Much of a muchness

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.

A couple of years ago, I had a really strange experience. I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep. I thought I was still awake and I opened my eyes and was sure that there was someone in the room with me. I closed my eyes tight, absolutely terrified and felt someone sit on the bed and then I felt as if someone was sitting on me as I couldn’t breathe and I was completely unable to move or struggle. After what seemed like a couple of minutes, I eventually woke up and found that it had all been a rather hideous nightmare, and it took me a long while to recover.

This same dream has happened to me maybe half a dozen times since. Always the same feeling that someone is in the room, a feeling of terror and the same suffocating sensation and the worst is not being able to struggle. It happened again last night with one refinement, this time, I knew what was happening was a nightmare and I although I still tried to fight the person off, it was more a case of trying to wake myself up as this time, I knew subconsciously, what was happening to me.

I was listening to the radio a while ago, and they were talking about why people think they have been abducted by aliens. One of the doctor/scientists on the programme said that one explanation was ‘Sleep Paralysis’ and went on to describe exactly what I have described to you above. I have since read a lot about about it and it is a very well documented phenomenon - try googling it, there are lots of references to it. Not everyone experiences the hallucinations which accompany the paralysis but it is felt that it may be a possible explanation for people thinking they have been visited by witches, ghosts and aliens and such like.

One of the many web sites that explains this experience is run by the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada and it has links to lots of other ones. The painting at the top of the page is by the Swiss artist, Henry Fuseli and is called ‘The NIghtmare’. It has been suggested that he may be depicting a sleep paralysis episode. In mythology, the Hag is a well known figure of a wizened old crone who is supposed to visit during sleep, sit on your chest and send you nightmares. So if I look a little ‘hagridden’ today, you will excuse me I’m sure! And it is Friday the 13th today…

Anyway, back to business. A couple of weeks ago, I got chatting to an old lady at the market stall when I was buying those plasticized fabrics. She asked me if I would have a go at restoring her favourite poetry book which she loved and used a lot, but which had fallen to bits after her dog had a go at chewing it (obviously not a poetry fan then).

As you can see it was in a bit of a state, I was going to make a new case for it but she said she liked the original cover (teeth marks and all) so as I’m not really a book restorer I did the best I could with what I had, I hope she likes it. She won’t know of course that the first time I did it, I opened the book up and realized I had stuck the text block in UPSIDE DOWN. One of the advantages of making blank books is that this doesn’t normally matter. In this case, it mattered a lot, so I had to rip it apart and start again…

This has all been a bit serious hasn’t it? I’d better leave you with a bit of silliness to lighten the mood or you might not come back :-)

And to keep you up to date on the progress of my diet….

When I was a little girl aged 9, one of my best friends was a boy called Andrew. He lived just down the road from my family, his mum was my mum’s friend and his sisters played with mine. We were friends until his family emigrated to Australia when I was 14.

Years later, when I was married and living in Hemel Hempstead, I went into London for the day with my husband and some friends. We decided not to drive into the centre of London so we parked in St John’s Wood and caught the tube. We got on the first train that arrived but quickly realised we were going in the wrong direction so we jumped off that train, ran across the platform and jumped on one going the right way. As we sat chatting, a guy who was sitting next to us, said ‘Hello, Diane’ - it was Andrew with his wife, Helen. They had come back to the UK to see if they wanted to return permanently and were living in - you’ve guessed it - Hemel Hempstead! They had just made the decision to return to Australia, and it was another 20 years until we met again for the day in London while they were on a visit in 2002 and I met them again this week. Each time we meet, it’s like we had only seen each other a few days ago - except with lots of news to catch up on.

If we had not decided to go into London that day, not decided to park in St Johns Wood, not got on the wrong train, not sat in that particular carriage….we would probably have never met up again. On the way home on the train yesterday, I sent them a text to thank them for the visit and to wish them a safe journey home, just as I pressed ’send’ a text arrived from them saying the same thing. Spooky!

I love hearing stories of coincidences like these - synchronicity, happenstance - whatever you call it. All a bit ‘Sliding Doors’. Now that was a depressing film…and a happy one at the same time…. There was one particular quote from this film which made me laugh

‘Gerry, I’m a woman! We don’t say what we WANT! But we reserve the right to get pissed off if we don’t get it. That’s what makes us so fascinating! And not a little bit scary.’

You have been warned!

I also must recommend a great book by Carol Shields which I read years ago called ‘Happenstance’. It was the story of a marriage told from first the wife’s perspective and then when you had finished the first half of the book, you turned it over and started reading from the front again - the husband’s story, or of course, you could have started the other way round. I have always thought it was a clever way to show that there are two sides to every story and giving both of them equal importance.

By the way, the illustration at the top of the page is by Edward Monkton, who makes a range of hilarious greeting cards, based on the ‘Interesting Thoughts of Edward Monkton’.

