Chez Spud

Monday: Meh…a day of no time and no inspiration…hence the bliming cat. Again.

Tuesday: Working in London…Such a British moment…the sun came out…out came the Brits and perched on every available step and bench, or just leant up against the wall and drank in the warmth. Taken at the Royal Exchange.

Wednesday: Not doing this gorgeous gift any justice. A wonderful PROPER polaroid, of beachhuts in Southwold…framed and looking just perfect in my writing room. For now. I will have to move it, it’s very bright and sunny in there and it will destroy the polaroid. Thank you Wife! x

Thursday: Yet ANOTHER of my love gifts from The Wife. This is one of my very best favourites, even though I regularly injure my children with it as it’s heavy and has a habit of smacking them in the face when I’m doing their coats up. I love it so much I dropped it down the loo. Strange, but true.

Friday: Friday + sunshine + daffodils…you do the maths…

Cute little hat, complete with teddy ears…a gift for my friend’s new baby girl. I love making baby hats, quick and easy to make. This one was made, parcelled up and mailed within 24 hours of the baby being born. She doesn’t even have a name yet! But she has a cute, handmade hat and that’s much more important. Welcome Baby Girl! x

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My Megaboys snuggled up this morning. Looks like they’re engrossed in a book doesn’t it? They’re not. They’d filched MrSpud’s iPhone, turned it on, broken the password and, having engaged in a little light movie snack, they are hard at work with their spelling using an app. Later they got busy with phonics on an iPad. It’s all oh..so…very 00s isn’t it? Who needs flashcards and tracing the letters when you can load up an interactive app on an iPad? There’s no replacement for 1:1 learning, and paper and pencil work…but the appeal of the ‘whizzy’ way is plain to see. Although it occurred to me, whilst watching them hard at work, that we’ve returned to the days of slate and chalk. Only the slate is a tablet of Apple loveliness and the chalk is our finger. What goes around comes around and all that. MrSpud told me that Diggy, puzzled at something not working whilst practicing his letters, looked at his finger and frowned.  That tickled me…his immediate assumption that his finger was faulty. Hope he’s got it covered by an Apple Care Protection Plan ;-)

I often ponder about whether my ingrained passion/obsession for ‘being connected’(for want of a better expression) will stay with me all my life. Or will it wane as the years get the better of me. When will I stop knowing and engaging in ‘the latest’, whether it be ‘puter, phone or gadget related or social media and whatever else is coming our way? Will I ever be like our grandparents’ generation…afraid of the VCR never mind a DVD player, unable and unwilling to use a mobile phone and referring to the internet as the “WWW DOT” as my grandad did?

Or has the technological revolution (shudder) over the last 30 years or so meant that we are the first generation of the Techno Tribe…who have been comfortable with technology and ‘being connected’ for so long that old age won’t defeat us? As octogenarians, will we still be doing the 2050s versions of Twitter, Facebook (I do HOPE that’s long dead by then), Foursquare, Spotify etc etc…and showing off our latest gadgets to our slightly alarmed great grandchildren?

It’s very rare that I’m truly curious about the future,  I much prefer to wallow in the past and enjoy today for what it is. But I would LOVE to know if my love love of CyberLife will stay with me for all my years. Or, when I’m old and crusty, will I idle away my hours crocheting, reading trashy novels and wondering why the hell I spent so much of my life glued to a computer. And was it worth it?

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Bertie went to his Big School today for a ‘settling in’ morning. I’ve no idea what it involved other than ‘a drink, a story, playing in the dragon’s cave and then you came to get me’. That’s a big improvement on his usual response to, ‘What did you do at nursery today?’ which is, ‘Nothing’. Great. So that’s money well spent then…

Here’s a quick iphone snap of Mr B having a last minute cuddle with His Love, our neighbours’ daughter who also went for her settling in session too. Bertie loves Imogen, but Imogen loves another. It’s a complicated 4 year old love ‘thing’. But, when the chips are down, these two stick together and what better way to start school than with a reassuring hug from a friend you’ve known since you were born?

