Monday's Faces

Just look at this lovely little lad - what a poppet! Thought I'd post this one today seeing as it's such gorgeous weather outside; makes me feel summery. It's quite tricky trying to guess where he might be, but I reckon he's just visiting the seaside for the day. Looks like a city lad to me. And look at his little face, "glee" personified.

My favourite bit of this picture, though, is his little boat on a string. It makes me wonder where he got it. Did he buy it in a little seaside shop? Something makes me doubt it. I reckon he brought it with him specially, and had it in his lap all the way to the seaside on the train. You know when you see something so beautiful, or so lovely, it kind of makes you feel like your heart might break? Well, that little boat is a heart-clencher.

snobs continued...

So, I'm reading the letters of John Keats for my dissertation and have come across conclusive evidence for my hypothesis that English students and their ilk are indeed incorrigible snobs.

Keats hadn't written to the love of his life as much as much as she would have liked one particular week. What was his excuse?

I have been writing with a vile old pen the whole week, which is excessively ungallant. The fault is in the Quill: I have mended it and still it is very much inclin'd to make blind 'e's.

See, happens to the best of us.

Monday's Faces

This one's so lovely. Even though neither of them look like either of us, it reminds me of my dad and I. It makes me wonder where they were going when they stopped for their picnic. Me and Dad used to go to the Lake District for the occasional weekend when I was younger, and we used make stops for what became affectionately known as "car picnics". 

In fact, I used to kind of hope that it'd rain so that we could have a car picnic instead of one outside because, somehow, sitting in the car all cosy while the rain battered down on the roof and windows seemed much more of an adventure. It was a comforting, warm space with just me and Dad out in the middle of nowhere with our Scotch eggs and apple turnovers. Perfect. I like to think that the girl in this picture was feeling something of the happiness I felt at those times.

Monday's Faces

I bloomin love this one. I've had to up the contrast a wee bit because it was so faded - so faded, in fact, that the guy on the stall gave me it for free. It was just too good to miss. 

I didn't think much of it until I read what it said on the back: 

The bear and I. 

I flicked back to the picture and realised that, indeed, it was a bloke with a gun and a dead bear. What I want to know is, where on earth was this picture taken? I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, that it was taken in the UK given the unlikelihood of a picture from elsewhere finding its way onto a market stall in Tynemouth, but maybe I'm wrong?

My favourite thing about this picture is the caption on the back. Dead simple, no explanation, no beating around the bush, grammar-perfect. What a lad.

drawer

OK, so here's the thing. I cannot wait to have a house. Not in a I-must-have-a-house-and-make-homemade-bread-and-lentil-soup-in-order-to-be-a-real-woman kind of way. Just in a I-can't-wait-to-decorate-and-fill-it-with-random-and-cosy-stuff-and-have-a-cat-and-a-bedroom-bigger-than-a-shoebox kind of way.

To that end, for the last little while I've been collecting odds and ends for my Bottom Drawer. This wondrous concept was introduced to me by my ma a couple of years ago when we were in some shop and I happened to say something like: "Ooh, those plates are nice." Then she said, oh fateful words, "You should buy them for your Bottom Drawer." Turns out there's this whole world of pre-marital hoarding that I didn't know about - apparently it's a tradition so antiquated that even blessed Wiki doesn't have a definition for it. However, I did find one that described this concept as: 

               n (Brit) a young woman's collection of clothes, 
               linen, cutlery, etc., in anticipation of marriage.

Now, tragic as this inevitably makes me sound, I do in fact now possess a Bottom Drawer. Well, more a Sprawling Collection, but still.

To be honest it's less in anticipation of marriage than the more-comfortingly-imminent hope of owning a house. Or, at least, long-term renting one. So, in anticipation of said house-ownership I now have a delightful array of, well, mostly mugs, plates and bowls actually (for the aforementioned mismatched-chic). The last two trips I made to buy birthday presents for friends may have just happened to lead me into the home and kitchen section of Fenwick's and might possibly have lead me to the latest handful of really very reasonable culinary appendages.

