OK, so it's 08.11 on a Sunday morning

And everything was packed up ready to go late last night.

The rain is falling steadily but quite gently.
I've made soup and coffee and packed a dozen plastic sacks and a quantity of plastic sheeting and everything.
Can't help wondering what exactly constitutes weather bad enough to cancel the event! Because if the event had been cancelled, I could still be asleep in my warm bed.

So I am just a tiny bit peeved when a phone call comes to tell me that this is exactly the sort of weather that's bad enough and the event is cancelled. I just wish they'd got up as early as me and looked out at the rain before I got to this stage.
Oh well. Next week at Oxford Market then. I don't think they cancel that except for hurricanes and blizzards...No, don't say it! I absolutely refuse to tolerate hurricanes and blizzards in June. (Or indeed to toerate them which is what I typed first by mistake. Spell-check thought I ought to have typed 'toe-rate'. Picky! Anyway I refuse to toe-rate it either so it had better be sunny and bright.)
I was going to take a picture when I set up but fortunately decided to have a dry run at home last night so this is how it was going to look. You have to imagine the park railings behind the red blanket and a plastic sheet draped cunningly over the top (or suspended from the trees above with little bits of string and selloptape). Oh and a soggy, plastic shrouded figure, clutching a cup of soup, next to the stall)

Thing is, now I will be able to join Barney and all my other Bampton friends in a field in deepest Oxfordshire in time for the Sunday afternoon campers' BBQ on the field. Isn't that wonderful! And then I can spend a wet afternoon dodging in and out of tents and huddling damply in the pub, later. This will be at least as much fun as sitting in the rain, with my feet in a plastic bag, wondering how to stop drips from going down the back of my neck whenever the member of the public turns up to buy a card :).
Ah well. Soup and a sandwich for breakfast and a quick shower before packing up all the stuff we forgot to pack for camping and unpacking all the stuff I packed last night! Present wrapping for Youngest (her birthday always falls on a Bampton weekend so it's always a bit of a puzzle, how to celebrate it. Possibly the best ever was the time Nigel blew up 15 balloons and tied them to her tent, all secretly, so they were all there when she woke up).
I imagine that the campers are busy at this moment, frying up an enormous breakfast for er, 17 I think it was going to be this morning and dashing from tent to tent with cups of tea and coffee.

Just a few more pictures
Of Mr Drake....trapped in the lock with our boatMrs Duck and family, anxiously awaiting his escape (yes, it's alright, he did escape, though seeing as how he came into the lock riding cheekily on the front of the boat he was lucky beyond his deserts to do so)And in case you haven't heard quite enough about water.......
Hey, I just realised that now I won't have to spend all next week frantically replenishing stock. Or I can spend the week making more cards with different pictures. Got some ideas :)

See you soon. er, keep dry!

Here today

And gone tomorrow. Then back again, then gone again. then back.
Am I a yo-yo or what, I ask myself?
Well here are pictures from the wild and woolly place.

Goosey gander and three (and a bit) goslings for Mel
Some stone with a moss and a little bit of lichen for I
A boat big enough for all of us(though it waould look very small on the open sea)
and see? I forgot-you-not.
And then to bed, lulled by the sound of a gently rushing weir. but only rocked when someone got up to go to the loo in the midle of the night)

Next day, onwards into the pennines, all green and steep
And under the tunnel below one of the deepest locks in the coutry at Sowerby Bridge

Oh and did I mention pies? There were puddings too!
All behind me now, as on Sunday, Quiet Pictures goes offline for the first time and will park itself by the park railings and woo the picture buying public.
Fingers crossed ok?
Be well. See you soon :)

Oh dear

I wrote a post, with pictures, several of them,and hit save (perhaps a bit randomly) and it all vanished and left me with this! ♠

That's not quite what I was hoping for!
Well you'll have to read the labels and try and guess what I said while I try and remember it.

Now which picture came first?
Oh yes, geese.................

Touching base, briefly.

Well I've done the first thing that meant I couldn't blog in May, which was going on holiday. Handbag theft gave me a touch of paranoia which was why I didn't say out loud (as it were) I'm going on holiday. But now we've been and gone and done it I can tell you it was very nice. We travelled the canals of Lancashire and /Yorkshire in a little boat...well quite a large boat actually, a fifty-six foot narrowboat, and saw some gorgeous scenery. We discovered pies* in Hebden Bridge and Slaithwaite and got quite wet several times. This was due to rain, not clumsiness though I did fall over on some cobbles** and have brought back a heap of bumps and bruises as a result. Since our companions on this trip were brewers (the makers of Maggs magnificent mild and other wonderful beers) we had plenty to drink and the pies filled in other gaps wonderfully. Nutmeg came with us and he got wet, partly because Marvellous Mr Maggs walked him from lock to lock in all weathers (and thereby made him a Very Happy Dog) but also because he was a bit clumsy and perhaps a bit confused about that smooth shiny stuff and stepped straight into the canal the minute I stopped reminding everyone that he is a slightly dim person (though a very bright dog).
I have brought back a lot of pictures though there is a slight problem with canal pictures. If you are travelling at 2 or 3 miles an hour, ie, a steady walking pace, everything glides past very gently and invitingly. But just try taking a detailed photo of a tree or a shaft of sunlight pr a ripple (there were lots of those) while walking past it...without stopping! It can be done but it takes practice. I did a lot of practising so it will take me several hours to delete the practice runs and the 'got it right too late because we'd glided gently past the view', versions.
I have to go to bed now or maybe a couple of hour ago. I'll catch up a bit more tomorrow or soon. there's rather a lot to do here so I'll still be mostly absent. Pics when I've finished downloading:)
xxx all :)

