Monday...

Well here is and there goes Monday. Been a funny sort of weekend, working, but short shifts, so plenty of free time. And what have I done with it? Cleaned, washed things, made bits and pieces for xmas. Had a lot of stuff end on Ebay Sunday, so had to babysit them as they crossed the finishing line - can't say I sold overmuch, but I'm ever hopeful that sooner or later, Xmas shopping will start and loads of stuff will be zipping out of the door. What did sell, sold reasonably well, and wonderful news on those things that are on sale right now, they have early bids!
Been doing some thinking about photography recently. I really enjoy taking photo's but I don't take anywhere near enough of them. I'd like to start snapping stuff around town a lot more, but I'm kind of nervous about taking the camera out and about. I keep meaning to get a camera phone, which is so much more snapable, if you know what I mean. The other thing is it would be quite nice to take some photos and frame them up - get them on the old Ebay. Can't hurt, and who knows? Maybe I'll make it my new year project.
I had something on my mind then that I was going to write about, and I got sidetracked by Ripley going in to the bit on the spaceship where she finds all the other 'mixed clones'. Yep, I'm sort of half watching Alien Resurrection. Always liked the Alien films, got to respect a film where a character - hell, any character, let alone a woman, is allowed to grow and develop. You get a real sense of story, you know? Especially when so much of what we watch is such trash. I was reading something the other day - nope can't remember what, and it was something about today's "celebrity culture." Personally I don't think it has anything to do with celebrities, it's about the known. It's all about presenting yourself with recognisable personality traits that people absorb into their own personal sense of what's acceptable inside the house. They don't even have to be likeable traits, everyone loves a good villain. They simply have to be the known. Or maybe even not necessarily known, simply not alien/outsider/not known. People have or appear to have difficulty in tolerating the unknown these days. I'm not even sure that this was a result of 9/11, I think it may have been inherent to us, to our culture, as a reaction to the 60s. I don't know, I can't really get my head around what I do mean at the moment, I'll have to cogitate on it for a bit longer and spew up my thoughts in due course!!!

Cool Day!

Had a really cool day yesterday, even if it was tiring! Went over to have lunch with the family - my eldest brother is visiting from France, so it was great to see him. Figured I'd show you what these people look like!

And here they are - Mum, and my brothers. We took her to the local pub for lunch which she enjoyed - then had to come flying back to home so that I could zip in to work to do a night shift. And I was just so tired when I got home.

On top of all this, I have been making some chain and bead bracelets to put on Ebay to see how they sell. They are very pretty - so far I've put on these two:

This one's a bronze tone bracelet, with gold lined Indian glass beads and amber Czech glass faceted beads - and a gold tone snowflake charm on the extender chain - it's 8 inches long.

And this one is really so pretty - silvery blue glass beads, with a silver plate chain linking them - again an extender chain with a Bohemian glass crystal on it to catch the light!

And it's also 8" long.

You can find both of these on Ebay from tomorrow evening, just search on seller Sunspark 58. Both of them are on a low start auction - wouldn't they make someone happy for Christmas? Especially if that person is you!

Today

Yet another day passes. So what did I do today? It suddenly struck me that this tag line across the top of my blog sort of says it's supposed to about this person, me, and my ordinary life - and when do I ever talk about my ordinary life?

