Amsterdam - again

A few weeks ago me, and my friends D & A hopped on an early Saturday morning train to Amsterdam, to spend four excellent days with our beloved Z (we all worked together as graphic designers on a magazine a verrrrrry long time ago), in my home city from home. Neither D or A had been there properly, so the first thing on the list was to get them used to riding bikes, which they did quickly, in the quiet Noord neighbourhood.

We stopped for a delicious vegan lunch at Liever Hier in Nieuwendammerdijk, where we hands down had the best chocolate brownie either one of us had ever had. The view wasn’t bad either. Looking back at these pics I can see that we were very lucky with the weather (I’m typing this wearing heat tech and a thick fleece - in June).

The street that the café is on is almost 2km long, with a lovely mix of architecture. I think I’ll have to come back and walk it next time, so I can take more pictures of it.

Z had the smallest ladybird I’ve ever seen on her shoulder. I’m sure it’ll still give her lots of luck, despite it’s size.

Slowly making our way into town; you see a lot of this in Amsterdam, various ways of fitting your kids on a bike. I once saw someone cycle while holding a small baby in one arm, no sling or anything. Scary/skillz.

Pretty. Or ‘mooi’ - in Dutch.

Still in Noord, getting closer to the trendy end of it. Love the block of flats on the left. Why new builds in the UK can’t be this nice is beyond me. There’s just no inherent good taste in British architecture these days. I think it might have peaked in the Georgian era.

And these floating houses! Swoon. There’s a little neighbourhood of them, just in front of the block of flats in the previous pictures. Seeing the ladders going into the water makes my heart beat a bit faster.

When I go travelling I like to have a loose plan of what to do/see/eat, a bit of sketch if you like, with areas to visit but then keeping it flexible. It’s mainly to avoid the panic trying to find somewhere to eat when you’re dead tired and hungry, or making sure to not miss out on seeing a special place. Well, one of those special places for me in Noord is Van Dijk & Ko, a massive warehouse stuffed with second hand furniture, books and trinkets. The prices are ridiculous cheap too; some of the massive beautiful cupboards, including antique kitchen ones would cost up to six times as much in London. I hadn’t planned that we should cycle to it, but as it was on the way, we popped in.

D has a thing for antique linen and picked out some good ones.

There are also some weird stuff amongst all the goodness. Where do we think this would have been originally (minus the wig of course)?

I’ve been thinking recently how there are a whole generation of kids who mostly don’t know what a cuckoo clock is or what it does (these are the sort of things I think about - haha!). There would always be someone who had one when I was a kid. I was a tiny bit tempted to get one, but these were actually not that cheap, and who’s to say they still work?

If I had a different house style I would have got a few of these. Or if we had a second home.

Instead I got two old Hungarian ceramic bowls with crazy glazing on them.

Stop! Ferry time. Time to cross the IJ and cycle towards our dinner.

Love the mixture of the architecture here + the balustrade shadows.

Dinner at De Japanner has become a regular thing on the last few trips to Amsterdam. Incredible Japanese food that’s delicious in your mouth and kind on your wallet .

The street it’s on, Albert Cuypstraat, is a market street in the day time, and once it’s shut it’s quite a mess, which these herons have figured out, so they have quite a feast where the fishmonger trades.

And finally, catching some evening light on the ferry back home to Noord. Such a great first day of the trip.

Me me me

17/4/21

I fell into a bit of a picture taking funk last year, but was then inspired by an episode of Elizabeth Gilbert’s old podcast ‘Magic Lessons with Elizabeth Gilbert’ (ep.208 if you want to know), where she spoke to a woman who didn’t feel able to call herself a poet. I can 100% relate as I’ve never felt comfortable with saying that I’m a photographer, because you know, real photographers have their work published, and therefor I don’t qualify (I’m not so hung up about that now, as I don’t really care about it as a label anymore; if someone asks I say I’m a photographer, and then the conversation just moves on). Anyway, Gilbert suggested a couple of ideas to the poet (see - I call her that!), one of which was that she should embark on a secret year-long project, which she wasn’t to show anyone until it was finished. The whole point was to create, without any input from anyone else, for your own pleasure, and away from any validation that social media gives you. I immediately knew what my secret project should be. A year’s worth of self portraits, using the self-timer on the camera, and only having three goes to get it ‘right’. I’ve said this so many times, but as I’m always behind the camera there are hardly any photos of me, so it really was a no-brainer. In the end I missed two days, as I had completely forgotten to take a pic on those days, but you know, whatever. I’m going to make a book of it, for myself, so there’s also a physical record of me between 16/4/21 and 16/4/22, and I’m naming it ‘Me me me’.

The picture above is from day 2, on what looks like a nice sunny day, in the garden, with me reading the paper. There’s a LOT of pictures of me reading, which feels good to see.

22/4/21
I didn’t use a tripod, apart from one pic I think, so I had to make use of the floor, shelves, tables - basically any flat surface I could find. I love this picture. That light was just a frickin’ gift!

30/4/21

Me and O reading our books next to each other before his bedtime. Most of the pictures are from home and my everyday life. I very rarely remembered to take a self portrait when I was out and about. A good creative challenge if there ever was one.

