Haven’t been taking many photo’s of late, have been thwarted by the flu, the weather, life in general. I did manage to sit and have lunch by the sea one afternoon, and took a series of people walking past the gap in the dunes, which amused me as I was sitting in the car at the time, had a Warhol moment 🙂
Beside the seaside
On one of my client visits I went by Ludworth Tower, I have shot this before but had another go as it may just fall down one day though it was built in 1422, so nearly 600 years this wall has been standing. Also I liked the crow sitting on it 🙂 I do like crows.
Ludworth Tower
I joined a colour wheel project over on Ipernity and the first colour we had to do was Pink, so I dragged Phil out one evening and we went up to St.Mary’s Lighthouse as I knew it was being lit up pink every night in October for breast cancer awareness. As it happened the sky was doing it’s own pink thing too, but we were bliddy cold with the wind coming off the sea.
Pink cloudsSt.Mary’sSt.Mary’s in the pink
Last weekend we had Phils son and his family over and I got a couple of roids of his kids.
LivvyMatty & Phil
Last night Phil and I went out on a date, dinner and the cinema, dinner at MacDonalds lol, it filled a hole, as Phil says, and we were pushed for time so cheap and cheerful.
Phil at Macs
then onto Cineworld where we watched Fury, a war movie starring Brad Pitt in a tank.
Cineworld
The movie was 2 hrs 15mins and it was OK, not a patch on Saving Private Ryan, which is still our benchmark war movie, but it was fun, and I don’t mind looking at old Brad for a couple of hours. However the seats in our cinema leave a lot to be desired, I was SO uncomfortable, my bum hurt and I couldn’t wait to get out.
Also yesterday I had to make a ‘spooky’ photo for the Sunday challenge group, and so faffed on in photoshop with a picture I took in May back in the States, at Rochester cemetary,
this is the original
Rochester cemetary
and this is what I did with it
Spooky
Steep learning curve to turn day into night! 🙂
Today have been back to work, the weather is meh, and the A1 Western bypass is just godawful with roadworks, as they’ve decided to widen it which is going to take forever. I had to go both up and down it today, and each journey of 6 miles took an hour!!! Fedupski me or what. I heard on the local radio that the whole North East is full of bliddy roadworks all over, and I can attest to that, it’s making my work life even more grim than it is normally 😦
A1 Western bypass.
Well more of that to come for a while so I’ll just have to suck it up and leave earlier when going Northwest.
Books I’m reading..still going with the Jack Reacher series, really enjoying these books by Lee Child, on number 15 now, think there is 4 more to go.
TV..started watching The Knick, really good as its about surgery -“A look at the professional and personal lives of the staff at New York’s Knickerbocker Hospital during the early part of the twentieth century”. And Clive Owen stars, someone else I can happily look at for a couple of hours 🙂 The surgery bits were really well done, as an ex – operating theatre sister I was very impressed with the realism.
Am supposed to be going down south again next weekend to see Helen then on to see Ben & Lewis, but I have a huge tax bill to pay which is going to wipe me out, so not sure yet if I’ll make it 😦 life huh, does have it’s challenges now and then. Well quite often really. So fingers xt for a good sales week this week, and a lottery win would be good too.
Didn’t take any shots much during the week, and what I did take is on the yawn side of boring, so lets skip right to the good stuff. I worked Monday – Thursday and so on to Friday and my day off. 🙂 I went into South Shields town as they have a junk market on to see if I could find anything photogenic and cheap.
South Shields Market Place
I bought a little wooden inlaid box for £2.50 and 3 glassware candleholders for £1. The best bit was it was full of mature couples looking for things they can take to an Antiques Roadshow at some point, and I heard a market stall holder telling a lady the little pots she was looking at were made in the 1920’s, and she bought them straight away. Also there seemed to be lots of people on mobility scooters. Now these things drive me batshit. Nearly everyone I see on them is capable of getting off and walking, and everyone of them is at best overweight and at worse really really overweight, and I’m like duh?? I am sure there are genuinely immobile people who really need these things, but no-one I’ve seen as yet. Rant over.