Ok, so today was a work day, and more than that, a day shift. So that means the alarm goes off at six, which is like hell on earth. Acclimatisation shock to being awake. Then I drag myself out of bed - maybe 15 minutes after the things gone off, into the shower, make the coffee, my stomach's upset because I wasn't too well yesterday and I've still got gassy remnant of food poisoning. (oh it was totallly my fault!) So then having checked my bag - essentials like mobile, purse, bus fare etc, and having checked my bank balance - I go to catch the bus. I have this thing of trying not to miss it, so I have to leave the flat like ten minutes before it could possibly be due - which could be anything between on the hour or ten minutes after it depending on the traffic - and the bus stops deserted which means the bus before more or less just went. All these fine judgements going on you know? So the bus comes along - together with a lot more people - and we thread our way on to it, through the people getting off - and chug along into town. Journey of about fifteen minutes. Traffic went quite well this morning. I keep, and have all day, been thinking it's Friday, which is unsettling in a Tuesday!
Anyhow we arrive in town and I head on down to Tesco. I needed some fags, and juice and stuff - and it opens at about 7, so by the time I get to town - about quarter past, it's been open a while.
Clearly today was a very very bad day to choose to go to Tesco. I got my stuff, in the basket, and I go to the fag counter, and I'm getting my stuff out, and this woman behind the counter is pointing at a new sign saying they don't take groceries anymore. And I said, and I swear this was conversationally, that's a pain, it's going to slow up getting through here, and she's going I know but there's nothing I can do - and this other woman, who was way away stacking fag packets onto the shelves, butts in, incredibly angrily, saying "It's nothing to do with us, we're not responsible" as if I had accused her or something. And it doesn't matter what I say or do, she is absolutely not going to be appeased, and by this point I'm getting actively angry. I don't go to Tesco to be insulted by the woman who works on the fag counter, who wasn't serving me, who wasn't involved at all until she decided to butt in. Frankly anyone else would have described her as fag ending on someone else's conversation, but I couldn't bring myself to reach for that bad a pun.
So I give the other woman my bank card (bear in mind I've checked the balance) and she puts it into her machine, and blow me down, the wretched thing goes blank and she's standing there helplessly and the other woman, the rude one, gets herself involved. And she's like, 'that card is blank' as if there's a) something wrong with it, b) it's my fault. I persuade them to put it in the other machine - jaw drop here - blank screen.
So at this point I loose it. Not, like loose it, shout my head off, or anything like that, just like loose my patience with this wretched woman. I put my basket of shopping down on the side and walk out of the store. I go to the nearby bank machine and lo and behold there is nothing wrong with my card at all. I get cash out of the machine. I go back to the store where there is now a short queue of people complaining bitterly to wreched woman that there's nothing wrong with their cards. And of course she then presses the right button, or puts in the right code and everything starts working again. Did I get an apology out of her? Did I hell. I think she was trying to be masterful or something, or 'above' the vagaries of her customers, or some damn such thing, I wouldn't mind but this is a shop I go to regularly, and this wretched woman was so, so RUDE. All I can say is she was so lucky it wasn't later in the day when I was more awake, because dear God, she wouldn't have known what had hit her. I am reasonably confident that there are few people in this world who could actually out-rude me in a fair fight, and my God she would have known she'd been in a dispute.
Having read through all of this, it occurs to me that I should state that a) the original woman who was serving me was great. I thought we were getting along fine until bossy boots butts in. b) I would never 'fight' fight with anyone. c) I reserve my right to uphold my end of the story in a fair argument! d) what is it about supermarket staff that they can be so bad tempered at the very start of the day? God knows it's an awful job, but if you hate it That Much, time to look for a new one!
So then I went to work. And I came home, and I ate dinner and I watched the box. This blog is getting way way too long to go into the details!!!

