London Family and Child Photographer

Fluffy White Clouds, above Guadeloupe Jan 2009

 

Well, I never realised when I took a photo of nephew no. 2 that he was sitting in the identical chair to a previous photo I took in 2006, 3 years ago. 

How mature J looks now! He is his Dad's son and loves computers. Indeed spending lots of last week fixing or something in order to improve his knowledge of how they work. 

I took out some pohotos of his Dad when he was a teenager and in fact there is a huge resemblance. So guess he is like him in more ways than one. 

He was not so keen on me taking photos so I said, well smile for one and I'll leave you alone and this is that pic. Definitely worth the effort. Thanks for the smile, J. 

Rain and Rainbows, London, July 2009

If you live under the delusion that it rains all the time in London, it really doesn't. At least I don't think it does, and I know this from spending alot of time outdoors throughout the week. All though this week has been a mix of rain and sun and a lot of the rain seems to come at the most noticeable times, rush hour! 

The nice thing about this weeks weather is whilst there has been lot of rain - it has been very mixed. The wind pushing it on and bringing in new rain showers. I am fond of the kind of rain where we can see the edge of the clouds - great for photos (absolutly don't like the oppressive cloud cover kind that has no end in site for days on end). Also I like rainbows and these are from Friday evening...

The area in this pic below where the rainbow fades is caused I think by rain...

Psycho cat is on the loose

If you happen to see him keep clear.

He might puke on you.

Don't say you ain't be warned!

School Report: 1990

Mathematics: Areas covered - Weight, Area, Angle, Length, Multiplication / Division, Subtraction.

Evie has presented some excellent work. She always works hard, but needs to confidently ask for help if she is confused rather than hope that the answer will suddenly appear. Shows no problems in understanding new concepts.

Language: Punctuation and presentation are progressing but slowly. She needs to allow her imagination 'go' as her creative writing is a little stilted. 

Topics - Growing up, [illegible - but maybe France], 1939-1945, Sports - Contributes well to topic work.

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Evie is a helpful kind girl who has grown in confidence over the year. She needs to continue this and see herself as a valuable person with something to say. Hard work and applying herself to this work will ensure progress in her new school.

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Okay I copied this almost word for word but is it me or do you notice the same teacher that remarked upon MY bad punctuation - also had bad punctuation in my report??! Ah well, Mr Spencer was the dude so we'll forgive him that one, who knows maybe I'll discover from one of my pedantic perfect punctuation (PPP) family members that it is actually an acceptable form of speech?

Its rather amusing to read this, I hate to tell you Mr Spencer - I am still rubbish at Maths, and still hope the answer will suddenly appear, lest I embarrass myself revealing to others exactly how rubbish I am at Maths! And if it is connected to Maths I still don't have problems understanding new concepts, I just don't.

Thats right, give me a maths concept and I'll turn my brain off. That solves all problems of solving new concepts:)

Now I think the imagination has improved, I think now I need to rein it in occasionally. The idea of someone saying I ever had a stited imagination in creative writing is quite amusing to me I must say. Parents, tell me - IS THIS TRUE?? Me, A stilted imagination... Seriously??

But I do see from this that it was my last year in primary when I did the war period, man that was a good topic. In fact it is one of the only ones I remember. I don't remember a thing about the other topics. 

And my last comment is about me seeing myself as a valuable person with something to say. I think my parents  and most of my friends would argue I have plenty to say and usually say it.... 

In fact I don't think my parents believed some of these reports were actually about their daughter, where they said I was quiet and at home I was a chatterbox. And here I am now working with this quiet kids, whose parents try and convince me they can't shut their child up at home.

I usually don't believe them.

Maybe I should?

There's a cat in the doghouse

Puked 4 times in one day

2x in my bedroom, including...

1x on my floor - I stood in it. In bare feet.

1x on my bed. On a cover that has to be taken to the launderette.

Needless to say the cat is in the doghouse.

And he knows it.

Most definitely he is on time out until he has learnt his lesson!

Or maybe we just quit meat for a bit?

My Old Man Said (follow the van)

Back in the olden days... when I went to primary school. One of my teachers Mr Spencer, taught us about the second world war period including things such as the Blitz and also cool old songs. One of which I keep singing to myself recently, except I could only remember 1.5 lines of it 'My old man said.... Don't dilly dally on the way'. 

Well curiosity got the bed of me and I found this rendition on youtube by Jessie Wallace as she played Hoxton born music hall singer Marie Lloyd... (For this song go to 4.16 on the timer)

This makes me want to blog more about Hoxton which as you can see is an area rich in history and culture. So happily now I can play this song back in my head with the right words!

Mamma Mia! The Musical: Review

 

So last night was the big night for me and Dad to go along to Mamma Mia as his birthday present to me, and what a great night it was too.

