Monthly Round Up (February '10)

February being the shortest month of the year, would ordinarily mean it whizzing by at a rate of knots, wouldn't it? But this year it hasn't. I don't know whether it was the cold (and snow, hail, howling gales, sleet, and rain ... etc.) and general yuk-ness of the weather; or just me remaining a bit of misery guts, but it didn't go as quickly as I'd thought it might. Never mind, I've still managed to find lots of stuff from this month about which to chat, and on the positive side I received a Valentines Card for the first time in years! From a friend, it had the desired effect of cheering me up. Thank you - x.

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Let's start off this month with the Wrinklets.

No.2 has, for some time, been keen for his football coach to try him out in a midfield position rather than his usual place of left back. At his age group, it's quite unusual to find a boy who will listen to what his coach is telling him, and stay back to defend rather than chasing the ball; but No.2 does all that, so I'm sure that's part of why he's remained a defender for so long. Anyway, at their away game on 6th Feb, the coach gave him a run out in midfield - hooray and hurrah. And guess what? He played his socks off! In fact, he played so well, he ended up with this:

The next week he was asked to play half the game in midfield and the other half in defence, and if the coach carries on with that kind of 'balance' I think No.2 will be happy. His team are playing really well at the moment, but just not getting the results, and are therefore not doing too well in the league. Let's hope luck starts going their way soon.

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No.1 completed an interesting Design & Technology project this month. It was centred on The Oxford Natural History Museum, each student being required to make something edible (Food Tech) and present it in appropriate home-made packaging, complete with relevant labels (Graphics). This was a project made for No.1, who researched the ONHM, and then thought about what she might make.

She decided she wanted to make butterfly cakes, and a funky bag or box for them to go in. The bag/box was fine in theory, but how would we achieve it? In the end we (yes, I might have been the assistant on this project) ended up using an empty Rice Krispie box, cut to size. She covered it in wrapping paper, and inserted some acetate in the top to make a 'window':

The butterfly cakes were easy enough, although she wanted to put coloured icing butterflies on the top, rather than cut 'wings' out of the actual cake. More than that, she wanted to 'paint' her own butterflies with food colouring on white icing, rather than use coloured icing. A short baking session resulted in these:

Which were placed in the box (which had labels attached, to detail all the ingredients, and a sell-by date), and taken to school where they were unceremoniously scoffed. I wish we'd had homework like that when I was at school!

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Still on family matters, my mum hasn't been at all well this month with ongoing dental problems. A really nasty infection under a tooth (which needed THREE courses of antibiotics, and eventually removal of the tooth itself) resulted in her having to pull out of a planned holiday in Las Vegas, the poor thing. Thankfully the other 'girls' still went, but Mum was naturally upset and disappointed to miss out. Pain of any kind is horrible, but pain in one's mouth (which of course affects eating, talking, even smiling) can be so debilitating. She's quite literally down in the mouth; and I hope she bounces back soon.

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I'm sure I'm not the only blogger who occasionally receives emails asking me to 'plug' products on my blog. The latest one asked if the people concerned might purchase some advertising space in my sidebar. Thus far I have never accepted any of the free products, or an offer to promote anyone's business. I'm happy to give a big shout to companies with whom I'm impressed, and equally ready to report cruddy customer service - but it's all based on personal experience.

Thus this month I would like to give a big 'up' to a company called 'Pennine Industries'. It all started one night when I was lying awake (not sleeping well at the moment) and could hear Herbie Hamster downstairs making a weird noise. I got up and came down, only to find he'd gnawed his water bottle to the extent that the metal 'feeder' bit had fallen out of its plastic housing. The water from the bottle had of course leaked out over his bedding, and he was trying in vain to get a drink. I had to sellotape the metal bit back into the plastic bit until I could find a new bottle. I visited the local garden centre to get a new feeding bottle, bought one, and brought it home. It didn't fit the 'hole' in the side of Herbie's cage (which doesn't have bars on the sides onto which I might have hung this other bottle). I visited a local pet shop, to find they only stocked the same ones as the garden centre. Hmmmmm. A bit of investigating found that Herbie's cage (and water bottle) was made by Pennine Industries; so after finding their website, I fired off an email explaining my problem.

