Finding my feet.

First day on the ground and I am on the other side of London from where I know.  I have to learn to orientate myself all over again. My son said it was about  1 hour to walk into town but I opted for the tube.  Hang the expense, I didn't want to get lost.

My first day has been sent in the National Gallery.  It's a bit of a shock to come face to face with a Leonardo you weren't expecting to see.  I never look at the maps just drift around.  I managed to drift in circles and right through am exhibition of Dutch Masters you were supposed to pay to enter.   Somehow or other I 'drifted' through a back door.

I had lunch in the cafe, just like the ones you see in old English movies.  Surrounded by paneled  walls and English accents.  No cups and saucers just the styrofoam type.  You can buy a print of any painting in the gallery, you just look them up on the computer and they will print them out for you.  An A4 cost 10 pounds, about $25.00AU.  the Auzzie dollar doesn't buy much!

Trefalgar square is busy with lots of traffic and people.  All around buildings are being refurbished and traffic and pedestrians do battle. Some buildings are waiting their turn in this refurbishment round about and stand empty, but the statues still stand there waiting.   

 

London at last

I seem to have been sitting in airports for ever.  I don't know what I was thinking when I made my bookings but I certainly wasn't concentrating.  I thought that I had booked my flight via America but I travelled via Hong Kong.  That was a bit of a surprise.  The other surprise was all the time I spent sitting in airports waiting for the next plane.

The last leg was 27 hours, I was bushed by the time I got into London.  I was going to ring my son when I got to the airport but noone would help me with change, even when I bought something from their shop.  So it was onto the tube and off to Clapman Common.  The trip took over an hour and the worst part was getting my bag up the stairs at the end.

So here I am at my son's flat, which is on the 4th floor.  Great views and he carried the bags up the steps thank goodness.  He took me to a great Hamburger place for dinner, best burgers I have ever had,all owned by a Kiwi.

I'm now off for a day at the National Gallery.

Goodbye Oz

I leave in 10 minutes so will be out of range for a couple of days until I get to London.

I thought that I would do a last check of my Emails and I found one that had been put in a folder by mistake and not answered.  Now that is nearly as bad as not turning up for a dinner party!!!

So a quick note to Georgette was in order and I am on my way.

This was taken at Mount Tambourine, don't you love those birds!

The last sleep

Well this is it, the last sleep.  Tomorrow I'm away.  If I have things I haven't finished, to bad.

The saga of the camera continued today.  I bought a new camera on Saturday and two hours after buying it, I had got the zoom lens stuck.  I had placed it on the box it come in on the kitchen bench and it toppled over on the zoom, all of 10cm!  That meant that the warranty didn't apply.  I had taken one picture.  So today I took it back to the store and they said it couldn't be fixed under the warranty (which I knew) and that I would have to send it away interstate for it to be repaired.  How long would this take?  A minimum of 5 weeks, and I leave tomorrow.  The long and short of it was that I had to buy another camera.  What an expensive exercise.

The other problem is our cat Fluffy, a very original name, who will have to go into a cattery.  Now she is 17 years old and has never been away from home.  We fight all the time but I do love her.  I hope she is still here when I return.

The side trip  to France is now all in place and I will meet up with Pam on the plane to Paris. 

Driving the typepad machine

I keep pressing buttons around this page but I don't understand the directions!  Just a couple more days and I will have two web page developers to help me.  Guy (my son) and Gerrod (my godson).  How blessed am I?

It's Sunday!

Oh dear!  I sent the wrong address to all my quilting mates, and I'm not blonde!

Spent most of the day getting my business cards reworked.  I am going to change service providers, I think, and that will mean a new email so I had to get a more generic one that is portable.  The old email is also used by my husbands business and that could cause all kinds of confusion.

I took the cards to be printed to the 24 hour printing service in town to find they were closed because of lack of staff.  So, I took them to another 24 hour printing service and guess what?  They were closed because of lack of staff.  Makes you wonder doesn't it.

I do like eating out with friends.  Here are Pam, Di and Tim in the Botanical Gardens Cafe in Adelaide.

It was a great lunch.  Thanks Tim.

Afternoon tea with friends

This is Pam, Di and myself having a 'proper' afternoon tea at High Societea in Clayfield Brisbane. I had a sickie this day so that I could go.  I put it down to a 'mental health' day. 

A new beginning

Here we go!  Where I'm not quite sure but it is only three, or rather two and a half days and I am off on my trip to the UK Europe and America.  I have no really clear ideas about what I am going to do other than research textiles, clothing and design for my teaching and my small design business.

This blog is quite an adventure.  I have no idea how to drive this machine called typepad, so I suppose that there will be a few 'dingles' along the way. But, as I tell my students "there is no learning without making mistakes, it's in the trying that we learn".  Looks like I am about to take my own advice!

One thing I do know is that I have had my three bad things happen before I leave.

1. The car broke down.  No warning just broke down.

2. My dinner guests forgot to come after I had spent the afternoon preparing a great meal, polishing the silver and china and doing a wonderful tablesetting.

3. I bought a new camera, set it up, took one photo, put the memory card in and the zoom came out and is stuck!

The next thing to work out is how I inset pictures.