We arrived at school, they went in to the classroom and I hung around in the doorway for a bit with Imogen’s father looking, and feeling, like a spare part. It was quickly apparent we weren’t required, so we shouted goodbye and they hardly even glanced at us, murmuring something that could have been ‘bye’ but quite possibly was ‘will you just get out of here you’re embarrassing us’. So we left and that was that.

Isn’t there supposed to be a bit of crying and clinging on? Or is that just for the parents? Sniff.

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I love the 70s. The older I get the more I love the 70s….the fashion, the music, the photos, the cars. I love the 70s, shoot me if you must.

Neatly, I was born in 1970 so the 70s, for me, were all about my childhood from 0-10. I guess it’s normal to look back at our childhood with a fond nostalgia but, really, the 70s were coolest weren’t they? All that hippy hippy shake and Ford Capris and Wagon Wheels and Trumpton and [insert your own fond 70s memory].  I am blessed to be a child of the 70s…we weren’t even metric when I was born. THAT’S how totally ‘rad’ I am. I’m Old Skool, baby, Old Skool…

If my life wasn’t packed up in a storage container I’d drag out my 70s photos to share at this point. Those slightly yellow, square, rounded corner, slightly textured shots…with ‘Date taken….Who….Where…..’ and lines printed on the back for you to fill in the gory details.  Although the 70s were the ‘Chubby Years’ for me so I’m probably doing you a kindness by sparing you the fat grumpy looking kid.

When I think of my childhood I think of summer. Long, hot, summers…where the sun shone every day and we played out from morning til night. Clearly I’ve scrubbed out the other 98% of my childhood when it was freezing and it chucked it down. I think I remember it was hot/sunny because all the photos are taken on sunny days. Because film was expensive, getting photos developed was really expensive and those funny little flash bulbs that rotated on the top of your camera cost bazillion. So my parents limited their photography to sunny days and I bet there weren’t alone. Who else remembers the 70s as one long…hot…summer? And I’m not just talking about 1976 either.

Yesterday a little bit of the 70s came around to visit.  The sun really WAS shining. So the boys stripped off and spent the afternoon dipping themselves in our neighbours’ huge paddling pool until their lips turned blue with cold. Then they snuggled up in towels in the sun to warm up…ran around….played with the dogs….had a picnic tea and then played out until bedtime watching their shadows grow longer and longer. Both boys were filthy when I got them home, smeared with tomato and chocolate cake and homemade blueberry sorbet (very 00s…in the 70s it would have been Walls ice cream, hard as a rock, vanilla and perhaps in a wafer sandwich if you were VERY fancy). I took it to be the sign of a good afternoon.

Pretty much every photo I took yesterday with my Big Girl’s Camera is rubbish. All the photos in this post were taken with my iphone. Apparently I can return my £3,000 of Nikon kit and just stick with my phone. So that’s good isn’t it? There’s something about the late afternoon light, ‘Colin’ the caravan and the swing which smacks me right back in my own childhood. Simple pleasures…being outside…friends…water…swings. This is the stuff of memories.

When my boys are grown I hope they’ll look back to their childhood with the same kind of nostalgia that I do for my own. I’m sure they don’t realise just how lucky they are to live the lives they do, why should they? But to live on a farm (albeit not ours!), right next to their best friends in the world, pottering around the place and over to each other’s houses when they fancy, near the sea, me at home with them…they are so very fortunate. I feel their fortune ‘for’ them, but I hope they will look back and feel it too. And I hope they will get over their inevitable teenage fury that we moved out of London to be here when “IT’S SOOOOOOOOO BORING!!!!”. If they have their own children, I assume they’ll understand why we moved. If not, well tant pis, we did it for all the right reasons.

The 00s are the new 70s you know. I’m recreating it right here. One strangely clad child at a time.

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Look look look! It’s hard to know which to love more…the purple sparkly shoes or the purple heart tights…but the combination is a winner. Helpfully Little Miss Stylish was snapped on these yellowish tiles, oh so Wizard of Oz. So I called this photo ‘Dorothy’s Weekend Shoes’. Perhaps she flirts with purple sparklers on a weekend?

