Chez Spud

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Final thoughts on Blog Camp before I parcel up the rest of the memories for myself and pop them in to an easily accessible corner of my mind.

Whilst driving home it suddenly struck me that I had been the only Brit attending the BBC (Brit Blog Camp); Kristina is Swedish and lives in Sweden, Blanca is Spanish but lives in England, Polly who isn’t Polly is Polish and lives in England, Julochka is American but lives in Denmark and Bee is American but also lives in England. So it was only dull schmull me who is English and lives in England. Quelle boring! At least I will have the benefit of being ‘slightly’ exotic at Blog Camp 2.0 (or DBC..Danish Blog Camp?)

It was quite a revelation to be honest, I may even have cracked open the snacks to mark the moment (it was a long journey, I had to take my pleasures where I could get them). Clearly our diverse nationalities, one of the world’s greatest dividers (along with religion and the Barbie/Sindy issue), had been such a non ‘issue’ for our merry band that I’d entirely failed to notice it.

Why was that? Why was the single biggest ‘difference’ between us so invisible? Perhaps because everyone spoke excellent English (even the Americans, bless them)? Maybe we were all so consumed by the Love of Blog that we were too giddy to notice (not so, we hardly talked about blogging at all)? Did our Nikon Girls Group Smuggery get the better of us (very possibly)? I really don’t know the answer…all I can tell you is that we found the common ground and felt comfortable there, shared secrets and confidences, despite our diverse geographic and cultural backgrounds.

At this point it would be tempting to spin off in to some tedious diatribe about how World Peace could be achieved using Blog Camp as an inspiration (Ban Ki-Moon, listen in! Just get loads of Nikons for everyone, make some nice presents, go to the pub, gossip and…TA DA…WORLD PEACE!) but I’m not going there. That’s just a bit too worthy for a Tuesday evening, don’t you think? If it were Wednesday I would consider it.

I just want to know how we found our common ground, so quickly and effortlessly. I’ve wondered whether we all ‘shaved’ bits off our personalities, curbed the ‘extremes’ of our nationalities. I can’t answer for the others, of course, but I don’t think I did. I often tone down my sarcastic sense of humour when among People From Foreign, and speak more slowly and cut out obvious cultural references and idioms … but I don’t think I did for Blog Camp, for whatever reason. I was just me and, I hope, they were just them and it happened to gel.

They went home knowing what ‘chavs’, ‘pikeys’ and ‘grockles’ are…I went home knowing what ‘funk’ and ‘smack’ means in different ways that I knew before. We are all better people because of it I’m sure. More importantly, I went home knowing that IKEA isn’t a random brand name…it actually stands for something. Oh, life enrichment how I embrace thee! Also, us Brits pronounce Ikea all wrong. Even Julochka (an American) says it right, tush and fie.

I don’t have the answer, I don’t think there is one. I’m still slightly awed by our weekend together which, looking back, felt like suspended reality. All I know is that we found our common ground and, having photographed it 2,478,321 times, we loved it. And we want to go back.

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I feel like an astronaut re-entering the earth’s atmosphere…or that the light is calling me, like it is for Polly and Blanca pictured above. Less airily, I’m coming down to earth with a huge bump…I’m still fizzing but the bubbles are rapidly going flat. The glums are descending and I feel lonely, a very rare feeling for me. I love my own company, pretty much more than I enjoy any one elses in fact. I need substantial chunks of time alone each day so this curious ‘lonely’ feeling is somewhat of a novelty. I haven’t felt like this since I was a teenager, when each holiday involved some  residential course or tour for the various choirs and orchestras I was involved with. I loved those intense few days or weeks when all we would do was eat and breath the music…with friendships formed fast and forever. Sometimes I would cry when the concert or tour was over, and would replay and relive it all in my head over and over while I waited for the nagging, empty feeling to pass. And that’s how I feel now, and I’m 38! I’m stunned and delighted, in equal measures, to learn that I am still capable of such intense connections at this stage in my life.

