We went to the seaside on Saturday

We woke up on Saturday morning to bright sunshine and temperatures hot enough to allow egg frying on car bonnets.  The sensible thing to do in such situations is to hot-foot it to the seaside where one should find the above warm temperatures and sunshine but with added cool breezes that make it all so much more tolerable.  We chose Sutton on Sea, not the closet beach to where we live but much quieter and more refined than Skegness.

The Yorkshireman’s great big shiny car has a temperature gauge so that while you sit in air-conditioned comfort you can see what temperatures the population at large have to endure outside.  We got into the car at 29°C.  By the time we got to the coast the mist had come in off the North Sea and it was 16°C.  Bugger.

Undeterred, we decided to stick it out.  We are English, after all, and we do not let such things as water vapour hanging in the air deter us from a Jolly Good Day Out.

Fortunately, under the sea wall out of the breeze it was warm enough to set up camp and The Yorkshireman could do that very important Daddy job of helping Little’un dig holes and build sandcastles.

Little’un and I went exploring and soon found a huge pile of shells and some starfish that had been washed up on the tide.  She was a bit wary of the dead crab (“It’s going to nibble my toes Mummy!”) but was fascinated by the starfish.  I am coming to realise that part of being a parent is to put your own fears aside so as not to transfer them onto your offspring, so I found myself picking one of the horrible slimy dead things up so she could get a good look at it.

Typically the sun broke through as we were getting ready to come home so we could justify having ice cream before getting back into the car.

We really must go back when we can see how nice it is there.

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Wheel of the Year – February

February’s Wheel of the Year pics are (finally) here.  I started taking them on Thurday 1st and finished them this afternoon.  The intervening time has been spent coughing, gasping for air, listening to firstly Little’un and then The Yorkshireman cough, stopping my head from imploding, being completely unable to talk, visiting doctors (all three of us) and necking assorted drugs.

I freely admit I have done a crap job this month.  Some of the compositions are all wrong and the lighting is bad too.  Hey-ho, I really can’t be arsed to do them again so you’ll have to live with it.  I still don’t feel too well to be honest.  As you will be able to tell from the horror that is my self-portrait.

Back to work tomorrow after a really horrible week off 😦

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Wheel of the Year – January

Is here :o). Not very interesting yet, it takes a few months to start showing any changes.

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Wheel of the Year 2007

Roll up, roll up, come and join in the fun…

It’s Wheel of the Year time again.  Come and join me.  Please.  I’m very lonely at the moment.  Just me, myself and I.

Click here to find out more…

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Wheel of the Year

Congratulations to Pewari,  Akra and everyone else who completed the Wheel of the Year project this year.  I failed miserably, getting no further than June.

I’m having another go in 2007.  I’ve already chosen my subjects and I’m hoping that they’ll be a damn sight easier to photograph every month than last year – some pictures resulted in frustration, tantrums (from me and Little’un) and also a case of nettle rash.

I’m taking over the administration of the group on Flickr from Pewari, but you don’t need to be a Flickr member to join in.  Just post your pictures on the net somewhere where I can find them and I’ll link to them from my project page (not set up as yet but will be in place by 1st Jan).

So do you fancy a go?  Go on, you know you want to!  Leave me a comment here if you’re interested and I’ll add you to my list.  The list that at the moment solely consists of Me.

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Little’un aged 1 year and 10 months

Here’s a recent picture for you, taken a couple of days ago as part of my Wheel of the Year entry for May. Isn’t she growing up? She is chattering away nineteen to the dozen now and is getting really cheeky. Her hair is starting to grow properly as well, and she loves putting clips and bobbles in it, then taking them out again, then putting them in again, then taking them out again, then putting them in my hair, then putting them on her dolly, then putting them on her bear and then finally attempting to put them on the cat which generally receives a fairly frosty reception. Oh well, I suppose it makes a change from trying to force feed him raisins or orange juice.

The rest of May’s entries are here, and the whole year’s results so far are here.

