365/162 Neglected.

Our laburnum tree in the garden is losing its colour now so it looks quite neglected, but I did take a picture of it a while back when it was looking good...

.. my craft room got its make over so it is no longer neglected.. and I feel so much happier..it is a small room next to our bedroom and I see the chaos every time I pass the door. I have rationalised it a bit and the desk now has stuff I use on it..so despite Col having to go off today for his early start tomorrow I did get something out of the empty afternoon...

It was quite strange when he was leaving as he took his Dad with him, to visit his brother, so the place is really quiet today. Kate spontaneously hugged Col..(it doesn't always happen.. you know, teen girls and their Dads..sometimes they each think the other is an alien!).. but it was real nice and they cuddled so I commented I should have it in a picture.. so they posed.. just look at those eyes.. she isn't going to be neglected is she!

JB, Ross, April and I had tea late on and I am waiting now to fetch Kate from her job (did I say she had a job at the Chinese in town close by.. it pays for the evening twice what the hair salon paid in a whole day.)
I know she should be home in bed ready for school tomorrow, but hey she would be watching TV or chatting to someone on FBk if she was home, so I am cool. And if she falls asleep in a lesson its not that far from not listening is it.. I am sure you will all be frowning, but she's our last babe and I really have thrown away the parental angst and swapped it for some chilled out Mum potion!
Other news on the Kate front is that she got through to the finals of Miss FreshTeen a teen model competition under the Miss England umbrella.. so we are hoping that goes well later in the year!

Now, to the word of the day again.. 'neglected' .. well I have neglected to mention of late that our Jordan is making herself a bit of a name in the custom sunglasses world.  And what world is that?.. well she has a FaceBook and Etsy site so you can see for yourself..

http://www.facebook.com/shinebrighteyes

http://www.etsy.com/shop/ShineBrightEyes

 

 

365/161 Frayed.

I'm short of inspiration at the moment, seems my pal Karen feels the same about her photography...my Col is away tomorrow, early for a trip away til Thursday so I am thinking that maybe, just maybe I will use the spare half day to sort my scrap space and get going again.  The only trouble is the usual, when you have a free half day you come up with several good things you could do, then waste half the time deliberating about which to do, when to start and so on.. (shouting now).. 'Stop pontificating and get on with it!!!'

(Inserted here, before posting this.. I found one.. a picture of a sad frayed palm tree on one of our holidays!)

So, whilst the prompt 'frayed' perhaps relates more to my state of mind than an image of some worn out jeans (and aren't they just the best that month or two before the fray becomes a fully fledged 'hole' ?)...I have something to tell...

Zac on our website..

So, as you know our Zac is away in Oz, working aboard  P&O cruise ship as part of his training... well you may also know that we make, here in Cornwall, a range of stainless steel drum trolleys and materials handling equipment (STS) which is sold to all kinds of companies all over this country and some abroad.. including quite a few to a reseller called PBA Safety out in Australia.  

Our flagship product which we have been making for about twelve years is a drum handling trolley for oil drums.. it is very trick and really is revolutionary if you ever used it, not like the tragic type of sack truck thing people sometimes use...(well as ever I digress.. end of sales pitch..)

So, (are you keeping up?) Zac is on a ship out of Sydney and he goes down into the engine room for some job or another.. and there it is.. one of our drum trolleys, cut , bent and manufactured here in Cornwall, shipped to Oz and then resold to P&O.. for our Zac to find and feel proud of.. here's the pic.. just brilliant!!

One we made earlier!

Did you read the manual?

Enjoying his work..xx

365/160 Vintage

.. well I went upstairs in search of something vintage, I have quite a lot of old stuff but I think vintage should have a special kind of 'look' or feel..I picked out a few photos and was pleased with how they came out being rephotographed, the people look clearer and I see them in a different light... but saving them for a lazy day prompt..

Instead I fell upon this album cover..I still have quite a lot of LPs and most of the singles I ever bought, but most of them are out in our sheds. This album had been loaned to one of the guys I hung out with back in the late 70's / early 80's and to be true I had probably forgotten all about it..then two or three years ago Ross was working with the same guy's daughters and he passed it back via the kids.  

There were a bunch of kids all in the same social circle and (as I do) I asked enough questions about who's dad was who and all that, to realise that about 4 of us teens from Mousehole had kids now who all knew each other.. not so amazing but I kind of liked it!!  

Okay so some of us had been away and come back, but Ross like me likes living where he knows people and they know him.. amazing how different people are, my brother-in-law really likes new places and new things to do all the time!