I can’t let go of Blog Camp, and yet I’m totally stumped in terms of what to write about. It’s tempting to let my photos do the talking but, in truth, I took very poor photos during our couple of days together. I think I was too distracted by all the conversation to really focus on photography. Also, I realised early on that I was never going to be able to capture the ‘essence’ of Blog Camp in photos so I kind of unplugged from my usual photography obsession. In the end, Blog Camp was all about the people and thus I present them, in no particular order:

Polly, who isn’t called Polly at all, who is funny, warm, kind and thoughtful and didn’t seem to mind that the rest of us couldn’t pronounce her real name. We talked about photography alot, I fear I lectured her (it’s a weakness of mine) and she didn’t even seem to mind when I inadvertently insulted her D40. Possibly presenting her with her own Grudge Book (my gift to all the girls) later in the day was a mistake. Perhaps I am the first entry? Hmmmm, ponders. She was exactly what I expected from her blog which is beautifully written, insightful and poetic…just like her xx

Lovely Blanca with the lovely Nikon glued to her face (oh, look! there’s Polly who isn’t Polly in the background with that totally AMAZING and BRILLIANT D40 glued to her face too). Blanca looks about 10 years younger than she actually is and sometime soon I will forgive her for that. She has an infectiousness, upbeat personality and is utterly charming. She is EXACTLY what I expected, her personality is written all over her pretty face. Best of all, she doesn’t mind being the butt of all our jokes…she’s so cool like that…

Giggle. That’s a house name she’s photographing by the way…’Laughing Waters’. We’re a funny bunch, the English…

AHA! Presenting Kristina who is seriously the cleverest person on the planet, but it took me a while to work that out because (a) I am stupid and (b) she is terribly unassuming about it. Kristina is my Big Regret from Blog Camp…I just didn’t get to talk to her enough, so I kidnapped her and forced her to ride with me in my Shit Picasso for our trip to Stonehenge yesterday. She literally knows everything. OK, that’s a ‘slight’ exaggeration but she certainly knows everything linguistics related and it was a fascinating discussion. If only I could have cornered her for longer. No matter, I will force myself upon her at Blog Camp 2.0 and bore her death then. I’m sure she can’t wait…;-)

Some bloke we picked up in the pub. He’s damaged for life now…look at the smug grin…filthy bugger…

Julocka ‘assuming the position’. I have about 200 photos of her in a similar pose from the weekend. Perhaps she’s shy? (queue wild laughter) She arrived with about 45 cameras and rarely was there a moment when one or other, sometimes two, weren’t strapped to her visage. Apparently she actually DOES have eyes, but I can’t confirm that as I’ve never seen them myself. I would have adored her except raging Lens Envy got the better of me so I must grudge her instead, such a shame…seems a pity that the small issue of a 60mm Nikkor micro lens should come between us. Best that she just hands it over don’t you agree? Yes I thought so too. Marvellous.

And finally our gorgeous and generous hostess Beth who, you read it here first, is actually a magician. She can turn this…

…into this…

…in the time it takes me to have a shower. And then nonchalantly serve it with homemade jam and marmalade. The woman is a GENIUS! And she’s smart, and funny, and sassy and wise and…um…totally not what I was expecting and I have a crush on her but don’t tell her. I had Beth ALL wrong. Her blog is very reflective, intellectual and calm. And she is all those things, and yet so many more. For some reason I had decided she would be like her namesake in Little Women (“docile and shy to a fault”), cringe. So wrong, embarrassingly wrong. Bad Spud, baaaaad. Thankfully I kept my gob shut for a change and managed not to blurt out my shameful assumptions, although I did sneak in a totally inadvertent insult without anyone but Julochka realising. And her lips are sealed…I’ve glued them together as a bond of friendship. She would thank me, if she could…

And that leaves just me. You know, I think I was not at all what people were anticipating. I think they expected/feared a crazy, whacky, ‘hilarious’, zany, laugh-a-minute Spud and they got just me. I talked about this with the victims that I kidnapped for the Shit Picasso ride to Stonehenge (Julochka and Kristina)…that I am much ‘calmer’ than people were expecting. Somehow my blog ‘personality’ was set by that 30 secrets which, in all honestly, just played to the more ‘extreme’ part of my personality. Since then I’ve settled down in to the more ‘normal’ me which, I hope, is a lot more palatable than the version the others might have expected. Either that or they were desperately disappointed!

Six people, five nationalities, five Nikon owners and one on the way, a little over 24 hours together and friends for life I’m sure. xx

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“Feeling fizzy”…that’s how us tired but happy Blog Camp 1.5 girls described ourselves this morning over breakfast; a kind of energetic bubbling up of excitement and giddyness at our blossoming friendships. We all went to bed very very late, but no one could sleep at first because of the ‘fizzy’ feeling. Our lovely hostess Beth, astonishingly eloquent for rather early in the morning, described it so elegantly as being that rare emotion that a few, select girlfriends can inspire, almost akin to ‘romantic love’ if you like. She explained it so perfectly, but ‘fizzy’ is a good summary of what it feels like. If we could bottle it and sell it we’d be millionaires!

