Points of focus

I can’t tell you how fortuitous it is that at the same time as I decide to keep going here, a new-to-me camera falls into my hands. The 50mm lens is growing on me too; I like how my pictures now don’t look exactly like they usually do.

Oh, and to continue on the love of winter theme: have your bestie who lives abroad come and stay with you (for the second winter in a row), so you can go to the cinema on a rainy day, walk home through the neighbourhood under a too small umbrella, bring her along to your weekly choir (oh man, I haven’t even told you guys about that yet) where everyone welcomes her with open arms and you get to sing standing next to each other for the first time. You might go to exactly three exhibitions, as she’s only staying for three nights, and you eat delicious food and drink delicious hot drinks (these pics are all from those days). On one of the nights you’re lucky enough to be able to walk up the hill to watch one of your favourite artists at a gig (WARNING - FLASHING LIGHTS!!) in the local live venue, which was the reason for her coming in the first place. It’s one of the best gigs you’ve ever been to and your watch tells you you’ve taken 5000 steps at the gig - which was you dancing the whole time. You talk life for four days, figure stuff out and part by saying “You/I need to do this more often” and one of you remembers that this exhibition will be on this summer, and that that is a perfectly good enough of a reason to do it all over again.

So long, farewell...

… auf wiedersehen, goodbye. I’ve been thinking about wrapping the blog up for a long time, and had thought that a natural stop in the year I turn 50 would make sense, but now I know I don’t have another year of blogging in me. I started the blog in 2008 as a way of getting me to take more pictures (and boy did it work!), but now I have to end it for the same reason. I’ve really enjoyed posting in this space for the last 16 years, but I feel that blogging has stifled my creativity for a while, and that I’ve perhaps gone from my funny eye to my tired eye… I want to thank you so much for having been such a great audience over the years, and to give a special thanks to those of you who’ve taken the time to leave a comment or two - or twenty. I will miss hearing from you, but when an I’m old lady (ok older lady), and hopefully still taking pictures, I’ll remember that decades ago when I sent my pictures out on the worldwide web, there were people there who really liked them, and were kind and generous enough to tell me. What a privilege!

I’m leaving the blog up for a while longer as my contract with Squarespace won’t end until the end of the year, so you’ll still be able to go through the archives should you wish to do so. Wishing you all that is good, and again - thank you so much for stopping by here. You guys rocked.

Ready, steady... go?

Heeeeeey. I didn't mean to take a break from the blog, but here we are. There are several reasons for why it happened, and as it’s now been so long, my question to myself recently has been “Where do I even start?”. I know where I should, but that post will take a while to put together, and will be pain/joyful to write. So I’m just dipping my toe in, giving a life sign, waving hello. I’m here, all is good, and it’s time to take the time to be here again. Hope you’re good.

A summer summary

Woohoo - summer’s over! Thank fudge for that. Never have I ever wanted it over so quickly; maybe it was the intense heat, the drought, the looooong days with not much going on, but boy am I glad that it’s DONE. I’ve come across a few articles in the past couple of weeks with titles like “How to make summer last” or “Hold on to that summer feeling” and I’ve been shaking my head, feeling like I live on another planet, one were I want routines back, the cold and the dark and the quiet, and hibernation. Weird - I know. I think I just have three words for it, and that’s “cold water swimming”. It’s changed my life and has changed me. Summers are kind of a drag now.

I’ll tell you what didn't help either. I missed out on our first holiday abroad together as a family in 2 &1/2 years. Something that I’d so intensely looked forward to, found stressful to book many moons ago, and in the end managed to clear Covid by one day before departure (!). We were due to go to the Dolomites, back to the same place we went in 2008, but this time with Oomoo. It was going to be amazing to be in the mountains again, showing him all the crazy beautiful places there, but it was not to be, not for me anyway. Buddy had been poorly for about a week before we were due to go, and right up to the last minute we didn’t know whether the holiday was a go or a no. Seven hours before our cab was due to pick us up for a ridiculously early flight, it was decided that I’d have to stay behind and look after him, so I unpacked my suitcase, hugely disappointed. But you know, in the scheme of things, not a disaster, just really crap timing. Anyway, we FaceTimed daily and I got sent pictures like this, which made me both happy and sad (that’s O over there, enjoying the view).

