Family

The concept of family is open to so many interpretations.  Do you consider your friends as family rather than blood relatives?  For me I love all of my Aunts, Uncles, 1st cousins, 1st cousins once removed, 2nd cousins, 2nd cousins once removed and all the other combinations.  We have a good laugh when we meet up and these days facebook keeps us abreast of what we’re all up to – gone are the days when myself and my cousin Ian would write when he was studying over in the UK (actually it’s kind of sad that we don’t any more)  Holidays were spent trouping from house to house, sleeping on floors, sharing beds, camping in gardens.  The thing is – Family is no guarantee that you’ll get on so I’m glad that I can count my cousins as friends.  However they are friends with that extra layer – I know that our families have been friends going back generations.  Ok now I’m wittering!

On Friday we were at a family reunion for his family and it was the first one that himself has gone to.  I was touched by a simple gesture from one of his aunts – a warm shake of the hand and the phrase “Welcome to the family”  It’s one of these unnecessary sentences that you know the person means it.  During the family photos I took a photo over my shoulder of his aunts and uncles – because of the way I was sitting I managed to leave an aunt out – I do apologise!  There was one other uncle not there as he has sadly passed away.  However I have to laugh- himself has more aunts and uncles on one side of the family than I do in total!! (8 versus 5)

 

I have to say it was a great night and lovely to meet all the cousins!

Negatives

About a year or two before my grandmother died, a pipe burst in her house and it was flooded – well destroyed wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration.  She was in a home and never knew.  However when she did die all of their stuff that was left had to be gone through and dispersed.  I rescued the some of the photos.

These photos have been sitting in a box for the last year.  Himself has a scanner but it’s awkward for me to use – desk space issues etc.  So on Thursday gone I bought myself a flatbed scanner and between Friday night and Saturday I scanned all of the photographs along with the backs of some if there was any information on them and all of the memorial cards.

All I was left with was a large pile of negatives.  I say large, but that just depends on your idea of large – I will come back later and tell how many.  Now logic tells me that in order to see what is on those negatives I should get them printed.  Whilst it might not be a considerable outlay it was one more that I hadn’t really planned on.  I mentioned this to himself as we were going to bed and he asked – why not scan them?  Well! with a suggestion like that you have to give it a go don’t you?  I took one scanned it (twice as I wasn’t sure of the right way around) and it worked!  It bloody worked!  It may have been obvious to some of you but not to me so I was thrilled beyond belief!  However, can I just say, you don’t want to be making such a discovery at 00:50 just before you go to bed ’cause all you want to do is get stuck in.

As you can guess today is going to be spent examining negatives and scanning them (Yay!)

Here is last nights experiment:

I should explain that this is the right way, deduced by the position of the window.

Negative:

Inverted:

Adjusted levels:

Yes it looks a bit blue but that’s either a case of that’s just the way it is or I could adjust it a bit more/better.  Either way I’ve lots to be getting on with!

 

What I did on my holidays

We are home from London.  Our time there was mainly taken up by being at Loncon3/Worldcon and another day or two meeting up with people outside of fandom.  If you want to stop reading now, just know that we had a great time and really enjoyed ourselves!

However here is a rough idea of how the hols went:

Thursday saw the pair of us wander around for most of the day with what felt like the morning stares*.  The cause of our morning stares was the fact that we’d left Dublin at 8pm on Wednesday and traveled through the night via coach/boat/coach arriving in London at the wonderful hour of 07:30 (This form of travel isn’t overly conducive to sleep).  However after a quick waking coffee, in Neros, we headed over to the convention site – reg. was to open at 09:30.  The plan being register, loiter with luggage, then head over to the hotel and see if they would let us check in early.  The hotel had a check in time of 3pm, but midday for an extra £10.00 if there was a room available.  What did happen was we started to queue at 09:00, because there was a queue and they had started to process folk. After a quick wander up and down the boulevard we settled in the fan village for a cup of tea looked up and saw a really really long queue for the reg. desk – it would seem we had timed it perfectly.  We hung about ’til 11am and our eyes could stay open no more – we decided to head over to the hotel and sit in reception ’til they gave us a bed, by 11:18 we were in bed.  We headed back to the convention after about 2hrs and as we were now luggage free we hit the dealers room.  I was somewhat surprised to see a photo of mine being used in the Iain Banks booth.  Himself was wondering if I knew about it – I replied that I didn’t but as it was now printed out and stuck up it would seem to be a bit late now but as himself is rather keen on copyright I don’t think he was too happy about it (permissions wise).  However as Iain was kind of a friend I would have been honoured to have the photo included, still am.  Shortly after the photo discovery and in the middle of a chat with Ian McDonald we heard a noise.  The heavens had opened!  I should explain that there are two parts on the main boulevard that are tent like – but of type of plastic – letting in loads of light, but in a heavy rain storm it turns into a drum.  The noise of the rain was incredible and to add to the delight we had thunder and lightning – a wonderful display of nature.  Although I do believe that a some people may have gotten a little bit sodden 🙂  The other highlight of my day was dinner with Juliet E McKenna.  Due to the nature of social media we seem to be in touch with everybody, if only vicariously, that it makes it difficult to remember when was the last time you actually met a person.  This seems to be a theme for the weekend (5 day weekend!)

