« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »
January 31, 2006
Great books...
It was my new year’s resolution to have three books on the go at any one time; a novel, a short story collection or anthology and a non-fiction of some sort. My God I think this is the first resolution in a long time that has taken me to the end of January, although admittedly I did pick an easy one, as it was something I was more or less doing anyway and simply wanted to make official. As a side note I have also started jotting down the name of books in the back of my diary as I complete them. This all started when I couldn’t remember if I had read certain books or not. Ah! You may laugh at my senility but have you read Oliver Twist or do you simply know the story inside out from various screen adaptations and so on? Difficult one isn’t it!
Although of course noting down books now will not help me remember if I read Oliver Twist many years ago but it might help me in my octogenarian years when I’m there in the old dear’s home (or as the current government would have it – on the factory line) trying to recall if I read Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth or not.
See how after two paragraphs I meander this post round to topic. I will be able to say, ‘Oh yes I read that book at the beginning of 2006 when I was a mere spring chicken,’ because, yes you have guessed it, Labyrinth is my novel choice at the present moment in time. The novel is great but I think I’m in love with the website even more. What with the computer still not working properly, I haven’t managed to explore fully but I can see lots about the inspirations behind the book and mega pages of helpful creative writing tips. But by far my favourite part of the site is Bookfriends, where you send in your favourite ten books and surf around finding who has similar tastes to you, all sorts of people have already done it so far, Tony Benn, Andrew Motion, A.L. Kennedy...
Me? Well I’m still working on mine. As there are so many I don’t want to leave out should I restrict myself to one book per author? Even so, my lists of favourite books usually end up rather narrow in scope, consisting of mainly women authors writing in the 19th and early 20th century and I find myself resisting the temptation to slip in an up to the minute book, just to show that I’m on the ball.
But no, this is a list of my favourite books and not a carefully constructed sample of everything I’ve ever read, so come back Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte all is forgiven.
Something tells me I’m fretting over this a little too much.
So tell me, what would be in your top ten?
Posted by purple elephant at 09:54 PM |
January 26, 2006
We have been 'improved'!
I’m wondering if there is a blog somewhere in the vastness of this blogosphere that concentrates entirely on ranting about public transport. I can see the categories over at Blog Explosion, Political Blogs, Mummy Blogs, Food Blogs and Why I Wish I Didn’t Ever Have to Leave My House Blogs. If there is not such a category then Purple Elephant’s Corner is well on its way to being the first but then I do spend a lot of time on Public Transport, which of course means that I spend twice as much time waiting for Public Transport.
We have brand new busses and boy are they all shiny and pretty! We are now blessed with double deckers which means that you can fit twice as many people on them and also they have access for prams and wheelchairs (although of course never both at the same time) oh and not forgetting the nice big computerised screens that tell you where they are going, Mr. Lucky Driver no longer has to tire his arm at the end of the line in order to wind the numbers.
Oh and did I mention the seat covers? We have an exciting new design! Instead of boring old putrid brown stripes, we now have a rather fetching royal blue and dark blue geometric splodge, with an orange overriding pattern which resembles a waning crescent moon projectile vomiting a 1980s Pacman.
And best of all, Cambridge now has a London complex and has decided to spend stupid amounts of money on the bus stops, installing those screens that helpfully inform you of the location of the next bus. Except London obviously has much more money to spend than Cambridge. The stop outside the school permanently indicates that the 09:57 is currently at Crwlnd Wy; the 10:07 is at Flbrn Tescos and the 10: 17 is at Chrch Lne; even at 19:14 in the evening.
Oh and if you are partially sighted you too can be taunted by the bus timetable which insists that a bus will be here every ten minutes, that work of great British fiction is now available in Braille or large print.
And to grind salt in the wounds, scattered around the town are these posters, boasting of how much they have spent on these ‘improvements’, as if they have dug deep into their own pockets out of the utter goodness of their hearts. They increased the fares months ago, first they put up the single fares and said ‘but look the price of a Dayrider remains the same!’ and then a couple of months later they increased the price of a Dayrider and said ‘but look the price of a single remains the same!’
So excuse me but WHO has paid for these ‘improvements.’
I swear to God they should have me on the team, I would have simply re-printed the timetables, announcing that the bus will now be coming every 30 minutes instead of 10 and then allowed everything else to stay the same. Then on the rare occasion that the bus turns up within 20 minutes, there will be cause for celebration rather than complaint.
I could have saved us all so much money.