..and for Jen.. I always lived here really, first out west near Land's End at my 'home' , then as a teen in Mousehole, I went to Uni in Exeter for three years and then lived around this area, about ten mile radius of Penzance ever since, so I see some people I always knew, and some I never see..my Mum stayed in Mousehole til my Jb was born in 1994 so we've always been close to the sea..xx

365/159 Roadside.

 

Tenuous link here, but the risk was that I would have a small river as my option for roadside outside our place, it has rained so much here today.. thick mizzle I call it, not mist, not drizzle, miserable thick almost rain! And wind.. bah! But at least it keeps us moany Brits happy with something to 'buse about!!

I have realised lately that I don't blog (or scrap) much about my teenage years and those six full and eight part-time years I lived in Mousehole. I think it is partly cos I was probably a moody teenager a lot of the time and also it was a period when I didn't take quite so many pictures..but I do have some and I should put it right..

Mum married Phil when I was just 13 and we moved to live with him in the double gabled house right by the beach in the picture. It was a big flat and the blue doors under were the 'Shark Office ' where Phil & his brother sold their shark fishing trips in summer. Phil had lived there with his first wife Sally who had died a couple of years before (they and my parents all knew each other, they were favourites of mine who bought me big Easter Eggs and a Diana annual every Christmas.. see, typical material child.. some things are a constant!)

..on reflection it suited me quite well, there were four buses an hour to Penzance and it dragged me well into the world as a teen, rather than being in the outback of the fishing cove and kind of stranded from the kind of thing teens usually want to do.

.. sooo, I digress.. the roadside in this case was 'the Wharf' it was a walkway right along the harbourside .. and a secret here.. the sand was actually brought in every few years as it would gradually be dragged out of the harbour over the years..

.. but this picture is another of Uncle Bills.. Cols brother and his lad in our 'roadside' lane just outside our yard..

365/158 Reaching up..

.. random choice for today's prompt, I was unsure where I would get inspiration during my run-of-the-mill back-to-work kind of day.... dear Ben, one of our Design guys was leaving work the same time as me, and he, as ever, was humouring me about my 'word of the day'.. and it happened.. he reached up to turn off the fan..

Just to give a little variety I found these pictures some of you may not have seen before, our acrobatic Kate.. she loves to trampolene and do cartwheels and stuff, but gave up acro about a year ago.. I wasn't sorry as I worried it may hurt her hips and things in the long run if she pursued it for too many years, but now she says she does feel it more when she exercises at school!

Reach..for the skies..x

365/157 Sparkle.

Well I must say how cool the Jubilee concert was last night, we watched it all on TV and I confess that I am still such a Robbie Williams fan.. I am so glad he seems settled, having seem him a couple of times and watched quite a bit of stuff on TV following his tours I always worried he would be one of the lost young guns, but his greying hair, swing songs and impending fatherhood do give me hope that he will live a long and happy life now.

..end of ramble.. time for a Happy Birthday to my Col.. he loves that all the comments yesterday wish him a happy day, the long suffering husband of my random blogging habit!  Thank you!

It's been a bit of a lazy day, he got a nice breakfast in bed, watched some TT coverage on TV, a great relaxer for him (not the big bends and 140mph straights though!)

Zac called mid morning, it's 10 hours ahead out there and they had a lovely half hour chat, as good as sending a big gift!  This is them chatting on the phone with JB waiting to catch up with her much missed brother snuggling under Dad's arm!  She baked him this lovely madeira cake with lemon 'sparkle' (?) icing.

The cake has gone down well, as you can see Lyla is making her mark now, being heard and likes her own full sized piece of cake! 

 

Lilly and I played Pirates and we used Christmas Pot Pourri.. yes, still out in a bowl on the dresser..as treasure.. and there it was..Sparkle.. three little lots of it!   I felt bad as I was fun chasing her with a sword and she got scared that I would cut her throat with it, so we had a big cuddle and agreed to play tickle sword next time.. she's such a madam with a soft gooey middle!

365/156 Colourful

This is just lovely.. following on from yesterday's prompt, my cousin Sarah who reads the blog sent me this picture.. for sure the better viewpoint of 'White Gate'...and she wrote..

Love it, how bad is that - we get excited over a "gate". My memories of the gate, every Easter Sunday Grandad Ted would man the gate when the gardens are open for St. Levan Church funds. He would chat to people as they walked down cove and then back up again for a cream tea...

(her Grandad Ted was my Dad's best man and best friend, they joined the Navy together, despite both of them having valid reasons not to... and used to go courting together with Mum & Val... who worked together in town)

Cheating somewhat for the prompt today, but these colourful fruits at a stall we passed in Paris a few years back made me think about all the lovely foods on offer at the moment with the Jubilee parties going on.. mmm, I love raspberries..

