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Category Archives: Cool links
Hats off to Bridport
Posted by on September 19, 2010
The town where I live, Bridport, is busy trying to reinvent itself and drag itself upmarket and into the 21st century. When a local hotel revamped itself and became a ’boutique’ hotel, there were cries from camps both applauding the move and loathing it. When an old derelict cinema was renovated and opened as an arts venue ‘The Electric Palace’ there was universal approval. However, when a reporter from the Observer newspaper suggested Bridport was becoming ‘Notting Hill on Sea‘ (in theory due to the large number of trendy London folk now visiting the town) there was uproar.
In Bridport, there is a brilliant shop called T Snook. This is their web site. They are a hatter and gentleman’s outfitters and inside it is an Aladdin’s cave full of hat treasure – they sell every kind of hat you can imagine – panama hat, bowler hat, top hat, fedora, fez, deerstalker, beret, bush hat, trilby, boater – the list is endless. Splendidly, they decided to organise an event which they hope will become an annual tradition – the Bridport Hat Festival.
The sun was shining on Saturday, so I donned my hat (straw – very conservative) and headed into town to see what was going on. It was amazing. It seemed like the whole town was wearing hats, some had made the effort to make a wonderful hat, others were just wearing whatever they had at home but it was an fantastic sight. There were loads of trade stands selling every kind of hat, workshops teaching how to make hats (and their mini relation, the fascinator.) Here are some photos I took on Saturday.
At 12.30 there was a mass hat photograph in the town square (which is called BuckyDoo Square)
Later in the day there was a cocktail party and all the women attending had to wear a fascinator (not my favourite piece of headgear) but I have to say, having got togged up and worn one I am coming round to the idea of them.
But I knew that it reminded me of something…
Later in the evening there was a poetry cabaret which was also excellent – the highlight was Matt Harvey – an hilarious poet who appears on Radio 4 regularly and who has also been asked to be the official Wimbledon poet in residence. His tennis poem ‘Thwock!’ was hilarious and my favourite. Listen to it here. (possibly UK only…)
These ladies are called the Lyme Bay Lovelies – a branch of the Red Hat Society, founded for ladies who are over 50 but not ready to start acting their age. The society was based on the poem ‘Warning’ by Jenny Joseph.
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Jenny Joseph
Today we watched an Argentine Tango Social Dancing display and then later we went to see local singer Jess Upton perform at the final event of the weekend.
The whole thing has been a brilliant success and lets hope the Bridport Hat Festival returns next year.
Excuses, excuses
Posted by on January 27, 2010
Well, the huge mountain of ‘things that need doing’ which I have been trying to run away from (and which must be attached to me by a long length of elastic) has finally smacked me in the back of the head and I have been forced into doing something about it. Consequently, I have been working on the e-commerce web site I am designing for a friend and am almost cross eyed with the twin joys of html and css. The site will eventually sell hand crafted jewellery and the other thing I have been doing this week (and continue to do) is processing dozens and dozens and dozens of photographs (which I confess up front – I took) which are basically not very good so they need lots of TLC and Photoshop to make them useable. Removing backgrounds, adjusting colours, removing specks (hint- always clean computer screen before starting THIS job) cropping and more cropping – it has been endless. Still, I think it is taking shape and starting to look very good (even if I do say so myself.)
So not much else to report. I am continuing to post a photograph to my 365pix project every day because that is quick and easy but I may have to go AWOL here for a bit while I concentrate on getting the web site finished. Sorry I’m not checking out your blogs at the moment too. Anyway to avoid this post being a complete waste of time for you, here are a few random things I found today while I was putting off starting work (still procrastinating)
- This makes me ashamed of my measly Photoshop efforts – from the National Geographic
- This is fun and maybe the shape of things to come who knows? Don’t click it
- I read this on the BBC web site today.
“In 1778, the third Duke of Chandos arranged a christening for his new-born son. The whole of fashionable society, including the Royal Family, was invited, and the Duke commissioned a lavishly embroidered christening robe. At the moment of baptism the child was uncovered and found to have suffocated under weight of the robe, upon which the Duke died of shock.”
- I have already put this on my Facebook page, it never fails to make me smile, so I am adding here too. Love it.
- I found this photograph yesterday of my youngest son when he was tiny. I adore it..
That’s it. Back to work!
Help!