Posted by purple elephant at 06:02 PM |
January 25, 2006
Enough to make a feminist cry,
Jodie Marsh in the Guardian,
On the Big Brother House;
"(full of) the most fake, hideous people I've ever met"
Present company excluded then?
On Books;
‘For me it's really nice escapism just to lay back and read about a beach house in America and it's hot and they've got butlers serving their drinks. That's what a book is: escaping the dull, boring, monotony of everyday life.’
But never let it improve our souls, or bridge the class divide eh?
On Feminism;
"…feminist bitch women … who don't like glamorous girls who don't like intelligent women - they want to be the one and only intelligent powerful woman, and they don't like anyone who can challenge that or rival that."
Is it the ‘glamorous girls’ or the ‘feminist bitch women’ who ‘don’t like intelligent women’? I’m confused.
On Equality;
"On the one hand people say, 'Oh, women have equal rights now, women can be as powerful as men and do the same jobs as men', but we're still not allowed to talk about sex, 'cos that's unladylike. It's like that old thing, if a man has slept with loads and loads of women, he's a stud. But if a woman has slept with loads of boys, she's a slag. Well, why? Why? What makes a man a stud 'cos he's pulled loads of women? And what makes me a slag 'cos I've slept with more than 10 men?”
Jodie Darling put your clothes back on, that’s not what they meant when they told you to burn your bra.
Posted by purple elephant at 11:40 AM |
January 20, 2006
From kids to animals with only a day in-between..
I was just watching the coverage of the bottle-nosed whale travelling up the Thames and apart from one woman and a small child, the audience seemed to be treating it all as a big joke. ‘It must be a bloke as it hasn’t asked for directions,’ laughed one woman.
For a whale to travel so far off course, it is likely that it was already weak and sick and it’s chances of survival decrease the more time it spends the wrong side of the estuary.
I’m with the kid who looked a little distraught and said that she hoped he would find his real home soon. If he doesn’t then Littleone and I will not be able to read one of our favourite bedtime stories, The Snail and the Whale, with a dry eye.
And while we are on the subject of animals, it turns out that the coat Pete Burns was wearing on Big Brother was not made out of gorillas (as he boasted) but endangered colobus monkeys instead.
Nice.
Posted by purple elephant at 07:40 PM |
January 18, 2006
Shameless Mummy Post...
I can go as gooey over babies and toddlers as the next person and of course I loved that stage of my daughter’s life, cooing over every stage of her development; the first smile, first steps and first word (‘doggy’ but not ‘mummy’ bah!) etc. I always knew however that as much as I did my best, I was far better equipped to mother an older child, so secretly and almost guiltily I have always looked forward to the day when we would be able to hold down a semi intelligent conversation and share stories with slightly more character development and plot than ‘Cute rabbit gets lost, cute rabbit gets found again…’
I’m pleased to say that the time is arriving. I’m rather impressed with the extent to which Littleone has developed since just before Christmas. Of course we still have the tantrums about what seem to be silly little trivialities but these moments are largely balanced out by her mounting intelligence and interest in the world. She comes home from school, bursting with questions (‘Is my head made out of metal, plastic, wood or fabric?’) and humorous misinformation (‘Boy cats have all the boy kittens and girl cats have the girl kittens.’) and is continually being praised by her teachers for her reading progress.
I am also assuming that by now, she is developing personality traits, which will largely hold for life. She is confident and polite, without being one of those showy brats and has an amazing but slightly surreal imagination. For this reason I’ve started to take her to a kids’ storytelling and role-playing class on a Monday evening and she returns vibrant and satisfied.
Oh and when she grows up she wants to be ‘a Kate Humble,’ by which I assume she means that she aspires to present TV programmes about Nature and Science. Could do a lot worse, I suppose.
There is more but I must stop now before this turns into a bragging post, which wasn’t my intention. I think what I’m tying to say is that I’ve been waiting for this moment with anticipation and I like who she has become. Can we just hold it like this for a while?
Right I’m off to investigate a suspicious crash from upstairs.
Posted by purple elephant at 06:18 PM |
January 17, 2006
Sex Offenders
This whole row over List 99 and certain so-called ‘sex offenders’ being released to work in schools, is disturbing me somewhat and probably for different reasons than most parents.
As a human being with a certain degree of rationality I am concerned that there can be a ‘one size fits all’ melting pot into which anyone who has ever had any connection with the vague term ‘sexual offence’ is bundled (even if they weren’t convicted) and nobody seems sure if they are or are not clear to work in schools. And then when they do get a job with children, their face is splattered all over the paper alongside such accusations as ‘child abuser’ and ‘paedophile,’ thus leaving their identity open so that tabloid readers can do their dirty work. If either man concerned remains out of hospital for the entire week, I will be surprised.
