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This week I spent a happy evening after work drafting a home-made calendar for next year.
I found when I moved in May that my wall calendar was one of the very few things I could not accommodate in any sensible (i.e. useable) way. There are no hooks on the walls, or nails in the walls, no picture rail, and nowhere to put up a pin board; so, nowhere to hang my calendar.
I bluetacked it to the wall, but it was too heavy, and kept dropping off with a crash at odd moments. Including the inevitable middle-of-the-night crash. Shriek, thrash about, sit up, bang head on cupboard. Bah, that's not on.
So I disemboweled it, and have been sticking up individual 1-month sheets. It works, in a rough and ready way, but when you've removed the staples and separated a calendar into individual sheets, sometimes the picture that comes with a month is rather unsuitable for that month (snowdrops in August and so forth). They're still lovely pictures, but it looks stupid sometimes.
I was thinking rather crossly that maybe I would have to manage without one next year. But then it hit me that I could make my own, and print it on light-weight paper that wouldn't crash to the floor. Ah-ha!
It took about ten minutes to do the grids and fill them in. And then I had a nice mooch in Google images, and one or two other places online, and made up a selection of pictures. I'm going to be alternating Greek islands (and beaches I want to swim from) with food, plants and handsome men. Since they're all loose-leaf pages, I can change the images around every week - even every day if I want. Or put up two or more at a time. I can mix and match; Renner with cherries, McRae with scarlet buckeye leaves, Stepanek with Antipaxos... Have Crete with the cherries. Thassos with daffodils. Renner with daffodils. Heavens, the possibilities are endless. Happy, silly Dent.
Luckily I don't have Photoshop, or the possibilities really would be endless.
If anyone would like to borrow the grids, and then make up their own image selection, let me know and I can copy them to you. It's easy, cheap and can be custom-made to your personal tastes. Maybe I should go into business? - the Dent patent loose-leaf customised pick-your-personal-porn calendar. What do you think?
Writing update; last night I wiped out the Big Evil Bad Guy. Oof, got there. Now I only have a couple of scene to do, and I'm done. Apart from the revisions. And typing up.
It's been a fun ride, and to my amusement I can see sequel possibilities. How daft is that?!
Showing posts with label beach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beach. Show all posts
Friday, 9 November 2012
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Oh England, my England...
How grey and damp it feels here, how cold, how flat.
The temperature on Thassos was about 33 degrees C, almost fifteen degrees hotter than here, and the humidity was about half this. The sky was huge and blue and the sea like sapphire (albeit rather rough at first - I was semi-surfing rather than swimming for a couple of days). My studio had a view across olive groves to the sea, one way, and across olive groves to the mountains in the other direction. At night, the full moon shone on the mountainside like fairy dust, and fireflies hung in the trees. Swifts and swallows, which had left the UK a couple of weeks ago, swooped over the valley at morning and dusk, and the terracotta roof tiles housed a cheerful sparrow colony.
I ate too much, and probably had too many cold beers. I swam (or hurled myself about in the breakers) every day. I did some rather bad watercolours, and read a nice fat fantasy novel, and did a bit of walking and a lot of sitting looking at the view. I took a tour into the mountains by jeep, bouncing along unsurfaced tracks to a deserted village, a beautiful country church with a fifteenth century painted iconostasis, a hidden mountain lake, spectacular stands of old-growth forest full of birds and wildflowers and with resin-perfumed air, and finally right to the very top of the tallest mountain, Ipsario - which is slightly higher than Mt. Snowdon.
England feels so grey, so dark, so damp and cold in comparison. London seems all grey concrete and grey faces, yellow brick and yellowing leaves. Greece is blue and white and brilliant gold and clear green. Greece is light itself, and England is dimness and the approach of winter.
Last night I had booked a ticket for the first night of a new dance adaptation of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis". I had a feeling I might have post-holiday blues (and boy was I right!). It was good to remind myself, with supper at Patisserie Valerie and a trip to the theatre, that after all it is not the end of the world to have had to come home. I think there are probably very few minor blues that would not be eased at least a little by eggs benedict and buttered spinach, fresh-pressed orange juice, tarte aux framboises and a hot chocolate, followed by Edward Watson being a giant beetle. Edward Watson coated in treacle, what's more.