South Shields high street was surprisingly full of people (Bargain Hunters!) because when I go on a weekday it’s normally quiet empty. The recession has taken it’s toll on high street shops in lots of places, and empty spaces where shops used to be is a sad sight to see but hey!! good news……..
good news?
A shop full of trainers and tracksuits. Yay. Just the regeneration it needs. Sigh. That lady was rocking her scooter 🙂
I love the old architecture in Shields, the Lloyds Bank Building is quite impressive..
Lloyds Bank
There was also a really nice young chap busking with his guitar, he had a great voice and sang really well, I was going to take a shot of him but this silly old lady person in a bright green dress and pink cardigan started dancing right next to him and in front of him, I was quite annoyed on his behalf, they were romantic songs and not dancy anyway. I mean, how rude! I didn’t want to then encourage her by letting her think she was being photographed, but I suppose if I was more journalistic I should have taken the shot.
On Saturday we had Cal come to stay over, and he is a ball of energy (which we are not haha). We decided to take him out to Saltwell Park for the afternoon and he had a great time, and I took some nice pictures of him and Grandad. Cal can’t say Grandad, so calls Phil ‘Dawdaw’ which amuses me greatly.
First stop play area,
Slide
then bouncy castles, £2 for 10 mins across 3 castles, not bad value, Cal loved it.
Bouncehappyness is a bouncy castle
Then onto the lake and a trip in a dinosaur peddle boat, £5 for 30 minutes, best bit of the day for me, love being in boats 🙂
to infinity…
next up a trip on Thomas The Tank engine
and beyond
then we went home
homeward bound
and after tea we baked cakes.
alien cakes
today we entertained his Lordship til Mum and Dad came to get him, and then have just been toodling around preparing for work tomorrow and cooking a sunday lunch. I was supposed to take a shot for the sunday challenge group, but am too worn out! There’s a reason we have kids in our 20’s and not in our 50’s 🙂
Here is the round up of some pictures I took this week, and what they’re all about. Because I was late last week and posted on the Bank Holiday, this week started properly on Tuesday. As usual, a work day didn’t bring about many photo ops, but I got to sit in my fave place and take a couple of quickies whilst I had a coffee break.
Peace & Tranquilityview from the carserenity
all taken with my samsung phone with the VSCO app and different filters applied. I could sit here all day really! Wednesday I forgot to take one, but was a pretty meh kind of day anyhow. Thursday was a better day as I did a couple of sales, but I still didn’t take a shot, must try harder. 😀
So Friday came, and my hub says do you fancy a trip into Newcastle ( our nearest town) as he had to take his car in for brake fixing and stuff and had a couple of hours to kill. So off we went, and I took my iphone to show the blog all around Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. I don’t go th ere often enough and it’s my main town. It has some beautiful architecture and statues, and is about the coolest city I’ve ever been to. So here we go, welcome to The Toon!
Firstly the very tall statue of Charles Grey, Earl Grey 2nd, who was a big deal up here.
Grey’s Monument
the inscription reads as follows-
“THIS COLUMN WAS ERECTED IN 1838
TO COMMEMORATE
THE SERVICES RENDERED TO HIS COUNTRY BY CHARLES EARL GREY K.G.
WHO, DURING AN ACTIVE POLITICAL CAREER OF
NEARLY HALF A CENTURY
WAS THE CONSTANT ADVOCATE OF PEACE
AND THE FEARLESS AND CONSISTENT CHAMPION OF
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
HE FIRST DIRECTED HIS EFFORTS TO THE AMENDMENT
OF THE REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE IN 1792,
AND WAS THE MINISTER
BY WHOSE ADVICE, AND UNDER WHOSE GUIDANCE,
THE GREAT MEASURE OF PARLIAMENTARY REFORM
WAS AFTER AN ARDUOUS AND PROTRACTED STRUGGLE
SAFELY AND TRIUMPHANTLY ACHIEVED
IN THE YEAR 1832.”
which just about tells you what a great guy he was, and wish they still made them like that!
