  Today he finally finished and we went to the woods across the road to take it for a spin!

So this is his new toy.  He made it from a kit and it is a remote control 2WD buggy.

This is Richard making sure he knows what the controls do!  I thought he was being overly cautious given that we were on a field and well how could it be a problem in such a big space!  However once he got it going I fully understood his caution.  It goes incredibly fast!

The blur of the ground in this photo may give you some idea of just how fast!

... and it can move quite some distance away from the operator!  It tried to go off the 'course' and into those shrubs on the right at one point!

.... and quite a few local dogs thought they would try to catch it...no chance!  The children were trying when I was driving it so no photos of them!  One toddler stood beside me and kept saying 'it's gone, all gone now!'

Like all off road vehicles when they are pushed...it needed some running repairs.  The tubing that holds the aerial wire came off  and needed to be refitted!

So I guess for a quiet weekend we still packed quite a bit in.  Only three weeks to go and I will be at the end of another school term.  We are off on another European road trip and I can't wait.  Australia really does need to look at the length of its school terms!!

Athens highlights

I just thought I would do a quick catch up today as I really have not had a lot of time with the start of the new school half term.  Athens was brilliant, even though there was an attempt made to pick my pocket on the metro!  I caught the person before she was able to take anything.  She obviously denied everything.  I know what I felt and am sure that it was only because she failed that I was able to confront her.  Thank heavens for all that 'useless' art gear at the top of my bag burying all the valuables like wallet, mobile phone, ebook and camera!  I had my pencil case and water colour paints in easy reach for me...in the way for her!  Some pickpockets just have no sense of what is really important in life! I on the other hand will remember which way to carry my bag in the future!  The catch goes TOWARDS your body Ali!!!!  A sickening but useful reminder!

Anyway, even though that happened we had a brilliant time!  Here are a few of our images from Athens:

The view as we flew over the alps!

The flea markets at Monastiraki

My Birthday Cake!

Dogs sleeping on the glass in the square near the flea markets at Monastiraki!

'Mind the Gap'  ....it's all Greek to me!!!

Sharing the day I turned 50 with the love of my life..... the Temple of Zeus in the background while we are at the Parthenon....life is brilliant!!!

I saw olives on a tree for the first time ever the same day I found out my new granddaughter's name is Olive....had to take a photo!  Wow was that tree laden and were the pigeons ever feasting!

A view from the parthenon back across Athens.

The small temple along side the Parthenon

The Parthenon...lots of scaffolding around it....but WOW it is amazing and well worth the visit!

The Temple of Zeus - The original olympic stadium!  It is over 2500 years old (so at 50 I am a real baby!)

As I said a quick catch up.  We took nearly 400 photos in Athens so this is a very limited sample!  We had the most wonderful time and really enjoyed our visit.

On a sadder note, our dog Jazz passed away yesterday morning in Australia.  Rest in peace our beautiful Jazz-a-Belle, you will be sadly missed by the whole family and all those who had had the honour of meeting you.  Such a beautiful girl!



Start of Spring Half Term Break

I have had a fabulous start to my Spring Half Term Break!  On Friday night we went to the theatre in the West End and saw a play called 'The Rivals'.  It starred Penelope Keith and was fabulous.  It is apparently a fairly old play and was very clever and very well done. 

Saturday saw me doing more drawing, including an attempt to draw my Papa....not much of a likeness, but I guess I will need to keep practicing.

On Sunday we went to the football.  It was a knockout match for two of the teams in the last 16 for the FA Cup final.  We saw Fulham defeated by Bolton by one goal to nil.  It was lots of fun, but feezing cold.  It had been drizzling when we got there and even though our seats were supposed to be undercover we were getting wet.  Thankfully it stopped fairly soon after we arrived, so we only had to contend with it being cold, not cold and wet!  By the end of sitting for two hours my toes literally felt like ice blocks.  I have to say I was pleased when the game was over.  I managed to take some short video bites of the Bolton crowd (I tried to include the video but it wouldn't work!) as they reacted at different points throughout the game.  Unfortunately there is not a huge amount of footage as I was running out of both memory and battery.  I still say the most entertaining part of the soccer is the crowd reaction and participation.

On Monday I stayed home for most of the day and tried to draw a self portrait.  Again it is not brilliant, but at least I can see some resemblance in this one!

It is really hard to get decent scans or photos of these pencil drawings so I played with this one a little in photoshop.  It is a better representation than it was, but still not great. 

Yesterday I went and did some shopping and today I went into the middle of London to go shopping.  I bought myself a little set of pan water colours so that I can start playing with them too!

Tomorrow we are off to Athens for three nights.  Hopefully there will be no more riots there!!! I willl be taking my computer and will blog from there if we have time and I have the energy!

Happy Birthday Dooks!!

Well my 'baby' girl turns 24 today.  I know we always say it but it really is very hard to believe that 24 years have gone since the day we welcomed that noisy little bundle into the world.  We were in a hospital ward in Sydney with three mums and their baby boys.  The boys had sweet gentle little cries.  My little bundle of sugar and spice had I am sure, the loudest cry in the whole hospital.  The nurses could hear her from the other end of the ward and at one point said she HAD to go into the nursery because she was disturbing the whole ward! 

Well that noisy bundle managed to grow into one of the most delightful young women to bless this planet....and I do not believe that is just a biased Mum speaking!  Happy Birthday my love, may you have the most wonderful year ahead.  With all the joy you bring to those around you, you deserve every ounce of happiness that is possible!

Ben took this photo of Ash at I when they were visiting the UK last year.  It is one of my favourites of the two of us together!

