Thomas did us proud!

 My son Thomas carrying the Olympic Torch and smiling all the way along 'his' section of Chatham High Street, Kent.

This was taken on the coach that was transporting Thomas to his allocated run.

The moment his torch was lit.

Karen was given permission to chaperone Thomas to help if his hand jolted off his wheelchair controller and getting him on and off the coach and here, helping him with the famous 'Torch kiss'). She had to wear all white and looked as though she was about to play a game of cricket - no her hair didn't catch fire! I like the caption Thomas' Grandma put to this picture on a Facebook page "Determination and Success".

I have lots more images to put up but Blogger tells me I have reached my 1GB free allocation for images so that will have to do for now and until I sort it out. The vicar of our church has another picture on his blog here.

Pink Elephants really do exist!

This Elephant Hawk-moth was a welcome visitor to my garden moth-trap this week.
I should have photographed its underside - it is bubble-gum pink!

NOT as intended.



Fellow blogger and fabulous artist Sonia suggested the grapes photograph from an earlier post would make a great watercolour composition so I decided to give it a go. Sonia would have produced a far better result. I set out to create a free flowing, spontaneous rendition but instead ended up painting each grape individually - why??! Using far too varied a palette of colours, these grapes all look so unrelated to each other. Hopefully I will learn by this, oh well.

Shed Haven

Meet 'The Shed' at the end of our garden. It is of course fully wheelchair accessible and serves as garden room, art studio, home cinema, wildlife centre (complete with nest-box-cam), music room, reading retreat, there is even a sofa bed for a sleep-over. However, tonight it served another other purpose...

Here is a clue - last years grapes trying to ripen in the garden...

Yes you guessed it - 'Home Winery' where I spent a very pleasant evening bottling up a demijohn of grape wine and another of sloe wine while listening to my favourite composer featured on tonights ClassicFM concert - Elgar. They even played one of his delightful but little known "Shed Pieces"!! These were called 'Shed' after the shed at the back of the Elgar Music Shop where he and his friends rehearsed on Sunday afternoons. They used to meet regularly to play his latest chamber music written specially for them. They constituted two flutes, oboe, clarinet and Bassoon. Elgar later confessed to writing most of them during the Sunday sermons.