bitter and twisted...

... in the kitchen.


Its the beer which is Bitter and Twisted, not me.
I remember it as a rather nice pint, not bitter at all, quite hoppy.

I feel rather distant from the kitchen at the moment, in terms of creativity and food preparation. I cooked a meal on Friday but M has been responsible for meals since then, apart from the odd meal out and/or take-away.

We have Australian friends visiting this week and there has been quite a bit of washing up, dishwasher loading and unloading, eating, talking...

...and beer drinking.




thanks Kimy for the Thursday Theme

stuck

This is somewhat how I've been feeling for the last week or so.



Though I suppose its better than feeling like this:



The mud was constituted of various elements, not least of which was a particularly large pile of long essays to mark.


The following pictures might be taken to represent some of these essays.








There were, however, some which are more like this:







So thats not so bad, is it?

And even better, they are now all done.



all pictures taken along the south bank of the Thames, between the Thames barrier and Bermondsey

Thursday Theme - Chair

Thursday theme - how handy for lazy uninspired busy bloggers like me as I'm absolved of the need to think of a theme or topic to post.

However I have had to think about which pictures to post.

As my photography habit has grown, its quite interesting to see the obsessions which emerge. I seem to have taken an inordinate number of pictures of traffic cones; rubbish; chimneys; abandoned clothes and shoes; fire hydrants and similar; walls and pavements; chairs.

so, here is a small selection which are - on reflection - partly illustrative of me, where I live and where I go with my camera:


a lot of the chairs I photograph are dumped


The left-hand picture above is the Thames which is, for much of its length, a beautiful river. But the stretch where I walk and cycle most is full of dumped artefacts and I have quite a few "Thames chair" pictures. And even more "Thames shopping trolley" pictures.

This is one of my most viewed pictures on flickr - no doubt because it is entitled "bottomless". pffft


but this is clearly not just a London, or an English phenomenon, or an urban phenomenon. Here are some abandoned chairs spotted on my travels:

in urban Ipswich, Suffolk, England



in suburban Nyack, NY, USA



in the deeply rural Dordogne, France.





Some "street chairs" are ambiguous.

dumped? or loitering?



dumped? or waiting for a bus?

by a bus stop in Greenwich


dumped? or enjoying the sunshine?

just down the road from home in Charlton


dumped? or avoiding a parking fine?

in a car park in East London, Nr. Liverpool St.


dumped? or waiting for lunch?

outside Somerfield in Greenwich


This chair is certainly waiting to be sat in

its in one of my favourite pubs in Greenwich, the Greenwich Union.


My final chair is also waiting - to be returned (post-renovation) to Little Gem's bedroom, to be engulfed in a teenage PILE

Mice beware!

We have a growing short-list of possible names which might suit our new family member. He doesn't seem at all convinced by his current but obviously false name, "Tommy".


He is 5 months old, quite shy and very beautiful.

Update: he was quite shy when I began this post yesterday, but after an hour or two of sitting (happily but hidden) in a little quite inaccessible hidey hole last night, he then began to take possession of the house. And us.

His shyness seems to have vanished entirely, he is purring constantly and doing those things that kittens do.


We would be happy to add any of your naming suggestions to our list, subject of course to our own hardly-thought-through, difficult-to-articulate and wildly subjective and inconsistent criteria.

Top-runners at the moment are:
Skaro
Logan
Havelock Vetinari.

disruptions

back at home
back to work

6 am is too early, no matter what time I get to bed

battling against a persistent cold
beleaguered by large piles of student essays to be marked

my computer is limping on
though also very reluctant to wake at 6 am
or at any time for that matter


I hope to resume normal blogging (whatever that might be) in due course