A very nice lady called Kelly replied that it wasn't a problem, and she'd put a couple of replacement bottles in the post to me. Did she want my card number to cover the cost of the bottles and postage? Nope. Did she want me to send a cheque by return of post? Nope. The bottles were sent free of charge, and incredibly quickly. So Herbie now has access to water again and is a happy, if aged, hamster. Now that's what I call customer service!

Herbie Hamster being an old man in his house

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Whilst I think of it, I would like to mention in this round up, how much it meant to me to receive such lovely comments from my fellow bloggy pals, after I'd posted about coming in joint fist place in the Camera Club competition at the start of this month. You're lovely people, and your words made the pleasure of doing well, all the more enjoyable. Thank you - xxx.

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I had some very sad news this month when an old college friend of mine emailed to let me know that our Secretarial Tutor had died. Mrs D was a funny old thing - I don't think I will ever forget the image of her stood at the front of the class whilst we all attempted to get our fingers intimately acquainted with the precise layout of a keyboard. She would watch us closely and tell us off if we looked down at the keys. It was she who taught me shorthand, that bizarre phonetic language which looks like squiggles, dots and dashes, but which actually very cleverly makes short work of any word. I still use it today if I want to make a note of something I don't want the kids to understand. :-D

Mrs D and I had kept in touch over all the years since I left college, and exchanged letters in our Christmas Cards. Just this last Christmas she sent me a lovely newsy letter telling me all about what she'd been up to during 2009. Anyway, Mrs D fell in the snow we had in January, and plainly hurt herself very badly. She was taken to hospital but died there a few days later. She had been a widow for 10 years, and I guess the blessing is that now she is with her husband again. She was extremely active and busy, and I'm sure will be missed by not only her daughters and their families but also the people who were in the many groups and clubs to which she belonged. Thanks Mrs D ... you taught me well.

Another bit of sad news was learning that one of the bosses for whom I worked as a secretary, had died. In this instance it wasn't such a shock, as a man at Camera Club had told me a couple of months ago that Peter (my ex-boss) was very poorly indeed. He was a really bright, cheeky character of a man, and I can honestly say that there was never a dull moment during the time I worked for him. We were both gobby spirited individuals and appreciated each other's humour from Day 1: At Friends Reunited I wrote on my profile 'Would love to hear from anyone who remembers me' and he left a comment saying 'How could I bloody forget?!' :-D

There was of course a door between our offices, but we also each had a door on to the main corridor. He was forever popping out of 'his' door without telling me, and I would put calls through to him (sometimes quite important calls) and end up not only looking a prize chump, but also exasperating the person on the other end of the line. Despite me mentioning it to him several times, he continued to do it. However, one day I'd had enough, so went and locked his office/corridor door from the inside. A little while later there was a large 'thump' noise as he walked into his door and banged his head on it, because it didn't open like he'd expected it to. A couple of Welsh expletives might have passed his lips, but the point was made, and thereafter he always let me know if he was going out of the office for any reason.

He was such a huge personality, that there must surely be a gaping hole in the lives of his family and friends. Thanks for being a great boss Peter - and for the many laughs.

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I haven't been doing much crafting of late - what with all the photographicals and everything, but I thought some of you sewing types might like to see a table runner Mum completed this month. I've only got a photo of one section of it, and I'm not sure it does the whole thing justice, but it gives a general idea. It's an absolutely beautiful piece of work - appliquéd, embroidered, and quilted by hand:

It is now gracing her rather large dining room table and looks fabulous.

EDITED TO ADD: The pattern for the table runner can be found on this page. It is the Flower Garland Table Runner.

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At the very beginning of February (or was it the very end of January ... too late to go in January's Round Up?) the kids and I had the pleasure of spending some time in the company of my lovely forum/bloggy/facebook pal Lily-Wren, and her other half. I'd never met Mr Plum (aka 'Ticharu') before, although we had exchanged the odd message and comment or two in the past. Meeting him continued my experience that bloggy peeps met in real life are just as fabulous as they seem on their blog(s); and that whilst I completely understand the natural concerns we must all have about meeting 'strangers' first encountered on the interweb, it really can be a wonderful way to meet new friends.

