Floating bookshop

I love London and we often spend hours just walking around and exploring the hidden alleyways, cobbled streets, marketplaces and old buildings.  It was last year that I heard of this fabulously quirky bookshop that is known as the "Word on Water" a floating bookshop barge on the Regent's canal and so we had to go and investigate.

On our visit it was moored at Granary Wharf near King's Cross, where regular jazz bands play either alongside or on the roof.

It cruises and moors up between various locations on the Canal including The Angel at Islington and another close to the Olympic Park at Stratford.

It was a book lover's delight - so many fabulous second hand books

Its uniqueness had me enthralled

It had its own resident dog and even an old iron stove below deck

  

 This visit certainly came up to my expectations and didn't let me down.

Have a great weekend.

The clearing in the woods

What started out to be what we thought a pleasant stroll admiring the changing colours of the trees turned out to be a nightmare

Have you ever gone for a stroll through the woods, taken a wrong turn and spent what seems like hours trying to get back on track - or the very least find a clearing ahead and a road back to civilisation?  This happened to us yesterday. 

What would normally be a twenty minute stroll, lasted 1.5 hours!!  The trees were getting thicker and darker, not a bit of sky to be seen and at one point Mr M said lets go back to where we think we went wrong. Definitely a no no. I just wanted to be out. A jogger who obviously knew the woods well, did not even know the name of the road where we'd left our car but insisted that there was a road ahead if we just kept going! Ahead seemed to go on forever and getting very damp and muddy.

At last I could start to see daylight and yes - a clearing in the woods. Yay! However, it was nowhere near where we'd begun our walk and so had to put the sat nav on the phone to see where we were - a mile away - and so our walk, instead of being perhaps a mile  in length max, turned out to be 3.5 miles (as tracked on my phone app Map my Walk).

Foraging was the name of the game and after I'd scraped the mud off my boots and had a well earned cuppa finally managed to put this together for my dining table.

Moral of the story? Stick to the path - even better, buy the darned thing!!

Thankyou for all your lovely comments dear friends.  See you again soon.

The beginnings....

So - going on from my last post I've taken the bull by the horns and signed myself up for a free online course "Start Writing Fiction" with an organisation called Future Learn and run by the Open University. I loved my six years studying with the OU and have missed it very much. It lasts for eight weeks and the study hours are around 3-4 a week - or more if you want. I'm not totally sure at this point if I want to write a fictional novel as such - probably a bit of fact (historical) and fiction mixed up.

Anyway the order of the day is notes - lots of notes - people watching notes;  notes about  overheard conversations; notes about body language; notes about different smells, sounds and daily life events. That's my homework for this week - taking a notebook wherever I go so I can build up a picture and create a fictional character.

Incidentally Future Learn have literally hundreds of free online courses, run by different universities and there's so many categories to choose from. Another one I've put my name down for  is called "Literature of the English Country House" - watch this space!

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses

Hope you all have a happy week and I'll be back soon.

Patricia x

Finding the time

Hello everyone. 

This quote sums me up right now - trying to do too many things all at once. Lots of thoughts. lots of ideas. Lots of plans and basically lots of not much being done at all.  My head bursts sometimes with all the things I want  to achieve and at times am like a Whirling Dervish.. Do you find that the more you want to do, the less actually gets done?

So taking things slowly is the order of the day and it's actually beginning to work. I spend so much time thinking about what I'm going to do that it eats into my 'doing' time. Planning is the key I believe and am having fun using my old Filofax again and actually writing up lists and notes rather than using electronic devices for all my hurried thoughts and ideas.

My next project? I've always wanted to write a book - and do you know what - I'm jolly well going to give it a go - given that I can find the time!

Have a great weekend dear friends

P x

(pictures by courtesy of Pinterest)

It's been a while I know.....

....... I could say it's my busy life; I could say I've lost my mojo; I could give any amount of reasons. It hasn't helped of course that I re-discovered Instagram and I'm well and truly hooked on Pinterest!  Added to which I'm toying with the idea of creating another blog - focusing on Essex villages, London and a bit of family history thrown in as well. More of that another time.

So - here is a small potted history of the last couple of months.

May saw us getting out and about with our family - boats, camper/caravans. 

