A pictorial day

We are thrilled to announce the safe arrival of a precious little bundle.
Mother and child are both well, following a routine postal delivery.

This amused me, for obvious reasons.
I'm not tagging it, for obvious reasons.

I wonder if they know?
They can't. I wonder if anyone will ever tell them? They couldn't.

Whilst in Kinghorn, which is where that is, I went down to the beach, for it is one of my favourites:

If you lived in one of these houses...

...this would be your view

I want that.

And so to "my" beach, not visited today, but must be noted amongst others. Pathhead beach in Kirkcaldy, in the shadows of the ruins of Ravenscraig Castle, across the road from where I lived for many years, and so where many's a tear was shed and decision was made.

Prettiness, pettiness and pitiful preferences

A practically perfect day, aside from the grumpiness of certain people that might well have been me.

The boys have only been on a train twice, once for the sake of it: we got the train from Kirkcaldy to Burntisland and back; and once on the Bo'ness Steam Railway. So today we thought we'd take them on an adventure and we got the train through to Edinburgh. It is a beautiful journey, and one which I have been doing on and off for 20 years. I miss it a bit, there's all the sights along the way, many of which have changed recently. But how nice to have two new pairs of eyes to point it all out to, and eyes belonging to people that don't think you're bonkers for caring like fellow commuters often do.

And then we arrived in Edinburgh and took ourselves off to Princes Street Gardens to travel on the Big Wheel.

Marvellous, and I was most pleased to note that the only tears were of frustration at not being able to get on till we got to the front of the queue. I took lots of photos and played around with the camera settings a bit (not enough, I have more learning to do).

Edinburgh Castle on automatic

Edinburgh Castle with a little tweaking

And then the children insisted we ride on the horses on the carousel, which pleased me immensely having never succeeded in getting anyone else to go on them. Waiting for the previous turn to end, I decided which horse was to be mine, as you do. Debating whether it was in fact the done thing to pull a small child off a horse because I wanted that one, imagine my joy when that horse just happened to be the next one and I got it.

This is he:

and this is why:

I was almost as happy as my son.

This, plus lunch, plus trying to understand the new system at Waverley took most of the afternoon and then we got the train home again as the sun set. I took some immensely rubbish pictures from the Forth Rail Bridge (the pillars don't half get in the way).

stillness and sadeness

Sunday morning, deep and crisp and even.



There's not much nicer than a proper winter's day. Wrapped up snug and warm, playing in the snow, taking pictures of the stillness...

Wondering where the ducks and geese have gone, as the seagulls screech and bicker for some bread.



Just pretty.

That last one, taken by iPhone in an attempt to share a moment. Doesn't compare very well in terms of clarity, but oh! how it captures the light.

And no, not a sad day. A nice one spent with family and friends, on a tedious trip to the Falkirk Wheel, interesting to look at, not interesting to journey on. Photos for that were captured only by phone due to the camera having a moment and not all that worth sharing. Brilliant guide, very funny guy, also very pleasant to be on a canal boat but it goes so very s-l-o-w-l-y and takes an hour, nearly.

More friends, more family, no stopping today. Severe lack of sleep made this arduous: not a good family member, not a supportive friend, just a sleepy, slightly dreamy, lump.

Sadeness (the e is from enigma: cum angelis et pueris, fideles inveniamur) only appeared late on in a residential care home. A wish tree stands in the entrance hall, star stickers with wishes written on them are stuck to its leaves. Two that caught my eye said "to have tea with my family" and "to go to a football match". My heart cracked in two, so much we take for granted. I would have liked to wish for all the wishes to come true, but there were no stickers.
I wished it to the angels instead.

Pix pix pix

It's too cold to do anything. A trip to the park was frosty and chilling, made worthwhile by the starvingness of the ducks, geese and seagulls we fed bread to.




But still, homeward and snuggled indoors, and a bit bored. So I got out the camera and took some pictures. Of cupboards. Well, it was sort of a meme...


The fridge:
and yes, it is the biggest fridge I could find. It's got a freezer below and back in the days when I spoke to people, I had everyone at their correct height pictured on the front.



cupboard 1: pasta and the likes, drinks, tins, misc:



Cupboard 2: spices and oils and what not:



Cupboard 3: jams and sauces and drinks and sweets:




And then we have the sum total of all the books that aren't piled up, earmarked for charity or the four large bookcases worth that are in storage (since last Jan! Sob!):



Then the bathroom...

Hypochondria cabinet:



And girlie hideaway:



And that's the lot. Everything else is in storage, apart from clothes which are a Big Problem.

I did a mood board. Well, I started. I had this great idea that I could use images on the PC instead of scissors, but I only have paint on this surrogate laptop and so everything is square. Not so perfect.

This is as far as I got before I got bored...



and there. the products of a bored mind on a cold day.

I do like to be beside the seaside

West Wemyss, Fife

An expedition to the park ended up being a walk along the beach a little up the coast due to the fact that a good song on the radio meant driving right past the park.

Approaching sunset meant a turn down to the prettiest place to view the sun.

Unfortunately, the iPhone's woeful camera didn't capture the moment.



Easily amused.

Driving home, another diversion to another harbour to photograph the sunset was spoiled when the sunset was revealed to be less than spectacular with the removal of sunglasses.

From Dysart Harbour


There are two ways to live your life - one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein

Test

This picture was taken with the phone. Terrible quality, as expected, but the light is perfect. I also took the same photo with a "proper" camera and it corrected way too much and the light didn't look like that. Specifically, it lost the green glow that was the purpose of taking the picture.

Sigh.

Pictures instead of words

I was just looking at me photos and these are me favourites of those that I've taken, that I've put on flickr and can access easily...
(they're all old and they're all sea):

Over the cliffs and stacks, Shetland.

Actually over the cliff

An Orkney sunset

After the storm, Orkney

View from a cliff, Ibiza

"Bad" weather, beautiful skies

Clouds from the motorway

























Here comes the sun














A thunderous sky











Nearly midnight on the longest day