Some fabulous photos

And for once (ha!) the photos aren't mine :o)

I've been learning about my family history recently and some of the characters way back when (would you believe that there's apparently a 15th century pirate in the mix?). Anyway, turns out that photography and observing the world isn't something unique to just me. Fortunately I've got some of my great-grandfather's photos (part of his huge archive has been digitised, thanks to my dad and grandma), and I've posted some of his WWI photos up on lamppost-pictures.com:

• training for the kite ballon section of the Royal Naval Air Service
• the stricken SS City of Birmingham and the Emden

Thought you might like to check them out :o)

The start of a beautiful friendship ...

There's a huge buzz about 'grow your own' in the UK at the moment, mostly driven by the 'celebrity chefs' Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall through their TV programs on the UK's Channel 4. Although I doubt that Jamie and Hugh's efforts had a direct impact, even the Obamas and the Queen have jumped on the grow-your-own band wagon.

Not that I'm deriding the efforts to get people to connect more with their food and the impact that their consumption has on the environment and on animal welfare (Jamie Oliver's programs on the reality of commercial pig and chicken farming last year were a very stark wake up call for much of the UK viewing public, including us).

On the contrary, I'd love to get more involved on the grow-your-own front ... it's just that given our work and lifestyle at the moment, I think I'd likely kill the poor plants from neglect well before I could harvest a crop worth the effort.

So I've decided to do my own version of grow-your-own, and have bought myself a (hopefully) long-lived new friend ... a miniature potted sunflower to keep the basil company. Surely grow-your-own flowers counts? Doesn't it?

Not quite as glorious as the amazing fields of sunflowers that grace Crans-pres-Celigny, or even as fabulous as the random giant sunflower that crops up in Ally's garden ... but it'll just have to do :o)

Photos ... and update in general

So I've just put the best of the photos I took of Tantallon Castle up on lamppost-pictures.com ... looking at them again (& checking out some of the websites on Tantallon) I'm really pleased with them - I seem to have managed to get some quite different angles in my photos that not a lot of others have. Or at least, mine are quite different to those easily thrown up by a Google Image search for 'Tantallon Castle'. Always a satisfying realisation!

Apart from photo blogging ... this past week has been an exceptionally busy one for us, not helped by A's lighting fast trip home this week to sort out the annual tasks associated with asset ownership. There are times when sensible investment strategies are a right pain in the b*tt. Oh well ...

I've been settling back into something of my 'domestic goddess' mode recently, which primarily means I've been baking far more than 'normal'. This afternoon it was cupcakes (one of the junior designers has a birthday on Tuesday, so that was my excuse) and last weekend it was my double choc-chip cookies (A's favourite, and the first time I'd made them in about 3yrs ... they were just as yummy as always, and A took the last 2 of the batch as his munchables for the flight :o). The weekend before that it was an 'out of season' batch of Anzac Biscuits at the request of the guys at work.

I'm actually really grateful that my work colleagues are happy receipients of my baked goods. For me most of the fun is in the making rather than the eating, and being able to 'distribute' the results of my activities means that I can make the next thing much sooner than I could if we had to eat everything ourselves!

And so now, a quiet evening of wandering in the sunshine of an early summer evening (7pm and 23deg isn't bad!) before more homely activities later ... probably encompassing curling up on the sofa with the rest of the weekend papers

I really like weekends :o)

A weekend sojourn to Edinburgh

It seems strange to be putting together a 'proper' blog post ... it's been ages since I've written one! Looking through the last couple of posts it's made me realise that most of them have been tidbits I've come across online, and not so much about what we've been upto.

There's been several reasons for this, primary amongst which has been that work for both of us has been increasingly busy over the last month or so. And after a long day at work (often without a proper lunch break) and a cumulative 2hrs commuting time as well, the last thing I've felt like doing is thinking enough to write something coherant! But then, that sounds a bit like whinging, so I'll stop before it starts too much. 

Well, for those who're insterested, here's an update on the world of Adam and Marion ... :o)

We spent the second of the May long weekends up in Edinburgh visiting our friends Katie and Andy - and whilst there realised it was more than a year since our last visit to the lovely Scottish capital.

Edinburgh seemed keen to make amends just as much as we were, and we were fortunate to have 4 days of glorious spring sunshine (well, it was mostly sunny anyway!). 

As a result, we came home with a significant number of photos (unsurprising really) and I've just managed to get them all sorted and edited, and the best of the bunch uploaded to a web album for your perusal ...

Hope you enjoy them :o)

As well as a good excuse to visit friends, we managed to tick-off a number of things that we hadn't yet managed to do:

• Explore Edinburgh Castle (an easy way to while 2hrs away, but we're at a loss as to how some tourists manage to spend all day there)
• Visit a whiskey distillery - in our case, Glenkinche, which is the closest working distillery to Edinburgh
• Enjoy (?) the Scottish take on fish 'n chips (fish good, batter overdone, chips greasy)
• Go to the final of the Heinekin Cup ... well, Adam & Andy went and Katie and I watched from the comfort of some pub couches ... and for the record, it was a great game, and Leinster were deserving winners  

And here, I'm running out of steam ... so I'll finish up before I start to waffle.