Posted by on July 24, 2009
I have spent an inordinate amount of time this week trying to sort out my email settings. As you might know, I own the domain name dianealdred.com and it struck me that I don’t use the associated email so I decided to set it up as an alternate email address. My #2 son has been here this week too and as he has his own domain name and also wanted to use the associated email for business, I attempted to set both of them up. Oh my God! Why is it SO difficult? The domain names were registered with different companies so I had two separate and ridiculous sets of instructions to follow. I ended up (after much fiddling about), with me able to send emails but not receive them and my son, being able to receive emails but not send them. Nightmare.
Turns out my problem is that my domain name is now mapped to my blog and the emails sent to me at dianealdred.com are re-routed by WordPress to Google mail – but not my ordinary gmail account, oh no, to a separate ‘diane@dianealdred.com’ gmail account. Who knew? When I checked it, there were about 30 emails from the last two years stashed away there, unread, from various companies and an old boyfriend (which gave me a turn!) but mostly from my friend Claire in LA – sorry, love, wasn’t being rude or ignoring you – honest! My son’s email problem remains unsolved. We have copied the settings exactly as instructed but it still won’t work, there is some impressive buck passing going on by the company we have registered the domain name with and their website is confusing, unhelpful and clunky. Rubbish, AZC.
I now am suffering from tech support phobia and I am going to get on with making my books, a much more peaceful and stress free pursuit.
I went to Pittards factory shop yesterday and bought leather for several projects I have in the pipeline, two wedding albums, a ‘new baby’ album and a huge ‘our holiday’ album. The leather I bought was so cheap compared with buying it from the retailers I normally use, I couldn’t resist buying several pieces. Meanwhile, the work continues on the music anthology project (I am working on books 11 and 12/20) so I am busy, busy, busy, which is all good.
Right, I’m off, where’s the glue….
I may have found my new career…
Posted by on July 9, 2009
I’ve been occupied this week with making a gift for my sister to say ‘Thanks’ for my wonderful sailing holiday in Greece. Here’s a sneak preview of what I made for her. I was going to send her a CD with copies of all the photographs I took but I decided it might be nice to make an album of the highlights which would hold the CD. So here it is.
I’m now going to make a birthday gift for a friend celebrating her 40th birthday on Saturday. She is the daughter of my very good friends, Mike and Julie, and it is very scary indeed to realise that my friends’ children are now reaching 40. How can this be? I am sure I’m not much older than that myself. Mind you I did start counting my birthdays backwards several years ago, so I might be mistaken….
As this is a return to my bookbinding posts, I want to tell you bookbinding folk of two discoveries I have made recently. One is Ratchfords who sell a full range of bookbinding materials from their web site – not the best online shopping experience but they are extremely helpful and offer prompt delivery. My other discovery is a factory shop at Pittards. Pittards is in Yeovil, where they make gloves (in fact the local football team, Yeovil Town, is nicknamed The Glovers) but the factory shop has a HUGE range of all grades and colours of leather and leather working tools you can imagine – as well as gloves and handbags etc. I visited the other day and managed to take these photographs.
Wow. Very inspiring and the prices weren’t too bad either.
I watched the epic Men’s Final at Wimbledon on Sunday. What a match! I started out rooting for Roger Federer but by the end I was so impressed with Andy Roddick’s play, I didn’t want either man to lose. Poor Andy Roddick looks shell shocked in the photo above. What a marathon, one of the best matches I have ever watched. I’ve been feeling a bit bereft this week, no more Wimbledon for a year but all is not lost. I can now move seamlessly on to watching the cricket – The Ashes series started yesterday and promises to be as exciting as ever. By the time that finishes, the football season will be starting again, hey ho.
And now, the job of a lifetime. It has come to my notice that Wookey Hole a complex of caves near Wells in Somerset and a famous tourist attraction is advertising a job vacancy. They are going to pay £50,000 a year to some one who is willing to live in the caves and be……a witch. Local legend says the original Wookey witch was turned to stone when a Catholic monk, sent by the Abbot of Glastonbury, splashed her with holy water. A large, vaguely witch-shaped stalagmite in one of the caves is said to be her petrified remains.
