It was a Wednesday in the middle of the Summer holidays. The weather was hot and sunny and expected to be well into the 30's and everyone, but everyone decided to beach was the place to be.
Including us. Our intention was to revisit Whitstable, a lovely little beach we had spent the previous year. On the road with the sun blaring down, the messages came about an accident ahead and closed roads. We had to rethink our journey. The relatives in the car behind made the most of the jams by popping out of the car to pick blackberries from the side of the road.
We decided to detour to Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey, just of the coast of Kent. Sheerness is itself a lovely beach. Much bigger than the Whitstable, with a fish bar (that took a while to find).
HIs uncle got this windmill toy that provided on the day and ever since, hours of entertainment!
The girls thought the sea was far too cold and ran away from it, they are too used to the warm caribbean waters!
My zoom lense helped me get this shot across the sea looking over at Southend
Look closely at the bottom left hand corner, yes you really do see a pet lizard being taken for a walk on the beach!
When my sister and family came home, they were joined by her husband's family from France and as it fell during my summer holidays I got to join them on some days out.
On this one we took the Tube to Trafalgar Square, walked along to Big Ben and got the boat down to the Thames Barrier. I have never even seen the Thames Barrier before, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable journey. The boat passes all the normal landmarks on the way down to Greenwich including the London Eye, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Hays Galleria and Canary Wharf to name but a few. Quite a few people get off at Greenwich, where the river also starts to get a lot wider, both meaning the journey from Greenwich to Thames Barrier feels a lot more peaceful. This part of the journey also passes the Millenium Done (the 02 Arena).
With 1046 days to go until the Olympics in 2012, it is with nervous anticipation we watch the preparations. Especially in terms of the building work... There is a particular train line that goes from pretty near our house right past the main area of building. And its always been interesting to see how things are progressing, watching the stadium and other Olympic buildings rise up out of the (mostly) waste ground that once existed there. (Was it really a waste ground? I am not sure, but it is certainly how I remember it used to look from the train anyway.)
The line I am talking about would be the Richmond - Stratford Overground Line. It is the little gateway to East London, that I take to get to Essex (for when is strictly necessary), the Scrapbooking shop Artbase and now my sister's new house. So on a visit to my sister for the 1st time last week, I secretly whipped out my camera for these few shots.
Secrecy is a necessity. The overground line attracts all kinds on interesting people, indeed on the last journey the ambulance were called for a passenger who was incapacitate with either drunkenness or something having a similar effect.
But seeing the results I was pleased to have taken the risk, please note the rather interesting window patterns, I gave up trying to avoid them and decided to embrace the circular rainbows...
For more photos from this journey, click on the photo to follow the link!
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...
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!
As I try and deal with several big projects of processing photos including the ones from a wedding yesterday (where the bride wore the most beautiful dress - ever!) it is little ones like these that give me a relaxing diversion.
Happily today I have achieved the following things...
8 hours with the lovely lovely children and survived the hot weather
Bought bananas (you would think that we have to do it every week would make it a habit it isn't, every week it is like a surprise, 'oh, we need bananas, again?!' Maybe one day....
Formatted a hard drive and turned it in to a backup for the computer (and praying hard I didn't lose any important stuff when I formatted!) Presently it is half way through the back up and it has taken about an hour I think. Only another hour to go. Sigh!
Processing wedding photos, weeding out the rubbish ones. Still doing it, but I am more than half way through that, then will come editing stage.
Managed not to go completely crazy trying to figure out why my other external hard drive has only 12 gb free space when I calculated it has 120 gbs used on it (250 gb drive) can anyone advise??? Please!
The day following Amy and Lee's wedding I took myself on a walk around the local area. First decision is whether to turn left and right, having gone right for the wedding I decided left would be a little more adventurous and off I went with the camera. Turns out to be a pretty interesting walk... The following photos were all taken pretty much on the same road within a very short time period, you don't have to go far in Rochester to see some amazing buildings.
The sky threatened rain but it held off right til I was photographing the cathedral so I had to call it a day
and run back to the B+B but was glad the subsequent storms hadn't come the day before at the wedding....
Yesterday Metcheck told us there would be storms and rain in the afternoon, so I set out the playground at nursery accordingly (only plastic toys and bikes) and what happened? No rain, nothing, nada.
So this afternoon as I desperately try to concentrate on processing photos, I briefly considered taking the laptop into the garden but noticed the clouds looking a little on the darker side of nice. So took my place by the big victorian living room windows with a front seat to see the storms rolling in. Now here I am sidetracked again, because of course I had to get the camera out and take a few photos and of course I had to blog about it.
So this is our garden this afternoon, it's starting to clear up a bit although we can still hear the thunder and see the lightning. But the hail has stopped and now we are just watching Wimbledone, waiting to see if the rain will make it over and make them close their new roof for the first time...
I am always rather amused to know that where most people's parents would rather they be a lawyer or doctor or teacher (something 'prefessional') I have a wonderfully set of supportive parents and I think my Dad would be quite happy to see me be a photographer... (go dad!) and not only that, but through my addiction passion for photography my parents have also developed an interest and especially Dad. Mum takes photos for the memories, to scrap, Dad takes photos, to take good photos. The other day he was complaining that his photos just weren't as good as mine to which I replied, I would be worried if they were!
However last night I was on their computer downloading images I wanted copies off and then I saw this one and I think it might be time to get worried (I have edited a little) but this is a photo of me arriving back through the gates at St Pancras off the Eurostar after coming home from Guadeloupe.
Over half term my church, St Marks Tollington Park hosted this amazing week of missions, outreach and fun! It kicked off with the church big day out on the Sunday Over the week there was outreach such as football, art, gardening, tollington's got talent, christian rapper etc and it was all wrapped up with a party on the Andover Estate on the Saturday. I have had the pleasurable task of going with anopther lady from St Marks, (the wonderful Fiona - in case she is reading xxx:) and getting feedback. It has all been so positive from everyone wondering when we are coming back. I confess I was a little curious as to how it was all going to work out but I think the guys at St Marks and on the Andover did such an amazing job and I'm looking forward to getting involved the next time.
For now here are some slideshows of photos I took over the week. They are silent, so do put on some on music and press HQ for the ultimate experience!
