Wednesday 15 August 2012

Window on Wednesday

this picture was taken a couple of years in Montague, Cape, South Africa…on holiday with the new love of my life who is now my husband….

….very fond memories….

Friday 10 August 2012

Space vs. Home?

….reading Jude’s post on space has got me thinking about home…an elusive space for me…

I think I was born a nomad..I was always on the move when I was young… even when I wasn't..in my youth I travelled in my mind, through books and documentary programs…my feet itched as my mind wandered to destinations beyond my reach…but life, as I chose it, kept me chained to a home…

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…this is where my wanderlust began in 1968…the garden was expansive….. and….. we had a swimming pool…my imagination ran riot…I also learned to ride a bicycle in this garden (beyond the house we had half an acre of ground)…for the first time we had animals…two dogs…Lassie (an Alsatian) and Twinkle (a Pointer)….i watched this house grow from the ground…to me this was “our dream home”….how wrong could a family be…….my mother left this house….without so much as a goodbye…my life was turned upside-down…my father burned all my childhood memories on the “heap” at the far end of the garden…saving an envelope filled with guilt memories which he sent to my grandmother (my mother’s mother)….at least that’s what I think…because years later going through old photographs in my mothers new house with her new family…i came across this and other pictures…i took them and for a long time brooded over them….looking for “the dream home” that she shattered on the day she left….

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…but looking at the house then and now (by courtesy of Google earth)…life moves on and looking at this has made me realise….it is about flipping time i did too….sometimes one needs to see it in pictures….I'm that kind of person….

this is not home…this is not my home space….

(mmm something just occurred to me…my father made security gates for the house and once they were erected i remember a conversation he had with a fellow neighbour in the local supermarket…the neighbour had commented that our house now looked like “Fort Knox”….i wonder what he would make of all the barbed wire on the gate and fence today)

a break in the rain….

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Aberdeen is visible again…clean…sparkly…looking like a new pin….

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just look at this day….one can hardly believe that yesterday it was so dark in my studio, I had to have the light on…the window is open today…the sound of the gardeners busy in the garden is bombarding my eardrums…they are cutting the grass. I always wait to smell the sweet smell of freshly cut grass….but am always disappointed because there is no smell at all…

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this is a jasmine plant…plenty of flowers but no fragrance not even in the evening…just look how the gardener has hacked it with his machete…no matter how many times I tell them not to touch it this is what they do…defiance! The consolation is that in a month that will have grown back with interest so I don’t let it bother me….too much….anymore….!

Wednesday 8 August 2012

Window on a very wet Wednesday….

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…..view from the window of my “studio”….

It started to rain last night and has not stopped….Aberdeen is cloaked in a shroud of rain…those are burglar bars not prison bars…although sometimes…like today….I feel imprisoned….

….241 days to Beijing….

Wednesday 1 August 2012