Boxing Day Colour

The weather on Boxing Day this year is pretty dreadful.  It is quite mild temperature wise, but it is rather dull and very, very windy.  So it really feels very cold.  Nothing to tempt one outside.  So to cheer myself up a bit I've put together some collages of photos from warmer climes.  The first is from a holiday we had in Palma de Mallorca way back in 2005.

Next up is this collage from a walking holiday we had in the Cinque Terre region of northern Italy.

Puglia is the next destination, which is where Alessio's paternal grandparents come from.  Another beautiful part of the world.

Just a few lovely memories to bring back a bit of warmth and sunshine in the middle of a dreich and dour Scottish winter.  As it is Boxing Day I could not resist ending with this collage of some of the boxes I use to store my stitching stuff.

November 2011 in Photos

The highlight of November, at least for us Scots, comes at the very end of the month.  November 30th is when we celebrate our very own saint - St. Andrew.  Well he's not really ours as Russians, Greeks, Romanians and some others also claim him.  However we are not a mean people and are delighted to share our saint with all these other lovely people around the world.


Alas in Scotland St Andrews Day is not yet a public holiday.  This year though it was a day of strikes in the public sector and most schools were closed as a result.  This meant we had the pleasure of Liam and Jamie as our companions for the day.  We started with a bit of window shopping in the Ferry to see all the weird and wonderful Christmas displays.  Here are some below.

In the afternoon we visited St Andrews itself.  As part of the celebrations all the museums were open to the public, free of charge.  We visited the castle, or rather the remaining ruins.  Here are the two boys on a window ledge.

What the boys like most about the castle is the underground tunnel that was built during the siege in the 16th century.  No photos of this alas.  Before we headed off home we came across another early sign of Christmas with this brightly decorated tree in the grounds of the Holy Trinity Church in the centre of the town.

The rest of the month was not without its unexpected pleasures.  Early in the month we attended a conference on Food hosted by Fife Diet, a campaigning group for a better diet and lowering our carbon footprint.  There we met some students from the USA who were all over at Edinburgh University on various one year programmes.  One of them, Liz from Boston has some ancestors from Dundee and was due to visit the city to find the graves of her great, great granny I think.  Anyway we met up with her and spent a most enjoyable day showing her around the city.  Here she is with Dundee's famous son, Desperate Dan.

Another unexpected pleasure was meeting a group of musicians from An-Najah University in Nablus, Dundee's twin town in Palestine.  They were over to celebrate an agreement between their university and Abertay university in Dundee.  As part of their visit they played some traditional Palestinian music at a concert.  Here they are on stage.

I am particularly fond of the oud and have a couple of CD's of traditional oud music.  Here is the beautifully decorated oud from the concert.

The end of November is pretty much the beginning of winter over here.  The weather has now changed and it is a lot colder.  Though thankfully no snow in our part of the country as yet.  Despite the colder weather there is still a little colour in and around the garden, as you can see in this photo of a single fuchsia flower with some geraniums.

November is also a time of long dark nights.  Though this can be compensated by some great views of the moon and I end this piece with one of my attempts to capture a full moon in a very dark sky.

Photo of the Month - February 2011

February, alas, was not much better than January photo wise.  Still stuck too much in a bit of post Christmas lethargy.  However I did attend a one day course in Japanese and Korean Calligraphy at the DCA.  Very interesting and enjoyable ti was too.  Below is a photo of some of the fascinating range of brushes that get used in calligraphy.  The really big on the left is horse hair I think and is very difficult to use.  All of them are in fact, at least for beginners like me.

The calligraphy is of course done with ink.  And to give us an inkling of the real oriental experience we had to grind our own ink.  Below you can see my little container starting to fill up with ink.  The small blocks of black ink were lovely to both look at and feel.  This activity was done as a form of meditation.  Very relaxing it was too.

The actual activity of making characters with the brushes was very challenging, but also very satisfying.  Here are a couple of my attempts.  The first is the Japanese character for fragrant or full of flavour.  The second is another Japanese character - passion.

As part of the introductory course the Korean tutor wrote out our first names using Korean characters.  Here is what Alister looks like in traditional Korean.

I continue with my stitching and the loose ends of cotton threads are beginning to mount up in by bottle.  This is two months cast offs.

During February we visited Kathleen's sister Jacqueline, way over in Erskine, in the far west.  While there we tidied up the grave of her parents and laid down some fresh flowers.  John and Mary are of course the maternal great grandparents of Liam, Jamie and Alessio.

While there we had a lovely meal with Jacqueline and her youngest son, Adam and his lovely partner Gemma.  Here is Kathleen enjoying a glass of wine while relaxing on Jacqui's fancy chair.

February finally brought a bit of welcome colour to the garden.  Though it was difficult to see much due to the covering of leaves and other detritus from last year still lying profusely around.  Still a little bit of clearing away and some brightness was quickly found.

