Much of a muchness

I try not to use this blog too often as a personal forum for all my pet peeves, personal traumas and disasters however, every once in a while something happens and I just have to explode! Back in April, I thought I was being very clever and bought some garden furniture from an eBay shop. It was a very good price (but still quite expensive -£600 or so). I still haven’t received the furniture.

Here we are at the beginning of July and my garden is still bare. I am furious. Particularly as the company that sold it to me (Land of Sofas based in Poole - be warned!) are now no longer registered as an eBay seller and do not communicate with me at all, and all their contact details are no longer available on eBay.

I managed to track them down and have contacted them several times. The girl I spoke to (Gemma) is always very short with me and seemed irritated I am bothering her. She has given me several dates for delivery, which have passed with no apologies or explanations, so I opened a dispute with PayPal and they are investigating the situation but as time goes by and our very short summer whizzes past, I am still furniture-less. My lovely big sons keep offering to go round and sort her out, as Poole isn’t too far from where I live (she signed off with her home address when she initially contacted me after the sale) but I am resisting their offer and attempting to do things through proper channels but if all else fails, I may go round there myself (with sons and a couple of their taller, even more scary friends) to discuss my refund!

The annoying thing is that the seller does appear to have lots of positive feedback but on closer investigation, most of it is for selling some sports drink bottles. All the feedback for the garden furniture they have sold in the past, says how long they had to wait for delivery and a lot of those people demanded refunds. The lesson from all this is to read the feedback properly. Don’t just look at the high positive feedback score and assume all is well. That’s the end of the lesson, I’ll keep you posted with any developments.

Anyway, rant over. A nice thing this week, has been reading the new ‘Top 101 Artists’ Blogs’ list over at Kim’s blog. Kim very deservedly (especially since her blog redesign) is at number 1, Emila’s lovely blog is at number 2 and guess who is number 3? Yes, moi! It’s such a phenomenal amount of work to update this list every month (particularly given the vagaries of Technorati) so I do recommend you head over there to check out some great art blogs. Kim was also sweet enough to pass on to me one of the many awards she has received recently - the Friendly Blogger award - well I try to be! Thanks Kim!

I’m going to pass this on to a couple of new commentators here at ‘Much of a muchness’ , 70’s teen and Daddy Papersurfer. If you read their blogs you will see why I enjoy reading them so much. And they are indeed, very friendly bloggers :-)

As I write this, there are gale force winds and rain sodden grey skies above, but does this stop #2 son from lighting the barbecue and cooking the ribs he so lovingly prepared last night? Indeed it does not. He is outside wearing shorts, a jacket and a woolly hat, cooking our lunch before we settle down to watch the tennis at Wimbledon (ladies final - the Williams sisters - should be a good one).

After the tennis, #2 son is going out (to play golf would you believe!) and I am settling in to watch Doctor Who - series finale, cliffhanger ending last week, Martha, Rose, Donna, Daleks, Davros  and all the Torchwood team, especially lovely John Barrowman aka Captain Jack - I can barely wait - 5 hours 20 minutes to go……

I was supposed to be going to a picnic at Mapperton listening to Cuban Salsa music tonight but that is looking like a non-starter so more TV it is….and then tomorrow, the Men’s Final, Roger Federer versus Rafael Nadal, the dream final! Woo hoo!

Couch potato? Moi?

It was a wonderful weekend. On Friday, I went to Wimbledon with my friend Amanda and we managed to cadge a lift from a friend, John, who was driving up, instead of having to catch the train, so that was a great start to the day. When we arrived, there were security checks and my tiny Swiss Army penknife which is attached to my keyring was confiscated from my handbag. This was so irritating as they only seemed to be searching bags so if the keys had been in my coat pocket, they would not have been noticed. Some security. Note to would-be trouble makers - carry your machete in your coat pocket….

