Been shopping?

I have, I actually went to COS such was my excitement at seeing the new collection, sadly I had seen it all before I went and had bought some basics, what I am desperate for is to see the new knitwear and coats.....
I had during a vicious rain storm taken refuge in Next and whilst searching for an umbrella found this gorgeous sweater. The sequins are dull so it is not too dressy, sizing up to a 20 made it slouchy and it goes with my tan a treat. Buoyed up by this image I may attempt a few more to show you when I get back to work.

On the beach

I LOVE this beach in St Ives, I love how families create small settlements using a range of windbreaks and tents. Best of all not one of them can see the sea!!

Even without the paraphernalia it is possible to create an oasis of calm.

An iconic viewpoint.

Proud parents watching their babies in Surf School.

This beach gets colonised by the gulls!

I will be back at work sometime next week hopefully with more photographs..

St Ives street style

I was wearing far too many hats during this break, so failed to capture much street style. There was plenty to see, but the streets were heaving making a good shot without being seen very difficult to get.
Standard uniform for this holiday is to layer dusty colours and stripes on top with either a short skirt or shorts on the bottom. This makes it easy to hop from beach to Fore street without a change of clothing, (the two are less than 5 mins apart) I must confess it was with some relief I left my black wardrobe behind, it is great to layer and mix it up, so much goes down here the rules do not apply and it was sad to wash and pack them away again. I can't wear these clothes in London they have grown to signify a time and an attitude separate from the place I live and work and in that sense I am pleased to put them away. I may wear a pared down version for the next break in Istanbul which is coastal too, otherwise they will have to wait for next Easters outing to Norfolk. Yes we are braving the misty climes again!

The following two images were from the inside of the Tate both perfectly encapsulate what makes the perfect St Ives style.

I am SO pleased I have booked next year for 2 weeks, so I can add more to my collection.

The view from here St Ives

I started a few very small gouache's, we only had a week so it was difficult to find any kind of mojo. That said the weather was mostly glorious which encourages me to go out rather than stay in and paint. But not the embarrassment of riches I came back from Scotland with. Which pretty much reflect the difference in weather.

Sadly the scanner has bleached the colours but it helps me work out the scale if I see them on the screen, as these are forerunners for some better ones I hope.

All are views from the balcony in the house, we return next year as I never tire of this place and hopefully now Leyla is more self contained and Mother more inform I will get more drawing done.

Thorpe Park hell & heaven

For those few non Blighty readers Thorpe Park is a meek and mild water theme park, full of rides that are more than inclined to soak you through to your underwear, than scare the pants off you, (as our previous au-pair found out to her cost.)

I prefer it to most other theme parks but rely on Leyla being too small to go on the rides as my get out of long queue for little reward. Don't get me wrong I love a thrill, but as I have gotten older the thrills get less entertaining the more my body suffers. Not for me the G forces of fun, not now anyhow. So having ascertained Leyla was in fact big enough to go on ALL the rides my heart sank and off we went. We were there as the gates opened and amazingly unlike previous visits queues were short and much fun was to be had. We had togged ourselves up appropriately, taken waterproof bags and all was good..... well you know that was not going to last don't you. It would not be me if a series of most unfortunate events did not conspire to ruin my day, although if you make it to the end of the post there was a surprisingly happy ending. I did not get whip lash, no, instead Daisy by 3pm realised she had the wrong bag. She had borrowed an old Just Do It bag from Kitty. The whole bloody theme park was chock full of these identical bags so NEVER take one it can only end in tears. In her bag was her ultra special eczema cream, her Blackberry and Kitty's brand spanking new gilet, a very expensive duck down one. Instead Daiisy stood holding a bag full of wet clothes and a Blackberry, sadly not hers. She ran back to the last ride. No, no bag there. She ran to the lost property to see if someone had realised their mistake. No. She handed the bag in and prayed that the owner would realise their error and come back to swap it before they went home. I felt sick, but it was Kitty's day so told them to enjoy themselves. Instead of leaving early to get home and pack we were now committed to a late leaving time. To cut a very boring story short 7 pm came and went and although the girl retrieved her bag she in fact had not picked Daisy's bag up. I now had a migraine. It was gone 7 and with a heavy heart asked if they had checked the boxes where they threw the bags on the other rides. It transpired that despite working out that the problem started with Leyla collecting the bags on another ride by trying to be helpful, they had not bothered to check if it was still there. We ran back to the one we remeber Leyla being so helpful after and drum roll.....there it was, still in the box where Daisy had thrown it.

Oh, if only that was the end of the story.