Eldon Square Shopping centre
nothing much to say about this except this is where you can shop indoors, like a USA mall I guess. But that geometric rooftop bit in the distance is St James Park, the home of Newcastle United Football team, which is a very big deal up here.
text break
This is where people sit to text, call, have a cuppa, reorganise their shopping bags etc, at the foot of the Greys Monument. In term time lunchtimes it’s heaving with students from the Uni.
The Golden Lady Clock
The Gold Lady Clock is on the corner of Pilgrim Street and Blackett Street, and is the symbol of the Northern Goldsmiths. Naked Lady statues are quite often found in Tyne & Wear, I’ll have to make a collection of them and do a post about them. Needless to say Northern chaps are a lusty lot. 😀
back alley
this is where my new clinic next week resides, it’s off to the right here, and I’ll no doubt take a pic of it on Tuesday when I go, but I like this little alley leading up to it, Newcastle has a lot of back alleys to explore.
strange guy
not sure what his game was! In Nirthumberland Street now which is a big shopping are up from the Monument, and where you also find people busking and doing weird stuff.
paint pot drummer
this guy was doing a great job of drumming on upside down paint pots, presumably empty. There’s been a youtube video of someone doing the same thing I think in America, so he’s obviously ‘borrowed’ the idea. He was really good though!
Phones 4u
I like the incongruous juxtaposition of old and new that happens in citys like this.
heads up
These heads and carvings were salvaged when the old library was demolished to make way for a new street. These are 7 gods and goddesses with Neptune in the centre (the chap gods look more like clergymen to me but hey ho, art is in the eye of the believer and all that) but I think it’s cool they kept the carvings and added them to the new retaining wall.
guitar man
Phil always likes to check out the guitar shop when he’s in town, and he needed a set of strings, so we got them and had a look around. While we were in the shop the call came through from the garage that the car was ready and we hotfooted it to the metro station, where we found 2 of the 3 potential men statues.
Potential 1potential 2
didn’t have time to find the 3rd potential man but apparently it’s 3 views of the same man, I haven’t a bliddy clue what it’s all about but they were sculptured by Sean Henry who is (apparently) UK No.1 sculptor, so they must mean something. Hmmmm. 😀
So that’s Friday day, and at night my lovely hubby made a party for my birthday last weekend, as he’d missed it, and we had a lovely time,lots of wine & whisky and music and just the 2 of us.
Saturday we were ill.
Saturday night we had to go to a family bash as Phil’s neice’s daughter was 21 and had a party by the sea front, so we pulled ourselves together and made a good effort at being at the party. I took my polaroid so took some family pics to put on the wall when I finally get my photo board up!
View from the balcony of the Sundial.Paul & PhilShelly & Karly
Phil’s daughter & daughter-in-law
Jan & Barry
Phils nephew and Mrs.
Carl,Karly,Steve,Shelley
Da Kidz.
Other Paul,Neil & Carl
Cousins and son-in-law
Carl,Neil & Karly
Neils face makes me laugh!
Today I went out taking pictures with my friend Sophie. We meet up a fair few times in the year and go off exploring somewhere, and I catalogue our adventures in my smugmug galleries so here is a selection from today. We went to Saltwell Park and Cemetery today ( we do like graves!) Saltwell park is a beautiful oasis in the middle of urban Gateshead, and has won many awards for it’s loveliness. It has a long & interesting history, which can be found on wiki .
As we left the car park, we got the first hint that summer is just about over and autumn is nearly upon us.
autumn to be
Salty Towers
Yes it’s called Saltwell Towers really.
Salty Towers side on.
The guy who had this built was a stained glass maker, not a single one in the building though.
on the lake
I love these bonkers peddle boats, must have a go on one next time.
ducklettsbottoms up
nothing more funny than a supposedly graceful swan upending to look for food.
Mr.Bolshy
This guy was in a really bad mood, chasing geese and generally swanning around being bolshy.
Mr.Bolshy, Tony’s edition
I remember Tony Single saying he didn’t have swans where he lives, and I was thinking he might like this dark contrast version.
ship ahoy cap’n
Love that this guy wears a Captains hat when playing with his model boat. 🙂 We soon found out he was in a model boat club competition just past the lake, so we went in and took pictures of course. We also had to vote on which ship we liked best.
