Show time

Last weekend, I had my first experience of one of the most British of things: the village show. One of my friends lives in a small village just outside Canterbury, and she was participating in their autumn village show. All the things you would expect to find at a village show were there -  tasty-looking cakes and biscuits:

Mince pies

flans:

Vegetable flan

floral displays:

Flowers

and of course giant vegetables:

Giant pumpkins

Giant marrows

My friend won several prizes and was runner-up overall. She’s very good at baking, and we were lucky enough to be able to eat the prize-winning goods afterwards. Yum.

PhotoHunt: Framed

I might have overdone the frames for this week’s theme!

The photo is the middle is a door at Canterbury Cathedral. The ones round the outside, starting at the top left and going clockwise are: the Heilandskirche in Sarcow (sorry website is in German), stonework on Rochester Cathedral, underneath that is my kitchen window, to the right of that is a chandelier and mirror in a friend’s wedding reception venue, under that is the door of the Ashmolean Musuem, then a view of the  bottom of the Berlin Television Tower through the window of Alexanderplatz Station. The two smaller photos are pictures of windows in British railway stations. The one on the bottom is at Paddington Station and the one on top of that is at St Pancras. The photo in the bottom left is a side door of Rochester Cathedral – I think there’s a proper name for this door, but I can’t remember what it is!

There are lots of other interpretations of this week’s theme at the PhotoHunt page.

An evening picture

Berlin

We went to Berlin for a wedding at the weekend. It’s a very beautiful city and the wedding was lovely. I’ve been spending a bit too much time messing about with Picasa today.

Summer solstice

I forgot it was the summer solstice yesterday, but I took these photos because the evening light was so nice. It never looks quite as good in photographs (or at least not my photographs), but still.

More photos of Oxford

It is a horrible, grey and wet day here today. I think the weather is affecting my brain, so today’s offering will not contain many words, but will mainly made up of more photos of an also rather grey and dark Oxford.

Entrance to the Covered Market from High Street

Pointy buildings

Leaves in the dark

Spring Harvest inadequately summarised

I went to Spring Harvest (which I keep rather vaguely describing to people as “a big Christian thing”) over the Easter weekend. I would write more about it, but I’m still processing the stuff I learned and experienced, so writing about it in public will have to wait, if indeed this ever happens. In summary, it was absorbing, exciting, fascinating, gripping, inspirational, interesting, intriguing, inviting, provocative, refreshing, stirring. (Guess who looked up ‘thought-provoking’ in a thesaurus?)  It was also a lot of fun and great to spend time with and get to know people from our church, plus some people we’d never met before.

Apart from this, we saw some interesting wildlife:

Who would have thought a weekend at Butlin’s could be so exciting?

Snowbound

Yesterday, I worked from home due to no trains running because of the snow. I can’t say that I did a full 7.5 hours work, but then I probably don’t do this when I’m actually in the Library of Doom either. At least I got some things done so I didn’t have to do them today. I also took the chance to take a couple of photos of my snowy surroundings:

The piles of snow in the park are people’s attempts to make very large snowmen! Other people were sledging and there were quite a few snowball fights going on! The snow can be fun and it looks pretty, but it’s not very easy to get around in. I’m afraid I’m not a very adventurous sort and I would rather not have to walk around on icy paths. I know, I’m such a wet blanket, but I find it quite scary.

The trains were working again today, although not at the normal times, which was rather confusing. I was a bit worried that we were going to get stranded halfway home. We were told to change trains so we all duly got off the train and went to the platform allocated to the train that was supposed to take us the rest of the way home. Worryingly, there was no news about when it was actually going to arrive! It was quite disconcerting not having any automated departures boards and not very much verbal information from the tannoy. Fortunately a train came quite soon and I got home alright in the end. Hopefully the trains will be running as normal tomorrow, as (sort of) promised by the railway man making the announcements on the train today.

Meanwhile, here are some ducks enjoying the snow yesterday:

And another unexpected visitor:

The sink and other Viking-related things

The sink in the picture is in the toilets at the Viking Museum at Borg on the Lofoten Islands in Norway. I took a photo of it because it was the biggest handbasin I’ve ever seen. Much more interestingly, the museum includes a reconstruction of a Viking hall. Unsurprisingly, it reminded me a lot of the kingdom of Rohan in film trilogy of The Lord of the Rings. Here are some more pictures I took while we were there (June 2007):

Goodbye, QE2

Due to having a husband and a father who are both rather fond of ships, I found myself spending most of yesterday afternoon and evening/night on a ship in Southampton harbour watching the final departure of the QE2 from British waters. It wasn’t exactly my idea of an enjoyable way to spend time, especially as I don’t like water or being cold and have very little interest in ocean-going vessels, but it was an unusual experience and possibly, on balance, not quite as bad as I expected it to be. Here are some photos of ships and other things: