Bananas:I dislike the colour, the smell, the texture, the taste, the shape and the word. Everyone else seems to like them though, so I accept them and we live in peace.
Isla and …
…my mum, telling us how it is.
Innes listening, or maybe thinking about something else. He loves bananas.
A girl on the train back from Glasgow at 8.30pm on a Friday night.
Andrew Gillespie of the A@131 society had been kind enough to ask me along to talk about sketching to Strathclyde University students. I studied at Strathclyde so was keen to go back and they put some effort into advertising it, so it was well attended.
I hadn’t talked about my drawings before and enjoyed it a lot. It’s good spend a little time thinking about what you are trying to do, after all.
Earlier in the week, after a late Christmas do, I spent some time looking at a coffee machine: modern on the inside, classic with a hint of modern on the outside. In the design world, from suits to buildings, that’s a popular mix.
Innes and I missing the outing to the Singing Kettle. He’s on the sofa, ill, and he can’t get comfy.
Heisker is a wee island off North Uist, and a new face at Gran’s for lunch.
Before that, reading some funny French words.
A week in London, and 3 nice places to spend some time
1. London’s public space has had a makeover since I lived there.
The focus is kids and the device that gets them active is fountains you can play in. People used to point to Spain to show how kids playing could be a welcome part of civic space, but London does it too now. This one is Princess Diana’s memorial, swishest of the five we came across on our travels.
2. Ben’s shed. I spent some time looking at it and thinking about spaces to be creative in (with some help from the White Stripes*).
This might be what Ben would describes as ‘rus in urbe’
3. Eames lounge chair 670. You need somewhere cosy to relax after a day in central London with three under fives.
*
http://www.whitestripes.net/songlyrics.php?id=49
Big Ted and I on a Saturday night with the beers out and the football on. We don’t normally do this, but Julie’s in London for three days so the place is ours.
Yesterday Innes and I took Big Ted to Innes’s playgroup Teddy Bear’s picnic: 40 mums, 1 dad. The mums were keen to know the details of how J had left me looking after three under fives for three days. I kept quiet, aware they were only gathering evidence for use in their own time-off negotiations.
We all survived and I recovered by watching a man changing some light bulbs in a café. It made me think of independence which is a common topic of conversation in Scotland and pretty much the only one when I’m in England.
Innes & I got to go to a party with a bouncy castle.
He had lots of fun, so hanging around with me next time big brother and sister go out will definitely seem like the short straw. We watched a film after, to recover.
One of the many extra things you get to do when there’s one more day in the weekend. It feels more like another week.
The chance to offload some old kit, and move on to the next stage.
It’s more fun on the train when you bring the family. We all went to London to help celebrate HTA’s first birthday. The bairns got a first experience of family holidays in big cities: traipsing around, sore feet, trying to find somewhere cheap enough that we could have a meal each…
We visited a house with a hole in it.
It’s a nice enough house characterised by fantastic vibrant colours, but we’re drawing up plans for it’s demolition.
Here’s Innes flat out on the couch after an afternoon flat out on his scooter chasing after big brother.
He finds it exhausting keeping up with his siblings, but it is, and always has been:
My sister Flora has put together a book on my great aunt Christina’s time on the Western Front in the first world war. It contains characterful portraits from my great uncle Barr’s sketch book. The portraits are of the men he fought alongside and the notes describe what happened to them.
It’s for sale in Waterstones, or here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Classics-Remarkable-Scottish-Christina/dp/0750953667
This is Uncle Ed’s Chair. Uncle Ed was born in 1908, so he was probably sitting in it about a century ago.
He was my Gran’s little brother. As we’re the folk left in the family with kids who fit it, we’ve inherited it. I like how the seat’s all scratched and the arms are shiny, a reminder of all the abuse it’s taken in the last 100 years.Ours prefer sitting on tables or on the floor. Perhaps it’s unfamiliar.I like that it’s useful and practical, and gives a physical connection to the past. It’s not the only connection: the watercolours that the sketches are done with belonged to my Gran. It’s nice that they’ve lasted.
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