Sophie shooting boatsSophie shooting more boatsbirdy
Saltwell also has a small wildlife section, with a few budgies and peacocks, but they are in cages, which saddens me always. Birds should be in the sky.
However hens can’t fly, and this one was ginormous!!This is his rear end 😀
fluffy bumsimbiosis
still some flowers left but not many left in the rose garden, which is quite stunning in bloom time.
Sophie Bomb
these are the flowers in the Tyne Bridge sculpture, and I took the shot just as Sophie walked past. We have a rule that we don’t take each other’s photo, but now and again we sneak one, and sometimes it’s accidental, but we also have a rule not to publish them. I don’t think we’re too good at sticking to the rules. Well I’m not anyway. 😀
Saltwell Dene
The Dene is a walk next to a rivulette with lush foliage and little waterfalls,and there’s a lovely twinkling silvery water sound while you walk around.
chocks away
So off to the cemetary over the road, and I managed to catch the magpie just as he took off.
baby graves
Saltwell Cemetary is HUGE! And quite modern, one of the most poignant sights was this section dedicated to little ones.
DIY or Robbing Graves??
This is such a crap shot but I only got the one chance before the lady saw me, and we could NOT work out what the heck they were doing. Speculation on burying their dog or digging for treasure.
Overseers
So thats it for this week, another long one, and now to get ready for work tomorrow. Phil’s on night shift boo hoo. Never mind, soon be the weekend 😀
As always work was busy, lots of problem solving and gnashing of teeth. Didn’t get chance to take any photo’s on Monday or Tuesday, but Wednesday I was able to have a quick lunch break at Woodhorn, and got to see the swans
swans at Woodhorn
I was going to get out and take some shots, but this one decided to have a lie down by my car door, and I didn’t want to upset him!
Guard Swan
Thursday was one of those days off I have that I end up working, but when I got home Phil and I went to our fave restaurant in South Shields, Pierro’s and had potato skins and Pizza for dinner, not the healthy option really but it was yummy!
Pierro’s
and on the way home stopped by the sea. This is my favourite place to be for peace and tranquility, but it was a bit chilly and Phil didn’t have a coat so we didn’t stay long.
Peace & Tranquility
Friday was a good day off as I didn’t have to see any clients, so I cleaned out my worky office, took ages and engendered a lot of recycling of old paperwork.
really that IS loads tidier!! 🙂
On Saturday my lovely hubby cooked us breakfast
lovely hubby cooking
and after more sorting out of recycling, we got our glad rags on and went to see a band called Blue Diamond at a pub in Sunderland called The Saltgrass. No ordinary band though as 2 of the chaps in the band are also from Phil’s past life as a rock god. Before he became an Op.theatre technician back in the 70’s he was in a local band called The Showbiz Kids, and they were destined for great things, they even cut a record and were on the TV! But it didn’t work out, and after a few years it all fell apart. Still he had a blast and still plays bass guitar in our living room. He hadn’t seen Bob or Pat (the 2 guys I’m on about) in over 20 years, so a reunion was had and they were really happy to see him and reminisced about the olden days. We enjoyed listening to them mainly doing covers of harmonic bands like The Eagles, Steely Dan & Fleetwood Mac etc, with a strange Jethro Tull moment as well. They’re pretty good musicians, though some of the vocals were a bit dodgy now and then, and also a feedback issue was really annoying. The Saltgrass is not a great venue for live music, it’s very small, low ceiling and I couldn’t see a thing of the band. But a good night out nevertheless.
The Saltgrassgee they got a band
That’s Pat setting up before they started, after that loads of tall people stood in front of me.
There was some great graffiti on the wall next to the pub.
Graffiti Elephants
Today Phil has been working 8am-9pm so I’ve been doing washing, getting ready for work tomorrow 😦 and of course doing a photo for the Sunday Challenge, which this week was ‘1,3 or 5’. I went with 5, and had a steep learning curve in photoshop to make the image below. The rest of my shots were done with VSCO cam on the Iphone and I do like how the sea shot came out. Now for some dinner and then… ta dah, the ironing!!