M xx

PS / BTW - I've also put some of the photos from Edinburgh Castle up on lamppost-pictures.com if you'd prefer to check them out there :o)  

My absence explained ...

Ok, so now that I'm happy with the end result, I can 'reveal' one of the reasons that I've been so absent from the blog recently ... and that would be that I've been busy with a couple of other projects, one of which has been to do something with my photos. It's all very well to have a hard drive full of images that you love, but there's only so many that you can view on a screen at once!

So now I'm ready to share my first 'public' photo book (I've done two previously, but that was of our wedding photos and 1/3 of our travels in 2006 ... and they're much more for private consumption!).

This photo book is of the best photos that I took on a day out at Kew Gardens with my dad and brother back in April - it was a lovely day and in the 5 hours we spent there I took about 350 photos, of which c. 150 were culled, and then about 50 have 'made it' to the final cut and are in the book.

A Springtime a...

By Marion Wotton

Book Preview

I'd love to know what you think of it - please check it out! :o)

{so Adele, is that a good reason for being slack? hehe!}

There will be more in the future, so I'll let you know as-and-when they're available for viewing.

A fun diversion - test your geography

Ok, so this is a viral game for Lufthansa, but it's a fab challenge! The 'my score' listed is my first effort ... let me know how you do :0)

Super slack blogging effort

Just realised it's a whole month since the last post! I've really let things slip ... and it's not even been due to being on holidays! Well, it is a little bit due to holidays, but they weren't ours! My dad visited us in London for 2wks over Easter, and he (understandibly and, dare I say, appropriately) had first dibs on our spare time.

So, now that the problem has been noted, we'll work to fix it :)

Ridiculous complaints by British holiday makers

I just came across this on The Telegraph's website, and it's too good not to share!

(if you want to see the original, complete with pretty pictures, here's the link)

1. A tourist at a top Africa game lodge overlooking a waterhole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the site of the rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel 'inadequate'
   
2. A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she'd been locked in her hotel room by staff ... she had, in fact, mistaken the 'do not disturb' sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in her room
   
3. "The beach was too sandy"
   
4. A guest at one of Novotel's Australian hotels complained that his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently drinking the gravy at the time ...
5. "Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."
6. "We bought Ray-Ban sunglasses from a street vendor for €5, only to find out that they were fake."
7. "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."
8. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England, but it only took the Americans three hours."
9. "My fiance and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."
10. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."
11. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation.' We're trainee hairdressers - will we be Ok staying here?"
12. "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners."
13. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."
14. "We had to queue outside with no air-conditioning."
15. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of any noisy or unruly guests before we travel."
16. "I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite."
17. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."
18. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close during the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned."
19. "On my holiday to Goa, in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all."
20. "We booked an excursion to a water park, but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."

It makes you wonder firstly, why do these people even bother going on overseas holidays in the first place, and secondly, what planet are these people on?!

Bring on Spring!

Another busy week flies past, and all of a sudden the end of March is a hair's breadth away. How does that happen? Before computers, emails, and mobile broadband did time seem to pass so quickly? I can see (a little bit) of logic in the idea of being a hermit ... :D

We've been out-and-about a bit recently - I finally received my birthday present from my parents, via my brother N, a 'family outing' to see 'Oliver! The Musical' at the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane. It was well worth the wait. The theatre was packed, and everyone was excited that Rowan Atkinson was performing that night (I'm sure his understudy's very good, but how often do you get to see 'Mr Bean' perform live?!) Atkinson plays the part of Fagin, and does so very well.

However the real stars of the show are (very rightly) the boys playing the thieves - the Artful Dodger character of course, but there was one small boy (playing the smallest theif) who completely stole the scenes he was in. I don't know his name, but he'll no doubt be seen on the stage again.

We've also ventured out of London with a weekend trip to Birmingham to visit friends, and I took the opportunity to exercise my photography muscles on a different pallette. I've put a couple of entries up on lamppost-pictures.com - please let me know what you think!

Cannon Park, Edgbaston
The Bullring, Birmingham

The end of winter may be in sight

Last weekend was simply lovely in London - still a little bit crisp around the edges, but lots of gorgeous blue skies and sunshine to enjoy.

We made the most of Sunday and went for a long wander through our backyard (aka - Kensington Garedns) and then through the 'back streets' of Lancaster Gate & Bayswater before circling back home again.

{we were on a deadline to be home in time for A to watch the 6 Nations game in the afternoon!}

Along the way I took some photos of the swans on the Round Pond in front of Kensington Palace - they looked incredibly serene given the mess of people close to the Pond (feeding the birds, promenading, trying to ensure inquisitive toddlers didn't follow swans into the water ...). Here are two photos:

I've got some more on my photoblog, lamppost-pictures.com (see Kensington Swans)