I had to mess with the original photo a bit to get it looking like this. The original, an iphone snap, was ok but Dorothy’s mama’s black shoes really bugged me and her papa’s shoes had sneaked in too, plus her skirt was quite distracting  and the colours were rather muted. Other than that I loved it ;-)

So I processed it ‘lolo’ in Camerabag to give it a square crop and vivid colours. I saved the ‘lolo’ version, opened it in Fotomuse and added a frame and a texture to (a) mute the mama’s shoes and (b) make it look really, really cool. My name is Spud…I’m an iphoneapplicationaholic.

Here’s how it looked before:

I like my edited-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life version much more, although I wish the mama’s shoes weren’t there. Next time I’ll just push her out of the way. You know, for the sake of my ‘art’…

And with that I will wish you all a contented week. Mine’s getting off to a fearsomely early start…we head off with the pigs tomorrow at 4.45am. It’s time for them to be exited and we are taking them to deepest Norfolk to do the deed hence the unspeakably awful time of departure. I’m hoping fatigue will mean I don’t notice ‘the business’ that we’re there to do.

Over and out. x

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Uh oh…I’ve discovered yet another way to waste hours of my life. I have such a talent for unearthing time robbers;  if only such a skill had a commercial use. Instead all I can do is shrug my shoulders, embrace the robber and then pass it on to you guys…although you will be spared if you don’t have an iphone.

I’ve become an avid reader of the iphoneography blog which is a MUST READ for iphone snappers. Today I found and downloaded several cool applications but I’m immediately smitten with FotoMuse. Such fun for transforming photos in to ‘artworks’ with contrast adjustments in colour and black & white, borders and textures. So this cafe scene, which I snapped in the City early one morning thinking it looked kind of moody… but I was disappointed with how it turned out:

turned in to this, which is probably trying a bit hard but it’s a huge improvement:

And this, Julochka‘s Rolleiflex snapped at Bee’s house at Blog Camp 1.5, which wasn’t particularly well composed, focused or lit (um, so rubbish then):

turned in to this which, again, is probably ‘too much’ but quite fun?

I’ve had a LOT of fun messing with FotoMuse today. Mind you, the rest of my day’s highlights included cleaning my oven and the windows so it didn’t take much. But if you fancy trying something different and need a time robber in your life  (and can bear the $2.99 price tag) get FotoMuse!

Also, news just in…I’m over Camerabag. I’m now in love with Chase Jarvis’ Best Camera application. LOVE IT. I’m also flirting outrageously with EffectsLab but have nothing very useful to say about it. So I’ll shut up.

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I accidentally ‘fell’ in to the Crumpler store in London this week and was forced, against my will, to buy stuff. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? You’re skipping along the pavement thinking happy thoughts when BAMMM, a vortex engulfs you and twirls you in to a store where elves and pixies relieve you of your cash in return for bags full of things you never knew you needed. It happens to me all the time, I’m blighted like that.

Later, I caught MrSpud eying up my new Hard Suit Special Edition laptop case with naked lust and longing for it, although presumably not in turquoise? Then I saw him attempting to shoehorn his gigantic Dell lapbreakertop in to the hallowed temple of loveliness which is now contaminated with Windows poo as a result…cry, cry, cry. Meanwhile my MacBook was sniggering in the corner, presumably feeling like Cinderella watching the Ugly Sisters trying to cram their trotters in to her dainty glass slipper. 

‘How much was that?’ he asked, quickly qualified by ‘Oh, I’m not being funny or anything – I’m just interested’. So I thew him my best Paddington Hard Stare and told him, without bothering to half the price or any other such witchery which is my usual tactic when put on the spot like that. Anyway, I went to work this week for a change and thus I am entitled to blow every penny that those naughty little elves and pixies can snaffle from me. It’s only fair and proper that MrSpud should work to pay the bills, put food on the table, clothes on our back etc while I work to buy the pretties for myself. Also, I’m warming to my theme here, we are in the midst of a major world recession and the only way out of it is to keep spending. That’s a fact…the only way to drag the economy out of the doldrums is to spend our way out of it…only by buying stuff do we create the need to make the stuff which creates jobs. So, in fact, I’m just doing my duty [shrugs shoulders nonchalantly, hands open with palms up in manner of 'Trust me; I'm a spendaholic']

