I remember reading about this place years ago and I immediately put to on my places to go list! It was amazing but not as big as I thought it would be. Remarkable feat of engineering.
My friend Bronwyn was recently staying here for two weeks visiting from Melbourne. Annoyingly I got hideous food poisoning immediately upon her arrival after eating at a Pizza Express (that will teach me!) and spent the next 5 days trapped at home. Bronwyn still managed to find the pub by herself so it was all ok and we made up for lost time as soon as I could manage to get out of the house. We visited Brighton, Shakespeare’s birthplace, London, Salisbury Cathedral, Stonehenge, and did lots of shopping. New Year’s Eve was a quiet one at home with Mr B and one his lovely friends.
Two weeks seemed to flash by and it was annoying that I had to go back to work at the end of it but we still managed a few games of scrabble in the evenings. Triple word score.
Have been busy making a variety of bits and pieces for various people. Recently I have been making iPad covers for my etsy and folksy shops and have sold a few. yay for me. also recently made a bag for a friend. Its fully reversible, with pockets and shoulder strap.
Finally finished Mr B’s christmas scarf. It is all knitted in moss stitch and has little metal stars hand stitched all over it. It took ages but it does look quite good.
Also just finished a dress that I had planned to make. I had it in my mind for ages and I wanted it to made out of tartan. When I went to buy some material they only had this tartan with pink and green in it so I decided to use that so that it would not end up looking like a novelty outfit. I quite like it and i think its good for a first effort with no pattern.
And my current project is giant knitting…
I made a giant ball out of polar fleece cut up into a long strip, and I am knitting it into this:
It is a bit heavy but it looks awesome and it will be very warm! Stay tuned for the finished product coming soon – as soon as the shops open and I can buy more polar fleece.
On Saturday, my friend Fleur and I went on a tour into a disused tube station in central London.
There will be a rare opportunity to sample Underground history when the disused Aldwych Tube station opens to the public this month and next.
The famous station, which has featured in blockbusters such as Atonement and V for Vendetta, was used as a public air raid shelter during the Second World War.
It was originally named Strand as it was built on the site of the theatre, but later became Aldwych meaning ‘the old village’.
Aldwych is still used for filming and training purposes and is rarely accessed by the general public.
more photos here…
Shortly after Mother left and still recovering from our Italian adventure, my friend Martine arrived from Australia via a work visit to Ghana. Having a week off before further work engagements at Cambridge, Martine stayed with me and Mr B in Reading and we had an ace time. We decided to do a mini road trip to Cornwall for three days as Martine wanted to do a Devonshire tea in Devon and have a Cornish pasty in Cornwall. I just wanted to go to Land’s End so it was a win allround and off we went.
Heading due south we wanted to go via the New Forest near Southhampton so I managed to wedge in a quick survey of the Art Gallery in Southhampton during a coffee stop which turned out to be lucky as we were just leaving town when my car had a spectacular meltdown and blew a head gasket, spilling its guts all over the place as Martine lifted the bonnet after I had managed to pull over into a turning lane while the radiator gauge pointed past the red zone.
An AA man came out and fixed a bung on my radiator while we waited for another AA man to arrive and tow my car back to Reading and straight to a mechanic. We got a lift back with the AA man who hilariously had a Australian accent set as the voice of his Sat Nav and after one failed attempt at going to Cornwall we stayed back at home that night and went to the pub instead.
The next day, Martine rented a fully functioning car and we went off for a whirlwind tour of Cornwall in that instead. We did get to the New Forest for a quick look – Marine looking at birds (yes she birdwatches) and I tried to take some decent photos.
We raced on to Lyme Regis because I had always wanted to go there to look at fossils on the beach. It was getting a bit dark by the time we got there so we had a quick stroll on the beach, wandered about the tiny town and had a coffee before we headed to our accommodation outside Exeter.
The next day we visited Exeter Cathedral and Martine managed to get in without being stuck down by the hand of God. She would say this is further proof of Gods non-existence, letting atheists into churches willy–nilly while I say, “God forgives everyone their mistakes”. Ha ha.
Later a Devonshire Tea was had in a spooky little pub on a hill. It was very Royston Vasey.
More pictures here…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/obscuritypictures/sets/72157627400352361/
I recently got back from 12 days in Italy with my mother. We started off in Milan and worked our way down to Sorrento and back to Rome on a variety of trains stopping in Verona, Venice and Florence along the way. The weather was quite hot which goes to show how used to the cold I am getting here in England. I was sweating all over the place and got quite sunburnt and yet my legs are still glowing white – they just won’t even catch one single sun ray!
We had a good time, mostly looking at art and spent two days at the Venice Biennale getting inspired and laughing at some of the crap that probably received government funding. We decided the art world is not quite ready for our stuff yet but stay tuned. I have fallen in love with the HD quality videos that the ipad can take and I love the big screen – it is like having a view camera and TV screen all in one so I made a few short films while we were away.
Milan was full of ridiculously good looking people and it was quite an eye candy festival along with all the inspiring art and design and fashion. They have an amazing design museum in Milan, of course, and I took lots of photos for school as this year I am teaching Product Design! Still on school holidays at the moment so I don’t really want to think about that yet though.
Verona was also very nice even though we only had one day and night there. We did go and look at “Juliet’s house” even though it is totally lame. Looked at some amazing churches all over Italy and drank some excellent wines. Sorrento was so hot and very touristy with a tinge of Gold Coast about it but made a nice change to the mega crowds of Venice and Florence. We spent a whole day at Pompeii and could still have spent probably another 2 days there looking at the amazing ruins. You just can believe it’s nearly 2000 years old! The buildings and layouts of the streets seem so similar to modern cities, especially in Italy but I do hope they had more shade about the place than there is now!
A flying visit through Rome where we managed to pop into the Vatican but declined to join the ridiculous queues to get inside as we had been to Rome before anyway and saw it then. Being a Monday, lots of art venues were closed which is universally annoying, but we lucked out and managed to catch the Mario Testino show which was excellent.
We did not stop for one second the whole time we were away so we were wrecked when we got back to Reading.
All the pictures are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/obscuritypictures/collections/72157627439976290/
I am Georgina Campbell.
|