Friday was to be a day out.  In between the DLR & the underground we went to the tower of London to see the Poppies, planted to the memory of those killed in WWI.  After that we went off to The British Library as himself had applied for a readers card in order to do research – although I’m not sure looking at bound copies of the Radio Times counts as research while I’m sitting in the coffee shop waiting for him to return to the ground floor…  In saying that I did have a wonderful wander around the shop and made up a shopping list for later in the week.  Afterwards we headed off down to Kew, to The National Archives.  Sadly we only had an hour there and with very little information to start with I’m entirely sure you could have called it a successful trip – I think I’ll go with the Mick Aston way of looking at it: we’ve learned what it isn’t.  Mind you simply walking to and from the building was a glory to behold – the houses, the porches, tiles, Houses!  I’m sure I’ve read books about streets like those!  Having missed on programme I wanted to see on the previous day, we arrived back at Con central for item we were determined to see – the Worldcon Philharmonic Orchestra.  We were a bit at odds with the programme at this point as we also wanted to see Universally Challenged and the musical piece we wanted to see was second last. They opened the concert with the theme music to Superman, followed by a chap on the theremin doing the theme to Dr. Who.  The piece we wanted to hear was a piece written by a friend of ours, Gary Lloyd, as a tribute to Iain Banks – a beautiful piece.  We left after that and ran up to the Universally Challenged – it was a bit of a shambles but fun none the less.

Saturday was spent entirely at the convention.  Mind you there were two panel items on in the morning – I say morning – it was in the AM 11 & 12 but we only managed to surface at 12 ish so panelling wasn’t going to happen – this seemed to be a trend for the weekend by the way.  On the other hand we did get to one panel item – What is I?  the room was full and yet 30mins – 45mins after it started there were people still arriving (don’t get me started on that one!)  The topic went more towards the psychological rather than the philosophical but in saying that myself and himself had a good old chat about it later.  We did bump into Fran & Ang – thank you to Fran for the special Yorkshire Water – very nice indeed! (I can’t get the website to open!! – coffee flavoured Vodka if you are curious)  This may have also stimulated the What is I? debate myself & himself had later.  Mind you a highlight of the day was that those taking part, we all dressed up for the masquerade – a wonderful collection of all sorts parading up and down excel.  I don’t mind telling you some of the outfits were fabulous and the amount of effort gone into them must be phenomenal.  In saying that some folk were wandering around in various different costumes throughout the whole con – absolutely fabulous.  So now that I’m at home can somebody please tell me why didn’t I take photos? Happily somebody did: Giles G Photography, Flickr #Loncon3

Sunday was an out and about day again although first we had to go to a panel – Pádraig somehow ended up on a panel with Gary Lloyd and a Mr Tim Perkins – he really was thrilled to meet Tim Perkins as he loves the music he makes with Alan Moore (The MASTER – as he’s known in this house).  After that we had to speedily make our way back to The British Library to meet up with a friend Tim Pilcher – it was a brief hello as he had just finished being on a panel and we were running into a panel at the Comics Unmasked/ Comica event – it was lovely to say hello and meet his son.  We went on to our panel – Draw Misty For Me – now this was a panel item for me!  Originally Shirley Bellwood was to be there – she was the artist that drew the lady herself – but she wasn’t well so couldn’t make it.  One of her pictures was used in the back drop – the image was of the only surviving piece of original artwork – it had been used as a cutting board!  What we got was an interview with Pat Mills & Julia Round – I thought it was fascinating – talking about circulation figures, artist accreditations, thoughts behind story policy.  It really was the kind of talk you could have kept going for hours in the pub but alas as we were meeting somebody we had to leave at the end.  However Paul Gravett, organiser, got us all to sign a get well soon card – which I thought was a nice touch.  Mind you it was a very low turn out – about two dozen and of that about 6 maybe 7 of them were female.  After this we went out to tea with a friend of himself (F).  F really is his friend and they have lots in common – so sometimes I do tend to lag behind – but that doesn’t stop the conversation from being entertaining and enjoyable.  Now I must say – I’d been carrying around my camera with me all weekend but I have a much traveled and little used camera so I only took it out on the Sunday.  Note to self – upload photos to Flickr! After waving bye to F we went to dinner with another friend of himself – I was rather touched to get an FB friend request from him the next day – very nice of him.  The chat over pizza was again interesting and although I would have said I’ve no interest in the graphic medium it seems I might be wrong – but then again it’s amazing what you’d pick up through osmosis.  With all of this socialising we missed out on the Hugos – If I’d thought about it a bit more – the Five(ish) Doctors was nominated – so Peter Davison was in attendance and his plus one was his son-in-law.  So seeing a status update that announces they were standing beside David Tennant in the bar obviously filled me with a little bit of envy.  Oh well!  We didn’t hang around long as it had been a busy day.