Mr Plum and No.1 bonded over her guitar (Mr P having been away from any musical 'doings' for a few days, and therefore experiencing the severe withdrawal typical of a musician separated from instruments). Lily and I talked photography - you can see her fantabulous images on her Flickr stream - and munched lunch. Then No.2 initiated Mr Plum in the ways of the Wii. He bowled, he bashed moles, he skipped, he karted ... and went away no longer a Wii Virgin.

Thank you both for visiting - it was lovely - xx.

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I'll leave you with an image. This photo was taken on 10th February when we had snow blizzards, hailstones, sleet, and sunshine all in one day. It is of hailstones on the shoots of some bulbs (can't remember what) which I planted on the day of my friend Tracy's funeral last Autumn, so we'd have some plants by which to remember her (not that we need plants to remember her).

Hopefully we are now edging closer to spring, and some sunshiney warmth. According to press reports: "England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all had their coldest winter season for more than 30 years. ... this winter is the third coldest in the last 50 years and 10th coldest in the last 120 years." Let's hope it's at least another 30 years before we get another one like this, eh?

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Volume One Has Landed

How do you, dear reader, feel about vanity publishing? One reads lots of stories about publishers rejecting now-famous books: Perhaps the most famous being JK Rowling's original manuscript for Harry Potter being turned down by nine publishers before Bloomsbury bought it in 1996. But lots of frustrated writers who have been turned down by publishers, resort to self-publishing as a way to get their books 'out there'. Anyway, I digress.

I must confess to having dallied in a spot of vanity publishing. I didn't send my 'manuscript' to a single publisher or agent, I just went to visit Blurb.com, where one can turn one's blog into a book. They have a very natty system which 'slurps' the words and pictures from one's blog straight into a book layout, thereby cutting out a lot of hard graft. However, there was still a lot of editing to do.

I decided a couple of years ago that I wanted to turn the Bloggy Bits into books, so the kids would have something 'solid' to look at in the future. I know I'd absolutely love to have had that sort of thing written by my parents, or even my grandparents. It was Suzy at Mind Spillage who first alerted me to the service offered by Blurb - thanks Suzy - x. She has produced several volumes of books herself, and jolly professional they look too.

After some consideration, I felt a logical way to go would be to produce a book for every year of the Bloggy Bits, so 2007 was my immediate task. I slurped, but some of the pictures weren't the right size and/or resolution for the book, so I had to do quite a bit of resizing, etc. on those. I decided I wanted to change the font for the text, and that took ages to change. Blurb has now updated their software so one can create a template for future use, which means you don't have to do things like laboriously go through it altering fonts. It is quite a lengthy process, but I have to confess I did kind of enjoy it.

You can make your books public or private at Blurb. If you decide to go public, other people can buy your books; however, mine is an essentially family concern, so I chose the private option. And as nobody other than family and close friends will ever see the book(s) I decided to add some personal pictures that I'd never put on the blog. I'm really pleased with the way those have come out, and think it gives the book a more interesting perspective. I simply scanned old photographs on our printer and inserted them into the book myself.

I went for the hardback book option, but in hindsight, I'm not sure it was the right choice. I might not choose the same for later editions. I really really dislike the design on the paper cover - the 'guidelines' Blurb gave were not accurate, leaving the main 'square' decidedly not central. And that irritates me. I quite liked being able to put little bits on the fly leaves though. I ordered three copies of the book - one each for the kids, and one for my Mum. No.1 has already leafed through it, smirking as she went. No.2 couldn't have been less interested, but I hope one day he will be pleased to have it.

Now I am in the process of editing Volume 2 - 2008: One of the most stressful years in my entire life. I have learned from the first volume to do better proof-reading - there are mistooks. I have learned to check and double check things like borders on images (in Volume 1 some pictures have borders, and some don't). Hopefully Volume 2 will be better. I'm really pleased with the quality of the printing and the paper used for the pages, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend Blurb to anyone thinking of making either a Blog Book or perhaps a collection of their photographs, or other things they'd like to remember.