Thinking

Been a very odd sort of day - a bit different from the norm, and I've been doing a bit of thinking. Nothing too profound - God forbid. Watched this thing on the box about Fanny Craddock. The last bit of it was set in this OAP home - the set was very apt. Maybe 'cos I remember going round so many of them in the month or so before Dad died, with Mum & Jo, the room where she was eating her supper was very true to life. The strangely Ikea'ish furniture, the picture rail at waist height and the apallingly bland artwork on the walls. Nothing at all that an old person would choose to live with, but brightly apealing to the relatives. And all wipe down clean of course. The staff put her supper in front of her - fishfingers I think and mashed potato, and I thought dear God. It wasn't that I ever liked Fanny Craddock - she was a strangely caricaturish figure even back in the 60's, but imagine you've spend your whole life cooking - and yeah, I'll get on to the cooking in a bit - and someone slaps down a plate of fishfingers and mashed potato in front of you. Me, I can't stand mashed potato. Any other variety of the stuff and I don't mind, but mashed? The very sensation of it in my mouth makes me feel ill. So there I am, thirty, forty years time, is someone going to be trying to make me eat mashed potato? People talk about the elderly reverting to a form of second childhood, but is that because we're forcing that childhood onto them? Eat it up dear! I can hear the very voice of a brisk careworker in my ears and dear God it's an apalling thing.
Anyhow the food.
I spend a fair bit of time looking through cookery books. I have a fair few of my own, and my mum had a comprehensive collection. I even seem to remember a Bon Viveur one, a spiral bound paperback with strange black graphics on the front that was very redolent of the 50's. Most of my mum's though were Margeuritte Patten's, big hardbound books, and lots of big paperbacks. Colour photo's in batches strategically placed. My God the food of the 50's was something else. To judge it by my memories of those books, that which was not smothered in piped mayonaise, was drenched in aspic, and I'll bet there was aspic underneath a lot of that mayonaise. The best of the Margeuritte books was a jam and pickles book that I freely admit I still use today. Not that I do a lot of jamming or pickling, but I have the thing, and if I had a family, I'd be using it all the time. There are some particularly good pickle recipes in, that I remember clearly. My mother pickled and potted all the time. She was never a particularly hot jam maker, but there were always tons of bottles of pickles and stuff - she bottled fruit as if another war was coming, because we had a big garden and often had gluts. Whenever a pudding was needed, she'd open a bottle of damsons, or plums, and I seem to remember greengages. These are fruits you hardly see in the shops these days - ok, well plums are hardly a rarity, but when was the last time you saw a damson in Tesco's? I do occasionally see greengages, particularly in the station fruit and veg shop, but they (the shop) are exceptional.
Tons and tons of tomato's made it into bottles. Kilner jars, washed, sterilised in the oven, topped up to the lip with tomato's and then topped up with boiling water from the kettle. Then I seem to remember them going in to the oven, the kilner lids being put on and back in to the oven, the seal being made - then out and tightened. Then they'd be left to cool (I think) and the seal tested. Then they'd be piled into the pantry for storage. And I think if it was a particularly good year, some would go into the celler. Now I have a kilner jar, and I often think I'd love to put up a bottle of soft fruit for Christmas - but can I get a lid for it? Not a chance.

A Quiet Week

Yes it's been a quiet week. Mostly because I've been doing night shifts, and sleeping during the day - when I'm not being woken by new tenants. New people moving in upstairs, and managed to set off the fire alarm at 11 am - well, that's not so bad but when you've just got to sleep after a night shift, it's pretty much the living end. Anyhow they're new, so you can't exactly blow your stack at them can you?

The apple's coming on well - check this out !

Yeah a great big dirty brown spot on the perfection of the apple! The inevitableness of decay surrounds us in our everyday lives...


Apart from this I've been spending a good bit of time uploading stuff on to Ebay. Check it out - Sunspark 58, tons of stuff. All ready for Xmas. I wouldn't say I've been selling much, cos xmas hasn't really leapt out of the stable door as yet, but you can sense those eager buyers frothing around the stable steps so to speak. Check out some of these goodies...






Rather lovely aren't they? Well I thinks so.









Both available on Ebay!!! (Well at the time of posting anyhow!)


So what else is new? My eldest brother is over visiting! Shan't see him til next week, frankly we both seem to be so busy it's hard to fit myself in to his schedule! Still maybe I'll get a photo or two and post them - yes, I know it'll make a change from the rotten apple...

A very lazy Saturday....

Yes, I've had a very lazy Saturday. I woke up late, got up late - ok, I've done a bit of washing, but that's about it. Made a new keychain. I was supposed to be working today, but had a late shift swap so I had nothing planned - it's been cool. To do nothing except the stuff you have to do - I haven't even cooked really, there was left over pasta salad for lunch, and supper was a baked potato. Mind you I'll have to pop to the supermarket tomorrow, this rather unexpected night shift requires sustanance to go with it. You can't go to work thinking oh I'll pick something up for lunch. No way. Night shifts require nibbles. I have plums at home which will be nice, especially as they're just ripening, and I have a bag of walnuts, but to be honest, walnuts are a cooking nut rather than an eating nut. They have that thing that dries out the mouth. Eating nuts to me are peanuts, cashews, hazelnuts - and seeds like pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, that sort of thing. And I do like to have a bit of chocolate for a nightshift.