I went up to London yesterday. I won’t bore you with the tedium of the journey there and back but suffice it to say it was a sorry catalogue of delays, misinformation and outright porkie pies.

Example, on journey home:

Announcement 1: ‘delay is due to operational misunderstandings at Waterloo Station’.

Announcement 2: ‘delay was due to an electrical storm in the Wimbledon area’

Announcement 3: ‘delay due to major signalling problems just outside the station’

Drives me mad especially as on the way there, the train was 30 minutes late because there was a problem with the train doors which meant they decided not to stop at all between Southampton and London. ‘Hurrah!’ the passengers cried, ‘A faster journey!’ -until the train ground to a complete halt and just sat there for 30 minutes.

Anyway, I had a nice time in London. Falkiners is even more yummy than usual as they seem to have had a bit of a re-organisation and all the lovely papers are now catalogued beautifully so that you can see everything they have in stock and not just the relatively small number of papers on display. Result? I spent probably twice as much as I would have otherwise - genius!

I then walked to Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road and bought some more paper and then walked to Liberty to buy a birthday gift for a friend and yes-you’ve guessed it yet more paper! Surprisingly, Liberty had a really good range of Japanese Chiyogami papers and some pretty gift wrap. So it was a very successful shopping expedition.

I’m sorry I’ve been AWOL this last couple of days and especially sorry I haven’t been responding to your comments but yesterday, I met up with some girlie mates at a friend’s house and we had a very pleasant time making books. I showed them how to make ribbon books a month or so ago and they have caught the bug! It was really interesting to see their different approaches to materials and their ideas for extending what you can do with the books. It might even galvanize me into trying something new!

Last night I went for a long walk with a friend. We drove to a village called Langton Herring which is a mile or so inland from the Fleet and Chesil Beach. I’ve mentioned Chesil Beach before. It is a shingle beach which is 18 miles long and runs from Portland to West Bay. The stones on the beach are much larger at the Portland end and gradually decrease in size towards West Bay. It used to be said that sailors who were washed up on the beach could tell where they were by the size of the shingle. For 8 miles of it’s length, the beach encloses a lagoon called the Fleet. It’s famous because it is where Barnes Wallis tested the bouncing bombs which were used in the famous Dam busters raid during World War 2.

This is a photograph of the Fleet and Chesil Beach I took last year.

The walk from Langton Herring on a cool sunny evening was quite spectacular. It was silent apart from the sounds of skylarks singing and seagulls calling. The lambs in the fields were playing and leaping about, some of the field were bright yellow with oilseed rape. And when we arrived at the Fleet, the water was flat calm and the sun was setting, it was so peaceful and beautiful. here are some of the photographs I took. You can click on each thumbnail to see a larger version.

The other good news is that Abbotsbury Swannery which is also on the Fleet and had to close earlier in the year because of bird flu, has now re-opened and has just had the first cygnets hatch! Apparently, this has happened much earlier than usual and as the arrival of the first baby swan is said to herald the first day of summer, this is good news indeed!

This gorgeous image is by Geoffrey Franklin of Christchurch, Dorset and was taken from a slide show of his swannery images on the BBC website.

This paper is one from Falkiners, ( gratuitous mention!) it’s a Japanese Chiyogami, which I have actually used before but in a black/red colour way. I think I like the black one best but the yellow is very Spring-like and jolly. They remind me of a Rennie Macintosh design.

Now then, brace yourselves for another Dorset geography lesson! I went for a walk this morning the sun was shining although rain was forecast, so it seemed churlish not to make the most of the beautiful weather we have been having. I went to my favourite spot, Hive Beach (my header image was taken there) but instead of walking along the beach to the east (as in my header image) I went to the west. The tide was in so I couldn’t walk along the beach. I walked along the cliff tops instead. The cliffs are amazing, they are made of layers of sandstone and are called Hive cliffs.

These are some other photographs I took a while back when the tide was out.

It’s a lovely walk along the cliff top but the edge is very dangerous at it is crumbling and prone to slipping.

I think you will agree that the views are very special. I do have a big problem though. The footpath eventually leads to this.

A huge caravan park (it’s about 4 or 5 times the size you can see on this photograph) and in my mind it’s a huge blot on the landscape. I know it’s only fair to share this beautiful coast and I know that I am very lucky to live in an area where people pay to come on holiday but really! These caravans are so ugly and so WHITE! No attempt to blend into the landscape. I must admit they are my pet hate. But then on my way back, I passed this

The white houses are on the top of the cliffs overlooking the beach, one is a hotel and the other is a house belonging the Billy Bragg, the singer. Every time I walk past them I wish I lived there.

Today I thought “Actually, are they any less of a blot on the landscape?’ They are also big and white and I suppose spoil the view - perhaps not so much as a huge caravan park covering acres of land but they are just as conspicuous in their way. Am I being a hypocrite? Or even worse, a snob? What do you think?