Category Archives: Life

Passport photo

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Passport Office strike or not, I need to get mine renewed before I head off to France in November.  One hopes that 4 months is sufficient time to complete this rather expensive and time consuming process.  First port of call is the dreaded passport photo – can someone please tell me why it is necessary to make your picture resemble a mug shot?  “The person in this passport was once the life and soul of the party but now they are just an empty shell, devoid of emotion or personality.  Let them into the country”!

And since when have they started dictating your hair style?!
Photobooth

Leaf Tornado

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LEAF TORNADO

Just a little sketch I did recently after I found myself in the middle of a leaf tornado.  It happened so suddenly that I was unable to get my camera out to capture it.  Instead I drew it – one of those unadulterated joyous moments that make you want to laugh out loud and spin around like Julie Andrews in the Alps.

On a windy day, I love to watch piles of colourful leaves come alive and race each other down the road. Tumbling, twisting, turning, clacking and tapping on the tarmac then taking off and dancing high into the air.   Since my tornado moment,  few leaves remain – they are either a soggy, slippy mulch or they’ve been hoovered up by the city council’s cleaning trucks.  I shall miss them.

Volume

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volumeMy hair doesn’t like it when it’s too rainy, or too hot, or too cold, or least of all when it’s subjected to products that are designed for heads that are not blessed/cursed with thick, wiry, unwieldy hair like mine.   It’s big at the best of times, but add a touch of volumising shampoo and watch the disco fro grow!

 

Crossing Paths – a daily commute (part 1)

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Tambourine manDachshund GuyI walk to and from work every day; a good 40 minute march.  It’s a great way to wake up on a dark winter’s morning when getting out of bed is an effort and your bowl of porridge hasn’t quite started to kick in.   I stick my earplugs in and listen to one of 4 Podcasts.  BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour, BBC 4’s Saturday Live, BBC 4’s Mid-week or Helen and Olly’s Answermethispodcast.com.  The latter tempers the former and is not for sensitive ears.

As you would expect, I pass the same people day after day and ponder their being:  what are they like?  Do they have a partner?  Where do they work?  Why are they wearing that? Gosh I love their dog, maybe I’ll stop them so I can stroke it….

I decided to draw a few of the characters to give you a flavour – I recently  showed the drawings to a friend who walks the same route, albeit a little earlier than me.  She recognised most of the people, so I’m satisfied that I’ve managed to capture them fairly accurately.  She even shared one or two of her own commuter people. Now she texts me in the morning to say…hey, I passed ‘Greggs Man’, and I respond to say ‘I think I passed red-headed-duvet-jacket lady’!

So the next couple of posts are just sketches (no polishing) of some of the… <sings> “people that I meet when I’m walking down the street…they’re the people that I meet….each day!” (Sesame Street, People in your Neighbourhood)

Cephalopod Encounters

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OctopusesDid you know that the plural of octopus is octopuses or octopodes? Me neither. According to the dictionary, octopi is definitely wrong.

I’ve recently come to learn that octopuses are AWESOME! During our holiday in Greece we bumped into an octopus on three separate occasions. The waters around Kefalonia are crystal clear and bursting with interesting marine life; perfect for snorkeling. So, on one bright, warm day we headed out on an excursion with Jamie, a marine biologist, whose main area of study was octopuses, hence my sudden interest in them.

Our transportation for the day was a traditional Greek working boat or Kaiki which sailed us around the coast, stopping along the way to drop anchor so we could learn about urchins, starfish, eels, sea cucumbers and octopuses. Jamie, kept us rapt with tales of Greek mythology, mafia and marine life in between our snorkeling adventures when were left to explore the bays and mingle with the fish.

Within moments of taking our first dip into the water I stumbled upon an octopus gliding across the seabed – what luck! I squealed with excitement through my snorkel and called for Jamie who swiftly caught it, but not before it squirted us with ink and wowed us with its ability to change a variety of colours in a matter of seconds.

Back on board the boat, we stood over the little guy who eyeballed intently before trying to climb out of the temporary aquarium using its suckers. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity, I couldn’t help touching it. It probably goes without saying that feeling an octopus’s tentacles wrap around your hand is weird and slightly alarming – for a moment I thought it might never let go. After a few interesting octopus anecdotes we put him back in the water and watched him swim away.

Here are some things I learnt:

  • An octopus can get through a hole the size of a ten pence piece (if you don’t believe me, I found a video on YouTube. Essentially, if its eyes can get through a hole, then so can the rest of it
  • Their tentacles will grow back should they accidentally lose one in a fight or to prey
  • They make little nests that look like miniature fortresses
  • They live about two years
  • They can survive out of the water for 3-5 minutes (possibly more?)
  • After mating, the male dies
  • Greek people love to eat them 😦

Below: A photo I took from the end of the pier near our apartment in Fiscardo – this chap was happily minding his own business.

Octopus

 

Below: our transportation for the day.

 

The boat

A Brit Abroad

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Greece_ToiletsI promised to share more cartoons of my recent Greek holiday and so…  If you’re not a frequent visitor of the Aegean and Ionian islands (or indeed parts of mainland Greece), you may not be aware aware that the sewerage system is somewhat antiquated and unable to cope with anything other than organic matter.  Therefore, every toilet is equipped with a bin into which all non-organic matter must be placed.

This took some getting used to and on several occasions I found myself accidentally contravening the rules of the washroom in a moment of distraction.   I feared for the town as pieces of my paper found their way into the system to clog a rusty pipe or wrap around a vital bit of machinery.  I imagined embarrassing scenarios; a flooded apartment, surly looking Greek men with plungers tutting menacingly and me plaintively muttering “it wasn’t me Gov”.

I found myself chanting ‘PAPER IN THE BIN. PAPER IN THE BIN’ in order to focus the mind and the memory before every trip to the loo.  Thankfully we were all spared the potential messy consequences of my action and on my return to the UK, I vowed never to take our sewerage system for granted.

Next week – encounters with a cephalopod!