Nyack

Starting to go through my USA holiday pictures [It will take some time. There are more than few] I took photos of things that I liked (of course) but particularly (on reflection) of things which struck me as "different".

So here is a selection of photos I took on our walks around Nyack, NY, with some suggestions about what makes this so very different from a town in the UK.


Siding.
Buildings over here are still usually brick or stone, though there is now more use of wood. Possibly something to do with speed of construction. And/or maybe global warming...

I like the colours of buildings in America too, they're more likely to be painted and also, painted in more interesting and varied colours than you'd generally see over here.


Porches. I'm not sure you'd find people in England sitting on their porches....

If we sit outside the house, it will be in the back garden, I suppose its a privacy thing. Although its also a class thing - in poorer and working class areas of cities over here, it would be common in the past to see people sitting out on their front door step, or on the path or pavement. But I bet it happens less these days.


A lot of the roofs struck me as a different shape than we would see over here...





Other things I don't think you'd see so much in Britain:

shutters
Maybe more likely in the country. Also, some Victorian/Edwardian houses have shutters - but on the insides of the windows. I have no theory as to why that might be.

The top half of this picture looks very American to me - but the bottom half could have been taken in this country.


verandas
(maybe just sometimes on posh country houses...)



turrets (only on castles)


(or occasionally on Victorian follies)


Fire hydrants struck me as different and exotic in France - but now I'm used to seeing them in the US as well, maybe its us in Britain who are different....


And the tangles of overhead wiring all over the place. Most of our cabling goes underground now, this is a very un-British sight....


My final 3 photos here, however, could all have been taken in the UK

(un)seasonal

I've been making marmalade, with my dad.

Its a bit of a family "thing" - liking and making marmalade. Except for my sister who's not keen. Which seems downright unBritish, as well as genetically nonconformist.

It is a funny time of year to be making marmalade, distinctly unseasonal - it should be strawberry jam really this time of year, but we're not great jam eaters. Seville oranges are briefly in season in January/February, but when my order arrived I was too busy to contemplate a day of kitchen stickiness, so they went straight into the freezer.

And there they have remained.....

until yesterday.

There are some who prefer their marmalade without peel.

But that, of course, is rather like having steak and kidney pie without the kidney; eel pie without the liquor; toad in the hole without the hole; bubble and squeak without the squeak; dripping without bits. Downright unBritish and not to be countenanced.

Despite that, I did pot one jar almost shredlessly for a special friend





So thats my unseasonal activity.


I hope soon to be engaged in the highly seasonal activity of making elderberry syrup.

Yesterday dad and I took a walk around the local park where I usually pick the berries but I was very distressed to see that a lot of the elder has been pruned back hard and has no fruit at all. Some ripe berries had already been eaten by the birds, and there are just a couple of more shady areas with some fruit, which is still very unripe .....

so, I will be monitoring closely over the next week or two and hoping to out-manouvre the birds in competition for the few berries still to come.


A whole winter without elderberry syrup is also not to be countenanced.

Theme thursday...

...wings


Trafalgar Square used to be full of pigeons. And hence full of wings and feathers and little scraggy pigeon feet.

The square was also full of people feeding pigeons. And people taking photos of people feeding pigeons. And people covered with pigeons. And people selling food for feeding pigeons. And therefore full of pigeon shit.

Our previous Mayor of London put a stop to all that featheryshitty nonsense and the Square is now cleaner and altogether more enjoyable.

However London is still full of pigeons, they hang out anywhere they can, and they are quick to clean up any edible messes left behind, as here at a cafe in St. James' Park




St. James' Park is also awash with gulls


ducks and geese


swans



and pelicans





(and of course with people feeding pigeons (and gulls and ducks and swans and pelicans). And people taking photos of people feeding pigeons (and gulls and ducks and swans and pelicans). And people covered with pigeons (and sometimes with gulls. Not with ducks, swans or pelicans. At least not that i've seen) (but sometimes with squirrels). And people selling food for feeding pigeons (and gulls and ducks and swans and pelicans). And therefore full of pigeon shit (& etc. etc.)


