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Much of a muchness
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Tag Archives: Weymouth
A blistering time…
Posted by on August 4, 2010
I’m feeling very sorry for myself today. About 10 days ago, I was playing tennis at a friend’s house and it was a beautiful sunny day. Idyllic you might think, except for lots of small flies which were flying around the court and even worse – biting us. I must have had a bad reaction to the bites because the next day, I had 6 bites which turned into blisters and then continued to grow. I looked like I had bubonic plague of the leg. I won’t go into too much detail about the ‘bursting blisters on cream trousers while on shopping expedition’ scenario, suffice to say, it was very embarrassing and itchy/painful as well. The blisters were just starting to heal when it was time to play tennis again.
This time, I wore cropped tracksuit trousers (not only to hide the ugly sores but to keep my legs covered in case the flies were around again) and I covered the small part of my legs which were still showing with insect repellant spray. The little buggers must have found the only square inch that I missed and have bitten me twice and I now have two nice fresh humungeous blisters again. They hurt and itch like crazy and as they are so close together, the effect seems twice as bad as before. I now have antibiotics to try and get rid of them once and for all – and when I play tennis next Monday, I am going to wear a full beekeepers suit. I’ll keep this image small so as not to frighten you too much…it’s quite disgusting.
Anyway, before I was eaten alive, I’d been having quite a jolly time. I’m trying to remember what I have been doing since my last post and my photoblog is as good a reminder as anything, so apologies if you’ve seen some of this before!
I visited the Hampton Court Flower Show with some friends and we all loved this garden seat which was somehow woven out of growing bamboo.
I went to a ‘Back to the ’80s’ open air concert with my sister and niece in Shrewsbury which was great fun. We saw Go West, ABC, Rick Astley, Tony Hadley and Howard Jones – it was a really fun evening and great to hear all the old songs again. The highlight for me was seeing Peter Cox, the lead singer with Go West who just seems to improve with age. I swear he is much more gorgeous now than 30 years ago and his voice is amazing. I’ll even forgive him the ear ring…
I’ve been to an air show – the Royal International Air Tattoo and saw some rather amazing planes in action. Particulary awestruck by the F22 – Raptor, a mere £4 million.
I went to see ‘Inception’ which I really enjoyed and now need to see again to work out just what was going on – such a good film. And it had Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe in it….
I went AWOL for a day and had a girlie shopping expedition/lunch/afternoon tea in Exeter.
Exeter Cathedral
I went sailing with a group of friends in Weymouth Bay. The weather was pretty rubbish but it was quite breezy so we had a good sail and a lovely picnic while moored in Portland Harbour.
In between all this I have been working very hard on some web sites I have been asked to create so it’s not all fun and games. Honest.
To finish, I must share with you the work of a wonderful sculptor I discovered yesterday. She’s called Annawili Highfield and this is from her website. Do check out her work, the paper sculptures are especially astonishing.
Book swappage
Posted by on May 30, 2008
You may remember I was taking part in a Book Swap over at the Book Arts Forum. I made a book as a first effort, fully intending to have a second go at it but as is often the way with these things, time ran away with me and I had to use my original effort as I never got round to trying something different.
So far, so familiar. As the theme of the swap was ‘My Home Town’, I did hit on the idea of filling the pages with images of Dorset (as you can imagine I have rather a lot). This started out as a good idea until I realised that as I had used Bockingford watercolour paper for the pages, the printed photographs wouldn’t stick to the pages terribly well, but having started, I had to finish! I think they are secure but the other problem was that the pages curled slightly and even after a day or so in my book press, they wouldn’t straighten and as time had run out, I had to send it to Rhonda as it was (with a letter of apology!)
Here are photographs of some of the pages.
It’s very intimidating making a book for other bookbinders to see ‘in the flesh’ as it were and even though this is the second swap I have taken part in – I still feel as if I could have done better…. having said that, I’m really looking forward to receiving my book from Crazy Daisy Girl :-)
By the way, thanks very much indeed for the votes over at Kim’s competition. I didn’t win but happily I wasn’t vote-less which was very pleasing. You might like to check out the art work which won, a painting by Emmanuel Martinez called “Pain in the Eye’. Congratulations to the lucky winner!
Now I’m off to continue with my latest project, a huge photograph album for a friend. She has two enormous beautifully made, very expensive albums which she has filled with photographs and I am going to try to make a third which matches the others. No pressure then……. :-)
Spring has sprung!
Posted by on March 31, 2008
Well, the sun is shining, the clocks were turned forward an hour over the weekend and so the evenings are suddenly lighter and the sun has come out – an altogether more optimistic feeling is in the air. So to celebrate this happy state of affairs, here is a my Spring book.
It was a lovely weekend. I went to a private view at a local gallery on Friday night with some friends and we had supper afterwards which was very pleasant. All day Saturday, it bucketed down with rain and it was accompanied by very strong winds, so I stayed holed up at home but did venture out for dinner with a friend in Weymouth on Saturday night. The diet was shot to pieces as we had some amazingly nice food and wine (and lots of it!) It ended being a very late night, lots of talking and forgetting the time and as the clocks went forward on Saturday night, we effectively lost an hour’s sleep too.
On Sunday, we awoke, feeling surprisingly chipper, to find wall-to-wall sunshine and decided to go for a long walk with some friends. It was a glorious day, warm and sunny all day so our walk to the coast was spectacular. We drove to a village called Chaldon Herring and walked to the coast at a place called Daggers Gate, so called because
“The gateway ‘Daggers Gate’ is believed to mark a witch’s grave, and is said to be haunted by her ghost. It acquired its unusual name in 1789, after farmer Sam Varnell was stabbed and killed at the spot by the daughter of the supposed witch.”
Here are some photographs I took yesterday.
I took this shot of the road sign because we all had a very childish giggle at ‘Scratchy Bottom’ which is actually a swathe of farmland which has been in use for over 4000 years, just above Durdle Door. Here are a couple of photographs I took last year of Durdle Door, one taken from the beach and the other from the sea.
This is the stretch of coastline we were walking above – we didn’t walk to the path which runs closer to the cliff edge as it is VERY steep and we only wanted a gentle(ish) walk :-)
I did take another road sign shot which also caused much merriment. What goes on down this bridleway is anyone’s guess. I’ll leave it to your imagination…..
As with all good walks, we ended at a pub and had a lovely Sunday roast dinner. Marvellous! When I got home, I crashed out and had a ‘Lost’-athon – I watched three episodes that I had recorded while I was away in Switzerland, back to back. It was as inpenetrable as ever but very enjoyable nonetheless.
Much of a muchness 