So lovely to be out in the fresh air taking in all that mother nature has to offer

To celebrate the hubster's birthday we lunched at the top of London's Gherkin building. The views were stunning. Oh and lunch was good too!

June - our garden is really coming along now that all the pots have 

been filled with bedding plants and given a general tidy up

We've recently returned from a fabulous week in Sorrento 

which we enjoyed very much  

Just a a glimpse of what's been going on, with more to come.

I really will be back again soon. 

Have a wonderful weekend dear friends. 

P x

The wanderer.......

....has returned.

I've missed my blogging friends over the last six weeks or so and hope this finds you all well.  I can't wait to start catching up with all your news and musings. It has been pretty hectic and messy around here I can tell you, so much so I haven't managed to put pen to paper (or fingers on keys even) but I've written a little ditty to put you in the picture.

Oh for a bit of peace!

Just ten minutes to escape the mess

The banging the crashing the sawing the drilling

The comings and goings of men

Sparkies and chippies, plasterers and painters

Deliveries, and parking and skips full of rubbish

there's no end

Walls are knocked through and ceilings renewed as are the window and door 

The kitchen ripped out and tiling removed and also a brand new floor

The hammering, the knocking, the chiselling, the dust

The dust - oh the dust -  in the wake of the work

Finds its way to places unseen

in crevices in corners on ledges and sofas

On curtains and carpets and more

The dusting and polishing, the sweeping and Hoovering

Makes no difference it never looks clean.

Sniffing and sneezing, coughing and wheezing

That darn dust gets everywhere 

No doubt about it I've definitely felt it

But knock it?  - no  - I'll not dare!

We've "lived" in our living room for five weeks or more

With two rooms  of furniture and  boxes to store

kitchen paraphernalia in all shapes and sizes 

Where the crockpot and microwave came into their own 

and meals were produced In various guises.

The kettle's worn out with the endless brews 

Made for the builders who've invaded our home

 I'm starting to see that proverbial light

At the end of the tunnel - yes please

The beginning of the end is almost in sight

But not without problems it seems.

Why oh why at the warehouse 

when those boxes are packed 

Do they not check that all is there 

Saving us time in sending it back 

So, my kitchen/diner is almost complete,  just

A few finishing touches to make

I can't wait to move back into my new abode

And enjoy the PEACE 

Make tea

And Eat cake!

I'll be back again very soon.

xx

Book making

I've been making notebooks, journals, scrapbooks and mini photo albums for a few years now, loving the diversity of the many designs, layouts and size. I'm a collectaholic, (is there such a word? my automatic spellcheck doesn't seem to think there is) and I'm always on the look out for bits of ephemera and memorbillia, cuttings from magazines, sheet music, script, quotations and so much more besides. You name it, I keep it.

Now some might scorn at what I'm about to say but I actually check out charity shops for old books which are long past their use by date and about to go into the great bookshop in the sky. Why you ask? Well I've been learning all about the craft of Altered Books or Book Reinvention. Basically ripping the pages out of a hard back book (the pages can be saved for later use eg making book page sculptures or Christmas decorations - more about that another time). Anyway once the pages are out and the spine is intact then you have a solid cover for turning into your own journal, notebook or whatever.

Just punch some holes in the cover and correspondingly your own paper and there you have it. The titles of some books are often very apt for the kind of book I'm making. For instance "In and out of London" ideal for recording my trips into town. "Looking back at the past" great for my family history and so it goes on. Never a dull moment!

I love paper in any shape or form and have enjoyed using various techniques on many types - sketchbook paper, handmade, lined, squared and even wallpaper lining paper. Stamping, painting, drawing, writing, torn edges, there's so much scope for creating your own personalised work of art.

So, here is one of my recent makes - a scrappy, shabby kind of book which I can add to whenever and wherever I want. Memories of anything or everything, recent or not so recent.

I sprayed my cover with a few different water colours and then decided on a name - couldn't be anything else could it? 

I'm very much looking forward to filling it now that 

I've prepped all my pages

And because it's an anytime kind of scrappy book I can start my recollections wherever I want to and a perfect place for my eclectic musings, sketches, poems and favourite quotations.

As well as the occasional photos

Enjoy the rest of the week and I'll be back soon.

Bye for now x