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.


This is Louis, the collie/red setter X who was making the same ferry trip.




All in all a great weekend and I didn't even get round to Rick Stein's fish and chippery. Next time maybe?

31 March 2013

Easter Sunday at St Mawes






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MEWIBT#8

The Believers.
Joy Heller.


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30 March 2013

MEWIBT#7

Saturday.
Joy McEwan.
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29 March 2013

MEWIBT#6

The Bookshop.
Joy Fitzgerald.
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MEWIBT#5

The Sea, The Sea.
Joy Murdoch.


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Location:Arwenack St,Falmouth,United Kingdom

MEWIBT#4

The Big Sleep.
Joy Chandler.


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MEWIBT#3

Vacation.
Joy Vickers.


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MEWIBT#2

Jamaica Inn.
Joy Du Maurier.


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28 March 2013

My Easter weekend in book titles (MEWIBT) #1

On the Road.
Joy Kerouac.


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Easter weekend

I've been invited to Cornwall for the weekend! So tonight I am hot-footing it to Falmouth.

26 March 2013

"This might cost you..."

...he says, when I call him after numerous unanswered texts.

"I'm in another country."

After screaming whhhhaaaa?? Where????? at him, I think;

'Yesss! At last!'

"Amsterdam"
"Are you being good?"
"Yes, although we have just lost someone..."
"Not in a canal I hope?"

Phone cuts out.

The years I've been trying to get that boy to leave the country!


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23 March 2013

Operation Ske-dawdle

What a crackin' day out. My mate and I took the train up to Tenby this morning as I'd never been before and an escape day was needed.



It's a beautiful seaside town even with biting winds and no sun! We walked down to the beach and along to the renovated visitor area at the RNLI.



A pub lunch then a walk round the town. We found a cool little cave on the beach that sheltered us from the wind.






Watched the sea for a while then ambled back into town. Window shopped & took in some art.





From Tenby we took the train about half way back and got off in Carmarthen. Coffee and cake, cocktails then dinner out before heading home.


Must research exact measures for Amaretto Sours. Beautiful!

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22 March 2013

Egg roulette

Enjoying an interesting game at 'youth' that pretty much involved people smashing eggs on other people's foreheads. The roulette part is whether the egg is raw or hard-boiled..!


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Elaine's visit

On our own little planet, we walked the 5 or so miles up to Burry Port


checked out the port, ate chips



and got a little 2 carriage train back along the edge of the bay to Llanelli. Very pretty.

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The maddest thing I've ever been told?

Surely this is the maddest? For reasons of Christian charity alone, I am going to protect the identity of the guilty but...

... I was recently told that the spirit of my dead husband had been living vicariously through me for the last 4 years because he hadn't realised he had died.

This wasn't said by anyone you know or anyone I will ever see again!

In other news, I learnt the text symbol for 'monkey' and I think this will serve me better in life than anything else in this post;


:(|)


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9 March 2013

Street pastors

This evening, as part of our trip to Scotland, we went out with a team of street pastors to the centre of Glasgow.(www.streetpastors.co.uk)

SP's look out for anyone vulnerable. They see young people home safely after a messy night out, give first aid, collect glass bottles from the pavements and dispose of them so they can't be used as weapons, give out flip flops in the early hours to girls struggling in high heels and are used by bouncers who see people in trouble and radio in for help. Essentially these are the good guys who proverbially ( or literally), 'hold your hair' while you puke.




It was a pretty quiet evening but we only stayed for the first half of the evening while the real heroes stayed out til 4a.m.

It was summed up for me as; 'The least cringy way...of working out your faith'

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5 March 2013

Pillow fight

I won. That is all.

Well I should just say that I won because my opponent said after that she wondered if she was going to die. True story.


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22 February 2013

Woof

Had to share this great picture taken by 'one of my kirstys'.

Funny to see my big ole' Monty dog dwarfed by another dog. Also I think the colour and composition is great.


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17 February 2013

Yesterday I was thinking about how much better I've become about dealing with the little annoyances in life and not getting irritated by trivia.

Today I'm sat on a LONG train journey with my neighbour who has sat about 2 inches into my personal space from Paddington to beyond Newport.

Back to the drawing board Joy.



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15 February 2013

Extra snaps

Will someone design an adult version please?


If the course doesn't work out, I could always try grass-balancing..?




Sass :)





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14 February 2013

Burkina yarns

Welcome back to 'Lighter Bites' and this week I shall provide for your delectation, tales and curiosities from beyond the Volta.




This picture is the start of an unusual cup of coffee. It is a long glug of condensed milk with a sprinkling of Nescafé. Once the hot water ready, your glass is filled up and you mix up the milk and water for something that tastes like a latte with half a bottle of syrup shots added. Great to bring you back to life after a long journey!



This picture, being in my top 5 favourites from my time in West Africa, is a lorry side used as a blackboard. Here, the future simple tense has been explained.




In my ten days, I visited Ouagadougou (pronounced waga...), Koubri & Bobo Dialasso.

It was my first time in West Africa, sleeping under a mosquito net and eating millet. My first time going into a neighbourhood at night and seeing 200+ people coming out to watch a film in the square. My first time taking anti-malarials, doing public-speaking in French and watching Burkina get to the semi's in the African Cup of Nations. (Eventually got to the final but lost to Nigeria.)

I found the country to be resourceful;



Refreshingly free of H&S regulations;



beautiful;



quirky;



welcoming, diverse and safe;




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26 January 2013

All-nighter

11:30 pm - leave Llanelli
00:15 am - bus from Swansea
04:00 am - arrive Bristol airport
06:20 am - flight to Brussels
12 noon - flight Ouagadougou
16:50 pm - arrive in Burkina Faso!



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20 January 2013

The digs

2 weeks back in Llanelli and living in a new place. Roaring log fires in Pam's wood burner is one of the highlights of living here!




Pam is a lot of fun and takes my teasing in good form. I even caught her giving some back the other day.

The house is beautifully quiet and we enjoy lots of ordinary things together; eating, chatting, praying, reading, watching iPlayer and DVDs.

I've met the hounds next door 'that way' and met another neighbour 'the other side' who took an instant dislike to me and expressed her feelings clearly and repeatedly. I hadn't done anything and I was polite but it seems my very existence was an irritant to her. I got used to that a long time ago!




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3 January 2013

A rambling post in which many subjects are touched upon


I am back in Wales, returned to Llanelli, in new digs and ready for the next step.
My new room is a good size and although the floor is covered with bags still, the most important job is done - books are the bookshelf!
Have had Minky returned to me after his trip to South Sudan, Uganda and Egypt over December.
Ate amazing Pizza at Verdi's and followed it up with 2 scoops of their famous ice-cream. 1 x apple crumble & 1 x praline pecan. Too happy-making!
Tears last night as Greta and I prayed about 2012-13 together.


More tears from nieces as they dropped me back here and had to leave.


2012 has been incredible in many ways. I have been particularly grateful for my travels to Greece, North Africa & Iceland. The move to Wales has also been hugely significant. The year has not been without its pains either.
2013, similarly, promises to be a year of travel, change, excitement and challenge that will be costly. But I am not journeying alone and there will be coffee




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