I’m too zonked to write with any thought plus I’m still ‘processing’ the weekend through my mind and waiting for something insightful to drop out the other end.  We talked about everything, we photographed everything, we ate, we drank, we went on a trip, some of us were 2 hours late arriving and got lost on the way despite being the only native Brit attending, there were laughs, and debate, there was teasing, some people put their foot in it but the others were too kind to make a big deal of it (phew), there were presents galore and a lot of this:

But mostly we just felt fizzy. And we liked it! And we want some more of it! And we wouldn’t mind another round of those fizzy Kir Royales (pictured above) knocked up by Beth’s super husband. Cheers!

Oh, and it turns out that the ‘Group Jump’ shot hasn’t improved since Blog Camp 1.0. Shabby…very, very…shabby.

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Oooooh so many thoughts and emotions. Mostly excitement because what could be finer than rocking up at a random stranger’s pad to spend the weekend with, um, a whole load of randoms from the interweb? Hoorah. Seriously, I’ve NEVER been disappointed by my many, many ‘real life’ encounters with people I initially met on the internet. I understand why many people feel anxious about taking the next step and meeting internet buddies for real…but my personal experience has been nothing but fabulous.

Think about it…these are people you have generally conversed with online for weeks if not months, or more. You share things you are often not comfortable sharing with ‘real life’ friends, for whatever reason. You’ve bonded, you’ve checked them out, you’ve bantered, you’ve giggled, you’ve shared stuff…and you already have the mutual interest that brought you together in the first place; it could be online dating (MrSpud, that’s you)…pregnancy/childbirth/hideous early days of motherhood and beyond (BFF and the ‘wife‘, that’s you)…and now bloggy peeps, or bleeps (that’s all of you reading this). When I think about my friends, I no longer differentiate between ‘real’ friends and internet friends, many of whom (perhaps 100 or so) I’ve never actually met. Means nothing to me – we don’t have to meet to be buddies.

But tomorrow I get to meet some of those interweb weirdies and I can’t wait. I’ve been packed for weeks…but today I made the final preparations. I finished up my crap gifts (pictured above) and wished I was capable of making something other than trouble; I packed the boot of the Shit Picasso (ek, I hate that car) with wine, gifts for bleeps, gifts for our hostesss, my dressing up box, a couple of axes for late night murdering in beds, spare liver, Blog Camp T shirt, stain remover to erase any blood splats from late night murderous activites, camera and entire lens stash for the Nikon gals (WE ROCK!), GPS, map and Grudge Book. I’m all set.

Hopefully there will be live blogging from the Camp (tequila permitting). If you don’t hear from me by Monday then they raided my axe stash and got me first. BUT REMEMBER GIRLS…I GRUDGE YOU FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE….

They don’t call me Scary Spud for nothing you know.

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This is my 100th blog post, yay me! I started blogging on  6 June 2009. Two months and a little bit, 16,445 views and 100 posts later and I’m still here, driveling on. Does a little dance, then stops. Doing little dances in the virtual world where anyone could be looking just isn’t right…behave, you’re a grown woman with responsibilities ‘n’ everyfink.

Probably this should be something really insightful and reflective. But it’s just going to be a load of shambolic wittering again, sorry about that. It’s just the way it goes around here, OK?

Today was a day of ‘fixing’ stuff!

Fix 1: I stuffed Parker (pictured above) in to a box and took him to the vet to have his annual innoculations. Fix 1 – my cat.

Fix 2: I zipped to  yoga and bent and inverted myself in unimaginable ways. Thankfully no one passed wind this week. Not even me…Fix 2: my inner peace.

Fix 3: I sped off to the osteopath, having admitted defeat to the terrible lower back pain that has plagued me off and on for years. ‘What’s the matter with your neck?’ was her opening gambit. Turns out the lower back pain has been diverting my attention from the fact that my neck is totally frozen. Doh. Anyway, it also turns out my pelvis is twisted – most likely as a result of childbirth nearly 4 years ago. Fix 3: my broken back.

Fix 4: Exhausted by physically assertive osteo, I limped off to the garage to get the VERY wobbly wheels on the car sorted. They needed balancing, and were in a terrible state. Fix 4: my dangerously wobbly wheels.

Quite a productive day, I think you’ll agree? Other tasks achieved (apart from the usual eating, breathing, looking after small boys, fake laughing at MrSpud’s ‘jokes’ etc)  included making 6 pathetic looking gifts for Blog Camp 1.5 this weekend and a trip to the fancy wine store to buy enough wine to drunk them so they don’t notice my embarrasing ‘offerings’.