“Wookey Hole wants the appointee to go about her everyday business as a hag, so that people passing through the caves can get a sense of what the place was like in the Dark Ages. This was when an old woman lived in the caves with some goats and a dog, causing a variety of social ills including crop failures and disease. The job is straightforward: live in the cave, be a witch, and do the things witches do.”
The ad goes on
“Wookey Hole is advertising nationally and hopes to attract a strong field of candidates, with the £50,000 salary serving as a major incentive. Ambitious witches, looking for a key career move, should turn up dressed for work and bring any essential witch accoutrements. A limited range of potion ingredients will be available. We are witchless at the moment so we need to get the role filled as soon as possible. The successful applicant will need to like dark, enclosed spaces, be good around a cauldron, enjoy the company of cats and have a good cackle. We are looking for someone who is friendly, a little mischievous and with lots of character.”
Interestingly, there is also a paper mill at Wookey Hole and they make the most beautiful handmade paper which I have bought on many occasions. Perhaps I could be the Wookey Hole bookbinding witch….
PS Please check out the Social Vibe widget in my sidebar, if you click on it, TNT will make a donation to the ‘Fill the Cup’ campaign by the World Food Program. It’s free for you and it’s a very worthy cause. Better still, if you have a WordPress blog, put your own widget on your blog! You can choose from a selection of different charities and sponsors. Every little bit helps :-)
Procrastination rules…OK?
Posted by on April 5, 2009
My youngest son is travelling in Australia and the Far East for four months and I spoke to him the other day. (Don’t you just love Skype?) He asked me what I had been up to. I replied that I had been working relentlessly on the music anthology books and clamshell boxes. He said ‘I thought you must have been, I checked your blog a few times to see what you had been up to and saw that you hadn’t posted for ages’. I checked and was horror struck to discover my last post was on February 22nd! Eeek! Where does the time go? To remedy this sorry state of affairs here is a list of things that have been preoccupying me the last few weeks. (Apart from making books that is)
- Bought my Glastonbury ticket this morning. Blur, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen are confirmed so far. Woo hoo.
- My friend, Claire Fordham whom I have mentioned many times here, has just found out that the film based on the story of her trying to get her book made into a film (still with me?) is being premiered at the Cannes Film Festival! So exciting! So I am going over to Cannes for the weekend in May to attend the premiere and hang out with my mate. The film is called ‘The Making of Plus One‘ and Claire and her sister Julia, both appear as themselves in the film.
- Julia Fordham, Claire’s lovely sister is a well known singer/songwriter and she is performing in the UK for the first time in ages. She is on in Newbury on May 6th and at the Pigalle Club in Piccadilly, London on May 8th. I am hoping to go to the Pigalle gig which should be brilliant as usual.
- I am flying from Nice to Geneva after the film premiere to meet up with my friend Edwina. We are then driving from Crans Montana to Palma in Mallorca. We have done this same drive twice already and so we have it all planned and ready to go.
- I went to the premiere of ‘The Boat That Rocked’ last week. Well, the Weymouth premiere! As it was filmed in Weymouth and Portland, the cinema in Weymouth was allowed to have a copy of the film early to have a charity fundraising evening – there was even a small red carpet! I really enjoyed it – despite it getting bad reviews in the press – what do they know? But then I love Bill Nighy, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rhys Ifans so I would, wouldn’t I?
- I have just found a reason never to visit Papua New Guinea. They have just discovered 50 yes, FIFTY new species of jumping spiders – that’s NEW species of JUMPING spiders!! Holy moly! How many were there to start with? And spiders that jump? My worst nightmare. You can read all about it here if you have the stomach for it…be warned. This is a jumping spider.
How disgusting is that?
- The weather has been wonderful but I have hardly set foot outside the door as I have been cooped up in my prison cell workroom. To say Milo is bored would be an understatement…
- The other scary thing of note is that it is my father’s 80th birthday shortly and I have volunteered to host the celebrations. This means that most of my family – parents, sisters, husbands, children are descending upon me over the Easter weekend for a party and three nights of merriment. Bearing in mind I have done no housework for several weeks now, and a decorator is arriving to paint my hall, landings and stairs on Monday, I am now getting severely stressed and it occurs to me I ought to be dusting and changing beds rather than writing this. As always though, procrastination rules and as I work better under pressure and with looming deadlines, I am assuming it will all work out in the end. Milo at least will have plenty of company to pay him attention.
Bye for now….
Much of a muchness 