Well the week started off Ok with nice weather, and I have made a decision to take some form of photograph every day, which isn’t always easy when work is so busy. Somehow I forgot to do one on Monday 😀 so that was a great start!
Tuesday
This was my first day at a new clinic starting at Age UK Gateshead. The shop is in quite a rundown part of Gateshead, but the lady running it is lovely, I had a nice quiet room to do my tests in and both my clients had too much wax in their ears for me to proceed!
Tuesday
I was quite taken with the name of the closed up pub opposite Age UK The Moon & Sixpence, I googled the name and it’s actually the title of a book by W.Somerset Maugham, about an english stockbroker who abandons his wife and children and runs off to Tahiti via Paris to be an artist, and it’s loosely based on the life of Paul Gauguin. Why a pub in Gateshead should be named after this book is beyond me, as far as I can find out Mr.Maugham never came near the North East so has no connection, but still, it’s a nice name and thats what drew me to take the shot. The other building I took a shot of is in Sunderland, The Harbour View (because the view is of the harbour of course) which apparently is a great place for live music, and good food, though I’ve never been. What caught my eye is the graffiti of what looks like Dean Martin on the wall of the pub, I don’t think he ever came to the North East either, but hey ho, it looks fab.
Wednesday
another busy day so all I took a picture of was my lovely chicken salad I had for tea haha and I’ve stuck it in the Tuesday collage! In truth I had the same tea on Tuesday so it still fits.
Thursday
Oh Thursday- day of doom! I should have been a day off but went to work for most of it and managed to take this shot of the church next to where one of my clients lives
but that was the only good thing about the day really as it all went to ratshit when I got home. I had an email frenzy for 2 hrs as there are a lot of problems with works new processes, I’ll spare you the boring details but it drives me mad and makes work harder than it has to be. Sigh. After that I decided to sit and have my tea and read my latest book, when I thought I could hear the rain start pattering on the conservatory roof, but on looking out the kitchen window the sky was clear and blue with fluffy clouds. So I went to the conservatory and holy guacamole the place was full of bazillions of flying ants, copulating all over my windows and blinds! It was the most horrible of sights and I hate buggy things at the best of times, let alone a gazillion of them. Of course this was the one night The Hubster had gone out on a schoolboys reunion so I was on my own with it. I shut the conservatory door and googled flying ants to discover they are really ordinary ants who once a year grow wings and mate like crazy fofr a day, then go back to being normal ants. How bloody bonkers is that!??? Why can’t they just mate like normal bugs inside their own homes?? So, I also learned that to kill them I would need some mega poisonous bug killer (which I didn”t have) or could use a solution of 1 part vinegar and 1 part water as the acid in the vinegar also causes them to expire. On the whole I do not like killing insects and stuff, but this was too much and I filled up my orchid sprayer and became The Exterminator! I did not take pictures of this as it was just awful. I sprayed and sprayed, for over an hour and bit by bit they ceased to live, but still some survived, When I ran out of vinegar I used bleach, but still there were loads left. In the end I got quite distressed with the whole thing so shut the door on them and got my camera and went drove to the coast where I consoled myself with breathing in the sea air, and lovely skies and sea.
Phil got home before I got back and thought I must have had fish and chips for tea as the place stank of vinegar! When I got home we decided to leave everything till Friday.
Friday
Apart from having the killing fields to contend with, my poor back tyre has been going down quite quickly and I’ve been having to pump it up periodically to keep it going. So in the morning I took her up to my local garage and a very nice smiley young chap put a new valve in the tyre, and all is well with the Rav again. Then I came home and got to grips with cleaning the conservatory, I stripped everything out and went to work sweeping up the corpses, there were still plenty of surviving stragglers that I had to bash over the head with the dustpan brush, but eventually they were all gone, the place was spotless, and nippon has been put into any cracks around the floor til Phil gets chance to go round with filler. What a bliddy nightmare!! For dinner we had another disaster, Peri Peri chicken. It said MEDIUM heat on the sauce bottle (you can also get hot and extra hot!) and it nearly blew our heads off! No way would I try extra hot. Hmm in retrospect maybe I should have used that on the ants. Finished the night off with a movie Thor 2 which had amazing special effects and visuals, and Chris Hemsworth had is shirt off at one point which is never a bad thing to see :). Then we sat in our newly lovely conservatory and chatted and had a few glasses of cheer before going to bed.
