Weekly Photo Challenge: Treat

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halloween, halloween treats, treat, treats, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge: Treat

After a week filled with family and friends my days have now turned back too normality. And since I have so much work to do for my masters it’s about time, after all all those words aren’t going to write themselves.

But just because I have to knuckle down and get work done doesn’t mean that I won’t be prepared for the witches and ghouls who’ll come a knocking tonight. In preparation for the nightly visitors I have filled a bowl with TREATS, in the hope to avoid all the tricks.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Careful

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Careful, Ireland, Newgrange, photography, photos, visitors, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge: Careful

This week I am being invade by lots of Germans! On Friday my good friends from Berlin came for a three day visit and tomorrow my brother and family will be invading my home for two nights.

With so much coming and going I need to be a little bit careful with my time, after all Masters does not write itself and I have to have 12.000 words done by next week Tuesday.

But of course I wanted to show my friends some of the wonderful things Ireland has to offer so I took them on a trip to Newgrange. This Stone Age passage tomb is older than the pyramids, by about 500years, and sits on top of a hill in the Boyne Valley.

It was  beautiful sunny day and Newgrange was showing itself in its best possible light. And while you can enter into the tom, it is a tight squeeze and you have to be to not hit your head. But once you’re inside you get to enjoy the fascinating cross camber at the end of the passage and stand where our ancestors did, we don’t know what, 5200 years ago.

careful, rain clouds nearing

careful when you enter, bow your head and keep it bent

careful reconstruction of the front of the tomb by archaeologist Michael J. O’Kelly who placed the stones back where they fell from

careful, slippy slope

careful, hungry sheep nearby

careful, no climbing allowed

 

 

 

 

making people smile

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baby, baby's laugh, Bus, Dublin, Dublin bus, thoughts

Yesterday evening I was treated to a steak dinner and the best company possible when I met up with two lovely friends of mine. One has just bought a house, one is busy traveling and enjoying looking for new challenges and then there are my own meager adventures.  So with lots to talk about it was a wonderful night out and as I made my way through the grey and wet night I couldn’t help but smile.

But once on the bus I was greeted with sullen, tired faces, a direct reflection of the miserable night outside. I took my seat and let my thoughts wander, when suddenly a baby’s giggle vibrated through the bus.

It was an unexpected sound, and while I am sure that the parents were only trying to humour their tired tot, it changed the atmosphere in the bus within an instant. The baby, maybe eight months old, was somewhere between sleepy, grumpy and delighted and his young parents were entertaining him. It was clear they were trying to keep him from crying and sleeping wasn’t quite on the cards.

As the little baby boy gurgled in glee and his loud laughs filled the gloomy bus smiles began to spread on everyone’s faces. Yes, even the cool dudes in the back couldn’t help but allow their mouths to curl upwards.

It was amazing to see how one small child brought so much joy to a grey and miserable night and as passengers disembarked many waved and said goodbye to the little boy who celebrated his new found celebrity status with more delighted sequels.

 

 

Weekly photo challenge – Extraordinary

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Extraordinary, photography, photos, St Petersburg, travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly photo challenge – Extraordinary

So much of our lives circles around the mundane and what we do on a daily basis that we often forget that most of our memories are made from the unusual. For me many of my memories are of travel, when I break away from the ordinary and get to see the special.

One of my travels in recent years was particularly exceptional for me, it was my trip to St Petersburg. As a teenager I discovered Wassily Kandinsky and Alexander Rodchenko and through them the Russian Avant Garde and it’s birthplace St.  Petersburg.

As time passed my desire to visit this incredible city only grew so when I was finally able to go it was a fulfillment of a dream. It was an extraordinary experience, one so far from my ordinary life that it still colours my thoughts, and possibly always will. I’d love to go back one day and discover more of this extraordinary place.

The view of St. Petersburg’s cityscape as you approach from the Tsar’s summer home Petershof (Petrodvorets)

orange thoughts

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autumn, colour, colours, communication, food, Orange, photography, spontaneity., thoughts

We may be having a bit of an Indian summer here in Dublin but autumn is well and truly here. If you don’t believe just look up and see how the leaves are now all turning a from vivid orange and look around to see the bright orange Halloween decorations appearing on windowsills.

As our world turns orange, even if only for a short while, I was amazed to find out two very interesting facts about this vivid colour.

The first was that it has been proven that bright orange physically improves the oxygen supply to the brain, which in turn improves mental awareness and stimulation. This basically means that the colour orange helps you concentrate and possibly makes you somewhat smarter.

The second interesting fact is that orange also stimulates your appetite. Maybe this is because lots of home grown foods turn a vivid shade of orange when the are ripe – just think of carrots, pumpkins and nectarines – or maybe it has to do with needing more food in the colder months. But either way it is the reason why many restaurants choose an orange hue in their decor.

An added bonus is of course, for both people and restaurants alike, is that orange is widely know to improve communication and spontaneity.

student savings

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Bus, Dublin, leap card, luas, money, saving, student, student savings

Being a student again means lots of extra work but it also has it’s benefits: student savings! So make the most of the next year I decided it was time to get myself a student Leap Card.

