Go Team GB - Go Danny Boyle - Go Isles of Wonder!

London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony tonight

I'll be watching from the comfort of the cheap seats (aka my sofa) in front of the TV .

Where will you be?

Birthday

Happy Birthday my beautiful first baby

How lovely that she came to visit us - escaping from her Australian winter to our English summer. Hahaha - that'll learn ya!

The bar at Black and Blue restaurant, Borough Market, London

Doting father Mr EM enjoys the golf on the mezzanine

Meanwhile we tucked into these yummy delights!
After enjoying a delicious lunch, we lazed away the afternoon as groups of daughter's much missed UK friends popped by to raise a glass in celebration. We then wandered through the crowds in Borough Market stopping to make small delicious purchases from the fantastic display of produce.

Newbies can check the helpful map

Old hands know exactly where to go 

Yes!

And yes

Oh yes, yes, yes!

Glamtiqueing

Barnes Fair 14 July 
Mud, mud, glorious mud...

Wellies are the footwear de jour

The quagmire around us

The big cover up - every time the torrential downpours hit 

Those girls (behind me) hang onto their candyfloss 

We saw not only candyfloss but ice-cream being enjoyed in the pouring rain as hundreds of local residents and visitors braved the weather and laughed their way around Barnes Green. 

Mr EM loses his sole but not his heart

London Bobbies join the queue for burgers and bacon butties

Or as Mr EM remarked, " The pigs are eating pig" ( oo-er old style 1960s anti-establishment wit)

Whereas we were drinking rose from Provence and eating smoked salmon sarnies

Wow - that bottle truly has my name on it!

Glamtiqueing British style.

Carrying the Olympic Torch

Salisbury Cathedral 6.30am 12 July 2012

I join the crowds waiting in the sunlit close to see Olympic Gold medal athlete, 

Michael Johnson carry the torch 

Shadows in the morning sun

More crowds at Choristers Green in front of Mompesson House

(This was the location of Mrs Jenning's house in the film "Sense and Sensibility")

Cheering - here it comes

Michael Johnson carrying the torch - somewhere there at the back...

Great pic lined up and WTF - officials GET OUT OF THE WAY!

There he goes, leaving by the High Street Gate to hand over to the next runner

Michael Johnson on the way back minus torch and still b****y officials in the way!

Another back view - I'm good at these

I think this is Jo Safe carrying the torch as it leaves Salisbury

So as the torch convoy moved on towards Wilton, I walked back home through the nearby car park and saw this bus still parked there outside the back of the Red Lion Hotel. The flame, the officials and possibly MJ himself, had stayed there overnight. 

As it happened the official driver was a very nice man and gave me a chance to shine...

He let a bleary-eyed me hold an Olympic torch destined for one of the runners this afternoon!

Sadly I had to give it back.

It's A Dog's Life

Here's looking at you!

This lovely dog was watching the customers including us, at the nearby river pub along the towpath until his attention was distracted by a swan approaching the safely boat outside the rowing club-house next door.

It's history doncha know

Our family has been visiting The City Barge pub for over 30 years and well before these fancy notices. At this distance from the estuary into the North Sea the river Thames is tidal and our offspring used the Thames foreshore at low tide as a beach. Like many other children over the centuries they became beach combers - though in this era thankfully their livelihood did not depend on their finds. Our dears discovered parts of clay pipes and shards of porcelain from earlier patrons of the river and its hostelries.


These pics are from a few days ago when we visited with one of the offspring on her way from  Heathrow and who had just arrived from the other side of the world. She was desperate to sit in the favourite riverside pub of her childhood. We demand a blue plaque!

The Thames at Chiswick, calm and still between tides


(Apologies for the highlighted sections of text. I don't know why this happens and I've tried eliminating it to no avail. Any advice gratefully received. )

Come on Andy!

(The only tennis pic I have in my files)


Wimbledon:2010
Reached Semi Finals - L2: Rafael Nadal (4-6 6-7(6) 4-6)

Wimbledon:2011
Reached Semi Finals - L2: Rafael Nadal (7-5 2-6 2-6 4-6)
Wimbledon: 2012
Reached Final: Bt Tsonga (6-3 6-4 3-6 7-5)

Wimbledon 2012: Federer v Murray!