Don’t get me wrong, I am aware that where children are concerned we cannot be too careful but I also feel strongly that we need to stop for a moment, take some deep breaths and curb the hysteria.
Firstly we need to remind ourselves that the register would indeed contain someone who abducted a 6 year old from the bath in her own home and rightly so, but alongside would exist someone who had a relationship with a 15 year old, 25 years ago; or someone who owned a computer that he just happened to share with others, on which child pornography had been viewed.
Far be it for me to comment on individual cases for I don’t know all the facts and this is precisely my point. We need to take a step back and assess the scope of the issue before we start waving our fingers about, assuming that we are only days away from another Soham.
Which leads me onto my second point, the widely known fact that most acts of sexual abuse (involving children or adults) are completed by someone the victim knows, usually a family member or friend. Could it be then that we are using this whole furore about teaching as a scapegoat for the fact that perhaps we should be more cautious when a little closer to home? It is, after all a lot more comfortable to get our knickers in a twist about the fact that Little Johnny’s teacher might have once fallen in love with someone a year too soon, than it is to question whether we should be sending him to Uncle Harry’s for tea.
We must not forget after all, that Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman knocked on Ian Huntley’s door, NOT because he was the caretaker at their school but because his partner was their teacher. Quick then, perhaps we have a whole new group for the sex offenders register; ‘Those who have ever had a relationship with anyone on the List,’ which would turn the whole thing into a logistical snowball.
There would be no teachers left and then we would have to keep our kids at home which statistically, as we have already established, is altogether more dangerous.
Posted by purple elephant at 11:24 AM |
January 14, 2006
Missing pages….
I picked up a copy of Margaret Atwood’s Wilderness Tips from a charity shop and now I’m half way through I’ve noticed that thirty-odd pages are missing (thirty have been printed twice and it misses out the pages that are supposed to be there.) This makes four out of the ten short stories incomplete. I’m lucky enough not to have come across this problem before but I’m not sure what to do. My first reaction was to slip the whole copy into the paper recycling but this seems wasteful (that is a distortion of the truth, in fact I could not bring myself to do it because it felt like I was pulping a child who simply had a limb missing.)
What are my options?
1) I could pass it on through Bookcrossing or a charity shop with a note in the front explaining which stories are incomplete.
2) I could search for another copy through the library or Ebay and photocopy the missing pages and insert them in the book and then pass it on through Bookcrossing or charity.
3) Or I could pulp it convincing myself that it will be reincarnated as a copy of the Guardian (This last part is necessary because I would lose sleep in fear that my Margaret Atwood might become a Sun or Daily Mail.)
What would you do in this situation and how would you feel coming across a version of 1) or 2) in a charity shop or park bench? Would you pick it up or would you feel slightly cheated by a dud copy? If I’m honest I would probably pass it by as I’m slightly fussy about the condition of books (I don’t mind them being ‘lived in’ but I don’t like them to be trashed) unless the book is difficult to come by and then I’m not overly concerned. This is not the case with Wilderness Tips as you can pick up complete copies on Ebay for under a quid.
Over to you……
Posted by purple elephant at 09:08 AM |
January 13, 2006
Dentists
My first Dentist was an evil tyrant who obviously had an inherent hatred of children, or perhaps an inherent hatred of humankind. If you didn’t spend at least 7 hours brushing and flossing after every meal, or had ever been within a four-mile radius of the sweet aisle of the supermarket, then you were a worthless slob who was wasting his precious time.
For my brother and myself the sound of his drill was a welcome relief from his constant metaphorical drilling into our brain.
I moved out of that area many years ago but my fear of Dentists has not yet subsided. I still expect my new Dentist to bend down and snarl in my ear, ‘You had a piece of cake on your birthday didn’t you? Don’t bother denying it, I can tell.’
Anyway to cut a long story short, yesterday I had to take Littleone to the Emergency Dentist and would you believe it she actually treated her like a human being? Asking Littleone all the questions first instead of talking to me as if she wasn’t there, ‘When did your tooth start hurting?’ ‘How many teeth have you got? Shall we count them?’ etc.
And then she explained her procedure every step of the way ‘I’m just putting the gloves on, do you like the colour?’ and showed her every implement before she put it in her mouth, constantly telling her what a brave girl she was.