Friday
Saturday
a much lovelier day, Phil and I did gardening! We went to our local garden centre to get some lawn feed, and I bought some new herbs for my pots, forgot to take a pic of them, but here’s one of Phil weeding the front bit, I took this sneaky out of the bedroom window.
and then we had a mini ODE (which is oudoor eating experience, a euphemism for BBQ because whenever BBQ is mentioned, it rains).
My Trendy Hubby
yummy cheeseburgers cooked by my trendy guy! Then we watched a really good British movie Closed Circuit, with Eric Bana, the watched a couple of music dvd’s. Phil has been transferring our old music video’s to dvd and they’ve come out really well, so we did Bon Jovi New Jersey followed by Bryan Adams, great stuff but we didn’t get to bed til 3am!
Sunday
Today has been another cool day, wet weather but nice anyway. We got up late of course, and had a leisurely breakfast, then I did a photo for the Sunday challenge group- which was to make a maade up advert for something.
Shelley and Cal came to visit which was fun
and then I cooked a lush Sunday lunch.
Beefcake meets beef!Sunday lunch
and that was the week that was! Start all over again tomorrow, bring it on!
It’s been a busy week at work, but on one of my visits to a client in Consett I drove past this sign, and I just had to park up and run back with the Iphone to get a shot of it.
I mean, how do they KNOW what surprises are in store??
I’ve also been chasing butterflies around the garden but without much success. They do like our Buddleia but its quite big and they nearly always land on the very top flowers where I can’t reach to get a shot! Missed a peacock because it would NOT open its wings, and it’s very black on the underside, but I did manage a tortoise shell which are common visitors every year
Tortoise shell
but also for the first time ever I saw a comma butterfly, so that was cool!
Comma Butterfly
On Friday Phil had a dinner party for his niece Lorraine and her husband Paul. As Phil was on holiday all week and I was working he did the shopping and most of the cooking, delicious lamb in red wine sauce, and I helped with roast spuds and asparagus tips for veg. I have to admit far too much alcohol was involved, and Paul & Phil played guitars while Lorraine sang, and I had a home made maraca of raw rice in a tin pot. A good night that took a day to recover from!!
PaulLorraine
Love the animal skins on my new polaroid film!
And today I had to do a photo for my Sunday Challenge group on Ipernity, the theme being ‘at ground level’ so took a last minute shot of the carpet in our TV room hah!
Books I’ve been reading this week and can recommend ~ The Myron Bolitar novels by Harlan Corben great reads full of derring-do and cool characters, films I’ve watched, just the one, Hunger Games 2, I’ve read the 4 novels and seen the first 2 films now which are both excellent and stick to the plot really well. So that’s this week done & dusted! Back to work tomorrow!
This is my best one yet, so think I’m on the right track, love the softness and light that the polaroids can produce. Like a little bit of magic, click the button, whir whir spit & out comes the film, stick it somewhere dark for 40 mins and hey presto!! These eggs had to be photographed as they were given to me by my friend Helen who lives a long way away, when I visited over christmas. She has two chickens, a Rhode Island Red, and a black one too. They are a)huge, b)spotty ( 🙂 ) and c) the most tasty eggs ever. I had one for my lunch at it was glorious. So much nicer than shop bought ones. Of course I want chickens now, but hubster says no 😦 he’s probably right, but still, I like dem eggs!
One of my projects for this year us to do a ’52’ with my polaroid equipment, am going through the (expensive!) learning curve at the minute though, am getting the hang of the camera settings just about but a bit unsuccessful with my first attempt on the instant lab, which converts iphone shots to analogue polaroid shots.
iPhone shot of HerkyConverted with Instant lab
I t hink I forgot to choose which type of film I was using so another test shot coming up.
fraggle ~ rocking a camera across the Universe 
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