Skip to main content

zen and the art....

Its been an expensive and manic week in the Ruby Starrs household... we have been bracing ourselves for the imminent replacement of the clutch on Beryl the Yellow Peril our beloved camper van - and then catastrophe struck - my car went clink clink clinkclink BANG and its now having an emergency engine transplant and some serious rehab time in the garage - huge expense I could have done without but I really can't do without the car!!! Now we have everything possible crossed to hope that Beryls' clutch sees us through Christmas so we can head out and do the family rounds and make it back home before having to remortgage life in general to have all wheels fully functional!!!

C'est la vie - these things happen and there is never a good time we would all rather spend hard earned cash on something other then car maintenance but living out here in the sticks means a car is absolutely essential and worth every penny!

So after a few cups of tea, we've survived the shock of forgoing any chance of jetting off for some wintersun, settling instead for a fully functioning car and on a lighter note it feels like the festive season is definetly here - the disco tree is surrounded by piles of presents - mainly labeled for the grandchildren, cards are sent, the christmas cake is iced and we have a couple of parties to look forward to this week.

All things given we are lucky..... Life is easy for us living in peace, our own home, surrounded by those we love and who love us - we've probably all got a present to look forward to under a tree somewhere, so spare a thought for those less fortunate......  



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful.   There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...

Autumnal Garden Days

I love these (rare) warm sunny late summer days and there is all sorts of lovely things  going on in my garden... I counted 12 red admiral butterflies whizzing around the over grown ivy which I had been about to hack down but then left until the flutterbies have finished with it... The late blooms add a dash of colour and the daisy strewn lawn is littered with autumnal leaves, debris from my brief half an hour of slash and burn and the stone wall is covered in glorious soft moss all shiny and tactile with a few late nasturtiums loitering. I've hacked out the brambles for this year, sadly I missed the fruit as we were away, ditto the strawberries, we never seem to get the fruit before the birds so I've made space and moved the plants that were getting swamped and so not performing to their potential - hopefully next year they will literally blossom now they have light and room to flourish.

Goodbye Dissertation!!!

The dissertation is finished...  it took me ages to do all the detail stuff Harvard referencing ect... the simplest tasks were starting to drive me mad!! I cant believe how long it took me to work out how to number pages excluding the first two pages aagghhhh...  I suppose I should be grateful that its not like the olden days where you had to get it typed and bound before hand in - this essay has been a hard slog, a subject which I felt was interesting - how the digital explosion is ruining traditional creative methods turned into a fairly unexciting - pretty boring unexceptional topic!  there will never be a next time but my advice is think of something funky - does Danny Boyle like garden Gnomes - Racoon meets Lady Gaga - anything that might surprise you but not too grown up!! I have worked hard and will be rewarded with a mid grade because there is no passion in this essay - the hard slog is evident as is the lack of enthusiasm - C'est la vie you cant win them all....