All of which is an aside as what really got me thinking, beyond my attempts to save the world economy all by my own (as Bertie would say), is my huge admiration and love for all things Crumpler. I am completely in love with of all their products and would ideally like to own one of everything in all the sizes and all the colours. Not because I am obsessed with the products (although they are fabulous) but because I am obsessed with the Crumpler brand and have the utmost respect for the quiet way they have built a cult following, by consistently developing products that ‘do the job’, look stunning and don’t cost the earth. Add the icing, which is a uniquely quirky approach to marketing and copywriting, and it’s a winner….Crumpler has consistently set itself apart from the field, differentiated itself in a very crowded market and I, for one, am a total sucker for it.  Because when those elves and pixies entice me in to the Crumpler store, or online, I feel like I’m in Crumpler World and am part of the Crumpler family…and that some of that Crumpler quirkyness might rub off on me and I can be one of the gang. And when I buy something, it feels like a little bit of ‘cool’ just fell in to my shopping basket.

And here’s the thing…I know the Crumpler ‘world’ and ‘family’ are just pure whimsey on my part, that I’ve spun off there on the back of some very well thought out marketing plan. And yet I can’t help myself. I know I’m being ‘sold to’ and that I’m ‘selling out’ by falling for it time and again, and yet I keep going back for more! Am I alone? Or are there brands that have sucked you in like this? Tell me!

My other big brand love is Moo and, when I’m not in Crumpler World I like to vacation in Moo Land. I could wibble on but actually I’m currently not on speakers with Moo who charged me £9.00 to deliver a pack of 60 postcards and 3 books of stickers. I’ve long been irritated by their vast postage charge, and the complete lack of incentive to bulk order; if you order more, you pay more postage, end of story. I think they are the only company I buy from regularly that sting me like this. I bought 5 Moo card frames as Christmas presents last year at £25.00 each. The postage FOR EACH was £5.00. So I spent £125.00 on frames and £25.00 on postage. Sorry Moo, but that’s just all wrong. Your products are fabulous, the branding is outstanding, Moo Land rocks…but you’ve got to get the postage charges sorted out.  Thanks very much.

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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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Giddy. That’s what I’ve been all day, giddy. I went to London. On a trip. On my own with no husbands or children or pigs or pigs ‘n’ wigs or anything. And it was absolutely blissful. I spent the day with my ‘wife’, BFF and brilliant photographer Lyanne; we went to an exhibition, we walked miles in hurty shoes, we took thousands of photos, we had lunch, there might have been wine, we giggled, we gossiped, ears must have been burning…hell, some of them must have been SMOKING.  She taunted me with her shiny new 3G iphone and I tried hard not to collapse in a rage of jealousy.  It’s been a rough week Chez Spud but I feel so much skippier now (it’s a word), and all nicely buoyed up for my cheeky little jaunt to Paris next week.

I could witter on but I thought I’d do the day in pictures. There are a LOT, so if photography’s not your thing..move along…nothing to see here…see you tomorrow for another treasure.

Here I am at the station REALLY living dangerously. Look! Little Miss Goodie Two shoes has a foot (only one mind) OVER THE YELLOW LINE!! Note to self; those chucks are nowhere near as comfortable as you think they are. Relegate to ‘only wear when in a very good mood’ pile. This one is an iphone/camerabag photo:

Hoorah, here we are in London Town. A camerabag photo of the station roof:

First on the agenda was a trip to the National Portrait Gallery, and a twirl round the BP Portrait Award 2009 (we were stalked around the gallery by a museum ‘bouncer’ after getting a bit too close to a few of the paintings…Julockha are you reading this?) and the brilliant, brilliant Gay Icons exhibition. Alas no photos allowed but you can imagine: gallery, people, whispering etc.