JB has made Colin a cake this afternoon for his birthday tomorrow.. ahh, and the Queen gave us a day extra to celebrate!

365/155 Gate.

I haven't really been out today, bar playing teen-taxi as I call it and it's been a quiet day here, I appreciate all the fuss everyone is making of the Jubilee and I think it's great that everyone has embraced it across the country, but personally I am left a bit numb about it all.. perhaps I have done too many fetes, too much organising of charity events and cake stalls and I am now just a jaded and tired old boot.. I dunno! 

My favourite bit so far was the old singles Jeremy Vine played on his show while I was taxi-ing.. 1964's 'You Are My World' (when Prince Edward was born by all accounts) and 1969's 'If Paradise is Half as Nice' (Man landing on the Moon and incidentally me buying this as my first single ever.... my dad had died earlier in the year and the outpouring of effort to make life a little nicer for me brought me a Dansette Record Player, second hand from ETS, via my dear Uncle Owen..oh and we got TV and a cat..!)

But I digress..

There is a live music thing in town tonight and the best bit sounds like the tribute band doing Blondie, the Clash and stuff, so maybe we will drag ourselves there and retrieve the moment.. bah, humbug!  It's Col's birthday Tuesday and he is in danger of having a ten minute home-made card and a jumper if enthusiasm levels don't improve.... maybe I just used up all my enthusiasm points for May while the family had its' get togethers!

And so to 'Gates'.. I played lazy I'm afraid and opted for a nice oldie.. it beat this little picture of 'White Gate' in Penberth, which in fact is not much of a gate picture, in that it is obscured by wild rhubarb plants and only those in the know (Penny and Sarah) even know what I am on about....oh yeah, you can just see the corner of the gate.... it was a point in the road used by Teddy and I when doing bike races and stuff.. and where I fell in the river once.. on his bike!

 The chosen pic also beat this one which for a moment was going to be 'the gate picture' because it was funny for a moment to have a snow pic today.. in June... but not so far off the mark, it is grey and windy outside in fact!

So here we are.. (this fairly famous picture now.. amongst those of us who collect such memorabilia about our homeland.. haha, home cove maybe)..our beloved Auntie Elsie outside her cottage with my brother Ken and cousins Mark, Keith and Penny. 

She was the lovliest lady, from Co. Durham and that lovely accent. I think she had been a school teacher and then married my Dad's Uncle, and cared for his mother for many years. She loved to have us kids around and she used to let me wash her step and clean all the amethysts and semi-precious rocks beside the step.  The house was full of stuffed birds, foxes and other small animals, probably trophies of hunting done by the men..I think she must have been sad not to have her own children but was like a favourite Gran to me, and was such as your Gran should always live just up the road shouldn't she?

I think Auntie Elsie was probably only in her 50's here as it was in the 1960's and she was still alive and well and teaching herself Russian when I last saw her when Ross was a baby in about 1987.  Amazing what fashion and hair dyes have done to make us ladies keep hold of the years now eh?

My other abiding memory of the house was the outside toilet with wooden bench type seat with two openings, I remember thinking it must be very odd if two of you were in there at the same time!!

(Well must go, the intention was a quick picture and note, I've now droned on for an age but somehow I feel like I have done the virtual nostalgia tour.. and I am heartened.. xx)

365/154 In the distance.

Taking the easy way out today.. iconic English view out to St Michael's Mount ( the horizon was sloping so I had to tweak it a bit!) before Zac & Col went boating last week...

.. and secondly the view back to shore at Marazion from the Mount harbour at low tide..

 

365/153 Isolated.

I always pick up the prompt in the morning and ponder the picture throughout the day, with some good / some bad suggestions from the 'gallery'!  Isolated threw me down some funny ones: Ross out in his cabin in the garden, Kate laying on the sofa while we were all in the kitchen, but I wasn't inspired... so I waited.

This morning, a day late, it came to me. I was chatting with Colin wondering where and how Zac is doing on his new ship, the Pacific Jewel and there it was...'isolated'.. he couldn't be further from us, based in  Sydney and sailing out on everything from a two week trip to Fiji to 3-day comedy cruises!  Thank God for the internet and satellite phones, they have made the world a much smaller (seeming) place than when I ventured to Uni in far off Devon in 1979!!

I'm sure Zac doesn't feel very isolated himself, on a ship with up to 2500 on board, but hey, this morning they dock in the Isle of Pines in New Caledonia.... now I have to work my brain as actually it's 8pm out there so he is already heading for the next port.. 'Mystery Island' !! Sounds like a venue for a Scooby Doo adventure..

(needless to say I didn't take the picture myself.. oops, I'm sure the challenge was there originally to improve our photo skills.. over to you Zac, send me something.. xxxx)