kumquat's blog

29 April 2013

Buttons

Complimented a friend on her home-made necklace today and she took it straight off and gave it to me!

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28 April 2013

27 April 2013

Nice

I did a nice thing for someone and they gave me a nice card saying I was nice. Any more detail would be bragging. Be nice to people! It feels nice.

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Regional comestibles

Who'd have thought the Greggs fresh cream Belgian bun was not a universal delicacy? Get ye all to your locals to see if this thing of delight, this stuff of dreams exists in your region.

Not in Llanelli it ain't. Bedford seems to have something of a monopoly on these heart-stoppers.
And so it was that my friend and I decided to recreate this sumptuous delight using only some Belgian buns and some cream.

The experimentation continues.

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21 April 2013

'The Mother and Child Re-union'

Oh wow, I'm sorry (I'm not) but my son is gorgeous.

I had such a good day with him yesterday. We met in London (if you say it fast you can pretend it wasn't a 13.5 hour round trip for me) to celebrate his 21st.

We went to the 2013 graphic arts expo at Somerset House and saw lots of cool stuff. Here's a splash I did earlier this evening taken from one of the pictures I saw;

I took him out for dinner and he bought me a waffle later on as we strolled along the south bank. The weather was amazing and we had a laugh.

I've always said he's on his own planet, now here's the proof.

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19 April 2013

Anticipation keen

Taking mini-me to the graphics art festival of design and illustration at Somerset House tomorrow!

Excited to be seeing him for the first time since;

* Christmas
* He shaved off his dreads
* He turned 21

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17 April 2013

A splash of retro and a copy cat

Evening paint. It's fun to throw some colour around then write a journal entry over the top.

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16 April 2013

It's no Picasso...

...but I love winding down at night and painting something little in my diary.

Just something fun and colourful.

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14 April 2013

Countdown...no, scrabble!

My son is going to be 21 tomorrow and I still can't believe I have a child. I love him with the passion of a bear guarding her cubs even if he's taller than me and the one I ought to be hiding behind in a fight. I miss him more than anyone else when I'm away and I am so proud of who he is.

I don't mind if no-one reads this post, I just need to express how much he means to me. I am very lucky.
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13 April 2013

Words

Today I read a lot of academic articles then watched an episode of black books I'd never seen before. (Also learnt more Welsh, transcribed phonetics, wrote up homework on tumblr and cooked risotto) Then I painted my picture for the day.

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10 April 2013

Language fortnight

These two weeks are not about me working on my Arabic but gaining learning tools for any language learning.

As part of this mini course, I am learning some German and Welsh. Have been playing with a fun Internet tool, Audacity, that is a record and edit type affair. Also have had to open a tumblr account in order to blog all our homework. It's becoming quite the project. Absolutely full on, especially after class with meeting language helpers, recording spoken Welsh, blogging homework and practicing a new language!

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Ariba!

I hath the human under my contrrrol! She ith powerleth in the faith of the PAW!

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9 April 2013

Dog-sitting & phonemes

Tonight begins a 9 day event looking after Finley the chihuahua and look who's getting a taste for chorizo!

My friend and I will be living in with our doggy ward and working on an intense week of language training.
The language section of the course has been made competitive so guess who worked for 4+ hours last night and had 2 bits of toast for dinner?!

Have been winding down in the evenings by playing with my watercolours. Working on letters of the alphabet and a little illustration in my diary for each day.

3 April 2013

Down and left a bit; a guide to finding and enjoying Cornwall

I had a great Easter week-end, only hampered by a self-inflicted rule to blog in book titles.

Falmouth, Cornwall is beautiful. It has that south coast vibe of style-infused élan that comes from a population of art students and the staggeringly rich.
I stayed with a couple of ex-architecture/photography students now married with kids and open to his mum and her tag-along friend (me) staying four nights.

Falmouth is all about boats. The dock currently has the world's longest yacht in at the moment, not for repairs though but to be made longer!! Learnt lots of interesting stuff about how boats are made and the misleadingly named "world" championships of various boats only made and raced in the area!

Coffees at a beach-side restaurant that provides blankets on the terrace, lunch at a tiny café with its own bakery and more fritzy boutiques than you can shake a stick at.

(I have subsequently tried to find a uniform description for the word fritzy. It does not exist. From henceforth, fritzy shall mean something eccentrically eclectic with an alternative edge and a smattering of bijou)

Had a pretty cool trip from Falmouth to St Mawes on the foot ferry, Easter Sunday afternoon with the grand-daughter of the former bishop of Cairo and her husband, the local vicar who was talking about a knight of the realm who attended his church that morning.