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Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Crikey, I have been meaning to write this post since Christmas, was sure I'd get it done by last weekend, but have finally got round to it. Those of you who have been reading for some time might remember that last year, we went to see Sleeping Beauty (panto version) at the Oxford Playhouse. The year before that we went to see Aladdin (also panto), also at the Oxford Playhouse. This last Christmas HWNLR said he'd like to do the panto 'gig', so we went to see the touring production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at The New Theatre, Oxford instead.

Like most people (at least those with kids) I have seen the film many times, so wasn't really sure how they would capture the magic of that flying car, and put it on stage. No.2 was sure it wouldn't actually fly, but we were going to find out! I don't know if it was a sign of the hard economic times, but the theatre was only half full, which must be difficult for the cast. On the plus side though, it meant we could plonk our coats, etc. on other seats and give ourselves a bit more room. We had people in front of us, and behind us - luckily one of the chaps in front had an iPhone and was able to show No.2 that day's football scores. Tsk. But we had nobody else at all on our 'row' so put all coats and bags on those seats.

The character of Caractacus Potts was played by Darren Bennett. Not the dancing, prancing Darren Bennett who appears on Strictly Come Dancing, but a different chappie of the same name, who has an impressive pedigree, having already starred in productions of Singing in the Rain, 42nd Street, West Side Story and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. This Darren Bennett was a really good dancer too - we all thought his rendition and performance of 'Me Ol Bamboo' was first class. It made me knackered just watching it! He didn't have the same charisma as Dick Van Dyke who played the role in the film, but I'm not sure it mattered all that much. It resulted in the rest of the (100-strong) cast being allowed to shine more than they perhaps do in the film.

Truly Scrumptious and Mr Potts

Truly Scrumptious was played by Katie Ray, and was really good. In the film, Truly was such a perfect lady, with clipped English tones, and upper class 'manners'; and Ms Ray's stage version was just the same. Like Darren Bennett, her dancing was superb. According to the programme, Ms Ray is also "a qualified yoga teacher, having trained on an ashram in the mountain tops of America, India and Thailand." Gosh.

There were lots of children in this production; I can't tell you who played the leading roles of Jemima and Jeremy Potts, because the programme says the characters might be played by one of 4 actors/actresses each. Suffice it to say, they were great. There were also quite a few dogs in the story, at one point they all bounded across the stage from one side to the other, and I had visions of someone on the 'receiving' end waving lots of doggie treats to get them to play along.

Dean Maynard as The Child Catcher

The main 'baddie' of the whole show is of course The Child Catcher, and in this instance he became something of a pantomime villain, receiving loud boos and hissing whenever he appeared on stage. My kids were both frightened of the film character when they were younger, but this incarnation was definitely less terrifying. He was played by Dean Maynard, who went along with the booing brilliantly. Did you know that The Child Catcher didn't exist in the original story (written by James Bond creator Ian Fleming)? He was an introduction by Roald Dahl for the film version of the story, and, I think is a wonderfully Dahl-esque being.

No.2's favourite song in the entire film is 'P.O.S.H' and he was singing away when we got to that bit in the stage production. An actor named John Griffiths played Grandpa Potts, and he was just as batty as the Lionel Jefferies film version; making his kidnap by Goran and Boris, the spies from Vulgaria, splendidly absurd. It was these buffoon-spies (played by Nigel Garton and Richard Ashton) who had some of the funniest lines in the entire production.

Dancing during 'Toot Sweets'

For us, I think the human stars of the show were Baron and Baronness Bomburst of Vulgaria (played by Edward Peel and Kim Ismay. (I wondered if I recognised Mr Peel, so came back and googled. He was a regular in Emmerdale, and has also appeared in Doctor Who, The Bill, All Creatures Great and Small, and Juliet Bravo (amongst many other programmes)). They were just splendid, playing those ludicrous rulers of a foreign kingdom with admirable gusto.

The Baron with some of his Vulgarians

The real star of the show is, of course, the car. According to the programme, it has a "Reinforced, triple-plated, shock resistant, glare & flare aware, see-through windscreen", and "Rotating, friend-seeking headlamps" amongst a whole raft of other qualities. The main thing was, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was huge, colourful and shiny ... but most impressive of all, it flew!

