Monthly Round Up (August 2010)

How was it for you, Dear Reader? We began the month with lovely hot weather here, but it got a lot cooler and wetter as the month went on. Whilst the gardens and farms needed the moisture, kids on school holidays didn't need it at all. I imagine up and down the land there are parents who are absolutely fed up that their kids have been stuck indoors, where they invariably squabble after a little while in one another's company. How much do you want to bet that as soon as the school term starts, the weather brightens up again? 'Tis the law of the sod.

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The main event of this month for us was our holiday in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. I had been so excited about it, not having had a 'proper' holiday for many years, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. About 10 days before we left, we opened our 'holiday tin' in which we had been posting odd bits of change over the past few months. I am happy to report that we ended up with almost £150 from that tin!

The week did not begin well, when just 20 minutes before we were due to leave for the airport (at stupid o'clock in the morning), No.2 began throwing up. :-O It was not what I needed at that juncture, and had to hope that it was nervous excitement rather than a tummy bug. He was sick again in the car on the journey, but once at Eastleigh Airport, I opened his suitcase and he got changed into clean clothes. Thank you to the nice man in W H Smith's there who let me have a nice 'bag for life' completely free of charge, in which to deposit the damp, smelly clothes No.2 took off. As we sat in the café there, No.2 began to turn a more normal colour and seemed much better. Thank goodness for that.

We were in Jersey by late morning, and found it pretty murky and drizzly. However, it cleared up and we went for a stroll on the beach in the evening. On the Sunday it persisted down all day, and we were a tad worried that our 'beach holiday' was going to turn into a bit of a damp one. We needn't have worried though - the rest of the week was lovely, and that Sunday turned out to be the only day we didn't get on to the beach. Our apartment was just 150 metres (164 yards for those of you still dealing in 'old money') from the beach, and we were lucky enough to have a sea view, which meant I got to photograph some lovely sunsets.

I plan to do at least one blog post made up of photos from our holiday (probably one of general shots, and one of images from the Durrell Wildlife Park - which was the highlight for me) but I haven't yet finished going through them all, so that'll have to wait for a bit.

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What else has happened this month? The kids have both enjoyed just hanging out with their pals. It's been so lovely not to have to get up early in the mornings but that'll all change later this week: No.2 returns to school on Thursday, and is now in the Upper Juniors, which barely seems possible. He's really looking forward to it. No.1 starts back on Friday, when she begins her GCSE courses, and is at a different 'bit' of the school than for the past two years. At this juncture, where we are rarely dressed before 11am, it seems like a very big call that I will be up, organised and out of the house by 8.30am by the end of this week, but I know from experience that it invariably happens. Somehow.

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This month I read the book 'Clapton - The Authorised Biography' by Ray Coleman. I found it in a book sale at No.2's school earlier this year. Having been a fan of Mr Clapton's musicianship for many years now (the music to which he has contributed is probably the most played on my iPod), it was cool to learn a lot more about him personally, although I'm pretty sure this is quite a 'sanitised' version of events. I see Clapton has brought out a more up to date version of his life, so will probably try to read that at some point; but what I'm really keen to read now is the Pattie Boyd slant on the man.

It is clear he has been through a great deal of trauma in his life (some of it self-induced) but a life with no challenge or trauma is probably not one worth either reading or writing about (and might perhaps even be boring to live). By all accounts he has found real personal happiness in the past few years, which is good to know.

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Due to the school holidays, I haven't managed to get to many Camera Club meetings over the past few weeks, so I've missed stuff there. I shall definitely be going for the next three weeks however, as it is my turn on the tea rota. I've only ever done it once before, so hope I manage alright. The third round of the open subject projected digital image compeition takes place soon (details of my entries in Round 1, and Round 2 included in past blog posts). At the moment I am lying in second place - a single point behind the guy in the lead. Could be interesting! I shall write a blog post about it after the event, whatever happens. Wish me luck!

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I would like to give a public shout of thanks to my lovely Flickr friend Judy, who regularly posts photographs of some of the lovely plants she has in her riverside garden. Knowing I am trying to make a garden out of a rectangle of grass here, she sent me 5 packets of seeds: collected, dried, wrapped and labelled - 3 different sorts of Aquilegia, some dwarf foxgloves and some delphiniums. Thank you so much Judy - I will be sure to take photos if and when they germinate and grow - x.