So, say what you like, I shall continue this wee collection with which I can festoon my humble abode. And, if nothing else, I can live in the vain hope that perhaps it'll make me vaguely more marriage-material: "It's alright chaps, at least she comes with her own crockery."

objets

So, yesterday I had to give The Bombshell back (it was quite a wrench, can't lie...) but not before I took a few pretty pictures.

A wee taste of what's to come in my documentary - I set up these shots and couldn't resist taking a photo, tee hee. 

Had my seminar for the documentary module today and my tutor was explaining the basics of Final Cut Pro - well, that was it. Paroxysms of delight inevitably ensued, and I cannot wait to get my eager little hands on those computers (oh, hang on, those Macs, should I say...). SO excited! Promptly called Dad to eulogise the utter wonder that is Final Cut. Suffice it to say, everything that I wish my software could do, Final Cut does.

Of course, my one-to-one tutorial isn't until next week so my tutor may yet hurl my idea out of the proverbial window and send me back to the drawing board. But I hope not.

Monday's Faces

So, haven't done a Monday's Faces post in about oh, I don't know, a billion years. 

So after a quick meander in Tynemouth Market and a quick browse of the ol' photo stall I came across a few new beauties and, making the most of the Canon bombshell while I can, I took pictures of the lot of them so that I can blog them over the next few weeks.

Well, how could I resist this lovely little lad? By the looks of it, it seems that he's on a farm somewhere (I reckon those buildings behind him are barns of some sort) - I love his dungarees and the way he's got his hands in his pockets, like he's copying his dad. Such a serious little face, and he looks so adult. Except for his little sandals. Cute!

More mysterious, though, is the writing on the back of the picture. If who can guess? And who's giving the picture away? The handwriting looks fairly old, and it's written in fountain pen by the looks. It reminds me of that game you play at school, where you all bring in a baby picture and you try to guess who's in each picture. Maybe it was something like that? Seems unlikely.

I love the mystery of it though, just that little note on the back: no name, no date - looks like something from a film. Love it!

glorious

So today I had my hands on this tasty SLR, courtesy of the aforementioned documentary module I'm studying, and went off to the also aforementioned Tynemouth Market to film my first few shots "on location". 

Needless to say, I am now utterly in love. I've never used an SLR before so after a quick peruse of the "quick and dirty guide to shooting" we were given I just went for it, twirling various dials and flicking switches to my heart's delight. And, well, it's a revelation. Such good quality, such a good zoom. It's fab. And, tragically, well out of my price range... A quick recce on Amazon revealed that to own this beautiful piece of kit I'd have to fork out something in the region of £600. I weep.

However, I fully intend to make the most of this little beauty while I have the chance. I've got it until Monday evening then I'll have to book another slot. It's making me want to go out taking pictures too - it's a photographical dream! Ah man. One day.

snobs

This is something I have learned during my time at uni: English Literature students are the most inimitable snobs. That is, when it comes to pen and paper.

Writing materials, granted, are something of a necessity when attending any course at university, but never have I seen such a glorious array of handmade, embossed, and leather-bound notebooks and fluidly elegant pens than when scanning a lecture theatre full of English Lit students.

You can tell when someone has forgotten their pen - they heave their shoulders in a great sigh of consternation and begrudgingly enquire if their neighbour has a spare. The trouble is that it is not a question of merely borrowing another pen, it is the dismay at having forgotten your own hand-picked implement of perfect weight, nib-size and ink type; the pen which, after trawling through and trialling endless others, you finally rested on as the perfect vehicle for transferring your flourishing ideas to paper. The ink which does not blot, spread or seep through your page, but skates uninhibitingly across its surface.

The page which, naturally, is the perfect size, thickness, and hue to complement your pen of choice. The page bound within the book which you weighed in your hand before making the decision between lined or unlined, and thereby constraint or liberty. 

Then there is the thin margin between quality and ostentation, refinement and frivolity. There is an unspoken principle of vanity which dictates that one's writing is worth reading, and therefore the writing materials should display these luminary ideas in a manner befitting their worth. It is not mere scribbling, it is a masterpiece. We are not mere students, we are Writers.

Honestly, we'd use quills and parchment if we could.

gifts

This is utterly sublime. That is all.