Ok he's a dour Scot but he's our dour Scot and we're all hoping for a Jubilee and Olympic Year British victory at Wimbledon. It seems that his new coach is that tennis legend Ivan Lendl who actually never won Wimbledon himself. Well so far he seems to have done something right to affect Murray's game for the better.

Amazingly as well as BBC TV coverage, dozens of cinemas across the country will be showing the game live in 3D. Sadly not our local one - so we'll be stuck in front of our TV on Sunday afternoon at 2pm with hands ready to cover our faces every time Murray makes a mistake. 

But hope springs eternal - yes! Go Andy Go!

Australian Girl Guides lose God and the Queen

Badge for sale on Ebay 

Guide Promise

For many years, the Guide Promise has been:

I promise that I will do my best:
To do my duty to God,
to serve the Queen and my country,
To help other people, and
To keep the Guide Law.

This was the Promise I made in 1958 when I enrolled in the Girl Guides in South Australia. So long ago.


I enjoyed two and a half fantastic early teenage years there including my time in the Girl Guides. But looking back it was clearly the end of the first half of the twentieth century and all the old values of a vanished world still tied to many  19th century and pre-WWII values. When we returned to the UK we had entered the 1960s and a very different future.

But now the Promise of the Australian Girl Guides has dropped the allegiance to Queen and God to reinforce personal beliefs. A good idea in principle but the wording is rather odd and in my view misguided ( pun not intended but very apt).

I promise that I will do my best:

To be true to myself and develop my beliefs

To serve my community and Australia

And to live by the Guide Law.

I can't find the only pic I have of my time in the GG - on our summer camp by the Murray River. Just as well as I look stupid with eyes closed.  How I survived the spiders and snakes - I can't bear to think about even now. The aggressive pelicans who shared our bathing space in the river were bad enough. Possibly God but not the Queen helped me then.

Rag and bone

My vintage cutter quilts at the Frome RAG market

The cry " rag and bone"  from a moving vehicle cruising down suburban streets was as familiar as the chimes of an ice-cream van as a feature of English life for decades, and even up to the 1990s in our part of West London.  

The Rag and Bone man was the original recycling system in the UK. As the very slow vehicle, in my childhood it was often horse drawn, wandered slowly down your street you came out with "any old iron" the variant on the cry. And as you disposed of old unwanted household articles, usually metal stuff like old metal bedsteads, prams, etc the driver would give you a goldfish in a bag in exchange - as it was often children who were sent to the front gate with the 'rubbish' - that didn't actually have to be metal. But 'rags' were just as acceptable because old fabrics, could be sold onward for reuse by factories. 


Actually although this is a true version, it's not totally my recall as I lived most of my childhood behind bars ( not in prison but in RAF married quarters which were usually protected from itinerant  sellers). However even when grown up and living in civvy street in the 1970s onwards the Rag and Bone man was a regular fixture. People would greatfully give him their old fridges, boilers, washing machines etc which the local council rubbish collection would not accept without cost. In fact when we were living in Ealing in the 1980s and were refurbishing a lovely Edwardian house, we temporarily removed a very pretty iron grate from the kitchen to enable some cleaning and came home from work one day to find that the children's nanny had given it to the Rag and Bone man - aaaaaaah!


So what has all this to do with the RAG market in Frome? 


Everything and nothing, except it is a form of recycling in the same way. But these days the buyers are lucky recipients of a wonderful array of scrap and sale fabrics from antique treasures to mid-century marvels of modern design. You could find 1950s curtains, patchwork bundles, 1930s silk parasols past their best but still retaining a soft beauty and many other treasures aching to be used, reused or just displayed in a decorator's dream. And of course old patchwork and 'cutter' quilts as in my photo above.


I was so delighted when one prospective buyer asked, " Do they have to be cut up?" 


Of course not!  It's just a silly phrase for describing quilts past their best and perhaps better cut up and used in other projects. But all of the quilts I had on sale could easily have been brought back to full use by some TLC.  I was so pleased by the positive reaction to all these quilts from my much loved collection. And so happy to pass them on to younger hand made and vintage enthusiasts.


PS All of my quilts in the photo sold on the day - hurray!