Pretty Things

We’ve been trying to retain quality family time at weekends recently. This seems more important now that the craziness of December is upon us. The weeks are busy, hectic and a little bit too much for everyone.

The boys are in a constant state of dress rehearsal / non-dress rehearsal / choir practice / choir performance. Either that or they are running around the house as crazed Jedi Knights or lolloping on the sofa watching another episode of CBeebie’s driving academy, too tired for crazed Jedi Knight action.

I nearly had some type of nervous breakdown on Friday trying to get our busy work schedules married with our busy other schedules. We’re trying to cram as much work as possible into December so we can take a break over Christmas and even a trip abroad in Janaury. I feel a bottle of calms coming on. Either that or a bottle of gin.

I really love the whole Christmas lark, but I find the run up a little stressful – the card writing, the present buying, the numerous post office trips and then once you’ve got all that done you then have to work out the whole Christmas eating thing, and go to the supermarket, where all shoppers look like the are bulk buying for the next millennia. Usually by this time it becomes very apparent that I left my Christmas spirit in the post office queue on my 83rd visit of the month.

To complicate matters further my first born, my mam, most of my first born’s friends, two of my closest friends and my grandmother have all gone for Christmas time birthdays, which is lovely for them but doesn’t shorten my lists any. I love you all very much though, so apologies for my Bah Humbugness this evening.

As usual, I digress. I created this post about pretty things in my head at 6am this morning. I was woken by a herd of elephants (biggest boy) trotting off to the loo and then my brain started whirring. I tried to calm my mind and started thinking of the amazing ‘Field of Light’ which is currently wowing the good folk of Bath outside the Holburne Museum of Art.

So while I was trying to calm my mind I thought of all the amazing pretty things I have seen this month, and about how much I love my iPhone and it’s lovely little camera. With it I’ve snapped these pretty things and then fiddled about with their appearance using one of my many photography apps.

It has really rekindled my love of photography, which I spent time studying at university. I loved all the theory about composition and light, I loved planning my projects and wandering around Leicester with a beautiful old Pentax. But I really, really hated going back to the photography centre and developing my photos. It was all too fiddly and scientific. I got into so many pickles in the pitch black trying desperately to get my film out of the camera and onto a reel. Even now, thinking about it makes me a teeny bit anxious.

I think I drove the staff mad with questions and requests for help and there was a palpable sigh of relief from them when I returned my Pentax for the last time and told them that my course modules for the next term would mean I wouldn’t be disturbing then with cries of despair as I realised there was another load of blank film hanging in the drying cabinet.

Having a hand-sized gadget that does all that for me really is quite mind blowing I think. We even have a wireless printer enabling me to print straight from my phone. 15 years or so have passed since my Pentax days. We hadn’t event heard of digital photography back then and as high tech as it got was a cool machine that did some kind of cool shit with exposure (I wish I actually knew what it did and what it was called!) Anyway, hat tip to you Mr Jobs.

So here are some of my little iPhone snaps, which you can look at while listening to this rather splendid Rufus Wainwright song, which is called, of course, ‘Pretty Things’.

On Friday, at dusk, Mike and I took the children to see Bruce Munro’s Field of Light. It is spectacular and beautiful and totally mesmerising – a huge expanse of glowing loveliness, swaying in the breeze. The boys adored it, as did we.

Field of Light, a wonderful light installation by Bruce Munro

Boys loving their first experience of fibre optics

I took the children to see the grandparents in my home city of Durham last weekend. I was really pleased to catch this year’s Lumiere festival, which, apart from some hairy moments among the heaving crowds (Durham is tiny and *a lot* of people had come to see the delights of the festival), it was really, really breath-taking. Durham is really rocking the whole festival thing (we caught some of the brass festival last summer) and it is great to see my home city thriving with really cool stuff going on.

 

A sound and light installation that was part of November's Lumiere Festival in Durham. If you haven't been to the Lumiere festival you *must* go.

Another fabulous Lumiere installation - a snow dome in the market place. Stunning.

Another Lumiere installation - this time inside a derelict shop

And finally, my last light installation of the night was seem at this week’s DJ Shadow concert in Bristol. Mike and I are both fans, so I bought tickets for Mike’s birthday pressie (win, win).

I guess it’s hard for a man who creates his wonderful music by mainly pressing a whole array of brightly coloured buttons to put on a visual treat for his audience. He certainly pulled it off, playing the whole gig from inside a rather delicate looking globe shape structure. Onto this moving structure they projected images, accompanied by secondary projections onto the backdrop…it was very cool…see for yourself…(listen from about a minute in)

and here’s my pic of it…

It’s been a pretty nice couple of weeks all in all.

Have a lovely week xx