The apple's coming along. Let me post one of todays pics:

As you can see, today's apple is rather a dull thing, and it's a hell of a lot more yellow than it was. It's going to be interesting to see how it ends up!

The apple and other stuff!!!

Wow! I'm dead chuffed! I installed one of those visitor counting thingies - yeah ok, a site monitor, and yes people are visiting my site! It's so - I dunno, cos it's clear these people have wandered on here via the navbar, but some of them have stayed and read, and that's so sweet of them! One from America, and a person from Israel - whoever you are, thanks! I feel somehow oddly vindicated! And yeah, to my old faithfuls, who are presumably my friends and colleagues, much appreciated!

So. The Apple. I'm doing a sort of photo project for Flikr. Having got my access sorted out, and having uploaded some photos - and I don't know what system they use, but my, my tatty photos don't half look good on there, I want to do more to put on there. And I have this apple. It's a beautiful apple, right now. I've been photographing it for three days so far, it's sitting on a plate in my kitchen. I'm going to photograph it as it decays - well, goes past its best. I don't think I'm going to put up with a rotten apple in my kitchen for very long. And, yes, I hear you all saying why exactly? Go have a look at Flikr, and you'll see tons of photo's of very fabulous food. I have to say there are cakes on there to die for. I mean drool at the mouth stuff. And I kind of got to thinking of the other stuff, the downside of food and all that. The all flesh is grass side of it. I dare say what I'm doing is very far away from original - to be honest I haven't checked. It's a bit more to do with me, and what kind of photo's I can produce. Not that I have very much to do with it, it's all point and click, but I'm quite interested to see the descent from edibility to oh god why is that still here-ness. So in the interests of what I'm up to, here's a picture of the apple!

Yay!!!

At long last, got my Flikr account going!!! Ok so this may not seem like the greatest thing in the world but see the blog entry below for just how much trouble this has caused me.
So check it out
http://www.flikr.com/photos/sunspark58

I mean there are so many fabulous photos on there, you don't have to spend time staring at mine. Just go check out Freddie the fox.. just too gorgous for words.

Electronic Hell....

These last, well pretty much 15 or so hours, I have been nothing but frustrated with this damn computer. Last night I started fiddling around with the blog - as you can see it's now this rather nice crimson instead of plain black - and it took me forever to get it to the point where it was viewable. I couldn't get the little spanner and screwdriver icons to disappear! Yet, thank God, they've gone this morning.
And then I put myself, quite deliberately, into Flikr hell. I opened a flikr account months back, but I keep forgetting the password. So I try to open a new account, and every time I try to log in, or create a new account, it recognises my email address, and only ever gives me a choice of tying them together or browsing without signing in. I always fancied uploading a few photo's, so I want to log in and start doing that. But when I try the option of tying them together, it keeps asking me for the password that I forgot, like, months ago! I sent them an email about this months back and their helpful suggestion was to create a new account - but the bloody thing won't let me!!! Talk about how to drive people up the wall! Flikr's a great idea, but they should fix the bloody system so it's easy to use!
But really at the end of the day what can you do? Let the stress of all this get to you, or just relax. It will sought itself out sooner or later. And I made a cool lunch - avocado, peppers, spring onion, cherry tomato's, pasta spirals, lemon dressing - very nice. And when I logged on to the blog, it seems up and running without any problems. Even my newly installed counter appears to be working. I put it on 'cos I want to know if anyone's looking at this thing. Or if I'm talking myself stupid to cyber space. Not that I mind that particularly, and I know that my friends look at this thing 'cos occasionally they tell me about it! But.. well you know how it is. I just want to know how many people accidentally fall on to this thing!!

