And still busy

Not content with doing things to the house on Saturday, we continued on Sunday, and painted the bottom half of the front of the house.  It has come out a slightly paler green than perhaps we wanted - in fact if you don't look at it next to white paint it looks pretty white, but I think when the new windows are in with their white frames, and we have repainted the front door it will all look very smart.

So yesterday we had a break from all this hard work and went to the Wetlands trust in Llanelli which we have been saying we would do for about a year now, and really enjoyed it.

Today I have done housework.  Oh joy.

Bank holiday

I came down to Pembs on the train because I didn't fancy the drive on the Bank Holiday weekend.  That was SUCH a good idea.  There was torrential rain which slowed the already slow traffic and the M4 ground to a halt.  I watched it on the news and was so pleased I had not been in that jam.

Today we pottered round St Davids in the morning and had a scary afternoon while I held the ladders and Brian went up on the roof. Even second hand I get scared going up ladders.  However I make very good ballast at the bottom of the ladder. 

I have been very disorganised in August, and must get organised next week to get some of the things on my list done.

I must deliver Caroline's birthday present (I am always late)
I must phone the double glazing man about the blown window in Nic's room
I must phone and get quotes for replacing the guttering not at ground level (ie most of it).

Adam is on holiday in a couple of weeks so could be home to let these people in if I get my act together and get them organised to come to do things.

Must, must must!!!

DVD success

I have been playing with the software to put my photos and small movies onto dvd over the last week or so.  After a few abortive efforts I can now edit my films (such as they are) and putting the photos together onto a dvd and successfully burn it.

Hurray.

However my voice overs on all the little bits of video I took on our holiday in Scotland a couple of years ago sound absolutely hilarious when watched in quick succession - I keep calling views a panorama for one thing.  If I am going to continue doing this I will have to put more thought into the voice overs I do - Brian and I were in stitches watching them last night.

I don't think I am likely to put anyone out of business as a film producer any time soon

People dying in tents

There are people dying in tents from fumes - using barbqs in the tent, or having gas fires running in the tent with no ventilation apparently.  How very sad, but also - I can't help thinking - stupid.  Surely people should realise that these things aren't for use inside a tent?

One of the kids had some friends visiting and they went to the beach.  Anywhere in the UK is only 80 miles or less from the sea, but one of the friends - not a stupid girl - had to have tides explained to her in some detail.  How can people not know that you have to be careful of tides when swimming in the sea?    Is it because people go on holiday to the Med where there aren't tides?

Madness.

Gift horse and shed

 This is Nicky's gift horse.  His stable name is Ben and he is better qualified than she is for shows.  She took him to the Vale of Glamorgan show and he did very well.

 He makes the jumps look easy - there is a really good picture as Nic's facebook picture at the moment

This is me as assistant shed erector person.  We recently built a shed in B's garden - and here we are in the middle of it.  It is now nearly completed, just waiting for the windows.

We really know how to have fun!!

Famous grandsons...

I have just watched a really good programme about Lucien Freud (grandson of Sigmund) which was both an excellent tv programme and very interesting  as well.  There was no intrusive music, no jiggly camerawork, no stupid commentary - it was called 'Sitting for Lucien Freud' and it was people - mostly friends and family - who had sat for him talking about what it was like, what he was like, and about the portraits.

Numerous offspring were there - Wikipedia lists 13, many of whom were on the programme - and although a distant and unconventional father, his paintings and his obvious commitment to them was apparent throughout.   

The portraits show how much of the person can be shown by a painting in the way a photo can't.  Especially interesting were portraits of one of the daughters done at different times in her life, and which showed how life was treating her and how she was reacting to it.  The Duchess of Devonshire had one done when she was in her 30s and said - very perceptively I thought - that she thought she looked more like it now, in her 80s.