One of my best ever decisions!

Was to marry this gorgeous man!

 Happy Valentines Day. I love you sweetheart! 

 XXXX

Busy weekend!

This weekend has been a busy one!  Yesterday I went into Southbank here in London and met up with a group of women who have all done the online experimental art course I did last September.  Amelia who runs the courses organised the get together and it was a great day.  We met for coffee and then lunch and then we followed that up with an experimantal activity with our cameras.  The idea was to walk for 5 minutes and then start taking photos.  You are meant to take one photo every minute for 36 minutes.....mmm!  Somehow I found it quite difficult to be so disciplined!  I am sure I took more than 36 photos and the intervals between them were very varied.  Not to worry I had a lot of fun doing it and got some interesting photos!

This is the group getting ready to go out and start shooting!

  

Loved this photo of the London Eye!

...and this one I caught of Donald Duck lighting up a smoke.....somehow ruined the image of what Donald should be!

 I love how moody this shot is!

The Valentines display on one of the support structures for the Eye.

Part of the Queen's Walk along the Thames.

  

A section of  a sculpture.

Part of a display of kids art work all about their brain. The display was really interesting and provided some food for thought for me with respect to my art classes at school!

A close up of some rose hips taken with the macro!

There is a story there.  I meant to take the lens from Richard's camera for my good camera, but grabbed the macro instead!  So most of the photos above were taken with the point and shoot!  Not to worry it still worked out ok!  I had lots of fun and really enjoyed meeting the others!  After chatting to one of the other ladies I have been inspired to learn about Photoshop so have put it onto my computer today and will hopefully start doing something about learning how to use it it the near future!

Last night Sam left to come back to Australia.  He has been over here since the end of November.  Some of the time he has been travelling but quite a large chunk of the time he has been with us.  The house will seem quiet and yes we will miss him, but it is also nice to have our little house back to ourselves again.  The house is only a two bedroom place and so is crowded when we have extras here.  We have loved having all of our visitors and would love to see even more of our friends and family!

Today we headed off out, not really knowing where we were going.  En route I suggested we have a look around South Bank together so we went to Waterloo Station and walked down there.  We wandered along the Queen's and then across the Westminster Bridge.  We then wandered towards the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben (or as my darling aspie husband would say 'the tower that houses the bell called Big Ben') ....got to be accurate you know!  We spotted Westminster Abbey and decided to see if it was open...no...but St Margaret's was so we had a look in there.  It has gorgeous stained glass in some of the windows, but not so wonderful in others as they were destroyed in the bombing of London!  Sorry no photos for two reasons....number one they ask you not to take them, and number two even if I could have, I had left my camera at home!

Anyway, after wandering through the church and seeing the memorial plaques for some famous people including Sir Walter Raleigh we headed off again with no particular idea of where we were going!  London is so brilliant because there is so much to see!  After a few minutes we wandered past the 'Cabinet War Museum' and decided to go in.  It is the underground museum where Churchill and the war cabinet ran things during WW2.  It was excellent and, in my view, well worth the visit.  Just an interesting note ...I spotted that the clocks in there said the time was 4:59!

The centre also has the 'Churchill Museum' as part of it and this was a fascinating exhibition of the life of Winston Churchill.  What an interesting character he was!  I never realised that in his spare time he loved to paint and did so with a reasonable level of expertise!  He also tried sculpting but did not keep it up because he apparently found it too messy!  We sat and watched film of his funeral parade through London.  Richard said he remembered it happening when he was a child.  Even after all this time it was actually very moving to see.  It reminded me of Diana's funeral in that the crowds were silent as the cortage moved along the road.  Somehow I felt the same awe at how silent large crowds of people can be when they are moved by the gravity of the situation and the sense of community mourning.

Wandering back to the underground it was cold and raining lightly.  We have had some warmer weather lately and have even been up into double figures, so I guess we were not as rugged up as we should have been.  We are meant to be heading into some cooler days again!  We decided to head home to the warmth and to cook dinner (well at least Richard cooked dinner) a bit earlier than normal.  We had eaten and tidied up by 7:30 ...very early for us!

A beautiful day!

We have had another cold snap here with night time temperatures below zero and days getting to the dizzy heights of only a few degrees.  It was actually zero at midday on Saturday!  Yesterday was a beautiful winter's day here in London.  It was cold, but gloriously sunny.  We headed off to Kew gardens for the final use of our 12 month passes.  Initially we were going to visit the open day for the herbarium, but the tours finished at 2:30 and by the time we got there it was too late.  Not to worry we still had a lovely time wandering around the gardens.

We came across this beautiful old Corsican Pine.  It was planted in Kew Gardens in 1814 and is said to be the oldest tree of its type in the country!  It has been struck by lightening several times and even hit by a small aircraft and is still standing...how's that for staying power!  Most importantly, note the beautiful blue sky through the tree's canopy!  Lovely, especially when Saturday would have won an award for the greyest of days!

In one of the glass houses we spotted this wonderful piece of art work.  He is a model of a hummingbird moth and is made of wood:

.... gorgeous isn't he!

Another arty thing we came across was this:

... and this was hanging inside:

We also discovered this fabulous tree which, from this angle makes me think of one of Tolkien's Ents!:

...and honestly it had the most fabulous gnarly, overhanging, yet gracefully pendulous branches.  ...and would you believe I can't remember what it was!

School's going well!  Only three more weeks and we are on our half term holiday....then hi ho, hi ho it's off to Athens we go!!  Have a great week everybody!