Next we hit Trafalgar Square to watch the One & Other ‘exhibition’ which is too bizarre to describe meaningfully. Click the link to see it happening live! 24 hours a day, for 100 days, ordinary Brits are spending an hour up on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square doing ‘art’. We saw a man flying coloured paper airplanes out to the crowd. It wasn’t that interesting and my photos were awful. So I started taking photos of the wife instead:

Oh and she started taking photos of me. Who needs ‘art’ when you can take photos of your buddies?

Right around now we had a debate about the relative merits of matrix metering and spot metering. Because we are THAT clever. Conclusion? Spot metering is crap. Just in case you needed to know.

Things took an unfortunate turn when we stalked a photographer with some serious gear, only to find it was a Canon. Argh, soul…troubled…eyes…bleeding. We so we hoofed it from Trafalgar Square which was then sullied for us, we shall not speak of it again, and made haste to the South Bank.

And look! Something very strange had happened to the trees along the South Bank. More ‘art’:

A few yards on we found yet MORE street art, a photobooth. In we jumped, wrote a few words about ‘our time on the South Bank’ had our photo snapped and it was uploaded to Flickr immediately. Cool. Cooler…it was wine o’clock lunchtime.

After lunch we shambled up to the Hayward Gallery but didn’t make it in to the gallery, we were too entranced by the fabulous, newly painted bright yellow staircase. I’m not a big fan of concrete constructions but Lyanne adores brutalist architecture. I have to indulge her because, well, she’s my wife and that’s what you do. But the yellow was surprisingly appealing:

Not content with oohing and arrrring over it. We got in it! And then we took pictures of ourselves in it. Lyanne took pictures of me:

And I took pictures of Lyanne:

And after that things degenerated somewhat…

Oh no. And now what is she up to? What the HELL is she doing up there? Ah, right..sing along…near..far…wherever you are…

I recovered myself enough to take my favourite shot of the day, the underside of Waterloo Bridge:

And all too soon it was time to make the trek back to The Country, and my boys. The littlest of whom ran at me on my return and clung to my legs declaring, seriously, ‘Oh Mummy. I lost you!’. Final snap, a camerabag offering again, is the bridge over the tracks at my local station. I liked the pattern of the light.

Here endeth the lesson! And CHEERS to anyone that made it this far xxx

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Famille Spud is confined to barracks – we have swine flu. Bawl. Not badly, let’s hope it stays that way. But since we are housebound I thought I’d pass the time by packing for Blog Camps 1.5 and 2.0 (I know, greedy..TWO Blog Camps). A little ahead of time, I realise, but a girl can’t be too organised.

Here are my boys‘ Trunkis which I think are the perfect size for the trip. One for essentials, the other I will take empty and then snaffle a couple of friends to take home with me.  I don’t have any many local buddies and at this point my options seem to be (a) knit my own or (b) steal some. Well, I’m not at all crafty (so don’t be expecting any of that crochet nonsense from me, I ‘might’ manage finger knitting?) so (b) it is.  The case is kind of small. Must remember to take axe to dismember Blog Camp attendees so I can squish them in my Trunki and then reassemble Chez Spud. Ta da!

Inside one I’ve packed all the essentials:

1. Blog Camp T shirt
2. Standard issue Converse
3. Entire lens/camera stash
4. Bottle of white wine (for the journey – will send 10 cases ahead. Each)
5. Dressing up kit
6. Wig (just in case)
7. MacBook
8. Passport
9. iphone (for non stop Tweeting)
10. Grudge Book (never leave home without it)
11. Stones for Julochka in case she needs a fix. They are special ones. From my driveway.

Still to be packed:

1. Spare liver
2. Funnies
3. Bleep Revision Notes (so I don’t boob and call everyone by the wrong name)

On the final point, I am aware that I am a Woman of Mystery due to my penchant for dressing up. I don’t want my fellow BC victims attendees to worry about which one I am. So I had my name printed on my Blog Camp T shirt. Thoughtful huh? So, ladies, when you spot the bearded, googly eyed, blonde swishy wig, habit wearing one…you’ll know it’s me.

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