Like the Oyster Card in London, the Leap Card is the perfect way to use public transport within and around Dublin. One of the main benefits of using a Leap Card is you pay less per trip. An additional bonus is you don’t need to carry around loose change when you want to use the bus (you don’t get back change on Dublin buses, all you get is a paper slip that you can exchange for money at headquarters – Dublin Bus makes more than a million euros every year on unclaimed refunds – so most people try an pay exact fares).

And since I am now the owner of a student leap card I get even more savings. I may still have to pay the same amount per fare however the daily and weekly cap on the card has gone way down. No matter how many buses I use in a day I’ll never pay more than 5€ (normally 6.90€), and in a week never more than 20€ (normally 27.50€). If I combine Luas (the Dublin tram system) and bus that goes slightly up but I still pay 25% less than with a regular Leap Card.

Wonderfully it doesn’t end there, by waving the Student Leap Card in certain high-street shops you get reductions and special offers. Saving 20% here and 15% there will definitely make a difference in the long run. Student savings – a perk for all the hard work.

a few euros saved with these two cards

sock season

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autumn, fashion, feet, quote, socks, stripy socks

I have finally given in to the drop in temperature and am wearing socks again. For someone who, for most of the year, enjoys wiggling her toes unhindered by fabric this is always a slightly sad decision.

Luckily for me there is a happy side to making up my mind to wear socks again: my stripy sock drawer. Over time I have collected several pairs, all shades of colours and stripyness.

So even if the day is grey and a little chilly, especially in the mornings on my bike, knowing that my feet are clad in colours makes me smile. After all, we all need rainbows in our lives and mine just happen to be on my feet.

today’s choice

You choose your friends by their character and your socks by their colour.

Gary Oldman

lunchboxes and sandwiches

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college, food, lunch, lunchbox, lunchboxes, masters, sandwiches, school, snacks

Going back to college has meant going back to making sandwiches in the morning. And while carving out those precious few minutes to prepare some satisfying food has been tricky, the reward is great when that grumbling tummy rears it’s hungry head.

But with making sandwiches comes the problem of transport. How does one get the painfully prepared food whole and not mushy to school? Well, my lovely and generous friend C. has now solved that problem in the form of a multipurpose plastic box.

Not only can I now safely transport my sandwich I can add a few other snacks as well – some yummy bites to tide me over until I can enjoy dinner at home. An added bonus, this folding box is green, my favourite colour.

Today it will have its first outing and I hope that it works out the way it should. After all no one likes soggy falling apart sandwiches.

my cube of food

folded out, carrots, apples and yogurt covered cranberries

and the final lid open to reveal my sandwich

thinking about perspectives

Tags

Dead Poets Society, first person, narrator, perspective, point of view, third person, writing

I’ve been reading a lot about perspectives for my masters and it is fascinating to learn that in reality, when it comes to writing, there are really only two point-of-views: first person or third person.

So, while the world around us is viewed through millions of eyes, when a writer sits down to pen a story the first decision s/he have to make is: who is telling the story? Is it the main character or do I decide that I want to go a bit ‘Victorian’ on the story and be omniscient* (admittedly not a very modern approach). Or foregoing that, novelists have the option of something called “free indirect style”.

But what does that mean? Well, very simply put, if you don’t want to wander around your story writing from the ‘I’ point of view, you take a step back and create the possibility of allowing the reader to see things through the narrators and the characters eyes at the same time.

This can be a bit tricky, as you need to use your characters language and then sprinkle in your own observations in a veiled way – allowing the reader to decide who had the thoughts, the narrator or the character?

And to be clear, surprising for some maybe, the narrator is NOT the author, but instead a fictional voice who guides the reader through the story. Some would even say that the person who sits down to write, is not the same as the author, but that the author is actually only a mask a person wears while writing.

Perspective seems to be much trickier than I thought. Maybe unsurprising if you think about how hard we often find it to understand each other, how difficult side-by-side living can sometimes be.

But, no matter how much I contemplate and discover things about point of view I somehow can’t help myself and always think about that iconic scene from that 1989 movie Dead Poets Society. Changing your own point-of-view may change more than you know.

Maybe 26 years old but Dead Poets Society is still a wonderful film

*omniscient: all knowing, all seeing. A God-like approach to a story, where the narrator can see into all the characters heads and even know more then they do themselves as the omniscient narrator even knows their dreams and unconscious thoughts.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy Place

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Happy Place, knitting, photography, photos, quote, socks, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy Place

What is a happy place? I think there are as many answers to this question as there are stars in the sky and people on this planet.

For me I have several happy places. On a wet and windy autumn afternoon it’s in front of the fire on my striped Queen’s Ann chair with a good book or a film to entertain me. On a sunny afternoon in spring it’s finding a few minutes to enjoy a cup of tea on the blue bench outside my home. In the summer it’s time spent on the beach,  the sea tickling my feet and the sun and wind on my face. Or when I get the chance to travel and have the delight of seeing things for the first time, the moment of discovery creating a sensation of pure joy. And then there is that moment, after a long tiring day, when you crawl into bed and your body just sighs in relaxation.

So choosing just one happy place for this Weekly Photo Challenge is very challenging indeed. After thinking long and hard about this I have decided that currently (since I’ve started my Masters)  my happiest place is when I sit down in the evening – after all my work and reading is done – and get a chance to work on some socks I’ve been knitting.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

Aristotle