flop.

Summer was a total flop so we're trying again. In a different country.  

Tomorrow the babies get on their first plane. Their parents get on their first plane since they swore they'd never get on a plane again. They are also taking their first holiday with his family since they said they'd never do that again either. This time the girl can drink though and the wine is 3 euros a bottle and truly exceptional. So it will be fine.  

I'm actually looking forward to it more than you can possibly imagine. Even if I have to take 8 weddings with me and work in the basement for almost the whole trip. Even then.  

See you on the other side lovebugs.  

pinning

Do you pin? I pin. I pin like Madeleine Albright (to quote the inimitable Kidchamp.) I've even added a little Pinterest linky button whatsit over on the right there. (look! It's a pinboard! It's clever AND pretty.)

I know I'm a bit late to this party but I'm still hearing an awful lot of 'I don't really get pinterest' which sounds an awful lot like 'I don't really get my VCR.' In other words Dudes! IT'S NOT COMPLICATED. Pinterest is a place for keeping track of things you like and things you find weird and things you think other people might like. Or it's an enormous black hole of things other people like, which is mostly grotesquely sickening recipes (white chocolate salted caramel cupcake,cookie dough truffles anyone?) and diet 'inspiration' (read: Starvation Motivation).

It's both a place for you to keep virtual pinboards of things you like and a place for you to browse things that other people like. Which is both wonderful and awful. Wonderful because there are people out there with very good taste (and some with TOTALLY insane taste, which is amusing), awful because there are a lot of people out there with very good taste and one can lose hours, days weeks lost in that shit.

I try to avoid too much browsing of other people's pins and keep it as a place to save pictures and gubbins that I like. Which becomes interesting when one looks back on one's pins after a few weeks and discovers what it is that one likes.

It seems that I mostly like:

tattoos 

stripes

things with boats on

peculiarities

sexy men with babies. 

 reassurances

and rabbits

Surprise! 

There are rules though. When you pin something it links to the page that you found it on. If that page is the front page of someone's blog then that link is not going to stay very useful when that someone updates their blog. SO. Either take 3 seconds to open the actual blog post that the thing is in or even better, if it's not that blog's original content then click through to whoever made it and pin it from there. Then when other people click on your pins they are taken to a link that is actually useful and credit is given where credit is due. Okay? Okay.  

Credits: 

1. Tattoo, 2. Stripes,  3. Boat Blanket, 4. Coffee Dog,  5. Sexy Man With Baby, 6. Absurd. 7. Rabbit,

remembering.

I don't have words. I don't believe that anyone does.  

Pictures don't do it either.  Trust me, I've looked. 

I do have memories though.  

I also have love. Love for friends who were there and friends who weren't. Love for people I don't know and won't ever meet. For New York and its throbbing, wounded, but irrepressible heart. 

* Photograph by Leonard Freed, copyright Leonard Freed/Magnum Photos.  

Decorating discord

There's been a lot of trying top make our house pretty recently, with not a lot of success.  First we were trying to make it pretty to sell it (pretty, but no danger of being described as interesting) and now we're trying to make it pretty so that we will enjoy being trapped  living here. 

The problem is we're slobs. We also threw out almost everything when we thought we would be moving into a shoe box in London. Also we never really had many things we loved in the first place, just weird hand-me-downs and assorted crap that we seem to attract like magnets. We also have no money (hello giant roof bill) to buy things we do love. But mostly we're slobs.  Which means our house will never look like Zoe's. Which makes me sad. 

Of course I'm also hampered by N's allergy to (in no particular order and not exclusively) knick knacks, collections of knick knacks, collections of anything, Cath Kidston fabrics, chairs that look good but aren't "comfortable", typographic art work (he's dyslexic, they make his head hurt) and objects that suggest the 1970s. Or 60s. 

He's not keen on the 50s either. 

He does however let me keep the rabbit indoors and will cycle to asda for ginger beer when I NEED a Jamaican Mule.  So I think I'll keep him.

*photos of Zoe's home by Zoe and via her blog, Conversation Pieces and The Seventy Tree.  

* and you've seen her wedding to the super-sweet Neil, who doesn't have allergies to nice things, right?

peonies and.

Thought process: 

1. I'm bored.
2. My blog is boring.
3. I wonder how much attention anyone pays?
4. I like polarbears.
5. Hey! PolarBEARS is similar to PolarOIDS.
6. That's cool.

(the answer to #3 is anywhere between 2 weeks and 3 months.)

by woodcum

the last day.

On our last day in London we went to Kew Gardens. Notice how none of my pictures are of plants.  (The plants there are very nice though.) Instead we enjoyed what we knew would be our last lazy day together as a family for Quite Some Time. We walked and we talked, we carried Ammie who was Very Unhappy. We spotted planes (not hard, they fly 8 inches over your head every 3 bloody minutes), we admired eucalyptus and grass, fishes and crabs, we rolled and we lay and we delighted in a lack of dog poo and cigarette butts. We ate left over anniversary cake from Konditor and Cook, we rolled our eyes at the old people who were extraordinarily mean.  We smelled the roses and chased the peacocks, climbed spiralling staircases and looked down on a jungley world. 

 (photos by both of us.)

west london.

West London. 

Ella would like to know what the deal is and why someone doesn't do something about all those sodding aeroplanes