But its altogether different in a green and leafy park.

hair (theme thursday)

Traditional




and
less traditional




(LG has not, in the past, done the allergy test. She now needs no persuasion from me to do so.)

highs and lows and clean towels

(no pics. but lots of links to other peoples' ....)


The high point of my summer -

my stay in Nyack with Ched:

days in New York city and in Brooklyn,
wanderings in beautiful New York state
and a weekend in the Catskills - all with Ched, and at times also Steve

Our Catskills weekend included a visit to a giant kaleidoscope, and Hippiefest 2008 in Bethel
(pics and vids here and here and here)


Ched's blog has more posts about some of our wanderings, (posts between July 26 and August 8th) and I will post some of my own pictures when I get back to London in 10 days or so.

When I get a chance to start sorting through them.


I did manage not to leave my camera on the plane this time.
This is good.
During my 12 day visit I took over 1,700 photos.
This is not so good.
I think my photography habit is getting dangerously out of hand.


There were other bloggers I'd love to have seen, but sadly couldn't. But I made firm friends with Dennis (after a few days) and with Chedwick himself (after a few more days) and fell firmly in love with Eddie in no time at all.


Lows of the summer have been health-related - trivial in relative terms, but quite miserable at (intermittent) times.

I'd had an allergic reaction to my hair-colour way back in June I think and was left with nasty allergic dermatitis on my ears which at some points have been inflamed and swollen to about twice their usual dimensions, with a range of other symptoms far too unpleasant to be detailed to such nice people as yourselves. I have felt quite freakishly elephant-mannish at times.

Twice I was at the point of full recovery and then suffered a relapse - the second relapse just after my return from the States, which I think was due to hair-dye left on towels in our bathroom after LG's own summer hair-dye experiments. Me being in the US at the time, the towels were left to fester rather than being washed. No comment. LG had learned from my experience and did a proper allergy test, so she was fine thank goodness (and her hair looks great) but I was less careful than i should have been about checking towel cleanliness.....

its clearly not enough to know where your towel is
you also need to know that it is clean.

The old elephant ears were mainly in recovery while i was in the US, I took to wearing little ear cosies cunningly fashioned out of medical gauze and was otherwise pretty much fine and healthy, and no one openly laughed at me. In fact, maybe I have added an indefinable something to the reputation of Brits in New York?

Anyway, post-return from US and post-2nd relapse, the ear cosies evolved into substantial dressings and my system seemed to crumble a bit with various lurgies and infections attacking face neck and eyes.


Its felt rather like a (trivial) greek tragedy with a not-very-hidden moral about vanity and clean towels.



I'm currently blogging from Jersey, Channel Islands where I am lolling about in invalidesque mode and hence finding myself unexpectedly without any inclination or energy to go out (not even to go and take photos on the beach), but with computer time.

We are visiting M's family, and staying with Dizzy, who is a dear friend, too busy to blog these days, and an Ayurvedic practitioner.

How handy - she is providing me with a full ayurvedic care package which seems to be working very well, and which includes a sticky drippy paste on my ears made up of neem oil, honey and turmeric.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I think I may be leaving Dizzy's towels less than clean.....

soon...... later

Going away soon

back later




towards the end of August

when i expect to return to blogging



till then, be good to yourselves

stripping

All the satisfaction of picking a scab, without the bleeding





good music for stripping to:

Talking Heads - Stop making sense
Thin Lizzy

the Thames

photos taken along, by, on, over - but not in - the Thames


















































This is one of my routes between home and work.

pause

i've been in a funny old mood lately.
or, more accurately, a funny old series of funny old moods.

and I've been feeling rather ambivalent about blogging.

I did wonder if maybe I would stop blogging - whether it was a phase i've gone through and will leave behind me. But i think thats unlikely. I don't think I want to stop blogging.
and, reading through all your comments again, how could I?

But I foresee a bit of a blogging break.
or maybe a change in blog-habits.

for a while....