Monday was about as busy as Thursday but without the buzz of the adventure to come – we were winding down.  People had checked out of hotels and heading home so we spent most of the day having tea and chat with people we won’t see for another year or two.  At the closing ceremony Ken McLeod accepted the gift for Iain – there was a tear or two shed.  Once the convention was declared closed it really did empty out.  I have to admit I was glad we had decided to stay on that extra day.  Mind you the one thing we weren’t doing was hugs goodbye ’cause I think con-crude had started to grip attendees by Friday and it had spread its evil reach far and wide.  I’m putting my resilience to it down to Yorkshire water & Yorkshire tea – drinking that stuff straight would kill anything off!

Tuesday saw us sitting on cases trying to fit in everything we’d brought with us and everything else we’d decided to buy.  I didn’t mention the two books I’d bought in the British Library did I?  We dropped our cases at St Pancras Station and went off to the Wellcome Collection.  In their shop I found even more books I wanted to buy but I don’t think the cases would be able to hold anything else – in saying that I’d one or two other things to get before we headed…
After the Wellcome Collection we headed off to Fortnum & Masons to get Jam.  I’d wanted Christmas Jam but they won’t have them in ’til the end of next month so we got other jam.  However we decided against getting any of the ones with gold in them ’cause that’s just a bit too much really!  Then we hightailed it to Hamleys to get an etch-a-sketch for my niece – although my sister was thrilled with it…
Amazingly time flew and we headed back to the station picked up the cases, and went to Victoria coach station.  It was bedlam if I’m being honest – but we were back on the bus and going home.

*For those of you that don’t know the morning stares let me present Garfield!

Family Photos

I spent a fair bit of the bank holiday weekend scanning photos belonging to my grandparents – it’s mainly when they were young and of their children (Mam, Aunt K & Uncle N) and then other assorted relatives. I was surprised at how much work was involved in simply scanning. I managed to get about 20 or so done and then came away with a thundering headache! Now that I’ve a small selection scanned the next thing is to go in and correct them. This bit is more work but it’s more fun. Sadly, due to the afore mentioned headache and I’m now dying with a cough I’ve only worked on one photograph – I’m to get it printed up for a few people during the week but what do you think? I’m not too sure but I may have made it too dark…

Apologies for the watermark across them but as they’re family photos and not fixed up I don’t want them to be lifted (as if!!) but just to be safe.

Here’s a 20/21 year old Kitty & Mick

Before:

After:

Kitty & Mick

 

I think I’ll get one printed to see how it turns out – the scan is a lot lighter than the postcard so we’ll see…

Photo Picking

I’ve been looking through some of my photos – I’ve picked out 2 that I liked – the first is that of my niece who went from posing when the camera was pointing at her to closing her eyes and smiling.  The second is the view from my office window – well the view if you look up the actual view is a brick wall.

Niece

Somewhere over the Rainbow:

Unexpected Adventures

Yesterday was Dead Can Dance day – they were playing in Dublin and I dragged himself along – I think he enjoyed himself so that’s a bonus ’cause there’s a concert I was to go to next year but more about that later 😉

We spent the day with my cousin and his other half except for about two hours when they went back to their hotel for a snooze. So what do you do for 2hrs in Dublin, late on a Sunday afternoon and in the company of somebody who flags easily?

Well we decided to hit Hodges Figgis! We or at least I very rarely get there and it really is (one of) my favourite book shop. Himself bought a thing or four and naturally I had to make a purchase or two – 2 more Georgette Heyer for the collection

      

After about 40 mins in the shop we wandered off onto Grafton Street and ventured into Bewleys for a pot of tea for two and to marvel at our purchases. Have you been to Bewleys lately? I haven’t been in AGES and I’d forgotten how beautiful it is – it’s worth going in simply for the surroundings – I did take a photo or two of the Harry Clarke windows but the website displays it a lot better than I ever could. We don’t often gad about wasting time so I have to say it was delightful – I absolutely loved simply spending time with himself with no other calls on our time. After our tea we wandered up Grafton and it would seem that there’s a Disney Shop! Who knew?!? (I spotted it when we came out of HMV) I do like what they’ve done with the window 😀

Unfortunately at this point in time the shops were closing and it was starting to rain so we decided to head back to The Secret Book & Record Shop to pass some time with our good friend Dermot – on our way I did spot some Hallowe’en preparations 😉

Doesn’t she look Fab?

After this I put the camera away ’cause we went to meet my cousin – I’m a loola for having not taking any family photos!! However we were going to a concert and as they asked for no photos I decided no pics (even if phones were glowing like nobodies business!)

I should mention that Dead Can Dance were fantastic and then some!