18th November 2010

This is my friend, Leslie. We go to the same scrapbooking crop. Unfortunately she was involved in the 7/7 bombing in London. Since then she has suffered PTSD. Today I went with her to King's Cross to lay flowers at the memorial to those who died.
At first we thought we wouldn't be allowed to leave the flowers. Security is very tight. The staff were very apologetic and we ended up talking to the duty station manager. He explained that people are generally encouraged to come at 6pm ( when the fire happened) but that since we were there he would come with us, with the official wreath, and we would lay our flowers together. Leslie is unable to go out after dark.
Sorry its not the best photo - I was being quick and surreptitious, expecting to be arrested at any moment.
There are 2 memorials - one for the bombing victims and one for the victims of the fire.
It was Leslie who told me about the Mixed Media Art day at the Museum of London - to which we both went in June. She is an inspirational and inovative artist and I appreciate her very much.

On holiday with a very smart phone...

If you would like to see nice photos of my short visit to Scotland in August, then head over to my daughter Evie's blog. The link is on your right. What follows is a different side of the holiday...

I knew Evie had this nice new phone...

As we left London there was a prolonged call to someone called Fiona. The tunnels didn't seem to cut the connection.

Then we got to Lancaster. 'I wonder what that river is called?' No reply but I could feel the increased level of concentration beside me. She looked up from the phone and announced 'its the River Lune'! Really?

We got to my cousin's house and the conversation was all about her son's forthcoming wedding. The hymns? The first one was All things bright and beautiful' - straightforward enough. The second was something like We vow to one another... would that be to the tune of I Vow to thee my country? We didn't know but the phone told us the answer ( which I can't remember now!)

Visiting my sister in Dunoon by ferry, I've always been confused about which loch is which - three of them branch off where the Clyde turns to flow to the south -no longer thanks to that phone! I know exactly which is Gare Loch, Loch Long and Holy Loch.

The next day was wet - again so we decided to stay in Glasgow. I took Evie to see some of my favourite places. One of them was the replica of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's house. It's attached to the Hunterian Art Gallery. She tried hard to get a guided tour of the house on her phone, but it didn't quite happen...

The next day it was much brighter so off to Loch Lomond we headed. I've had many a picnic on the bonny banks and I always knew there was at least one island... but now I know exactly which piece of land is Inchmurrin.

In bed at night I wanted to finish a chapter of my book. 'Thats OK, Mum, I'll just try my flag recognition app. while you do that.' I think she could recognise about 40 flags at that point. The World Cup had been a help. Shortly afterwards my chapter finished I switched off the light, forgetting she might still need it. Problem? Not at all, the torch on her phone was like a searchlight- brighter than all the lights in our room! And anyway she had moved on to do a maths game. ( I wish she'd had a phone like that when she was at school!)

On the way home it was cloudy and we couldn't see the sun. We wondered which direction we were travelling. Should have been south - to London? It turned out we were going east at that point, but we did get safely to London!

Thanks, Evie, for being such a good travelling companion and enriching the experience with your phone!

Silver Linings.

You will have to read back to my birthday blog at the beginning of July to find out why I have called this series of blogs 'Silver Linings'
This is the hotel in Eastbourne where I have just been to the Cardinal Colours Scrapbook Retreat.

It is a lovely place...

and I met some lovely people! This group sat together for the first meal and we stayed together for every meal after that. I've never been in a group that gelled together quite so well before. It was a good experience! More of the stuff I made, later when I take the photos of it all.
Thanks, girls, for making the weekend so special.

Lichfield.

This weekend in Lichfield did me a lot of good. I loved the size of the cathedral and all the old historicl buildings.

To get into the town we had to walk across the bridge at the end of this pond - or lake. This

This is my cousin - whose son was being married.

This is the dishy bridegroom...
When the blog template only lets you upload 4 photos at a time, you chose the best... and beautiful as the bride was, her photo wasn't among the four best. So sorry...

Silver linings in Glasgow

Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife designed the interior of their home in their own special style - and it it stunning! This is a replica, attached to the Hunterian Art Gallery.

We spent a wet day travelling by land and sea to visit my sister and her family in Dunoon. 4 generations here!

This is one of my favourite views in Glasgow. On the left is the Cathedral and beyond it is the graveyard known as the Necropolis. The highest statue up there is of John Knox, the Scottish reformer.

On the day we went to Loch Lomond the sun came out. I don't know how many picnics I have had over on the side behind Evie's head. On this occasion we stayed at Lomond Shores, the visitor centre at the south end of the loch.

Thanks for being such a good travel companion, Evie.

And I still haven't got round to the lovely flowers in the Botanics...

Random Silver Linings...

Outside the British Museum we chanced on this South African Garden

as we passed on the way to Blades, the stamp shop. They sell some nice arty magazines too...at nice prices!!

