bank holiday report

i experienced *sweat* for the first time this summer.

davoud and i went camping down near southampton over the last august bank holiday weekend and were treated to sunny skys and very warm weather. i even went for a swim in the sea. however, the new forest i've discovered isn't really a forest but an area of land that used to be a forest and has been pillaged for it's trees over the years to build the mighty british navy. but you can read more about it here. so there were actually large parts of our walk that only had low-lying brush and heather to look at.

we went to bournemouth to visit rosemary and keith, which was extremely civilised compared to the facilities that we were experiencing at our campsite, but i won't go into those painful memories. i even went for a very refreshing swim in the sea.

on the way back to coventry, we stopped off at stonehenge, which is one of those things in life that you see and your brain can't quite process why, when or how it got there. i discovered a little village on the map called canada, so of course we had to stop there to take my picture. photos will follow i'm sure.

a short week this week before heading back down to birmingham for a gig on friday night and spending the weekend in coventry. i really need to clean the house, but it's just going to have to wait...

apparently it's all about copper

there are a few things in liverpool that have pet names. the supermarket in town tesco is affectionately renamed stressco. the commuter rail line that i use every morning appropriately named mersey rail is rightly known as misery rail.

for 6 weeks in april/may the trains that run from james street around the liverpool loop - to three other centrally based city stations - was undergoing maintenance. so for those six weeks i hiked down to james street in the morning and back again in the evening and that didn't bother me one bit. however, the throngs of people that usually get on at 4 stations now getting on at one certainly did.

so on wednesday night when some misery rail official decided they needed to undergo emergency repairs to the carriages and take half of their fleet out of service, i was quite dismayed to get to the station on thursday morning to find out that again it was going to be down to james street for me. trying to walk down to a platform where a train has just arrived is probably better done by crowd surfing.

oh, and they are reducing all of the services to only running every half hour, which doesn't affect me so much because i can take two seperate routes to work, but still...get your act together! this morning the staff couldn't even tell me which platform my train would be leaving from and proceeded to argue amongst themselves.

talking to peter last night, he told me that apparently it's all got something to do with production in china and copper. a president bartlett answer if i ever did hear one.

last of the summer days

or not so summery days as the case was this year, but summer holidays are nearing an end, which means that my work life is about to get a little less stressful. i'll be able to catch up on some boring administrative work and generally feel a bit more on top of things.

i went down to coventry this weekend as davoud and i had tickets to see the penelopiad at the royal shakespeare company. it was actually the last show at the swan theatre before redevelopment. the play was adapted from a book by margaret atwood, which she'd adapted from homer's the odyssey. it was really well done and loads of dark humour.

the rest of the weekend was spend redoing what is affectionately known as the junk room at davoud's house. i took an impromptu day off yesterday to finish the painting of the walls as much sanding needed to take place on saturday and sunday to get the skirting/base boards ready.

camping down south is in the cards for the last bank holiday weekend. we're heading down to bournemouth/southampton and the new forest - still haven't got the story straight on why it's called the *new* forest - and a visit to rosemary and keith, friend's of my mum and ron's. haven't seen them in years, but they've kindly invited us for lunch on monday.

one person's garbage...

...is my treasure for today.

i was walking from bebington station to the gallery this morning (just a short 2 minute jaunt) and was literally outside the gallery when i looked down to the ground. now, garbage around the gallery usually does catch my eye because it's so rarely seen, but this was a little different.

it was a empty coca-cola can marked with what appeared to be $5 off, not £5 off like i would expect to see. so naturally i picked it up to discover that this empty can wouldn't give me £5 off at alton towers, but $5 off at la ronde! i never went to la ronde when i was living in montreal so maybe this piece of trash was trying to tell me something: i should go to montreal before it expires on 28 october 2007 and ride the rides at la ronde.

weird. very weird, almost on the edge of bizarre...but there it now sits on the corner of my desk until i try to come up with some explanation beyond some crappy french canadian tourist who's left their trash outside the gallery. i mean c'mon, it's gotta have more meaning than that ;)

first night on the site - val, harriet and paul - the wee tent is mine and davoud's, but the taj mahal is harriet's ;)

near the top of snowdon

val and paul our trusty guides

davoud posing as a hardcore hiker

black rock sands is this beach in wales where you can drive on the beach - which was beautiful - and apparently tow a boat with a tractor!!! how cool

let the sun shine in

it's actually been sunny this past week and thank god it has been. i've been teaching a summer course with a group of 11-16 year olds and its been a blessing to be able to take them outside in the sun to paint.

davoud, harriet, val, paul, frank and i all went camping last weekend in porthmadog, which was beautiful except for rain on saturday night. davoud, val, paul and i hiked up snowdon the highest point in wales on saturday; a 13 km hike up and down which took us about 6 hours. we let harriet sit that one out as she'd just done a 60 mile walk in 30 hours the weekend prior for charity...some serious walking to be sure!

the kids have been exhausting me this week, but it's been great fun. it reminds me of arts camp all those years ago when i first started going. they all can't believe it's the last day tomorrow and are sorry to see it end. puts a smile on my face to hear them say so.