Wordless Wednesday…yellow
Posted under Photography, Wordless Wednesday
Stuffs hands in to mouth trying to stop self wittering…presenting muted (geddit?) yellowy tones:
Archive for November, 2009
Mmmmm WordPress goodness
Posted under Witterings
Nikon v Canon, Apple v PC, WordPress v Blogger…the world is full of tension isn’t it? Would be so much easier if you all submitted and bowed down to the Nikon/Apple/Wordpress temple.
One of the many reasons I love WordPress is all the widgets and plugins you can play with. My newest widget is the ‘like this’ jobbie which you’ll find at the bottom of each post. For those times when you want to show me the love, but really can’t be arsed to type a comment, you just click on the link and I get a little heart and an ego back rub all at the same time. Sorry for confusing the issue by putting a screen grab at the top of this post, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity for another butchers at Kermy Hermy.
Sssshh, apparently work has begun on a redesign for Chez Spud…estimated time of launch is mid December. But I’m not holding my breath. I think I’m on designer number 6? Fingers crossed this one can actually, you know, do what she said she would…waves cheerily at Genevieve ;-) x
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Brave New World
Posted under Witterings
I’m on the edge of my seat. Rarely has anything even remotely political gripped me since, as we all, know, I lack any kind of intellectual curiosity. But I’m all fired up about the the announcement of the EU’s first president later this week. Not because I think that having a proper grown up full-time president will improve Europe’s position on the ‘world stage’ (whatever the hell that is), but because the clever money is on Herman Van Rompuy for the post. Even his name thrills me me…a kind of cross between The Addams Family and a sleepy deluded fairy tale chappy. His middle name is Achille, swoon.
But what really sets our Hermy apart from the field is his passion for haiku, those unfathomable 17 syllable Japanese poems. He loves them, he’s mad for them….he even writes them and posts them up on his blog which, by the way, is called “Haiku”.
WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE PEOPLE? He’s got a cool name, he loves poetry, he writes poetry, he’s not afraid to share it, and he blogs. Could he BE any better? Does President Obama blog? He Flickrs, or his People do anyway. But does he blog? Does he write poetry? Does he write it in Flemish, because Hermy does. Here’s his offering on the news that he was now the front runner for the Big Job in Europe:
Trio-voorziterschap EU
Drie golven rollen
Samen de haven binnen
Het trio is thuis
For the non Flemish speakers:
The EU Presidency Trio
Three waves are rolling
Together to the port
The trio is at home.
OK….it’s a little subtle I grant you that, but it’s supposed to be about the need for the current European Commissioner, the new President and the chief foreign policy chap to work together. I love it! No need for months of elegant political maneuvering, let’s cut through all the crap and issue edicts in 17 syllable memos:
Enough of your nonsense!
Work together or we are all lost.
The End.
It’s a little disappointing that he uses Typepad for his blog but there’s plenty of time to bring him in to the WordPress fold. Perhaps he’ll have a Blog Team when he’s President? Does he Twitter? Ah, probably not…those 140 characters are probably too loquacious for a haiku-geek-guy.
I can’t help but imagine future meeting of World Leaders….Obama is there sneaking off for a fag and a quick Crackberry fix when he thinks no one is looking…other world leaders of note who I can’t name (cf lack of intellectual curiosity) are also present doing their thing…and Hermy is there, distant, in a trance, slightly aloof and somewhat European, composing (probably shit) Haiku in a language spoken by, oooh, around 3% of the world’s population. The rest of the gathering are bound to feel inferior and submit to his wisdom, mostly because they don’t know what the hell he’s on about but at least it’s only 17 syllables long and they can all push off for a beer now. Job done.
Admit it: it’s a BRILLIANT tactic. The man is a genius. He might look like Kermit the Frog, but he’s a master tactician and I bow down before him.
Hermy Kermy Van Winkle for President. Ra ra RA!
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Five
Posted under People I love
Unlocks Chez Spud, checks all is well, nothing has been taken, all Secrets safe and sound…? Good, well then let’s continue…
Chez Spud is open for business again. Thank you to everyone who emailed and/or commented, you’re all so thoughtful and it meant such a lot to me. My father-in-law’s funeral is over now and it was wonderful and awful in equal measure. It was a true reflection of the man he was, and how well he was loved by family, friends and colleagues. But now the awful business of grieving will truly swing in to action, and there are dark days ahead for sure. I hadn’t prepared myself for Bertie (4) being so desperately upset, sobbing in fact, in the funeral. I knew he’d ask questions, and be curious but the inconsolable tears were a shock to me. Its the first time, as a parent, that I’ve been able to do nothing to alleviate his pain and suffering and it was like a slap around the face. “I didn’t want him to die, I want him to be alive again” he howled. What to say, other than, “I do too, and I wish I could make it happen but I can’t”.
Just to throw an additional spanner in the works Bertie has been very ill for the last few days, starting on the day of the funeral…so we’ve juggled a very poorly child, a very bouncy happy child, a long journey, 2 absolutely dreadful, sleepness nights (one in a hotel), the funeral and vomiting. Lovely.
Would someone please, please, PLEASE give us a fecking break now? Thanks.
So, FIVE! As well as the funeral on Friday (plus assorted ill/bouncy children) it was me and MrSpud’s 5th wedding anniversary. What better way to celebrate one’s anniversary than burying one’s father-in-law….cry, cry, cry. It’s wasn’t the day for joy, but I did take a moment to take stock, give thanks and marvel at how five short years can meld two families in to one, and produce the next generation, in what feels like the blink of an eye.