Another day saw me at The Princess Diana Memorial Playpark with my two daughters and various friends and family members. There must have been about 20+ in our group. This is the French contingent.It was lovely to see them and practice some French.

On the way home I called to say hello to another good friend and while we had a cup of tea, this butterfly visited us.

I thought it was called a woodland something but I can't find it in the book now.

Random Silver Linings in August.

I met up with my good friend DMJ and her daughter in law and grandaughter.

Then my daughter in law brought me this lovely bunch of flowers. Made up of lilies and night scented stock, it waws one of the nicest I have received. Thank you Julie!

I had a lovely North London woodland walk with Evie and her Dad.

These gladioli in our church one Sunday gave me great pleasure.

The silver cloud at Valentine's Mansion.

This is a stately home kind of place very near Gant's Hill and a walk from Ilford Town Centre. As well as the house - with its superbly equipped family room for the children, it has a cafe where there is a kitchen garden. Look at this for a cabbage!

There is a walled garden - trust me to head for the thistle.

There are lots of flowers but this time I focussed on the sea holly (eryngium) and the blue one which turns out to be Perovskia. Thanks to Wikipedia I now know that it is named after a Russian general, VA Perovski (1794 - 1857) and is also known as Russian Sage.

The silver cloud at Ilford.

While our daughter and her family went on holiday, we were able to spend 10days or so looking after their house and garden. Imagine
my joy on walking into their house and seeing this work of Lissa Lou's on the back of the kitchen door. All week I thought to myself 'aren't I lucky to be the Grandma at the top of the tree!'

They have a French laptop with an AZERTY keyboard which I worked hard at mastering. It also had the 'O' key missing. You have to press very hard to get it to work so I tried various alternatives which cause a certain amount of hilarity on Facebook. I received suggestions about books and teeshirts searching for the missing 'O'.

It was a great pleasure to see Brian taking such an interest in the garden. At this moment he is there helping to weed and tidy up for the winter - something he never felt confident enough to do in our shard garden.

Another pleasure to sit in the garden at 6am topping and tailing gooseberries for the freezer.
Thank you Heather and Alberto - can you book us in for next summer and for 2012...

Happy Birthday to me!

At the beginning of July I was 70 years old. Heather and Alberto and Evie arranged a superb barbecue for me in their garden.
They made me a lovely card and decorated all the tables with pretty cloths (mine!) and yellow flowers; the theme was yellow because I like mimosa but its out of season in London in July.

I never had balloons at the gate for my birthday before in my whole life! And if you look closely you can just see the darling little jar of dandelions!

Heather baked a superb 3 layer birthday cake straight out of the pages of Good Housekeeping Magazine. Alberto was in charge of the barbecue and Brian made up a quiz for everyone.
Unfortunately after a traumatic Spring with various problems I actually took ill on this day and so there are not so many photographs as I would have liked. I will try hard to keep up the blog because in spite of the ongoing nature of the problems, they can't be allowed to take over and there have been some silver clouds this last couple of months.

The Art of Mixed Media

I have just had the pleasure of spending two days this weekend in an art studio at the Museum of London. The tutor explained the recipe for different kinds of paint. (I should say at this point, before you eat Skittles again, check out what shellac is made from)(and you probably won't eat Skittles again!)After this we dispersed to try our hand at playing with the different kinds of 'mark makers'. This is my 'play' (as opposed to 'work'). I used india ink, wax crayon, gouache and oil stick. The scene was out of the window. There are some jokes in there if you can see them. The torches were a silvery metal, and didn't have fire burning in them. It just needed brightening up.

The technique we were introduced to on the second day involved using turpentine to scrape the paint of a magazine picture and turning the picture into something completely different. I could not see the point of this until I came across an article about Margaret Thatcher. Then I thought Yes! I could enjoy scraping the smile of your face! so I did and it turned out to be Blackpoool Tower, because that is made of tempered steel - or some such metal.
There's lots of layers here, india ink, gouache, pigment, tissue paper, and wax crayons.This is not the finished article, but the colours came out better in this photo. The finished one has a bit more white gouache highlighting.
It was a fun weekend with lots of inspiration from the others on the course.

Kenwood

I saw a programme on TV this week - maybe Countryfile- when we were asked to let them know our favourite secret places. Whats the point of that I thought - they wouldn't be secret any more...This is definitely one of my favourite places. Its very public, but the magic is there no matter how many people there are around.
The rhododendrons and azaleas are on the way - and we'll be able to enjoy them for another few weeks.

This is the Japanese hankerchief tree I googled that and top of the list was www.hampsteadheath.net with photos featuring this very tree.

This year we dicovered a small bluebell wood - across the path and down the banking towards the lake. Real dark blue English bluebells - no paler blue Spanish ones in sight.

And on the edge of the lake a water rat 0r vole who posed quite happily for several photos.