GeoTagged, [N51.44082, W0.13118]
And Amby couldn’t be happier. 🙂
Month: September 2010
Tweeterisation
In case no-one’s noticed the new addition over on the right, I’m now tweeting quite regularly on Twitter – do please feel free to follow me.
For the most part my Facebook updates and Tweets are the same, but they do occasionally diverge; so if you are on Twitter then why not sign up to receive “exclusive bonus material” regarding my utterly fascinating life and adventures?
And let me know your Twitter name, too, so as to be added to my follow list.
Another (lovely) wedding
We were away over the weekend, in Hatfield for a wedding, something I’ve rather neglected to post about here, despite us having a smashing time. On behalf of us all I’d like to say a big “thank you” to Mel and Ally for inviting us – we felt very honoured to be there! 🙂
There are some pictures on Flickr (aren’t there always?), although not as many as usual as my camera seemed to really struggle with the light levels at the venue. Two people who certainly didn’t struggle were Millie and Amber – they were absolutely in their element, running about the place with all the other children there and generally having a whale of a time. Amber needed to go to the toilet during the wedding speeches and afterwards in a loud and confident voice reassured the entire room that she had, in fact, done a poo.
There was a “sweet shop” in one corner of the reception and all the children made the very most of that; the place was full of sticky-faced children with comically huge lollies permanently stuffed into their mouths – it was a dental hygienist’s worst nightmare.
Amber conked out very suddenly at about 8.30 and was taken home by Grandma and Granddad but Millie, just like last time, kept on until 11.30! She was completely in awe of Mel, the beautiful bride, in her wedding dress. Fortunately Mel loves children and was more than happy to dance the night away with Millie rather than with her new husband!
The one sad note of the evening was the ceilidh and live band that Mel and Ally had planned – the ceilidh band were just getting started when an older member of the crowd took a nasty tumble; paramedics had to be called and she was taken to hospital. As far as I know the lady is OK, but the delay meant that there wasn’t time for the band to play any more.
Fortunately the DJ more than made up for the lack of ceilidh and there was mayhem on the dancefloor for the rest of the night, not least from all of the children present. 🙂
However, loud music and concentrated doses of brightly coloured sugar couldn’t keep them awake forever and Millie eventually collapsed into my arms and fell fast asleep – just in time for Grandma and Granddad to ride to the rescue once more and take us all back home.
TALL!!!
The Shard is set to be one of the tallest the tallest building in Europe once it’s finished in 2012 (this is just over halfway so far).
I’ve been past it fairly often via London Bridge station, each time thinking, “Hmm, yeah, pretty tall. Quite impressive. Blah blah blah.”
That was before I saw it just now from Southwark Street: it’s gigantic – positively looming over everything else in the area!! That’s when I knew for sure that I was living in the future…
Writing
Not my writing but Millie’s, which continues to improve in leaps and bounds.
This picture shows the usual spelling/written test we do before bed (and before reading Charlie And The Chocolate Factory) each night.
In case you’re in any doubt that’s pen, met, web, red, leg and go, all spelt and written by Millie after we told her the words. We were really impressed with her letters tonight – OK, she lost it a bit when g’s became involved but otherwise everything’s legible and correctly spelt.
Well done Millie, our clever little girl!
I know this post isn’t going to win me many new readers, but that isn’t really what this blog is for. What this blog is largely for is as a diary, a sort of digital keepsake, if you will, for us – and the girls – to look back on in years to come and see how they grew up and where they came from.
Occasionally I like to make a note of things that are, at the time, pretty mundane and uninteresting. The Lovely Melanie will point out that no-one in their right mind will be interested in that.
In future, however, it’s these kind of things that will have been thrown away, lost or simply never recorded in the first place. We have loads of pictures and colouring and – increasingly – written scraps of paper like this lying around the house, and almost all of it eventually gets thrown away. Just like the movie footage of Millie learning to walk and talk – the kind of thing that we could have recorded every day but importantly didn’t because it was so everyday and happening around us all of the time.
Although we have plenty of photos we have very little video – the little footage we did take is now priceless: 30 seconds here, 20 seconds there, etc. I’m trying to make sure that doesn’t happen so much with Millie’s school – ahem – masterpieces.
Away away…
We’re away with the fairies the in-laws this weekend, at a wedding in Hatfield.
Just time for two announcements –
- We’ve ordered a big girl’s bed for Amber, which is coming next week. No more cots in our house, just small beds for small people.
- I’ve got an interview for quite a cool job on Tuesday.
That’s pretty much it. You can go now.
No, really, that’s it. I’m not going to type anything else of interest for at least a couple of days.
Oh, all right, if you’re going to hang around here making the place untidy I’ll mention that Millie got a slightly disappointing 2/6 on her test at school. Most of the points were dropped for silly mistakes though, so hopefully next time she’ll do better. Obviously we were all, like, supportive and everything, and totally congratulated her.
She didn’t seem too bothered by it, to be honest, pausing only to comment that something (I forget what) was “well good!”
Now that’s it – please move along and read another blog!
Van Gogo tilt-shift crazy!
Even if Van Gogh‘s not your favourite painter of all time there’s really no arguing with these remarkably beautiful tilt-shift images of his work.
Tilt-shift photography involves using camera trickery and image editing software to make a real photograph look like a miniature model, with results that are often impressive and disorienting.
The Van Gogh tilt-shift seems to be, if I’m understanding this correctly, working the other way: making deliberately otherworldly images appear more real.
Click on the image for more examples of Van Gogh tilt-shift or here for more conventional tilt-shift photography. You won’t regret it…