2/5/21

A lot of the time I’d forget to take a picture until I was about to go to bed (and a few times I’d remember with a jolt, as I was about to fall asleep).

5/5/21

This makes me laugh. My New Year’s resolution last year was to be able to do three pull ups. I totally failed. A few months before the end of the year my elbow joints gave out, so I couldn’t do any weights for a while, let alone pull ups exercises. Needless to say, I gave up, and this year I realised that New Year’s resolutions are silly, and that I naturally do lots of new things in a year anyway. I also now know that I’ll never be able to do a pull up, and I’m fine with that.

27/5/21

I think this was my only tripod shot. And here I am, getting a blog post together.

10/6/21

I have no shame. Yep. that’s me on the loo.

14/6/21

It’s funny to see how my clothes change as the seasons do too. Buddy is in a lot of the shots. I’m sure he’s looking at me here thinking “She’s so… weird.”

25/7/21

Well, I am. A bit.

2/8/21

But you love me Buddy, and newsflash, we’re all weird. Even you, my furry friend.

7/8/21

And yeah, even away, in our friends’ house, I had to get my weird on. Sometimes I’d do a last millisecond pose, just to change things up.

10/8/21

This ones also makes me laugh. I’ll call it ‘Life at the edge of the sun’.

27/8/21

In the house in the Cotswolds. I like the tones in this one.

14/9/21

So strange to see this room when it was white. I have no idea why we left it so long before we changed the colour in there. It looks so boring and cold compared to how it is now. And yes, Buddy is allowed on the table, because who’s to say he wouldn’t be up there when we’re not in anyway? I draw the line if he’s just been to the loo, but going by my logic, he probably goes up there when he has, when we’re not in - ha!

21/9/21

Me and the moon. Howling at it? Turning into a werewolf? Joking aside, it was a stunning full moon.

I’ll post more of these soon. Hey - that rhymes! Noice.

26 hours in Suffolk

Last weekend we drove to the Suffolk coast (Walberswick to be exact) to meet our friends SA & Y for some fish & chips by the sea. We lucked out with the weather, just like last time we went.

After lunch we went for a little walk to see what else was around, and saw these weather worn fishermen huts along the way.

And through this restaurant window I spotted these two, perfectly colour coordinated with the chairs 💙💙

To get from the car park to the fish & chips place you had to cross the water on the blue boat you can see to the right here. Thought it quite a racket as it cost us £20 for six people to cross back and forth. We’re clearly in the wrong business. For this weekend trip I thought I’d switch out my lens on the camera to a 50mm, and after having been shooting on a wider lens for years, I immediately regretted my decision. The pics I took on the boat are too tight, and there was no room for me to simply take a few steps back. What a fool.

Never mind. On land I can always take a step backwards to fit everything in.

Y looking through an abandoned house; pretty amazing huh? We couldn’t quite figure out if it had been just used for storage or lived in. Looking through the windows I couldn’t see a kitchen or any fireplaces, so I doubt that it was ever residential (or at least not in winter).

Time to say hello to the sea.

Hello sea 👋🏽

O did his usual thing of dipping his toes in. Good attitude to have in life.

Back at SA & Y’s house. Such a great one.

Ruby the dog needed a walk (or run rather) when we got back, so me and SA went out for a late afternoon walk in the surrounding fields, just us ladies. Everything is so green at the moment; that special intense new green that only exists when everything is freshly sprouted, but eventually grows less bright as summer takes hold. I love how nature just does it’s thing, like magic, every season.

Hey Rubes, how goes it? You’re very cute, aren’t you?

Nice bit of evening light on some painted poppies.

After dinner we played Syringe. Such a brilliant game - I recommend it wholeheartedly. Basically you write down a category of something and then something within it that you don’t show anyone (for example: countries - France, cars - Ford, fruit - passion fruit) and then you walk round the table with a syringe filled with water. If anyone guesses what you wrote down, they get squirted with water, and if no one does you have to squirt yourself in the face. So simple, and

so

much

fun.

SA and I used to work on interior design projects together years ago, and her and Y’s house is full of nice stuff. I seriously need to know where this lamp shade is from (she couldn’t remember - doh).

Ruby supervising the breakfast chefs.

Another lampshade shot, just because.

On Sunday morning we drove to Framlingham Castle to have a wander in the gardens.

It’s medieval innit

and built in the 1200’s. Crazy.

It’s also the only castle I’ve ever seen giving you the finger. With both towers. Do we think that it was a way of saying eff you to unwanted intruders (I know they’re chimneys but let’s pretend, as it’s funnier than the truth)?

We didn’t go inside the castle (but I kind of wish we had now, as my inner pensioner would have loved it); instead we walked around the lake. This dude was just setting up - not a bad spot either.

Window shopping in Framlingham. Lovely building too.

And finally, right before we left, a Polaroid being taken for O’s wall of friends and family that he’s got up in his room. A sweet ending to what felt like much longer than 26 hours, and I mean that in the best possible way.