It didn’t take much effort and as a result Littleone can walk into future appointments with her head held high. If only my childhood dentist had thought a little more about his actions and then maybe 25 years later I wouldn’t still be sitting in the corner quivering and trying not to let it show, so that I don’t pass on my own fears to my daughter.
Not that there’s any chance of that, when we got out of the door she said,
‘I like the Dentist. When can we come again?’
Posted by purple elephant at 06:58 PM |
January 11, 2006
Bored of Board Games?
Then maybe the Buddhawheel is for you....
Me? I can't even cope with Scrabble.
Posted by purple elephant at 04:47 PM |
January 10, 2006
George Galloway in the Big Brother House…
I know I know before we all snigger and scoff and start asking ourselves what happened to British politics, I do feel there is a serious issue here.
If I lived in Bethnal Green I’d be more than slightly peeved that my MP is locked up for what could be three weeks on some sort of pointless, ,self promoting exhibitionist ramble, he’s not exactly accessible to his constituents right now is he? To me this is the most important part of being an MP, I used to live in Barbara Follett’s constituency and whilst I don’t agree with her on every issue, I will always have respect (with a small ‘R’ take heed o’ ‘Gorgeous’* George) for the woman because if you made an appointment you could usually get to talk to her face to face before the weeks was out.
Second thoughts, this is George Galloway we are talking about. If I lived in Bethnal Green perhaps I’d welcome the 3 weeks of peace.
Oona King may have been pro-war but at least she had some dignity and self-respect (again with a small ‘R’, etc etc etc.)
UPDATE; On researching it seems that I’m not the only one complaining. The irony is that if Bethnal Green wants George back at work then they’d probably do better playing the game and paying hideous phone line charges to vote him out of the house, than signing the online petition. If you can’t beat them join them, I guess.
* The author would like to make it clear that she is at this point resorting to popular expression. Under no circumstances does she find the man attractive, even if he does have facial hair.
Posted by purple elephant at 09:38 AM |
January 09, 2006
The Prize for the Christmas Decoration Left Behind After Everything Has Been Put up in the Loft Goes to.....
Drumroll please...
1) A pair of tiny Christmas Tree candle holders left on the shelf..
2) Littleone's stocking just found under the bed.
I think that's it...
How about you?
Posted by purple elephant at 06:52 PM |
January 08, 2006
Time.....
For a second there I couldn’t work out where all this time was coming from. I seem to have made a suspiciously significant dent on my ‘to read’ book pile, (Orlando, Rebecca etc) found the time to cook some non processed hearty dinners (Please be impressed that tomorrow I’m planning a Lebanese Feast, is it significant that I just typed 'feat' rather than 'feast'?) caught up with some sleep, planned some improvements and new scenes for my NaNo novel and I’ve even found time to watch a bit of TV (Three Men and a Boat, Balderdash and Piffle and rather embarrassingly I have been running up the phone bill trying to win ten grand on Deal or No Deal) and catch up with some stuff I videoed over the Christmas break. (Mrs Miniver down; Under the Greenwood Tree and Gandhi still to go.) The only thing I haven’t done that I’ve been meaning to do since before Christmas, is sort out the toys in Littleone’s room, throwing away all the broken crap and giving away the stuff she has grown out of, so that there is actually room for all the new stuff but who can blame me that is a heinous task, in my to do list it appears just below ‘extracting my eye balls with a white-hot poker.’
For weeks I’ve been wondering what the hell is going on. Have they secretly slipped a few extra hours into the day without telling me? Has Littleone worked out how to spend time in the corner, amusing herself? Or have I finally after 30 years achieved the ultimate efficiency of multi tasking?
And then I worked it out; it’s the Internet. Ever since I killed the desktop we have been working on this prehistoric laptop, which is tediously slow and cannot cope with complicated graphics, some sites are unreadable and others take weeks to load. So I have been limiting my Internet access to once a day and then only the bare essentials. I don’t think I realised until now how much of my day was spent ‘just checking’ this or that or ‘I wonder if I can get that cheaper on ebay’ etc etc. I think in recent weeks THIS is where I’ve been saving my time.
So I have mixed feelings about getting a brand new computer this week, part of me is salivating with excitement and another can’t help viewing it as some sort of ball and chain. There is some research I need to do, and I’m looking forward to visiting more than a couple of blogs a day and I would like to be able to view photos properly, as well as upload my own again but this extra time has left me feeling a little more fulfilled, so something tells me I’ll be cutting down on the mindless unimportant stuff (just as soon as I’ve discovered what that was) that seemed to be taking up hours of my day.
