My Pocket

Soaked nightingales

Oh, thank you all so much for your encouraging comments on my previous post - it warmed my heart and I will make good use of your advice! :) Sorry I went AWOL for a while, I had my dad come over to visit for a few days and we had a busy schedule, but delightful. On Tuesday we went to London, just him and me, and saw the Christmas Market in Covent Garden.

The little things always do it for me - like the twinkling lights in the white wintery decorations everywhere, the smell from the cafes, the violin playing band (Pachelbel's Cannon in D - performed while wooing the passer-byes, sticking their violins in the rushed shoppers' faces), passing by Big Ben on Westminster Bridge, watching the red double-deckers and black London cabs speeding by in the drizzle and reading the poetry on the walls of the underground pedestrian tunnels. I thought this one snippet was appropriate as we've been having characteristic misty rain and thick, creamy fog these last few days (after the driest autumn since 1914). Love the first line - above the hurt sky is weeping.

Last night we went to see The Darjeeling Limited (finally - I've been longing ever since I heard Wes Anderson made another one!), in a little cinema in Winchester that used to be a church. Oh man... I just love his magic. His idea alone of letting his characters be oblivious of any constraints of finance is brilliant - it frees up so much scope for adventures and delightful quirks, like the careless travelling and (the wonderful) coordinated suitcases in this particular film. It being set on a train winding through India with all its colourful places made my day too, so many memories made me smile and glow. Oh I love going to the cinema - especially this time of the year!

I will keep you updated on the photo prints, I'm working on it :). So glad you like the idea! I've started up a little shop on Etsy and will fill it up with prints as soon as I've got things established with the printer. I'm all excited about it, but will have to pace myself so that I have time to finish the assignments I've got left to hand in before Christmas. Hoping you all are getting ready for the twinkly, warm and cozy vibes of December coming up, I know I am! :)

the seedling

Hello! I hope your Sunday is unravelling the way you want it to and that the sun is shining where you are. I'm so happy you come over here to read and I'm grateful for all you wonderful friends I'm making through this space, it's bringing so much into my life.

For the moment I've got a little adventure on my mind, something Maddie sowed the seed to and now it's sprouting dainty little green leaves in my head and just won't give up growing. You've got to see her place - it's the most magical, delightful and inspiring corner with poetry, beautiful words and amazing photos of her very own magic.

The little seedling is the thought of selling my photos as prints - what do you think? I was hoping you could help me out a little and decide which photos, if any, might be suitable for it - would you do that for me? If I should be so lucky and have lurkers reading - then do feel very welcome to say something too if you'd like. Or not - I know what it's like to be shy :).

I've put together a set called possible prints? on flickr and it would be wonderful if you'd like to leave little comments on which photo/s you would like to see as a print. I'd love to send all of you a print as thanks, but as that is out of my reach for the moment I'd like to send the first three to comment one. I rarely get more than three comments anyway, so I'm hoping this is fair. :)

This photo above is one I found in the backwaters of iPhoto that has never been uploaded to flickr and I kind of like it so I'm including it in my possible prints - what do you think of it?

Looking forward to hearing what you say about it all - hoping you will say something, fingers crossed! In any case, I'm thoroughly enjoying myself which is the main thing. Ha, to think I am almost a real photographer! :)

friday

thursday

wednesday

tuesday

only

hello you! this week - photos only. hope you have a lovely week!

crop, crop

This post will take a bit of scrolling methinks! All photos are of the area around Brockwood where I walk, all of places and trees I love. I don't know what you think, but cropped like this the photos become a whole new experience for me, it's almost like I'm in them watching it all. See what you find!

Hey - you made it to the end! Thanks for dropping by, all of you, I really appreciate it. :)

sunflowers

Hello you! Life is sweet for the moment, but fast. Wrapping things up at work, sewing the last of the 25 curtains (phew!), getting the library into reasonably fit shape before I go (after a year I still haven't got used to the idea that I'm a, well part-time, librarian. Never saw that one coming), fitting in as much homework as I can (lying in bed in the evening with laptop on my tummy reading about asthma...), writing on those assignments and enjoying good walks (the more I have to do the more I need to take time for that). I like being busy and having less time to think and worry about stuff, just get on with it. I just need something to work towards, I'm definitely a deadline person.

I've been experimenting a bit with cropping my photos, I'll show you more tomorrow. I'm still loving my camera, but I got into a bit of a rut lately and had to come up with a different angle or project. I wanted to get my landscape pictures to come out differently, it seemed none of them were done justice by the camera so here's my first attempt:

Oui, c'est beau Paris

Paris started out just as rainy as Britain, oh bummer... We hid under umbrellas through the worst of it, just short of reaching the Eiffel tower (see it just beyond the trees). Wide rivulets were forming on the paths and we had some fun navigating across those, or exploring the Mekong delta which is how my dad experienced it. He can rarely take anything out of the ordinary seriously. Actually, not much of the ordinary either, now that I think of it. He's the one holding the umbrella in the picture by the way.

I love the French newspaper and magazine stands everywhere. Not just a great place for some gossip, but like an open-air bookshop too. That's my mum in the picture.

I'm fond of the fruit and veg displays outside the shops, I keep a lookout for them in Britain too. There's something so wonderfully old-fashioned or exotic about it. We managed to find a small market too which made my day. The berries were sold there. Along the little square where a line of shops - the greengrocer, the fishmonger, the butcher, the charcuterie, the boulangerie (bakery) and the winery, all in a row!

Mum and I found a pair of sandals each - her red with white dots, mine black.

Carl Fredrik (my brother) and I enjoyed ourselves in the evening with taking night-time shots out the window of the neon lights beyond the hotel. He is one budding photographer I think, he's got a great way with the camera and is so imaginative. We tried catching the headlights of the cars passing on the street below and had a lot of laughs in the process - quick, quick, now! Aaawww... Again - now, now!

We strolled along the Seine on my last day, after window shopping in Saint-Germain-de-Pres and I like that kind of holiday time the most. Just wandering along, seeing what you find and ending up wherever you do.

One of the things I like the most about travelling are the exotic smells. Doesn't really matter what, just whatever reminds me that I'm in a foreign country. I still suddenly find myself back in India whenever I smell anything resembling the smoke from smouldering burnt rubbish and it always makes me happy before I realise what I'm actually smelling. :) In France it was more from baking wafting out from the boulangeries, smell of lunch from the sidewalk restaurants, a wiff of incense from an open doorway, laundry somewhere or just summer sunshine warming the pavement.

In the end we ended up by Notre Dame and sat people-watching on the side for a while, resting our feet. Wish I could have spent some more days with them, strolling around breathing in the atmosphere, but there it is. It's back to work for me now. I'm so revitalised though, it did the trick those two days. I'm inspired too, French people have so much better taste in clothes than the British (sorry!) and I saw many people who had their own style going on. Perhaps that is a capital city phenomenon, but still. I love seeing different cultures.

That was a happy little holiday for me. Thank you mum and dad! Love you.