Wednesday, September 25, 2013

THE LAND WHERE PEOPLE WAVE AT TRAINS...












A long ride on a two carriage train that crosses over a river on a small rickety bridge, goes through mountain tunnels and then emerges into breathtaking scenery to hug the coastline. From the window on one side: slate, sheep grazing on hills and masses of blue and purple hydrangeas spilling down mountains - fields sectioned by miles of dry stone walls. On the other side is the sea. Whenever the train passes people, they wave hello to it.

A celebration at a little house last seen thirty years ago, still the same. Good food and wine, a cake, at night a washing machine drum and some bricks make a great fire, watching stars fall - just look up. A walk to the beach - this beach.


A failed attempt was made to recreate this picture. More food and wine, more croquet, more tea. Many, many sausages later, a train back to where hydrangeas always go faded pink and life is less sweet. At the local station, after crossing the single track, you have to put your arm out to signal the driver to stop. Couldn't get over that. Stuck my arm out like a pro. Looking across fields to the little house - to see all of them waving madly from the end of the garden. Loved that. ♡

Thursday, September 12, 2013

FALL DOWN SEVEN TIMES, GET UP EIGHT...


Haha, scared you there, sorry. At some point I took a screenshot of some of the THREE THOUSAND do-not-enter signs Google helpfully replaced every single one of the images of this blog with earlier in the year, for no reason, with no apology. 

I have now replaced every . single . one . of the photos, manually, by hand, one by one. 

It was... an experience. Once I got back into the deepest recesses of the archives, I discovered some embarrassingly written posts and even some funny ones - let's face it, I was amusing in 2007.

This was a huge inconvenience, took such an enormous amount of my time that I stopped counting, and at times I was tempted to just delete the whole thing. Most people might think why on earth would you bother? No one blogs anymore anyway... 

I think the answer to that is that I'm stubborn. You mess with my shit, I'm going to put it right. 

Anyway let's replace these nasty round signs with a more pleasing screenshot. I think I'll have to delete the above one soon actually. It's making me feel ill. 


That's better. 

Do feel free to peruse the archives, while I... well I don't quite know what I'm going to do with all this spare time on my hands now. 

{Joan Didion in her Corvette, Julian Wasser}