The question is will I be able to resist the temptation of checking for the hundredth time if I’ve been outbid on that oh-so vital Ebay item, once logging on is made easy again?
Posted by purple elephant at 06:40 PM |
January 06, 2006
Dear God, not another leadership contest...
Right so just say that there was this leader of this political party and everyone thought he was not looking well and feared he may be seriously ill, just say he was asked time and time again if he had cancer and he denied it each time.
Can you see where I'm going with this?
So the months roll on and eventually he admits that he did have cancer after all but he is now thankfully on the mend.
So if some power hungry members of his shadow cabinet then came forward and said that he was not to be trusted because he had lied about his health and that he should therefore step down, would you wonder about their lack of humanity?
Me too and quite frankly I cannot see the difference, drink problems are as much an illness as anything else.
But then again maybe this is why I'm not in politics, or party politics at least.
Posted by purple elephant at 03:57 PM |
January 05, 2006
That’s that all over for another year...
Well all the decorations are down and carefully placed in their respective bags and boxes. I was going to do it yesterday but Littleone wept so bitterly asking why Christmas can’t last all year long, so I left them up for another day, hoping that she’ll be in the back-at-school routine today and she’ll come home and won’t even notice they’re gone. Well I can hope.
I’m relaxing with a cuppa herbal right now and surveying the room wondering which lonesome item will be discovered down the back of the sofa, or under the bed seconds after it’s all been stashed away in the lock-up for another year. I’ll keep you posted.
For me taking down the Christmas Decorations is more of an event than putting them up, it’s a kind of emotional roller coaster, neither more pleasurable, nor pitiful, simply more reflective, I guess.
I think it’s because I dislike drawn out goodbyes and having the decorations hanging around till Twelfth night seems like just that, morbid, and garish like having a coffin hanging around in the front room until the funeral. If it was down to me I’d have it all done on January 1st so that we are ready to move on and face the New Year, clutter and baggage free.
What springs to mind first of all, is an already fading memory of that time, not so long ago (it just feels like a lifetime) when we were fired with anticipation, pulling out these very decorations from these very boxes and placing a string of tinsel here, a snowman there, the wreath on the door; and I remember that this was the first year where Littleone got really excited, asking such questions as ‘How will Santa get in if we haven’t got a chimney?’ and I wonder how many more years will be like this before she walks through that door and grunts ‘Santa? No-one believes in him anymore.’
Which then sets me off thinking about the future, where will we be in 11 months time when we brush off the dust and yank these decorations out again? Will things be so different, or will it all be the same? Would some major life-changing event have befallen us, or will we be plodding along, same as ever?
So here I am sitting with a soon-to-be filled gap where the Christmas tree once stood. (At least we have a reusable tree, when I was a kid I would become mournful over the death of the tree and now I’ve left home I can’t bring myself to have a real one as a result. I blame Hans Christian Andersen.) The room seems lighter, fresher somehow, ready for another year.
Posted by purple elephant at 12:02 PM |
January 04, 2006
So how was your day?
It started in BHS trying to change a pair of boots that were too small for Littleone, they didn't have her size and couldn't say if they were going to continue the line or not, so offered a credit note instead (for the sale price though) as I didn't have the receipt. That went better than expected.
So we are on the way out when Littleone sees this coat she likes and she does need a new winter coat and it is 12 quid, only a pound more than the credit note I'm holding in my hand. IN MY HAND that is. So just before we try any one I say to her,
'Let me just put the credit note in my bag, so I don't lose it. I know I'll put it inside my notebook so it doesn't get creased.' Yes I said INSIDE MY NOTEBOOK.
So we find a coat that fits (aged 7-8- BHS sizes come up a little small methinks)and take it to the checkout queue where I get the credit note out ready but I cannot find the blasted thing. I have my whole bag out there in the queue; my purse, my shopping list, my copy of Rebecca, various envelopes and yes, I'm not stupid you know, I flicked through every page OF THAT GODDAMN NOTEBOOK. I even went back to where the coats were and checked on the floor and then I went through the whole bag once more INCLUDING THE NOTEBOOK.
By which time Littleone was nearly in tears because, she really liked the boots, she really liked the coat and that evil mother lost her christmas pressie.
Shall we repeat that? I lost my daughter's Christmas presie.
Of course we stood in the queue again and I went through the whole motherfucking bag once more INCLUDING THE NOTEBOOK and then I paid for the coat out of my own money.