I joined the M25 at junction 11 we had to go all the way around to junction 2. By junction 10 flashing signs were telling us, NO, STOP, ABANDON ALL HOPE, GET OFF NOW, in fact they were begging us to leave. The motorway was closed and nothing was moving. I left at junction 10 and after a quick scrabble round reading a map upside down I knew with the heaviest of hearts that I was going to hit the south circular on a Friday night. Hell has no worse punishment than that effing road but on a Friday night..... My head was THUMPING. A frantic phone call from Emin and we realised we were in fact blessed. A lorry had traversed the central reservation and killed a shed load of people. The road was closed both ways and many were stuck there for most of the night in a 30 mile tail back. Despite the hellish journey with a pounding headache we got home in time to pack, sleep and get the train to Cornwall. So Leyla's bag snatch in fact has a happy ending.

One final OMG

KITTY HAS JOB!!!!

Her first interview was with GAP and she got the job. I can't tell you how happy I am and how relived we all are, she had resigned herself to going back to college with a heavy heart. Now she will get training and experience from a great company. Have I not always said how great GAP is?

Is it good to be back?

It has been far too long, luckily I get the impression most of you are away or off line too, so I don't feel so bad at the paucity of posts. Reading the last post I wrote I get the feeling I was quite low, no reason, only a frustration that most of this holiday seems very Leyla centered. It is not her fault and the whole bloody 11+ shebang will be over in less than 5 weeks.

Did I enjoy the holiday? Well mostly, there are some tales to tell, not Mother this time instead Princess Daisy has picked that baton up and sprinted ahead.

I have a shed load of photographs to look at but for now it is all very domestic. My current irritant is the weather, which in true 'It's August so it must be pouring' style has once again scuppered my plans to mow the lawn. I will soon need a bloody combine harvester.

One small plus was just before I left I could not decide whether to clean the house within an inch of its life and hope He Who Should Be Obeyed did not wholly trash it, or to not clean it and tackle the whole lot on my return. On past experiences it was pretty much a given that he would not lift a finger and I would as usual walk through the door to a mound of rotting chaos only to lash my self to a cleaning cloth for hours before weeping at the 3 suitcases of washing that had not a hope in hell of drying in this inclement of weathers.

(Everyone talks about the wonders of packing, few ever acknowledge the hell of unpacking and washing and drying and putting away...on and on...)

I cleaned before I went, that way It might shame him into at least trying to keep some semblance of order. Imagine my utter surprise when I returned to find not only a stacked dishwasher but the surfaces wiped too! 15 years it has taken for him to realise if he wants sex on my return the kitchen needs to be clean....Not that we have have sex in the kitchen or anything honest!

Holiday time

Well another year rolls by and it is that time when I trot off to damper climes! Sun is always a bonus in this country never a given and Cornwall is becoming.

Daisy is here, they have gone to see their new baby brother, I have packed already as before we catch the train on Saturday I'm foolishly throwing a shed load of money down Thorpe Park's throat to entertain Kitty for her birthday treat. Oh lucky me. memories still linger from my last visit when I came home with whiplash. I was hoping for a more sedate time but Leyla has put on a growth spurt and now qualifies for the whole shebang.

There are no witty post dated posts I'm still tired and lacking in the time or peace or comfort to post so I will wave you goodbye, have a lovely time, and see you in approx. 3 weeks.

XXX

P.S Kevin Spacey @ Richard III ...AWESOME... truly a remarkable night out,

Sweet Sixteen

Would I want to be there again? No, absolutely not, I would've like to have known I was beautiful so I stopped looking for love and worked harder at college, but that was pretty much it.

I am most defiantly enjoying life more now, I get more out of it most days not hamstrung by the need for the validation of others, I work at it a lot more too making sure I at least try to achieve something positive each day no matter how small. That said of course I have daily gripes and irritating niggles that mar each day. But Sweet Sixteen? No way. It is the age that Kitty has dreaded, the final transition into an adulthood and she has met it kicking and screaming. So desperate has she been to cling on the the heady days where all you had to worry about was what was for tea, what to potter at today, those days where food fairies brought each meal, washing fairies delivered clean clothes and there were no worries that were pressing.

Now today heralds the arrival of independence the need for employment sadly the job hunt has lacked fruition and it now appears she may have to return to college after all. So once again I will be strapped to a computed tapping in yet another series of witty answers with just the right measure of gravitas in order to secure her a place, or rather a place on the waiting list so late has she left it.

So Happy Birthday Kitty

You are really the sweetest of my girls, you have the lightest of touches and you are without doubt the best of my girls to spend the day with fun, witty and wise, who would have thought such a lovely girl would have emerged from that vile little teenage caterpillar?

Just as I wrote this a phone called came to alert Kitty that her new half sibling was on its way...Seriously three hundred and sixtyeffingfive days in the year and she goes into labour on Kitty's birthday. How unfair is that?