But oh, how dark and damp it is in my own country. A part of my heart belongs in Hellas, and cannot credit it has to live here...
The temperature on Thassos was about 33 degrees C, almost fifteen degrees hotter than here, and the humidity was about half this. The sky was huge and blue and the sea like sapphire (albeit rather rough at first - I was semi-surfing rather than swimming for a couple of days). My studio had a view across olive groves to the sea, one way, and across olive groves to the mountains in the other direction. At night, the full moon shone on the mountainside like fairy dust, and fireflies hung in the trees. Swifts and swallows, which had left the UK a couple of weeks ago, swooped over the valley at morning and dusk, and the terracotta roof tiles housed a cheerful sparrow colony.
I ate too much, and probably had too many cold beers. I swam (or hurled myself about in the breakers) every day. I did some rather bad watercolours, and read a nice fat fantasy novel, and did a bit of walking and a lot of sitting looking at the view. I took a tour into the mountains by jeep, bouncing along unsurfaced tracks to a deserted village, a beautiful country church with a fifteenth century painted iconostasis, a hidden mountain lake, spectacular stands of old-growth forest full of birds and wildflowers and with resin-perfumed air, and finally right to the very top of the tallest mountain, Ipsario - which is slightly higher than Mt. Snowdon.
England feels so grey, so dark, so damp and cold in comparison. London seems all grey concrete and grey faces, yellow brick and yellowing leaves. Greece is blue and white and brilliant gold and clear green. Greece is light itself, and England is dimness and the approach of winter.
Last night I had booked a ticket for the first night of a new dance adaptation of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis". I had a feeling I might have post-holiday blues (and boy was I right!). It was good to remind myself, with supper at Patisserie Valerie and a trip to the theatre, that after all it is not the end of the world to have had to come home. I think there are probably very few minor blues that would not be eased at least a little by eggs benedict and buttered spinach, fresh-pressed orange juice, tarte aux framboises and a hot chocolate, followed by Edward Watson being a giant beetle. Edward Watson coated in treacle, what's more.
But oh, how dark and damp it is in my own country. A part of my heart belongs in Hellas, and cannot credit it has to live here...
Monday, 15 November 2010
Yawn...
Holiday now over, sigh.
Cyprus was very hot and sunny. Far from doing lots of day trips and cultural things, we spent most of our week on the beach. Not that I'm knocking a beach holiday with Mum! - hot, hot sun, sitting under palm trees, swimming in the sea, eating tahini and garlic dips, salads toppped with olives and grilled halloumi, ice cream sundaes and bags of nuts, and drinking ice-cold beers at lunch and Brandy Sours at sunset. It was gorgeous. But based on the weather forecast I'd packed light-weight trousers, cardigans and cotton shirts, and only threw in some shorts and a couple of bathing costumes for the hotel indoor pool at the last minute. I spent most of the week either in the sea in one or the other of my swimsuits, or in the shade with a cold drink, wearing the shorts and my lightest tops.
So although not quite the planned holiday, it was a lot of fun, and perfect Girl Time with my Mum. I think the completely relaxing break did her the world of good, too. It's just such a pity one has to come back to Britain in the middle of the night to a thick fog and a hard frost; a temperature drop of about 25 degrees celsius, brrr...
Cyprus was very hot and sunny. Far from doing lots of day trips and cultural things, we spent most of our week on the beach. Not that I'm knocking a beach holiday with Mum! - hot, hot sun, sitting under palm trees, swimming in the sea, eating tahini and garlic dips, salads toppped with olives and grilled halloumi, ice cream sundaes and bags of nuts, and drinking ice-cold beers at lunch and Brandy Sours at sunset. It was gorgeous. But based on the weather forecast I'd packed light-weight trousers, cardigans and cotton shirts, and only threw in some shorts and a couple of bathing costumes for the hotel indoor pool at the last minute. I spent most of the week either in the sea in one or the other of my swimsuits, or in the shade with a cold drink, wearing the shorts and my lightest tops.
So although not quite the planned holiday, it was a lot of fun, and perfect Girl Time with my Mum. I think the completely relaxing break did her the world of good, too. It's just such a pity one has to come back to Britain in the middle of the night to a thick fog and a hard frost; a temperature drop of about 25 degrees celsius, brrr...
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