It started to rain just as we arrived but play was only delayed for 90 minutes so we did not have long to wait before watching Roger Federer walk onto a sunny Centre Court. He won his match against the French player, Marc Gicquel, in straight sets, 6-3, 6-3, 6-1. We then watched Serena Williams and Amelie Mauresmo play a thrilling first set which Serena narrowly won but in the second set, Amelie seemed to be carrying an injury and played below par and so Serena won easily. So all in all, a very bad day for French tennis players.

We managed to slip out between matches for a little refreshment  - my summer favourite, a glass of Pimms!

After an afternoon of tennis, we met up with John and Bob for a Wimbledon tradition, strawberries and cream - caused me no end of problems as I have an aversion to licking wet wood and the strawberries came with a wooden spoon! Still, undaunted, I ate the strawberries with my fingers and drank the cream from the bowl - not very ladylike but needs must… and of course, we had a glass or two of champagne.

The next day, I had to be up early as I was going to Glastonbury Festival with some other friends. #2 son had gone on ahead as he was camping and he sent a message that it had rained on Friday night so not good news. He said that he and his friends had put 10 tents in a circle with a tarpaulin on the floor, a gazebo on top of that and then covered the whole assembly with another tarpaulin so their encampment was snug and watertight! He learned his lesson after last year when they got soaked and never really dried out plus, it was so muddy, they had nowhere to sit down for 4 days.

By the time I arrived on Saturday, the sun had come out and the weather was warm and sunny all day - such a treat. Highlights of the day were Seasick Steve, Crowded House, James Blunt, Manu Chao, The Raconteurs  and a shambolic Amy Winehouse who manged to get into a fight with some of her fans….

This is my favourite bit - Crowded House singing ‘Weather with You’ and the wave at the end was fantastic! Did you spot me? In the middle, towards the back :-)

The next day, we saw John Mayer and bizarrely, Neil Diamond, who seemed to struggle to get the crowd going until he sang ‘I’m a Believer’ and then of course ‘Sweet Caroline’ which brought the house down. He should have just come on and sang ‘Sweet Caroline’ half a dozen times and everyone would have been happy. I love the way everyone sang the backing vocals as well as the main tune…

The weather stayed dry all the time I was there so I must thank you for all your kind comments and wishes - they worked! here is a small slide show of photographs from Wimbledon and Glastonbury.

I haven’t got a book to show you today. I’ve had a busy couple of days. I had some friends over for dinner on Friday night and as I am not one of life’s natural cooks, it took me most of the day to shop and then prepare the food. I made crab and scallop chowder with home made bread, followed by rack of lamb with a red wine and shallot sauce, green beans and asparagus, rosemary and garlic roast potatoes followed by coconut rice pudding with mango and lime and yummy cheese and biscuits. A feast - even if I do say so myself. For once it all turned out well (the rice pudding was slightly stodgy but still tasted nice).

I was woken at 8am on Saturday morning by a delivery man - marvellous. He was delivering a new TV so I cleared up the mess from the night before and then unpacked the TV and started to set it up. The connections were all very complicated involving a satellite receiver and a DVD player but I just unplugged the cables from the old TV and attached them to the new TV. I just couldn’t get the DVD player to talk to the TV and fiddled about for ages trying to tune the TV to pick up the signal. Finally I realised that I was missing a scart lead ( I vaguely remember one of the boys ‘borrowing it’) so the DVD player wasn’t even connected to anything. I ransacked the garage and finally found another one then the DVD player still wouldn’t work but eventually it dawned on me that the batteries in the remote control were flat - DOH!

I spent the afternoon smashing up my old garden table and chairs which had rotted beyond repair - surprisingly satisfying! Some friends had come round to help and they carted the bits away for me and by the time they had left, the day had gone, so no books again. So instead of a book, I am going to share with you, some of my recent ‘StumbleUpon’ finds.

First up is Clive Stevens who does amazing paper sculpture. This is one of my favourites.

All the work is for sale and he sells kits, books, greeting cards and calendars too. Fabulous stuff.

Next up is a photograph of the new coins which are going to be introduced in the UK over the next year.