As I am sure I have mentioned before I always appreciate that living in London, we can do these things fairly easily and not travel. In fact I would go as far as saying it outweighs most of the disadvantages of living in London.

Me and Dad are big Mamma Mia fans after Mum got it for Christmas (I think) and it has received many showings in parts and in its entirety in our house. 

Apparently the musical came before the film and thus is the original version. The pre show entertainment was a woman who didn't like her seat at the end of the row trying to get another seat, unsuccessful as the show was sold out.

Can I suggest if you are going to the theatre and care passionately about your seat, visit this website: London Theatre Seat Plans which shows you where all the seats are in the theatre, sort of like Seat Guru but for theatres. And if you have a really cheap last minute ticket, then suck it up and deal with it otherwise you will embarrass yourselves in front of the likes of me as you argue with the various theatre staff. So you have been warned!

We went on a wednesday night and whilst it was a novelty for the theatre in the middle of the week, it meant it was harder for me to get out of my work mind and in to enjoying mode, as it seemed to be for many others and the audience took a few songs to warm up and respond.

The music was just fantastic and whilst I didn't think the singing was the most outstanding I had ever heard I thought the dancing and choreography was out of this world, quite literally at times. There were a few songs that aren't included in Mamma Mia: The Film. My favourite being
'Under Attack' with Sophie having nightmares of being attacked by swimmers and divers in pschadelic swimming cozzies. Here is a youtube of the original (also apparently the last performance ever given by Abba as a group'.

It is also worth noting that we went in the first week of the British school holidays and there were a lot of children there in the audience including a lot of young girls dressed to the nines. And whilst it is mostly a family show there are a few sexual innuendoes, comments and actions (more so than the film) which I don't know I'd be happy to have my younger child see. Maybe it will pass them by if you have a not very observant child but as I have noticed in my years of working with children, they notice things. They notice a lot of things. I have had 3 and 4 year old kids make comments to me about things I did or said a week before and had forgotten about. I think 7 year olds would notice what is going on even if they don't say anything. 

The story is presented beautifully, dancing is amazing, and the set consists of two walls which are moved in different positions and together with the are just incredible at setting the different scenes. One of my favourite scenes is my least fave in the film and that is the hen night (I find it in the film just too stressful) but in the musical they just use the the lights and sound to create that whole scene perfectly.

I also want to pay tribute to the seemingly infinite energy levels of the cast, not only singing and dancing but it was also the cast members who did the set changes, bringing on tables and beds etc, and one did a little jump and a clap at the same time. Quite impressive!

If you don't have an aversion to strobe lights, abba music, white lycra or platforms I would completely and utterly recommend you go see this musical, topped off with a little singalong at the end!

Now you see it, Now you don't

When I reorganise my photos on Aperture, which I do ever so often in an attempt to get the perfect filing system I seem to have a knack of deleting lots of images.

The latest time I did this, 2 days ago, I deleted them at the source. 

Thats okay they are backed up in an aperture library on the time machine.

Except, I don't know how to get that particular directory on to aperture.

Thats okay!

I found them all the external harddrive. 

Except, they had all been removed from their folders (photos and originals and all put into the root folder). Not sure how that happened. Except when I had found it originally (before I realised said photos had been deleted from their folders). I didn't know what they were so put them all into one folder and called it 'Dont know'. Got to be descriptive in the folder names!

So last night I had to go through 4 months worth of photos and we are talking about Jan-April 08, the 4 months before I left to go away for 6 months and so took TONS of photos and put them all back in to their original folders. Thats photos plus copies. (I haven't even begun to divide the copies up). These process was also further complicated by alot of the dates on photos being inaccurate (something about when they were modified).

Why, in the world of computers, is nothing simple? (Although maybe I could say that about life in general?)

Sometimes when I sit and contemplate how far technology has come, from landlines to mobiles, from walkmans to ipods, from amstrads to modern computers and I wonder what we could possibly do to improve... I think the answer is just to at least improve the simplicity of what is not out there, to make it simple!

Wouldn't that be nice?

And because no post is complete without a photo, here is one of the ones giving me untold grief last night...

This as you may remember was taken by Naomi and in three weeks all people in above photo will be reunited again for the first time in 18 months. And hopefully we can have another photo to show you how much some have grown, how much Dad's hair has got shorter (unless he reads this and decides to go for the shaggy look to wind us up:) and how much older (yours truly) we are. 

Btw if you ever read my sister's blog 'Going Gwada' but have stopped since the demise of her laptop, she has written some more posts recently about their day trips and family history, interesting stuff!

Chris and Ele's Wedding: Slideshow and Album

Finally here is slideshow with most of the photos from Chris and Ele's wedding. Guys, once again thanks for the opportunity to take photos of one the most special day of your life, it was so much fun!

If you would prefer to look at the photos at your own leisure check out:
Chris and Ele's Online Wedding Album