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Headaches and Llamas

It’s been a very busy week here at Tangerine Towers. 

Little’un and I went to Sheffield on Tuesday to see BabiesEverywhere’s ever increasing bump.  We went to a soft play centre in Hillsborough in the afternoon, which was loads better than the Wacky Warehouse coz the adults can play too.  Of course, in her delicate condition, BE couldn’t play with Little’un and I which meant that we had someone to look after the bags while we played and ran round.  Great fun, but only one minor problem – these places aren’t built for people 5′6″ tall so I killed a few brain cells on overhead bars.  I also got stuck on a slide coz it was slightly narrower than my arse.  Oh the shame.

I drank wine.  I stayed up late.  Little’un woke up early.  I felt like death for the next 24 hours.  I’d say never again, but I think that we all know that there’s a fairly good chance that my good intentions won’t last.

Of course I can vouch for the fact that my indisposition, which wasn’t so much a headache as hordes of evil heavy footed demons smashing their way out though my skull, was not in fact caused by an excess of wine.  I clearly just need to watch my head next time I play on sprog sized play equipment.

I had to pull myself together and drive back to Boston on Wednesday afternoon as Mum and Sibling came to stay and had to be collected from the train station.  Their visit provided us all with the perfect excuse to eat chocolate (Easter Eggs were once again exchanged) and we also had a yummy Chinese takeaway.  No wonder I get stuck on play equipment.  Gah.

The poor Yorkshireman is incredibly busy at work at the moment so he can’t have any time off just now, which meant that we had a girls’ trip out on Thursday.  I took everyone to Stickney Farm Park thinking that we’d all enjoy it, but Sibling 3 wasn’t keen at all.  She’s definitely not the type to commune with nature!  Little’un loved it, unless the animals got too close or too noisy.  She was particularly keen on the geese although she does insist that they’re ducks.  The child is duck obsessed.  Better not give her the Crispy Duck from the Chinese then.

There are some photos here.  I particularly like the one of the llama.

Mum and Sibling 3 went home today, so normality has once more been achieved at Tangerine Towers.  Please please please Litttle’un, please sleep past 6am tomorrow morning.  Mummy will buy you a duck.

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Some photos for you

I finished April’s Wheel of the Year photos today.  I have some nettle rash on my leg where I tried to get a decent shot of Boston Stump.  Oh, the things we photographers endure for our art.

This month’s are here.

The whole year’s are here.

I also completed March’s Monthly Scavenger Hunt.  My entries are here.

Enjoy!

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Wheel of the Year – March

Here you’ll find my March pictures for Wheel of the Year.  Click on the thumbnails to see titles, descriptions and comments.

And here’s the whole collection so far.  It’s getting more interesting for the viewer now, you can really start to see the changes in some of the views as time has passed.

I’m not so impressed with some of March’s shots though, it’s been really sunny all week here which was great generally but it was very hard to get pictures without harsh shadows in them.  This is part of the challenge though and later in the year I’m hoping to get brighter days when the sun is higher in the sky so the shadows are shorter.

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Thirty days hath September…

I found myself in something of a panic last night trying to finish February’s Flickr Monthly Scavenger Hunt submissions for February.  I’d forgotten that there was only 28 days in February and hadn’t realised needed to get them done by the end of the day until about lunchtime yesterday!  I was determined to finish the hunt as it was the first month I’d done it and I didn’t want to fail on my first excursion.  I finally finished at 11.40pm!  Some of my entries are a bit tenuous and I’ve doubled some of them up though.  Have a look at my efforts here, if you click on the thumbnails you’ll get an explanation of my thinking (such as it is) behind each shot.

Today sees a new list of challenges for March, they don’t look as difficult as last month’s and I have 31 days in which to do them!

I’ve managed to bag myself a trip to Peterborough, Spalding and Boston for work this afternoon to buy competitors’ products from various supermarkets so this should present me with a good opportunity to get some of March’s Wheel of the Year pictures done.   And enjoy the winter sunshine too.

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