Change!

Yup those of you who are regular visitors can see some changes! Thought I'd brighten things up a bit - ok, so I like colour. But doesn't it make you feel warm? Or is it giving you a headache? Do tell me then, and I'll change it!

Friday..

End of the working week.. just to think what I was doing this time last week. Just arrived in the Lake District.. ah, never mind.
So what have I been up to since I got back - mostly working actually, doing 8 to 4 shifts. These aren't so bad since you get home to be able to rest and eat at a normal time etc, but frankly I can't say that I've actually been doing this. And I can't honestly put my fingers on the reason why - body clock is back to functioning normally, I feel quite up and refreshed from my break. But I must say I have got this sort of buzz inside me that's saying last chance to build up a stock for Xmas. And I have been putting together an awful lot of bookmarks and mobile charms over the past week. We're on weekend off this weekend - that means we all get the weekend off - and my plans basically fall into the category of get making those keycharms!
It's my Lake District pal's birthday this week as well, so I went to the Post Office to send her present, and I was very bugged that the guy in the queue behind me was reaking of alcohol. Which kind of got me thinking about the bus stop this morning, cos two people were there when I arrived, and another two people walking ahead of me to reach it. What bugged me about that was that these two people chose to stand on the opposite side of the queue to the people standing one behind another. When I arrived I went to stand behind them, and frankly when the bus arrived, the queue was literally all over the place. It's not exactly anyone's fault, it's the way the bus stop is built. The shelter is miles away from the newly raised step, which is where the buses actually stop. So no one really knows where to stand when they arrive there, and on top of this, the road has loads of B&B's in it, so there are more often strangers there rather than regulars. Lots of builders seem to stay here for some reason, and catch the buses in to town. There's also a new high Eastern European population, who I have to say, I'm not sure they even recognise there's a queue forming..!
But I have to say as a regular bus user, people who queue jump drive me up the pole. And no, that wasn't meant to be a pun! And I wonder exactly what pole it is I'm being driven up? Answers on a postcard please...
Ah well. I'm for bed, and the Darkover novel I'm reading. I've been buying up second hand copies of the original novels, which are frankly, patchy. But they lay out the background.. god bless Amazon and Bookbarn. What would I do without them?

Back Home 2!!

Well great as it was, I'm back home. Got some new stuff on Ebay that you might like to see - and it's the start of the wind up towards Xmas people, get out there and buy my stuff!!!!

This is a really pretty fab keychain - a bit of a vine with fruit deal here I feel. Just scoot on over to Ebay and you can find this under seller Sunspark 58.

And this is a green keychain - all very green - with a large lump of green agate on the bottom! Find it at the same place!

Back Home!!!

Well I'm back from a fabulous weekend in the Lake District. Really lovely time, and a salutory lesson to me in how much I needed a break! It was great to have long natters with friends, and to meet the baby - oh she's very gorgeous!

So these are some photo's that I took, that are sort of left overs - photo's that I've got more than one copy of, or photo's that I love, or photo's that aren't state of the art!!!!

This is the Arts and Crafts House, that's just been restored. It's really well worth a visit, and don't forget to check out the rather fabulous little restaurant that's attached. I had the Prawn and Avocado sandwich, which was substantial and tasty. (ok that's enough restaurant reviews!)

But the house was fabulous - and one of the guides played the piano, which was like being taken back in time. We were upstairs at the time, and it sounded like one of the family had come home - just as it must have been back in the day.

On Sunday afternoon, we took the baby to feed the ducks on the lake (Windemere!) This is the evening cruise boat - we went on it the last time I visited. It's pretty great to get a glass of wine and float out over the lake in the evening - I think this one is on it's way out.

And here is a parent swan with it's cygnet, first in line for our breadcrumbs!!!

And this was the view when we glanced up. Ok, now I've chopped a bit off the bottom of this photo, but can you honestly say that you've seen anything as beautiful? Imagine living with this. Oh well I can dream!!!!