Simple Pleasures - Day 10, A Photo Taken of You Over Ten Years Ago

This photo of me was taken at least twenty years ago. I must have been about 3 or 4, and we were still living in our house in Greenwich before we moved to South Africa. It was summer time, and even at that age I remember the magic time that was. Long evenings, that stretched on to infinity, when my brother and I really couldn't understand the need for a bed time.

This is one of a set of photos taken on the same day. Everyone smiling into the camera - my mum and dad making a bonfire, my brother barely a toddler naked and grinning in a little paddling pool, in the background trimmings from the garden piled high on a cheerful green wheelbarrow.

At the bottom of the garden, along the fence, raspberry bushes grew rapidly, heavy with fruit for a few weeks of the year. That day my mum gave me the bowl and told me to pick until it was full. Her and dad had explained to me how to check that they were ripe and to pluck them carefully from the bushes so that I did not squash them. As I went along I squashed the odd one here and there, until my fingers were stained pink and the nails red rimmed. I remember the tart sweetness of the berries, and looking up to smile into the camera, filled with a days worth of simple pleasures.

Forever - Day 6, Whatever Tickles Your Fancy

Okay so I have already managed to lose a couple of days here, so this thirty day post may take a little longer than planned - oh well! Anyway today I am to blog about whatever tickles my fancy. And today what tickled my fancy was someone else's blog :)

The Slow Track to Everywhere is in fact my auntie's blog, and will be most interesting reading as it develops as her plan is to document her and her husband's seven year circumnavigation of the earth on their 35ft boat, Forever (unbelievably awesome, I know!). I have heard some of her stories, in her emails sent from the high seas, and others around dinner tables at various family functions, but I am looking forward to reading the complete works as she writes them, and hear her tales of her bohemian trip complete with exotic destinations, wonderful people and the odd bit of drama I am sure. The first instalment has me gagging for a trip to Palma already, so this is not a good sign for my travel budget - just hearing the prelude to their Great Trek is enough to make me want to jump up off the couch and run down to my nearest marina.

So if you are an avid blog reader, or just a travel enthusiast, allow my dear Auntie Peggy and Uncle Mike and their intrepid exploits on Forever to inspire you.

The Very Hungry Reader

Books are a blessing. The best ones stay with you, and repeat on you for years to come. Generally I don't have the best memory for plot and action, but I tend to remember intricacies and details. The way light is described, a turn of phrase, a strange historical fact - my perception of the world is coloured by these little facts that rattle around in my brain, and occasionally pop to the fore when I am trying to recall all the information I have on a particular subject.

I am a reader, a rampant devourer of the written word, a literary glutton. I go through stages were it seems as though book after book passes through my hands, and I struggle to disentangle the subtle nuances in the plots. And then I go through reading droughts. Terrible, intellectually arid times when I can't commit to a storyline and when the words float through me and refuse to take hold. At the moment I am experiencing one of these self propagated phases of famine. I have a shelf of volumes, each with their own charms, and yet I cannot seem to settle with any of them. I flit from one to the other looking for god knows what to reel me in.

This has been going on for weeks, and alarming me somewhat, and then yesterday I sat down and read a whole book. I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This Eric Carle classic has been known to me as long as I can remember. At first I am sure I was fascinated by the holes in the book, as he munched his way through, and then by the amazing illustrations, and then by his sheer greed, and eventually by the message of transformation. I love this book, and with my sweet second cousin turning one (and me being one of those nightmarish people who buy children books) I bought it. And because I am one of those even worse people, I read it before the poor child had even clapped eyes on it. And as I read once more this original make over story (through binging - who knew?!) I vowed to return to my neglected tomes. And tonight I finished a chapter!

Meet Toren - the proud new owner of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Don't let his poor personal hygiene fool you, he is going to be a literary genius.