in which the seasoned blogger is content to fail picture posting class

There was going to be a linkless post here about The Abbey, which started on the ABC last Sunday.

I did a draft which did not please me on a second reading a day later. So today marks a foray into posting pictures, not something I've done much on this blog.

Two things prompt this: my admiration of the efforts of others (who actually take pictures worth blogging) and my daughter's Danish Deluxe chair and rather extraordinary opshop cushion, my snap of which came up better than could be expected.

The occasion? The acquisition of a larger bookcase and plenty of shifting and dusting last week. And the discovery that the viewing window on the camera is not broken, it had simply been turned off. Doh.

Fun times. A few tingles in the forearms at the end of the day, though. And I am ashamed to show the double stacked books on the old bookshelf on the other side of the computer, though the CD stack just out of the picture there is stupendously well balanced.

Suffice it to say that once the big 'un was filled and a bit of weeding done, the double stacks were no more. Yep, a modest collection, but bigger than some in these parts. What we lack in quantity we make up for in quality, though - speaking of which, if anyone is after a copy of Sir Ian Botham's 1995 biography, it's looking for a home.

Funny how friends accidentally fall together when you're lumping them from one room to t'other prior to the final shelving dance  (the only other travel books I have are by Bruce Chatwin).

This chair was a begrudging addition to our family room, as it's not a big house, and the colour scheme is egregious enough without those seventies shades clogging up the palette (basically mid-90s pale green, cream and grey, with badly scarred mountain ash floors and a few toffee and rust bits and pieces.) There's a story behind the brown one, which my daughter carried up the hill to our house when her father refused to take it from the hard rubbish collection - she has a GESOH to realise it is funny that he now sits in it all the time.

Nice kid, great collector. She helped me buy the bookcase, and picked up a bakelite phone for a bit of a bargain price at the same time. She is aggrieved that her mates think she sounds tinny on it, however.

In other news from the 'hood, I walked down the hill to snap this slice of urban history this morning.

Being a very ordinary photographer, I've neglected to provide sufficient foregrounding - this block is about 80 - 100 ft deep, and until three or four days ago had a post-war home on it of some fibrous substance, which was of some concern to me as it's about the third home in the street recently to be barricaded off with metal fencing, and one of them had collapsed stumps and had sunk in the middle. (Dear little weatherboard it was, too. Perfect writer's house, with a magnificent garden. That block is still bare.) Needless to say, I wasn't worried for long. But I was delighted to see the date palm at the back of the block and stopped to speculate with the bulldozer's driver on its age (maybe 70 years old, we decided) and provenance. He was a useful source of information, telling me first that the palm will be moved to the front of the block, and also that there were brick foundations under the removed house, suggesting that an older home had been there and maybe had burned down, with a new home being built over the top post-war.

As the nearest orchardists lived behind my place, and the oldest house in the area is a couple of streets away from me (1870s cottage), the date palm was interesting. They sometimes grew near older homes because people were eating fresh dates and threw the pips out the window - that's the claim made up at Mont Delancey in Wandin, anyway, which sports several splendid specimens.

Enough alliteration. Keep your eyes out for pips, you never know where they'll end up.

* Okay, so the fookers won't move. I'll be playing on Typepad help this evening. Please pray for me.

Comments

[Abby F.]

I admire people who can sing and people who take nice photos. I can't do either. If someone can sing & take nice photos, I hate them. There's a thing called too much of a good thing.Hope you can't sing.

I used to interview the famous & not-so-famous rock bands/artists. I knew my photo skills were not going to take me far after reviewing my work with a few members of The Electric Light Orchestra. Pix of the drummer on the left with too much junk on the right; walls full of colored posters obscuring the main subject of the snap...and so on.

[genevieve]

Blimey, ELO. That would have been fun. I was a great fan in 1977. And I've taken many photos of young children and people with awful messes in the background. Drying clothes, usually.

I think you have been awfully kind, Abby. I don't think others are going to be quite so nice once they've deleted all my false posts from their feed readers. But I've finally worked out where the margins are in the HTML now. And I don't dare edit it again, it's staying like this now. Problem with Typepad is that the preview button is rather misleading, so you see all kinds of disasters in the draft that don't appear in the final post. Tant pis. Had to learn sometime, I guess.

[ThirdCat]

I'd love to read your post on The Abbey.

[Ariel]

Nice study! So airy and light. I spend half my life in mine and am thinking it needs work.

I, too, would like to read your post on The Abbey.

[genevieve]

Much thanks to you both for your kind interest - I'll take another look at it after the second instalment on Sunday, I think. There was an article I didn't save about a year and a half ago that would have made a hell of a difference, on when the Spanish mystics were first available in translation to English speaking Catholics. Perhaps there'll be more if I can hunt that down - I'll keep you posted on that.

The light is nice here, Ariel, so is being able to look outside. Having the house to disappear into after extracting oneself from the Internet is another matter though. I emptied three bookshelves last week and only cleaned behind one....AAAAARRRGGH. It's getting to the point where I feel rather allergic to stuff, and shops are making me nervous. Time for one of those Compacting commitments, I think - though if you live in a small house, you're pretty much on those most of the time.

[Meredith]

That Danish Deluxe chair is wonderful - I'm very jealous.

[genevieve]

Thanks, Meredith.(I don't mind making people jealous if I can't claim any credit for it, heh.)
I grew up with a shitload of orange so I had a few eek moments when I saw it first. But it has good bones.
I hope I can get some dollars up and have it recovered for M. when she leaves home, as all the padding is shot. I also hope we don't break it before she flies the coop :)

[Mark]

"people with awful messes in the background. Drying clothes, usually." - that is my photographic malady.

I have now come to realise that this is more a feature of our messy, busy lives and home, as well as my bad photograph composition. Now I am learning to tidy up the room a little, or move/position my subjects against a nice backdrop. Like flowers or picture or something.

[genevieve]

I'm having a tidy week - they're usually only three days long, I find. And ditto with the photography tips, I did learn that after many rueful encounters with stone-dry washing in my photo albums.