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I had a lovely surprise this month when I was contacted, via Facebook, by a former friend. We used to work together eleventy twelve years ago (oh my goodness, I've just worked out that it was more than 25 years ago! :-O ) and at one time were very close. I have no idea how we lost touch - well, we both left the place at which we worked, which was probably the main reason - but it's been lovely to discover that she is only about 20 minutes away these days. I hope we can meet up soon and catch up properly.

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Right, I think that's it for now. I hope you've all had a good summer or winter - depending on which hemisphere of the planet you live. I'll leave you with a photo from the garden after one of the many rain showers we've had - raindrops on red flax:

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© Author

Mum's Birthday

As I posted here before, my mum had one of those 'large' birthdays last month. You know the ones that end with a very rounded digit? The ones that you see hurtling towards you at an increasingly rapid rate of knots once you hit around 28?

The question was, what would I 'do' to mark the occasion? When she had a big birthday 20 years ago, we had a party. I organised the whole thing, managing to find her best friend from school days who attended, along with various other friends and family from over the years. We had a DJ, and one of mum's friends (a teacher with a gift for stand up comedy) did a 'turn'. It was a very successful evening.

The big birthday 10 years ago was marked by a super dooper holiday in Cyprus for her and Dad. I was pregnant with No.2 at that time, and so busy puking all over the place that I couldn't have organised a big 'do' if I'd wanted to. (I stopped being quite as sick at around 8 months). I'm so glad she and Dad had that fabulous holiday because what we didn't know then was that he would develop a brain tumour and be gone within 4 months of that birthday.

I asked her if she wanted a party this time around, but she was pretty sure she didn't. I asked her if there was something else she'd like and she said she'd like a family holiday. A real bucket and spade job with me and the kids, and my brother too. So that's what we booked. But I wanted to do something else too - something other than the obligatory flowers.

I decided I wanted to make her a book. A memory book. A book of pictures of the people that had played a big part in her life. So that's what I did.

When she was away in Portugal with her sister last autumn, I went to her house, went up into the loft and got absolutely filthy moving boxes around until I found the one which contained old photos. I brought down the box and sorted through it, finding photos I felt were appropriate for the book. It was quite a difficult thing to do in that there were so many reminders of Dad - of course.

Anyway, after sorting lots of photos, I brought them home and scanned them all into the computer - this process alone took ages, but I had to get it done whilst she was still in Portugal, so I could put them back in the box and put the loft back as I'd found it. After having done that, I then started editing the pictures I wanted to use. Many of them were quite badly damaged, and I'm very thankful that one of my lovely friends has helped me learn so much about Photoshop that I could pretty much repair them - digitally at least.

The front cover of the book had a picture of Mum at 16. It opened with the details of her birth and contained pictures of her as a baby, her with her parents, and then with her sisters. It carried on with a chapter of images of her with Dad, from their engagement to their wedding, to various shots of them through the 41 years they spent together as man and wife.

The plump child on this page of the book might be me

The next chapter had shots of my brother and me from our christenings to now. The next chapter was of mum's friends from her school chums to her 'grown-up' friends, some of whom are no longer alive, and some of whom are. I had to go round to her friend Julia's and borrow some images of her and another friend as I hadn't been able to find nice pictures of them. Julia loved the idea of the book and was happy to lend me some images to scan.

The next chapter was of mum's grandchildren - from birth to now (and I made sure the most recent ones were very recent indeed). The last chapter was of the various pets we've had over the years, as a book without them just wouldn't be right. They have provided our family with much entertainment, love and company.

I finished the book just a few weeks before her birthday. I ordered it from Blurb and had my fingers firmly crossed that it would arrive in time. In actual fact it arrived 3 days before Mum went on the cruise with her sisters, during which she would celebrate the 'actual' big day. I rang, then met up with my auntie and fixed up for her to hide the wrapped book in her luggage. She and their other sister had been plotting too - they assembled a whole array of brilliant presents, including some yarn plaits. When they were kids, their mum wouldn't let them have long hair, but she did make them yarn hair and put it on a headband for them. So my two lovely aunties had sat and made yarn plaits on a headband, and they all sat and had a champagne supper wearing their wool plaits on the evening of Mum's birthday (in their cabin).

My auntie gave the book to mum for me over breakfast on mum's big day and I had a lovely text a few hours later which let me know she'd been very surprised and thrilled to have it.

Since she's been back, she's shown it to all the friends who are in it, and has it (in bubble wrap!) on the side ready to show anyone else who might come round to visit. It was several months of hard work, but I'm so glad I did it.

© Author