Notes of Life

My camera (a Canon 350D + 60mm macro lens) has been working overtime this month. I love photographing in the garden and hedgerows.

“Lewisia cotyledon”

Here’s the latest selection of flowers around the garden.

P.S. - Make sure you visit Shades of the Departed to see my guest post!

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been invited to be a guest author at Shades of the Departed!

I have been asked to write a post about “Documenting Today For Tomorrow’s History” along with how I document my life. My post will be up at Shades tomorrow (so don’t forget to check it out!), but for now why not take a look at what Shades has to offer.

Shades of the Departed

More flower photos!

I noticed these bluebells at the top of the garden and couldn’t resist photographing them.

I also noticed one or two other plants in the garden that had also flowered last year.

A funny title for a post, I know, but it’s the name of the plant pictured below.

Mum & I popped down to the village WI coffee evening on Thursday. I must admit it’s not my ‘thing’ (especially as I can’t stand coffee), but you never know what you’ll find there. We found this plant for £1 (Bargain!) along with another. I thought it was quite photogenic so last night I set about doing a mini-photo shoot.

Today Mum, Dad & I went to visit Nan & Granddad. I’m pleased to say Nan is doing very well with her new hip and she has already been for a walk up the street. She doesn’t like the crutches she’s been given so she’s using a walking frame more, but already she’s moving about a lot faster than she was before the hip replacement. Once she’s had her other hip replaced I’m sure she’ll be completely back to her old self! It’s wonderful to see her doing so well.

Following on from (last) Friday…

Saturday morning Chris & I got up early and hailed a taxi to Euston to catch one of the few trains to Milton Keynes that morning. We caught up with Erykah, Sathy, Nicky, Cryssie, Lyvvie and Sylvie on the train platform and all piled into one carriage with our tonne of luggage.

Once at MK Chris & I made our way up to the Jury’s Inn Hotel to see if we could leave our luggage there until we could sign in. Thankfully, they’d got a room ready and we were allowed to sign in so we could take our bags up to our room. We then headed up to MK shopping centre and Collectormania.

At some point, while dodging the crowd, I nearly walked into Leslie Phillips! A little while later Chris got his autograph and a photo taken with him. June Whitfield was signing next to him.

Chris & I got James Marsters’ autograph (again!) as well having our photos taken with him. He wasn’t feeling good as his arm was hurting, but his day wasn’t about to get better… Apparently he got groped sometime after that.

In the afternoon Chris & I headed back to the hotel to rest our sore feet. We watched some TV and talked before going to look for something to eat.

We ended up at the Chinese restaurant up the street from the hotel. The service could have been better, but the staff were polite and the food was lovely. We then went back to the hotel bar for a drink where we bumped into Nicky & Erykah. After a chat with them we ended up at a party in a hotel room on the 2nd floor with them and a few others! There was drink, food and lots of talking. We were quite loud so everytime there was a knock on the door I half expected it to be the manager! Chris & I departed a bit before midnight as we were expecting another early start in the morning.

Sunday morning the alarm went at 6.20am, but I reset it for 7am as I was far too tired to get up. We made it up to Collectormania just after 8am where there was already a huge queue just for virtual tickets for John Barrowman & Eve Myles (Gwen in Torchwood). My virtual ticket for John Barrowman was #280-something and I know at least 1200 were given out… possibly more than that!

A bit later on Chris’ husband Ron met up with us having driven down especially to give us a lift home. We went for a drink in Costa Coffee and while sat down Kai Owen (Rhys from Torchwood) walked in. He recognised Chris & Ron from the previous weekend and had a quick chat with them before dashing off.

Throughout the day we had our photos taken with John Barrowman, James Marsters (again) and Eve Myles (Ron also had a photo taken with Eve as a treat for his birthday). I also got Kai Owen’s autograph as well as John Barrowman’s. This time James was sat on a stool for his photo sessions due to being groped the previous day. As I saw first hand, he was also groped on Sunday. James was getting upset at this and who’d blame him! I’d be surprised if he agreed to do photo sessions again, unfortunately for him, he’d got more photo sessions on Monday (I assume they went ahead, but I was at home by then).

After a bite to eat and collecting our photographs we headed up the motorway in the direction of home. Unfortunately, the weather seemed to be getting worse the closer to Wales we got!

By the time I went to bed it wasn’t just the weather that was bad… I didn’t feel too good either. Still, I did have a great few days away.