But here’s where it gets interesting, yes, gather round…let’s look at the cost of today’s ‘fixes’ (no, not ‘those’ sort of fixes). In reverse order:

Fix 4: My dangerously wobbly wheels – £18.80

Fix 3: My inner peace – c£20.00 (hard to work out, part of excessively expensive and horribly underused family gym membership)

Fix 3: My broken back – £32.00

Fix 4: My cat – £78.00

There is somethng chronically wrong with the above list. The fix that could potentially be very dangerous (wobbly wheels) was the cheapest, whilst my cat ‘fix’ was astonishingly expensive…eye wateringly so in fact. Thank God our other cat is a total recluse and can’t be handled. Sheesh, if she was ‘normal’ our vet bill for innoculations/flea/worming stuff would be about £150 ($250). Scream.

But it’s a far cry from a few years back when MrSpud and I shelled out £2,000 ($3,300) on an operation for a previous cat. That was our entire holiday budget for that year, so we stayed home. The cat died 6 weeks later. Hmmm. But actually I never resented a penny of that money and nor did MrSpud. We didn’t have children in those days and our cats were our ‘babies’. Nothing was too good for our cats, and especially not for Basil.

Basil (RIP) had been my Mum’s cat and I inherited him when she died. He was a huge character of a cat, shrugging off the many challenges life threw at him including being shot with an air rifle between the eyes. Alas cancer got him in the end, despite the £2,000 operation to tackle the tumour. Me and MrSpud grieved and sobbed and howled for that cat, and I don’t think any cat will ever measure up to him. He was big, black and ugly…my Mum and Dad got him from the Cats Protection League. When they went to choose him my Mum was instantly drawn to him but the man showing them round said, ‘Oh don’t bother about him, he’s as ugly as sin and throws his food around, no-one ever wants him’. And that was it, my mother was smitten.

Parker is Basil’s ‘replacement’. It was a big pair of boots to fill, but he’s done it quite well. He wasn’t the lap cat I wanted, and his passion for hunting birds/voles/mice is very unwelcome. But in the main he’s cool and we all love him.

But £78.00 for a couple of jabs and tablets? Compared with £18.80 for a safe car? Something is rotten in the state of Denmark…

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People! Listen up….get a gravatar (Globally Recognised Avatar). Sign up for one here for free, gratis, for nothing. All you need to do is provide your email address, upload a photo of yourself and BINGO everywhere you go on the web and comment, say, that brilliant blog called Chez Spud, your photo will appear next to your comment.

Go on, be a sport. Look at the comments on my 12 of 12 post from yesterday. A list of ‘numbers’ commenting, with occasional bright spots of gravatars…yay for Sara, huzzah for Julochka and jubilations for that genius Spudballoo.

You’re not a just a number, you’re not just a name, you’re a person with a face so let’s see ‘em! I’ve shown you mine, so now you show me yours…for anyone not familiar with how I look, and I am notoriously shy about sharing images of myself of the internet (snort, snort, snigger)…here I am. Be afraid, be very afraid…

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Something new! Last month I was fascinated by a post from Eliane of Creativity and Inspirations from Ireland called ’12 of 12′. Twelve photos taken throughout the day on the 12th of each month – the brainchild of Chad Darnell. So today I joined in and here is my first 12 of 12.

9.38am…boys at nursery…workstation set up. MacBook, cup of tea, camerabag, iphone, pen, diary, two moleskin notebooks and postcards to the ready. Check out WeeBirdy …I completely adore her blog.

9.54am…Parker in his box ready to go to the vet for jabs. Alas I don’t have a photo of the moment, five minutes later, when he escaped from the box and hoofed it around the car as I backed out of the drive. Parker 1 Spud 0. We will try again tomorrow with a sturdier box.

10.54am To town for various errands and shopping. Time to break out my trusty iphone camera. Here’s a by stealth from the hip shot in our local kitchenware shop. No cookie cutters were bought in the production of this photo.

11.19am Brilliant, brilliant, BRILLIANT banjo player, huddled in the doorway of a closed down shop trying to dodge the rain.  I think this is one of my best ever favourite photos, and taken with a phone camera. Time to flog to the Nikon? Nooooooo, just my little joke.

12.13pm Home. Here’s the first of our sunflowers looking quite cheery, but that’s the processing. It was actually chucking it down and it was looking quite sorry for itself.

1.38pm After a boring hour of printing out Bertie’s birthday party invitations, getting it all wrong and meanwhile chattering with The Fragrant Muse, I sat down to cut them out. Easier said than done. I couldn’t get the new scalpel to work (hence tool box out) and my old one is blunt. I ended up using my mother’s old dress making scissors which my Dad ruined by using them to cut wallpaper with. You can imagine how professional the end result was…

2.26pm Phew, finally done. It was a mind-numbingly dull task, alleviated by chattering to Julochka at the same time about Blog Camp…

3.01pm Afternoon tea and vast sticky bun. Ssshh, it’s a secret…not even MrSpud knows this…I treat myself to a Belgian bun from our amazing local bakery when the children aren’t around. It’s my dirty little secret…secret 31 in the 30 Secrets in 30 Days project.