So then I go to the Co-Op Bank to pay the Co-Op credit card bill WITH CASH and the woman tells me that it will take 4 days to clear and therefore I will get a late payment charge.
'No' I say 'It's a Co-Op Credit Card and I'm paying with cash and it's not due until Friday.'
'But it takes 4 days to clear.'
'What cash?'
'Unless you've got a Co-Op bank account and then you could pay the cash into the bank account and transfer it over.'
'I haven't got a Co-Op Bank account but I've got a Co-Op credit card. Look I'm paying it off!'
'No it has to be a bank account.'
'Well this must be a new thing then. I've paid my bill on the day before and I've not been charged.'
'Nope it's not a new thing. It's been going since I've been working here.'
'But I've never been charged before.'
'You must have done.'
No, don't you think I might have noticed (and therefore learned my lesson)if I had been charged all this time? And besides she only looked about sixteen so I wonder how long she has been working there.
And then when I got home (after waiting 1/2 an hour for a bus) I caught up with the British Gas man who then saw me come indoors, so when he got to our place, I couldn't get away with pretending to be out. Cheeky so-and-so wants to look at my bills so her can tell me how much I can save with British Gas, which I find rude to say the least. I mean you don't ever get Tesco's knocking on the door saying,
'How much did you pay for that coat? We could have done it a lot cheaper.'
So then I go upstairs where Mr PE is working, and he has only gone and shaved off his beard, without asking my permission! I've never seen him without facial hair in the whole 5 1/2 years I've known him.
Needless to say he is growing it again.
Oh and I've found the BHS credit note, yes you've guessed it IN MY NOTEBOOK.
Posted by purple elephant at 08:19 PM |
January 02, 2006
My First Rant of the Year....
'You must be the change you wish to see in the world' Mahatma Gandhi.
If I had told you a year ago that the leader of the Conservative party would be quoting Gandhi in his new year's message, would you have split your sides laughing?
I am also bitterly disappointed in the idiotic rise in train fares, in most cases well over the rate of inflation. As someone who tries her godamn hardest not to own a car, the cost of public transport in this country is something that really gets up my nose. Especially as I've had the pleasure of the services in both Denmark and Belgium, for much less than half the price they manage to run on time and remain clean and in good working order. Where exactly to we go wrong?
Perhaps it's got something to do with that million quid spent on London's tasteless ten minute firework display at new year and then as if to rub salt into injury they then paid Clare Balding God knows how much to prattle on for another ten minutes how 'moving' it all was.
Shall we ask those in London struggling to find shelter for the night; or those lucky enough to be rotting away in refugee camps the world over; or those who live in fear of real explosions outside their window every day of their fear filled lives, just how moving it was to watch the privileged wrap explosives in ten pound notes and set light to the whole fucking lot?
Go on I dare you.
Phew!
*wipes brow*
Posted by purple elephant at 09:18 AM |
January 01, 2006
Happy New Year!
Whoah where did that last week go? More to the point where did 2005 go? I haven't even had a chance to make any resolutions yet, hell I might just recycle last year's. Oh and do I win a prize for the most original blog post title of the day? Thought not.
Spent the morning wandering around Cambridge taking photos for the Wheel of The Year Project, if you don't know what I'm talking about then check out the link and have a go, there's still time, well kind of.
The thing is I was being my usual indecisive self, I had so many ideas and couldn't narrow them down to just twelve so I took a whole film instead. Sit up and take note dear readers of Purple Elephant's Corner for here is where you are going to help me. Sometime over the next week or so I'm going to get the film developed and post the whole lot over at Flikr. Then sometime before the 31st January I want you, yes you to vote for your 12 favourite photos, or rather those you think should be taken again for the rest of the year. Oooh it's just like those reality game show type things....
All we have to do now is sit back and wait for Mr Boots photo processing to do his job, oh and there is the small problem of the computer - I probably won't be able to do any scanning until next week when we will be finally hooked up properly again.
So until then I shall tease you with a few of my ideas, I took one of Littleone next to her height chart, another of the two books I'm reading right now next to the newpaper headline, loads of the river, some around the deserted city centre, a few of Midsummer Common oh and an ugly building site.
Everywhere was deserted and empty and it was also pissing down with rain, so it's going to be rather bleak this month but I'm hoping this will be a fantastic contrast with the summer photos which are going to be bright sun and blue skies. Oh yes they are.
Posted by purple elephant at 06:41 PM |