A girls' weekend away-ish

Time for an interlude amongst my Amsterdam posts me thinks. A couple of weeks ago me and my friend D went to stay with our friend A at her house in Essex for the weekend. We (mostly) lucked out with the weather, and had such a great time. I reckon middle aged sleepovers should be more of a thing, haha! We arrived on Friday evening, and early on Saturday morning we went for breakfast at the local farm café, and got supplies (i.e. cakes and dinner ingredients) from the farm shop next door.

A then drove us to Leigh-on Sea, and pretty it was too.

We made our way down towards the beach, and as we were doing so, three ladies half our age decided to run down this stretch which made us feel old, as when you get to a certain age you worry about twisting your ankle, falling over and then having a painful limp for a good few months afterwards. When you’re in your 20’s you don’t have to worry about that sort of thing, because you tend to be able to run and stay upright.

Down by the beach the tide was completely out, but we could still smell the sea.

We walked eastwards towards Westcliff-on-Sea, and I realise now how different the walk would’ve been had the tide been in, but it was still enjoyable. To the left, behind the fence were railway tracks

and on the other side of those these houses caught my eye, and this spacey one the most.

The cute view from the bench we rested our middle aged legs on.

This view made me think of Leon Spilliaerts’ sea side paintings.

Lunch was a bag of chips, and A recommended that we put more salt on than we normally would, and make sure we got some on the bottom of the bag. D mentioned hers being too salty, and seeing how much she poured in, in this picture, I AM NOT SURPRISED.

After lunch we ducked into the Leigh Heritage Centre where we had a nosey in the replicated fisherman’s cottage from 1850. I wonder if people in the future will fawn over our household items like we did here, or will most of it have disintegrated as they’re mainly mass-produced crap made of plastic, with planned obsolescence?

Back on the street we heard these guys way before we saw them, wondering “Is that people singing or someone playing it really loud?”, before we saw where the singing came from. Turns out it was these guys, singing sea shanties, while swigging ale. How very very English.

Driving back to A’s I thoroughly enjoyed being the passenger.

Joey was waiting for us when we got back, A’s sweet old fella. As a gentleman aged 14 he’s not up for long walks or days out anymore. A said I wouldn’t manage to get a shot of him as he always turns his head just as your about to, but he’s obviously never met anyone with a trigger finger like mine.

Time for the cakes we bought in the morning. And yes, I will never become a food stylist, unless you find this look appetising and if so - I’m your gal.

At one point A got out this giant jar of matches that her parents had collected from their travels decades ago.

We decided that we would all pull a random box out, and that we would have to travel to those places one day. Mine came from a hotel in Bandung, Indonesia, D got one from Hawaii, and I think A’s was also from Indonesia. Does already having been to Bali count as having gone? I don’t know about you, but I feel funny about flying long haul in the future. I reckon I’ll only allow myself about two more in my life time. It just doesn’t feel right.

In the mean time I appreciated how much “my” box matched my and D’s jumpers.

Ever wondered what would a matchbox from a Playboy Club in the 70’s looks like?

Well, ahem, a bit like this.

D, crashing from the cakes and the day out. Time to watch some telly.

We started watching Couples Therapy, and binged through six episodes in one sitting. We kept cursing at Mau, the husband in this couple. The show films couples as they have therapy in real life, and why you would want to air your problems is beyond me, but of course it makes for compelling telly, just like Esther Perel’s podcast “Where should we begin?” has been a fascinating listen for the past few years.

Halfway through our marathon CT session A made some fresh pesto and bloody delicious it was too. It even qualified for a picture which, if you have been reading the blog for the past decade and a bit, realise is quite something. I can’t say that I still see people take pictures of their food with the same dedication as they did pre-Covid, but I did watch a girl posing for a selfie in her car for a few minutes outside my window yesterday, taking a pic, checking it, rearranging her hair/pout and re-taking the picture on a loop. I was hoping that we’d moved on from that, considering where we are in the world right now, but hey, if it makes you happy, keep doing it (but does it though, DOES IT?!!). I'm not judging (but I am, I AM).

Hey Joey! Caught you again - hehe. Sunday morning, and time for coffee

and breakfast. Mmmm, white toast. What a treat.

We had planned to go out for a walk before it was time for me and D to head back home, but the weather took a turn, so we played Sussed which I’d brought with me instead, which was, as always, really good fun. Have you ever played it? The premise is this; you read out a question with three possible answers, and the other players have to guess which one you’d answer. Like “Do I think strangers should chat more to each other on public transport? A. Yes, a lot more/ B. Yes, in some cases/ C. No, it should stay as it is now. As it happened we three knew each other really well, and scored accordingly, but the best thing about the game are the conversations you end up having. I’ve played it with kids who are usually quiet in adult company, and seen them actively take part in the conversation, and the arguing that can ensue when you disagree with what someone says about themselves is very entertaining. A nice way to round of a perfect weekend! If you haven’t done a grown up sleepover in a while and you can, put one in the diary sooner than soon (and kid-free is obviously better). We were all buzzing from having been able to spend so much unhurried time together, and it showed that you really don’t have to go somewhere far for some quality time with your best people, you just need longer than a brunch/lunch/dinner/day.