“The new designs have been chosen via an open competition which was widely publicised in the national media in August 2005 and attracted 4,000 entries. The winning designer is 26-year-old Matthew Dent, originally from Bangor who now lives and works in London as a graphic designer. After exploring a number of different options, Matthew Dent finally developed the heraldic theme, taking the greatest heraldic device ever used on coinage – the Royal Arms.

As you can see in the image above, the Shield of the Royal Arms has been given a contemporary treatment and its whole has been cleverly split among all six denominations from the 1p to the 50p, with the £1 coin displaying the heraldic element in its entirety. This is the first time that a single design has been used across a range of United Kingdom coins.”

Aren’t they gorgeous? I love the way they form a compete design and I foresee hours of fun playing with them when they are finally released :-)

Next up is the work of Thomas Keeley, as featured on the woosta.com website.

He creates surreal 3D objects which are both thought provoking and fun. Obviously, this book appealed to me, so inventive.

The last thing I want to share with you is a voice. The voice of Andrew Johnston to be precise. There is a TV program on Saturday nights here in the UK called ‘Britain’s Got Talent’. This young boy appeared on the show last week. Enjoy this and if you are not crying your eyes out by the end then you have a heart of stone.

Hope you are having a great weekend. I’m off to make a book…..

I love the colours of this book. I’ve always been a fan of lime green and navy blue and this Japanese Katazome-shi stencilled paper from Falkiners (where else) is very pretty indeed.

As you can see from the photographs it is still very sunny here in Dorset. We have had a really long spell of clear sunny days - a bit chilly perhaps but it’s so wonderful to see the sun. It encourages me to take long walks on the beach. I went a couple of evenings ago and watched the sun go down - so lovely, here are some shots I took.

It wasn’t the best sunset I have ever seen at Hive Beach but it was quite nice. Here are a couple of shots I took a couple of years ago. It was earlier in the year and there were a couple of nights when the sunsets were breathtaking. These photographs don’t really do justice to the colours in the sky but do give you an idea how stunning it was.

Today, I went for a walk along the cliff tops. Although the sun was shining there was a freezing easterly wind blowing which was at our backs on the way out but in our faces on the way back. I thought my ears were about to drop off. Here’s a shot of how rough the sea was as we set off on our walk.

Luckily, at the end of the walk, we stopped for lunch at the Hive Beach Cafe and devoured a bowl of wonderful Spicy Seafood Soup with a huge chunk of granary bread. It was delicious and I guess, quite a healthy lunch, which was good as the purpose of all this walking is to try and lose some weight before the holiday season kicks in. So I resisted the temptations of scones, Dorset Apple cake and other yumminesses on display - but it was very hard for someone who has no will power whatsoever. Luckily, my skinny friend has loads (which must be why she is thin) and I was shamed into resistance. On a nice day, (ie warm) everyone sits outside and enjoys the view and the sunshine but today everyone was packed inside keeping out of the icy wind, so we had to share a table with a couple who tucked into ham, egg and chips, followed by a huge slab of carrot cake with a lime frosting - so you can see how I suffered.

Not much else to report really. I received this in an email the other day. It reminded me of the days when I used to have cats, the days before they decided they preferred my next door neighbour to me and moved in there…..

and there is another one….

How true.

One of my friends asked me if I would attempt to rescue her favourite cookery book which had fallen into disrepair. You can tell she is a keen cook, my cookery books are all on display in my kitchen in pristine condition. What follows are the before and after photographs of the project.

I used one of my photographs for the cover image and an Emma Bridgewater double sized wrapping paper for the end papers - it is spotted on one side and striped on the other which makes for a nice contrast and compliments the fruity colours on the cover. The glue wasn’t quite dry when I took the photographs so the paper is a bit wrinkly inside but it is now sitting in my book press and should dry out nicely. I hope she likes it - at least it will give a new lease of life to Delia’s recipes :-)

You may have noticed how I like a nice link so continue the fruity theme….

And finally, thanks to Dave Walker for this time saving, healthy eating advice.

And you really must check out Dunn’s latest post over at My Interesting Files. I borrowed this image from there but there are loads more to see - all very clever and funny.