3.57pm Time for a spot of ironing, oh joy.  If only we were naturists, think of the hours I’d save and be able to put to good use like working with the poor and Twittering more. I must spend bazillion hours a week sorting laundry, putting the washing machine on, pegging it out, trecking out to the tumble drier, ironing it, putting it away, sorting out outgrown clothes, putting away out of season clothes, buying new ones, sorting stuff for the charity shop etc etc etc. And then it starts all over, they get dirty, they need ironing, they outgrow them, they need new ones.  Things have improved since I banned MrSpud from wearing shirts in favour of T Shirts (easier and quicker to iron). He’s only allowed to wear a shirt for Very Important Client Meetings and is given the third degree from me before I’ll give him a Shirt Pass….

5.01pm Hello…what do we have here? GIRL shoes in my car? That can’t be right, I have boy children…ah I remember. Our neighbours’ little girls now go to nursery with the Megaboys, much to everyone’s great delight. Nursery days now start with a lot of shrieking from the four of them and group hugs outside the door to nursery, it’s very sweet.

In an attempt to avoid yesterday’s group meltdowns on the way home from nursery, everyone swapped cars today. They were all was much jollier as a result, not least the parents.  I ended up with just one child in my car, little Miss C (2 and a little bit) who was a delight all the way home. I was so enamored I forgot to take the handbrake off and couldn’t work out what the high pitched squeaking noise was until we got home…ooops.

5.29pm Diggy clearly had an excellent day at nursery. He created an array of dreadlocks with green Playdoh. Great. I washed it but I don’t think much of it came out. Move over Medusa…

7.25pm Boys in bed, hoorah. I walked down the fields enjoying the sunshine and terrifying about 100 rabbits. The pigs were in bed, they are so human like that…they have their dinner and then they go to bed for the night, cuddling up in the arc. Here’s Reece, looking splendid in the evening sun, about to be attacked by two lively labrador puppies. I tried getting a shot of them but they were too fast and bitey…

That’s all folks…that’s my 12 of 12…more next month.

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The numbers aren’t stacking up here…

Ideal number of hours for a roadtrip with megaboys…1
Actual hours spent on roadtrip thus far…11
Tantrums thrown by megaboys…0
Tantrums thrown by me…ummmmmm
Number of steam trains seen…1
Number of model trains ridden on…1
Age of person who enjoyed model train the most…62
Number of balloons seen at misleadingly named Balloon Fiesta…1
Number of balloons which actually left the ground during Fiesta…0
Number of hours sat waiting on a hill to see the balloons make their evening ascent…1
Number of balloons which made their ascent while we were sitting on the hill…0
Minutes after we got back in the car after which the balloons made their ascent…3
Number of swear words muttered…all the words in the languages of the world
Number of hours late to bed for the megaboys…2 for 2 nights running
Length of nap for megaboys on return journey…2.5 hours
Number of grumpy boys on being woken from nap…2 (see photo)
Tears cried by Bertie at having to say goodbye to Grandad and T…does the phrase ‘cry me a river’ mean anything to you?
Regrets at not living nearer to family…too many to mention
Joy at iPhone miraculously mending itself…unbounded

Are we nearly there yet?

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Introducing Buster, my Dad and his wife’s dog…looking hopeful, ever hopeful, that someone might throw a ball for him. You’d think he be in his element with two little boys visiting but, no, my little wusses are scared of dogs, for no reason. It’s irritating; we live on a farm where there are dogs around all the time, when the neighbour’s dog had puppies there were 12 dogs in their house for a couple of months. That’s a lot of dogs to dodge with namby pamby boys in tow.

“It’s better to travel in hope than it is to arrive”…which twit said that? Clearly they were dillusional, or they’d been travelling for so long they’d lost touch with reality. Yesterday it took 8 hours to drive to my Dad’s house…that’s at least 3 hours longer than it should have done. And about 7 hours longer than the boys could readily cope with. They behaved beautifully however, which is more than can be said for their mother who may or may not have thrown a couple of hissy fits.

Then my back went in to spasm and now I’m half crippled. Worse, my iphone seized up and I lost communication with the ‘real’ world and all hell broke lose.

Believe me, it was WAY better to arrive than it was to travel, with hope or without…poor Bertie, after 7.5 hours, declared rather gloomily, “I don’t think we’re EVER going to get to Grandad’s house”. Sob.

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