He was clearly a genius, as was his grandfather, and numerous offspring are creative being painters, writers, broadcasters etc.  His brother (Clement) was famous as well.  Something very strong in the genes in that family.  The other odd thing was how alike the daughters on the programme looked even  though they had different mothers.  A bit weird actually

Now the Prom from last Saturday is on and Gabriel Prokofiev is having a piece performed for turntables and orchestra which Brian has put the sound mute on because he can't stand it.  The rest of the concert will be his grandfather Sergei who was a brilliant composer. 

Nature versus nurture?  Who can tell?

Early night

I fell asleep at 9.15 last night on the sofa, so went to bed.

Still tired today, but not ridiculously so.

I saw one famous person at the show, but as it is local there are lots of familiar faces, so only put her face to a name later - Eve Myles from Torchwood was there with her baby in a buggy. 

Today has been wet and horrible so we were lucky with the weather. 

I shall now go and sort out my bills for the rest of the evening.

Showtime

It didn't rain.

The dongle worked (mostly) so we had internet and could show people the websites we wanted to show them, and had quite a few people who were genuinely interested.

Ben came 5th and was very good in the working hunter class.

Very good day.

I am really tired.

Off to the show

I am off to the Vale of Glamorgan Show tomorrow.  The Vale Council has a marquee and we have a stand where we are demonstrating some of our online systems.  We are concentrating on 3 of them, the new eBook web site, a language learning system, and a driving theory system -  interactive hazard tests and such  like.  I have my fingers crossed that the system is going to be working tomorrow because the whole server crashed this afternoon and put the whole library system out of action.  I have spent the last week chasing our IT officer to make sure I have a working 3G system for the show site, and I will be really peeved if the main system crashes. 

Also Nic is riding her gift horse in the working hunter class and I am skiving off from library duties to be a groom for half an hour.

I am hoping for dry weather. 

But I am taking wellies.

Ow

I went to sleep last night with no aching arms.

I woke up today with a really sore left arm.  Washing my hair was a real challenge, as is changing gear in the car.  WHAT did I do in my sleep to hurt my arm???

Birthday weekend

I had a very pleasant weekend.  On Saturday B and I went to see an exhibition of paintings by Sally Moore.  B used to teach her brother the guitar many years ago and got very friendly with the family.  He has a painting by Sally's father Leslie which was given to him by the artist, and stayed in touch with Sally's mother until she died recently.  Simon is still playing the guitar too, so the teaching seems to have stuck.  It was a really interesting exhibition and you can see some of the pictures on the gallery website.  They are self portraits, some reworkings on her favourite classical paintings, but although hyper realistic they are also surreal. I really like them.  Out of our price range though.

We had lunch out, and later on dined in very  pleasantly. 

Sunday we had a visit from an ex student from AC who we have kept in touch with.  Beverly was back for her 20 year reunion (!).  She has some exciting news because is changing career completely and going to go back to college to train as a vicar - in Cambridge as it happens.  We will have to make sure to see more of them while they are there over the next two years, because they could go anywhere after that.

I am having less luck with creating dvds.  The bug I put into my computer when I downloaded something intended to clean it up has  mostly gone because I have reloaded the operating system and lots of the software, but the one that is still behaving very oddly is the one I am trying to use at the moment, which is the dvd burning software.   It is really annoying.  I shall continue to struggle with it this week, and if I can't sort it out I shall have to make an appointment with the Genius bar at the Apple shop and go and see one of the nice geeky young people to find out how to fix it. 

Our ebooks website for the libraries is now live, though not advertised yet.  We have training scheduled for the staff this week and next week, though as it is something people will do at home the library staff don't actually have to do anything, but they will get asked questions so need to know the answers.  Not least of those questions is - what can I download onto?  We knew from the start that Kindles don't work, but there are actually quite a few other things that don't because they can't read the Digital Rights Management software eg Blackberries and Nokia devices.  Lots of emails flying back and forward as we try to sort this out. 

We are also hoping to demonstrate this and two other online sites the library pays for at the Vale of Glamorgan Show next Wednesday, though getting dongles to run laptops is proving rather more complicated than I had forseen.  We have fingers and toes crossed at the moment.  Work is being busy.