*Ah! The pies of the North are as different from the slurry filled and sloppy pastry-ed pies of the south as are the granite crags of the pennines from the rolling hills of the Downs. In a totally melting, delicious and juicy way. In fact the pies of the North are unrivalled. Freshly baked, little hot pork pies with crisp tender party and dribbling with savoury juices have no equal anywhere unless you happen to prefer the sticky, rich gooeyness of Northern meat and potato pies. with the same gorgeous pastry.

We ate rather a lot of pies.

**I blame the thieves, who acquired my middle distance glasses when they pinched my bag. Bifocals and cobbles are a bad mixture....and before you suggest it, I don't get on with varifocals.

AWOL

till further notice.

If you see a harassed, muttering person, clutching large amounts of card and paper and rushing in and out of cartridge world or stopping suddenly at card racks outside craft shops, please report to the nearest competent authority. Especially if such a person suddenly gets a glazed expression and swoops into an internet cafe uttering small defiant noises.

(They won't do anything of course since there is no such authority for dealing with bloggers gone awol. But it's a good opportunity to feel like a virtuous citizen)

to the woods, to the woods

Well no, through the woods, to the pub.And quite a long way through the woods too, past bonfires
pausing for breath (lots of it since it was up quite a steep hill)
and again for some more breath (I am not a fit photographer)
looking back at the smoke (how fortunate that I needed some more breath)
finally arriving, all hot and thirsty :)
And there was this little chap who looked a bit disapproving
But I think it was because no one was eating and leaving crumbs for him

That's it. I'm finished! All pictures and no sleep makes mig a rather dim blogger.

Be well.

This blog will be temporarily abandoned

During the greater part of this merry month.

This is not because of anything dire or sad but because for a part of the month I will be unable to access the internet, or indeed the computer, and at the end of the month I am making my first foray into the world of commerce. Which means I need to spend long and tortuous hours printing, sticking and packaging pictures. All of those hours when the internet might be available in fact. I will need to be up, at dawn (ish), not blogging but preparing stuff. And those hours I would normally spend feverishly typing and reading the wonderful stuff of which other people's blogs are made I will probably spend sleeping!
Heavens, how boring!*

I may occasionally find it absolutely necessary to find out what's been going on in my absence but in general, for the next month, please forgive me if I'm not around. It's not because I don't want to see you all!

Ooh I shall miss you!

Well, meanwhile before I fall into bed (still a bit groggy actually from the four am business), on Sunday I went for a walk in the woods and saw


more bluebells
A tree which could certainly hide among a cloud of leopards
I was rewarded with a convivial and wonderfully reflective glass
was privileged to witness an act of homage

And a glimpse of true love (no not Barney and Steve!!!!) And in case you're wondering, no it's not the glasses who are drunk....er...well not exactly....it's the wall on which they stand. I may have wondered when I took the picture, who was drunk, but physics is my witness. The beer has found it's own level. And is in fact level. no really it is. I tried to straighten the image and the glasses all fell over.
*And just goes to show that all work and no play makes mig an absent blogger. Instead of a dull one. Well I could get just a bit boring about how many cards I've made and how many bits of sticky tape I've stuck and how many bits of cellophane I've wrapped.

Speaking of mornings

Waking (in the city of dreaming spires)


We were up at 4.00 am this morning!

Not quite as mad as it seems. We were in Oxford last night and went to listen to the may day singing from Magdalene College at dawn. Very nice and clear and fresh it was at 5.00 and the choristers looked suitably naughty and boyish peeping through the stonework at the top of the tower, before singing (disappointingly from somewhere behind windows in the middle of the tower).
My favourite piece of information about this event is that some centuries ago, when the annual event was already well established, there was lateness for some reason and in the general haste the song sheets were forgotten. So the choristers sang some hymn which they all knew by heart and that has been the song they sing to this day.
There is usually a crowd some seven thousand strong, gathered in the street below. I see no reason to suppose this morning was any exception (hence the need to be there by 5.00 am). Many of them have been carousing and dancing and generally making merry all night... and the tradition, of leaping into the river over Magdalene bridge and breaking lots of bones and heads after the singing, has been curtailed...the bridge is closed these days.
Frangelita assures me that though she intended to spend all night carousing and etc, she wasn't planning to leap over any bridges. Which set my mind at rest :)
The tower was very tall (I still have a slightly stiff neck from peering up at it for the best part of an hour)So I'm quite pleased with the gargoyles catching a quick drink of dawn sunlight

And the little angels (oh and some guardian angels I guess) waving and clearly loving being up there where I bet they aren't normally allowed. (this one is worth looking at larger to see the little angel face framed by the stonework on the right)
And after the singing, a last look at the tower as the crowds wended.