Photo of the Month - January 2011

January was still a most unsettled month weather wise, so I was unable to get out and about as much as I would have liked.  Still it was a lot better than December and the year did get off to a good start with a firework display in a neighbour's garden, as you can see in the two photos below.

Early January also saw one of the newly repaired oil rigs sailing out to sea.  Well you can just make it out through the cold mist.

Another pleasure in January is Jamie's birthday.  This year we all went ten pin bowling and then for lunch in a nearby inn.  Here he is getting ready to blow out the candles on his cake.

The snow lasted well into the month as you can see from this photo of our front garden.

We did manage to get in some good walks during the month and this one took us along part of the Fife Coastal Walk.  The shot below is one of the fabulous bunkers, with standing stone, on the new Castle golf course, just outside St. Andrews.

During January I restocked my store of goodies for stitching, including these colourful canvasses.

We got some trully amazing sunsets during the month.  This was one of the most spectacular.

Another walk was over the hills to the south of St. Andrews, another very cold, but sunny day.  One of the highlights was this group of very noisy turkeys, pleased that Christmas was over for another year.

I managed a couple of trips to Edinburgh to take in the theatre.  On our way back to the bus station I snapped this bright winter evening scene looking down to the Royal Academy on Princes Street.

Pride of place for January however has to go to the following photo.  Not because it is particularly good.  But because of the circumstances.  This was taken at a Monday evening protest to show solidarity with the brave people of Egypt who were out on their streets demanding democracy and the end of the Mubarak dictatorship.  Which they have achieved. All power to them in their continuing struggle for justice.

Photo of the Month - September

As with August, we spent most of September in Switzerland, with brief outings to Germany.  So most of the selections for this month again come from the continent.  One of our first visits was to the Park im Gruene in Ruschlikon.  This is a favourite place for Alessio.  This time there were some workmen repairing the thatch on an old, traditional style building which serves as a museum.  I have never seen this kind of work before, so it was very interesting to watch them at work.  Here is one of the workmen on a temporary ledge.

This was also Alessio’s birthday and we had a party for him that evening, with the usual trimmings, cake and so on.  But I think Alessio was happiest kicking a football around.  As you can see from the next photo he has excellent timing and co-ordination.

The following photo of a heron was taken on one of our walks around the Zürichsee.  This was on the stretch close to the lake just outside Horgen.

In Switzerland it is traditional to put up displays of autumn fruits, especially gourds.  Usually they are placed somewhere outside the front door for public viewing.  This time Kathleen decided to use some gourds to make a table display for inside the house.  Emma has subsequently added to this creation.

The next photo was a bit of an experiment.  I don't know if it has anything to do with the season of the year, but near Alessio's Spielgruppe I noticed quite a lot of spiders' webs on hedges and bushes.  So I took a few photos of them and this one I particularly like as you can see both the web and the poor creature caught inside.

The above photos were all taken in or around Kilchberg.  The others are from further afield.  I start with this snap of the Berner Oberland taken from the summit of Mt Pilatus.  It was quite cloudy high up and the peaks kept disappearing and re-appearing, so I was pleased to get this one.

Next up is this photo from a stall at the market at Bürkiplatz in Zürich.  This was a flower, vegetable and food market, with so many stalls to tempt the senses.  This one sold dried flowers, in particular lavender.  I am into lavender at the moment, so I just love this photo.

Also from Zürich is this adorable polar bear.  He can be found in the window of a fashion shop on the Rennweg in the old town.  The shop makes a feature of bears for their window display.  Each time we pass by there are some cuddly bears on display.

One of day trips was to Konstanz in southern Germany.  And there we had lunch in a lovely Italian restaurant called Pinochio.  The inside walls were covered with paintings, sculptures and other images of the little boy.  This one impressed me most.

The exceedingly large boot below comes from Rapperswil, a fine town at the far end of the Zürichsee.  It stands outside a rather posh looking hotel.

Another autumnal custom in Switzerland is to hang wreaths on the outside of buildings.  Usually they go on the door, but this  one was on the wall of a little shop selling home made food products.  I liked the simplicity of the arrangement and the use of the wheel.   We found the shop in the village Unterengstringen on our way back from visiting the Fahr monastery, just outside Zürich.

The last photo from Switzerland is this snap of the legendary Trabant car.  A relic from the old East Germany, it is now a bit of a rarity.  Though it may now have acquired cult status.  We came across this one in Schaffhausen, which of course is right on the border with Germany.

Finally a couple of photos from back in Scotland.  The first is this view over the Lade Braes part of St. Andrews looking across the golf links and further on to Tentsmuir forest with the Angus hills in the distance.  The prominent building on the left is the Old Course hotel.  This photo was taken from the hillside to the south of the town.

I end with this found object on the beach at Broughty Ferry.  I was just out for a walk in the autumn sunshine and took some photos of the objects on the beach.  Mostly shells, but I did like this little group.  The remains of a seaweed which has attached itself to a large pebble.