Pictured above: MrSpud lying on the bed in the hotel after his father’s funeral reading to our boys, hoping we might get some sleep (wrong!). And no doubt mindful of the years his lovely Dad read to him as he went to bed and, like all of us, wishing it all could be different.
Five years of marriage…two Old Spuds…two Baby Spuds…one love now and forever etc etc xxx
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Farewell
Posted under Uncategorized
I’m shutting up shop for a bit. MrSpud’s wonderful father died today and it doesn’t feel right to be wittering on here at such a time. There’s plenty to say of course, but he was an immensely private man and he would hate me to twitter on in public. So I will limit myself to saying that he was the BEST of men, and I am truly blessed to have had such a father-in-law. I loved him so dearly, and feel bitter on behalf of all of us that he’s been snatched away.
Only a few weeks ago I wrote that they broke the mould when they made my Grandad….and now I’m saying that they broke the mould when they made Batman (as the Megaboys call him) too. But it’s true. He was one a zillion… a LION of a man, so kind, so funny, so driven, so loyal, so smart, so unassuming, so optimistic….just ‘so’…
There was a magnificent sunset this afternoon, right around when he died, shortly followed by a huge, harvest moon. Quite a show, quite a send off I thought…but then he was quite a man, so it was entirely fitting.
Farewell Batman. You never converted me to eggs benedict, or Scandi jazz…but you were on to a winner with those fruit beers. Cheers to you, lovely lovely perfect man xxx
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Did you get the memo? Shoulder pads are back..
Posted under Witterings
Oh no. Shall we all take a moment and remember those good old bad old days when our lipstick was too bright, we wore electric blue mascara, we had big hair and even bigger shoulder pads? Well don’t be getting too nostalgic about it because shoulder pads are BACK. And not in a retrotastic, vintagey kind of way…oh no, this is not a trend for the kool kids…they are back in a Power Dressing/Dynasty kind of way.
I know this because I read it in the Financial Times so it must be true. Although I will admit that the FT probably isn’t too well known for having its finger on the pulse of fashion…but read it here ‘Recession spurs the rise of the ‘lipstick entrepreneurs”. It’s a fairly interesting article about the increase in women starting their own businesses, partly due to the rise in redundancies but also a more general shift in the way that we are all choosing to work. Personally I think ‘lipstick entrepreneur’ is a ghastly term, is it me or does it have slightly sneery slightly sexist overtones? But I digress…
Anyway, scroll down right to the bottom of the article and there’s a little nugget about power dressing. I bet Mr Brian Groom (Business and Employment Editor for the FT) never thought he’d see the day when he was writing about power dressing. Apparently those lipstick entrepreneurs aren’t plonked at their kitchen tables running their global empires in their jammies…they’re dressing up for the occasion and dressing up in 2009 means “power shoulders”.
But, get this, as well as buying jackets with power shoulders already built in and ready to intimidate…those thrifty lipstick entrepreneurs are doing it themselves. To the extent that John Lewis have SOLD OUT of all shoulder pads in all of their stores across the UK, as women have been panic buying to “stack them vertically or horizontally in anything from cashmere sweaters to last year’s jackets”. What madness is this? Has sexual equality made such little progress in the last 20 years that we still feel like we need to bolster our confidence by bolstering our shoulders, whether it be ‘vertically or horizontally’? Sheesh, soon we’ll all be doing our colours again too…
Naturally some old fashioned female rivalry has crept in. Not content with their ‘power shoulders’, some lookatmelookatme types are going for ‘extreme shoulders’….”Extreme shoulders, which some shoppers are opting for, can take up to four shoulder pads each side and build a 2x2in stack for maximum boardroom confidence,” said Jo Hooper, head of womenswear buying [at John Lewis].
It’s hard to know which is more comical: the mental image of “extreme shoulders” or the rather tragic belief that big fat shoulders = “maximum boardroom confidence”, whatever the hell that means. I would imagine that the board will submit to whatever Ms Extreme Shouldered Lipstick Entrepreneur wants for fear of personal injury,”Arggggh….it’s ok….it’s ok….here take whatever it is that you want…just…don’t…shoulder me…OK?”
Either that or they’re too busy pissing themselves laughing.
Some Lipstick Entrepreneurs earlier today
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Camera Club: Out Of Focus
Posted under Camera Club
Sorry, this one is for the Big Camera people only…point & shooters feel free to gnash teeth in my general direction at this point.
Here’s a fun technique to try: out of focus. This comes very naturally to me since I have about a million not ‘quite’ in focus shots knocking around. But actually I’m talking about making your whole shot out of focus, as above. Kind of cool huh? I’ve not tried it before, and wasn’t planning on trying it either. But this shot presented itself and I crouched down to get a snap…it was lovely, hazy late afternoon sunshine and I thought the shoppers and long shadows might be interesting. Alas the megaboys both climbed on my back as I was trying to shoot, and thus I was shaking and wobbling all over the place. So, necessity being the mother of invention and all that, I decided to give the Out Of Focus technique a go.
So…you flick the switch on your lens to switch it to manual focus (rather than automatic focus) and then ‘unfocus’ the composition until it looks cool. Et voila!
I think the key is probably a strong composition, with a clear subject…and not going overboard on the out of focus, but then doing it enough so it’s clear that it’s ‘art’ and not just a crap photo.
Have fun!
Quick Tip: and this one is for everyone….go crazy, try shooting diagonally for a slightly skewed perspective. I really like doing this with portraits too.
