Lilacs In May

Birdsong

The novel of love and loss in the era of the First World War by Sebastian Faulks, has been beautifully dramatised by the BBC. Part one of two was shown last night. It has taken a long time to get it onto our screen but last nights first episode of two showed it was worth the wait. Eddie Redmayne and Clemence Poesy were so well cast as the lovers Stephen and Isabelle. A real treat for a January evening.

image from http://www.show-and-stay.co.uk/magazine/2010/11/04/review-birdsong-starring-ben-barnes/

7 Days

The 8th was about shapes

The 9th, colour

The 10th was a dance-off, taken of daughter and I, by son.

The 11th, light

The 12th, shadows

The 13th, texture

The 14th, shade

Have a good 7 days.

January Blues

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all

A beautiful poem by Emily Dickinson that sums up how I feel in January. Living where we do in the world means we have short days in our long dark winters. Even though the weather has been kind (too kind, the cruel cold must surely be coming) I need hope that sunlight and warmth will return. I took the above photo yesterday, the bright low sun lightening everyone and everything.

Blogger is behaving badly. I cannot get it to centre Emily's poem. Bad Blogger.

7 Days

The 1st January was putting away

The 2nd gave emerging Snowdrops

The 3rd was grey and wet

The 4th arrived with a dazzling sunrise

The 5th ended with tea

The 6th had a musical interlude

The 7th bought glorious sunshine

Have a good 7 days.

Happy New Year

Whew. Another year over, a new one just begun, as the fabulous John Lennon song says.

The photograph above was taken besides the rowing lake in Dorney, where the olympic rowing will take place in this summers olympic games. It was a cold, windy January day, with occasional glimpses of low, bright sun.

Although I am not a good photographer, I do love to take photographs. To master my new camera, and to improve my skill, I have decided to set myself the challenge of completing Project 365, taking a photograph every day. I wonder how this will pan out. I think the largest part of the challenge will be to find something interesting to photograph, especially in the first 3 months of the year.

Whatever your challenges are this year, I wish you and yours a very happy 2012.

Christmas In The Capital

A night time view of the London skyline.

The same view, the morning after the night before.

In the morning I walked past this traditional cobblers shop window, decked with tinsel in the back streets of Mayfair.

The shop Shepherds the bookbinders is my absolute favourite. When I win the lottery, I will buy all my Christmas shopping from here. Such beautifully tooled, handmade leather book covers. The paper chains in the window were made from a selection of their own hand made paper range, as lovely as the faded colours of the sugar paper chains of childhood.

Heywood Hill book shop, the antiquarian book shop where Nancy Mitford once worked, and the HH with whom Nancy regularly corresponded.

There was also a fair bit of Christmas wreath competition in Mayfair.

This was my favourite door and wreath combination.

Thank you for stopping by this year, and for taking time to leave comments. Happy Christmas.

A Day Out

Last week I was lucky enough to spend the day exploring whilst in London for a couple of days. First on my list was The British Library. The brutal modern building that squats next to the gothic spires of St Pancras station.

To the left of the above photo you can just see Newton (below) cutting himself a slice of apple pie,

....or something.

inside was a hive of activity - books, computers and lucky students

this 3d artwork caught my eye, it messed with your mind as you walked past it

The shelves of books gave the appearance of stained glass windows in this temple of learning

I love this vintage printing block art installation

then it was time to leave, into the dark night

easy for you to say Marie Curie, physicist, chemist, pioneer, the first woman solo Nobel prize winner, the only woman to win in 2 sciences and the only person to win in multiple sciences.

More Blog, more flog!

Ab Fab have a Christmas special coming out, see sneaky peek below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTr8VV3z0eY

Have a great weekend.

Unseasonal Treats

This weekend I enjoyed a long country walk, it blew away the cobwebs, and I was so glad I had taken my camera along. Most of the views were what you would expect; bright colourful berries, leaves carpeting the woodland floor and fungus sprouting on damp tree trunks. But in amongst the usual Autumnal sights were others that I would not expect to see at this time of the year...