Buddy’s fine now, the meds I had to give him twice a day for a week sorted him out. I was also happy that I could look after him during the insanely hot heatwave that hit us mid-July, making sure he stayed in the cooler parts of the house, because look at him - that dude is basically wearing a fur coat 24/7.

19th of July, 7.29am. The day when we hit the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK, +40.3c (104.5F). I’d already spent the previous day indoors in the coolest room of the house and not moving much. I didn’t want to repeat it, so I went out for an early morning walk in the park, which is what everyone with dogs were doing too, before it got too hot. See the tall grass to the left of the picture? It should be a deep green and not a fire hazard. It’s no understatement to feel like we’ve gone past the point of no return with climate change now. It feels surreal to live in a time which is so amazingly shit on so many fronts, all at the same time.

But you all know that. And you didn’t come here to feel down, so let’s change the subject. This is the one picture this summer that I took, that I felt properly excited about taking. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it’s a real rush. It’s of course totally subjective, and you might find this picture meh, but in my eyes it ticks a lot of my boxes; a graphic shadow, nice colours, an anonymous child, and catching that second of her hand floating in the air before she grabs hold of the next handrail. AND that she’s under a “sun” wearing a sun hat. Noice.

Actually, going through the pictures for this post I remembered that the summer wasn’t all that bad. There were lots of good things, like feeding my eyes and soul with some great exhibitions. Really enjoyed Fashioning Masculinites at the V&A; I would wear all of these outfits (but then I do wear a lot of mens’ clothing as they’re so much nicer, but actually these are quite feminine or at least unisex 🙃). The two on the left are underwear from the 1700’s (I’ve got a nightie very similar to the first one -ha!).

Edward Munch at the Courthauld was another highlight. Very small but very good.

Also made our way up to Cambridge to see Hockney’s Eye at the Fitzwilliam Museum, which was absolute genius. I love that man’s art and mind so much.

On another boiling hot day me and my gal pals and Oomoo went to Oxford to see Ruth Asawa at Modern Art Oxford. I only realised looking back at my post from the London Asawa exhibition two years ago that this one was way smaller and not as broad. Still, it was great to see and the perfect excuse for an Oxford day trip.

One Friday evening me and my gals A & D went to see Football: Designing the Beautiful Game at the Design Museum, an exhibition that I initially was going to pass on, but after having checked out the website I realised that it actually looked really good. We all loved it, especially as A & D are graphic designers and I used to be one.

It’s not often that I bring O with me to exhibitions anymore; now that he’s old enough to say ‘No thanks’, rather than have no choice and get dragged along, he usually does. But in a long stretch of not doing much, and needing to get out of the house, I knew that he might be a bit more interested in Futureshock at 180 The Strand. There were only two good things in there, and this was one of them, Daydream v.6 by Nonotak. Like one of the best things I’ve seen in ages. I’m glad that you weren’t allowed to go inside it or it would be ruined by everyone capturing for their socials. Oh wait.

Last but not least I saw Etel Adnan’s Colour as Language at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago. Adnan was a published writer and poet who had been painting for 50+ years, and found fame with her art at 87 a few years back with her colourful and minimal abstract paintings, and well deserved too. If that’s not inspiring I don’t know what is.

What else?

well, there were two summer haircuts,

a very tiny bit of wildlife on our front room window right before bed one evening

lots and lots of watching TV

and staying inside away from the heat.

There were also a few day trips; one with A & D to Cambridge,

one with the guys to Brighton

and one earlier mentioned outing to Oxford. I enjoyed all of them immensely. I like the pace of a day trip.

There was also a trip to Kew Gardens right before school started,

as well as one week in Amsterdam, which we all got to go on, although Mr Famapa had to leave a few days early for a job in Warsaw.

And here’s a morning after a sleepover a week ago, right before the house schedule moved into autumn mode. Hope your summer was a-okay, and if you like, tell me about it :)