Apart from the ambivalence and funny old-ness, there are a myriad other things I should be getting on with in the three weeks I have (oops! 3 weeks when i wrote this draft, less than now...) before my holiday starts

(starts with a return trip to the US followed by another family visit to family in Jersey, Channel Islands).

A myriad other things like:
*continuing re-organisation of my study (well underway already) (you should see how tidy my desk is!) (and i can get things in and out of my filing cabinet. And Everything!)

*preparation for teaching of existing/revised and new courses from September

*wallpaper-stripping in dining room

*some sewing/textile projects needing to be finished

*balancing bank accounts (yeah right! balance would be SUCH a good thing)


oh, and really need to mow the lawn...

and clip the guinea-pig's claws...


So I am herewith serving notice that there may not be quite the usual service here for a while - I think I will just post photos for a while, without any/much verbiage - and I may not appear much or at all in your comments boxes, though I will try to pop in from time to time just to keep in touch a bit.



For a while .....

and nonsense

Its struck me recently how frequently I use the word "stuff".

what a handy little word - it can mean almost anything, and the sibilance of the 't' and the 'ff' are so satisfying.
Maybe they subconsciously provide a kind of finality - like a full stop - reassuring that theres no need to bother thinking of a better, more specific word.


Its funny though, that I enjoy such a lazy and cover-all short-hand sort of word, when I'm also quite appreciative of "proper" vocabulary. Words with specific, complex, nuanced meanings.

Suggestive words - evocative, ambiguous, interesting. Alliterative. Onomatopoeic.
(yes, i admit it. just checked the dictionary for spelling of onomatopoeic. Had got it nearly but not quite right)

Synonyms, antonyms and ... other kinds of words ending in 'nym'.



One of my best friends particularly shares my love of words and we have been known, in the past, to find entertainment reading aloud from the thesaurus.

In fact, last time I saw this particular friend we were reduced to tears of hysteria over some silliness about possible names for a cattery.

Catastrophe cataclysm catatonia caterwaul catalogue cathartic catalan catacomb caterpillar cataleptic....

We didn't get out the thesaurus, but i do admit we finally consulted the dictionary. Which provided a couple of final sniggers.


so.

there are some words for you.
about words.



Wasn't that a lot of stuff and nonsense?

more silliness

We're seeing the benefits of all the rain we've had this Spring in sumptious bowls of raspberries.

yum yum yum



and not only wonderfully raspberryish and soft and juicy sweet-sharp delicious (especially with nearly-lashings but not quite too much cream)

but also with that edge of potential silliness in the word "raspberry" with its great comedic potential...

...exploited most sublimely this classic of British TV comedy:

silliness

I had a wonderful weekend away, a week ago, in Suffolk which is in the middle of the big bulgy nose-like bit on the East coast of England.

Lucy and I took long walks with ziggy the dog - mostly country walks, with lots of stops for photographs (Luce was very patient with me), and pauses to watch the skylarks and listen to the birdsong



and pauses for other dog-silliness.





On the Sunday we took a long long walk - through and around Ipswich itself, through modern and old, derelict and developed, around the marina and along the docks; we found a vast and lovely park and walked through a rather beautiful cemetary just as the shadows were at their longest.

We walked for about four and a half hours. We were ready for a large G & T.
We thought the dog might be just a little tired...





sorry this vid is a bit dark, but i hope you get the idea...

Thursday theme - amusement

Lines and squares



whenever i walk in a london street
i'm ever so careful to watch my feet
and i keep in the squares
and the masses of bears
who wait at the corners just ready to eat
the sillies who walk on the lines of the squares
go back to their lairs, and i say to them "bears!
Just look how i'm walking in all the squares!"

and the little bears growl to each other "he's mine,
as soon as he's silly and treads on a line."
and some of the bigger bears try to pretend
that they came round the corner to look for a friend
and they try to pretend that nobody cares
whether you walk on the lines or the squares
but only the sillies believe their talk
its ever so 'portant how you walk
its ever so jolly to call out "Bears!
Just look how i'm walking in all the squares!"





a.a.milne
1882-1956

when we were very young
EP Dutton & Co. 1924
Illustrations by EH Shepard