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Gosh, My Gob's Been Smacked

It's not often that I'm a surprised person. I don't know why that is - whether I am less surprise-able than other people, or maybe that my life has had fewer surprising things in it than is the case for some. But this week I was very surprised.

I've been going to the local Camera Club for 7 months now, and have learned a huge amount in that time. From the visiting speakers and Judges, from watching tutorials, and from the other people who attend, who have been friendly, helpful and encouraging.

In common with most Camera Clubs or Photographic Societies, they have all sorts of contests - Audio Visual ones (where images are set to music); print ones and projected ones. Some with set subjects, and some without. Some require the images to have been taken in a specific place during a specific period of time. They have 'battles' against other Camera Clubs and Photographic Societies. It's a very gentle way to spend an evening - in a darkened room, looking at wonderful images and listening to someone who knows what they're talking about. Until this week, I had never been brave enough to enter any of the many competitions they hold there, but after a bit of encouragement from other members, I thought 'what the hell'. The Competition this week was 'Open Subject' (ie. images of anything you like) Digital Projected Image (ie. you hand in your images on a flash drive or cd the week before, and they are then projected on to a large blank wall for judging, and for everyone to see).

So I did ... I handed in my little flash drive containing my three (rather abstract) images, a couple of weeks ago. On the competition day I felt rather anxious. A friend said she might come with me, but texted at teatime to say her husband had a snooker match, therefore she couldn't come. So I went on my own, with my (ugly) knees knocking and hoping that nobody would say anything unkind about my creations.

In competitions, images are given a mark out of 20 by the visiting Judge, and each Judge obviously has their own personal likes, dislikes and opinions on what is appealing and what is not. There was a total of 87 images that night, so the Judge was going to have to work hard to earn his fee.

Anyway, here are the images I submitted:

The Judge said he thought this image was probably of a section of a glass ornament, but it's not. Since one has to sit there in the quiet, letting the Judge say what they think, I couldn't pipe up with 'no it's not actually ... it's golden syrup'. Nobody knows who is the 'author' of which image until the end. I just had to let him think it was an ornament. He said he liked the colours, admired the composition and gave it 16 points. I think I like this kind of psychedelic stuff more than most other people.

This one was taken in early January when the snow came. I was indoors, and tried to focus on the wet snow on the window, rendering the people outside, blurry. The Judge said at first he didn't realise it was people outside - he thought it was markings such as in Chinese writing, or something of that sort. But when he looked closer he could see it was people. He said it was "artistic" and gave it 18 points.

I took this one in December last year, with my little compact camera rather than the DSLR (which just goes to show, you don't need a DSLR to get a decent image). I keep the little camera in my bag so I will - hopefully - never miss an opportunity. The image is of some dew on a spider's web, which makes the web look like a piece of jewellery: The Judge said he thought it looked like a necklace. He liked the large droplet in focus and the other droplets becoming more blurred as one looked back into the picture. He also liked the diagonal emphasis. He gave it 19 points.

Three images that night scored the *perfect* 20 (these are called 'starred images') but I didn't mind that none of mine did. I was over the moon that this Judge hadn't said anything negative or too harshly critical (not that I don't welcome constructive criticism - I do). So, I had 16 + 18 + 19 = 53 points out of a possible 60, and I was rather pleased. I sat and chatted to the lady sitting next to me about a local school at which she worked, and she told me about her son who is doing GCSE Art - which No.1 will be doing too.

At the end of any competition, they announce who is in 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st place - in reverse order, like on Miss World when I was a kid. Several people had achieved the same score to be in equal 4th place. A few more had a point more to be in equal 3rd. Three had another point and were in 2nd. And two people had drawn for first place ... they each had 53 points. Erm ... pardon? Did you say 53 points? Yes, she did - she said 53 points, and before I knew it I was joint winner of 'Round One' (Round Two of this competition is in May, and the final Round Three is in September). How the heck did that happen? People came up and said 'well done' ... they couldn't do it to the other guy with 53 points as he's in the States at the moment. I felt embarrassedly self conscious, pleased, and a bit proud, all at the same time.

But mostly I was surprised: One gob, well and truly smacked.

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