Glad midsommar!

It is midsummer eve and we are in the car on our way to a music festival in Croyde, Devon. A nice four hour drive through very pretty country-side. The best part is that even though it is nearly eight o'clock, the sun is high in the sky.

Very appropriately for the day we just drove past Stonehenge. It is a bit of a pity to see such a remarkable place be completely deserted on a midsummer eve. Well well, I guess that's the way it is here. At least I got a sneaky shot of if through the window as we drove past.

And of the gigantic pig fram across the road. It was definately not there last time we were here. Time to enjoy the magnificent views a bit more.

The J&L story in photos

It started rather innocently on a Tuesday evening...














... attack ...

... All was calm again...

Purple cow

Spotted this on my way to work this morning. Someone has built a construction in the form of an upside-down cow! And it's puple and called Underbelly! Very bizarre. Nearly got me to miss my boat as it kind of demanded to get photographed.

Sailing weekend in Solent

As a birthday surprise Ian took me out for a sailing weekend. He had arranged for us to hook up with Geert (ex-colleague to Ian) who just happens to be about to start his own skipper business. As Geert haven't got his own boat just yet he had rented a nice 12 meter racing yacht called Blue Juice. The rest of the crew was made up by Geert's wife Jane, Jelte, Lorin, Alex and Shaun.

I was completely unaware of Ian's plans and was told first on Friday at 15:30 that I was to go on my first proper sailing trip ever. All very exciting and very unexpected! There I had been packing my passport and the hiking shoes. Was I disappointed you may ask. Not at all! The whole experience turned out to be very pleasant indeed. So good I could easily be tempted to go again. (As long as I can go with Geert and First reef.)

Our first outing was to take us from Southampton and up the river Beaulieu to find us a nice spot to moor for the night. It all took us a little bit longer then planned (mainly due to shopping) so we missed our pub dinner. Oops!

Luckily we had food for cooking, thanks to the shopping team. This was when we realised a few things were as they were supposed to be. Trivial things like a working fridge, temperamental gas stove (kept switching itself off), lack of sauce pans and other vital kitchen supplies. Makes cooking so much more interesting. Well, well, Alex and Jane managed to cook us a feast anyway, in batches! But it did mean we were gunning for the pubs for the rest of the weekend.

Both Saturday and Sunday turned out to be beautiful days. Sunny and blue sky! Water lapping! All very chilled and relax. Plenty of opportunities for water photographing. I was definitely liking it. The guys were however mumbling a bit that there wasn't an awful lot of wind. Good enough for me though.

As Geert is planning to teach sailing in his new business adventure he rather quickly got me involved with the whole steering business. Properly called being at the helm I think.

First time around was under motor so it wasn't that hard. Just needed to calm down and accept that your turning will happen 5 minutes after you turned the wheel.

Second time around was under sail. At this point I was still a bit confused as to what was going on so I spent most of the time photographing the water instead. But you can only do that for so long so Geert spotted me idle after awhile.
I had just got the whole groove thing explained when it was time for tacking. Oh my God! I could barely see the difference my steering did to the sails.Anyway I did a very nice and controlled tack (according to the experts), straight back into the groove again.

I was happy cruising along starting to get a tiny bit of feel for it. Geert was debating if now was a good time for man-over-board drill when our navigator of the day came up on deck. Very calmly he said that now wasn't a good time as we are about to run into a sandbank and we should tack instead. Me struggling with the terminology managed the first part "ready?" and failed to remember the second part. All that sprang to mind was "lederhosen", don't ask me why. Anyway, managed another controlled tack and just as we came out of it the backend hit the sandbank and all of a sudden we were very still.

Not to worry, we managed to get off the bank in just a few minutes. However, I thought that probably was about as much damage I was willing
to inflict on the others. I stayed well clear of the "making the boat go forward" business and reported for kitchen duty instead.

In the end we managed to sail to Lymington for our second night. Third night was spent in Cowes on Isle of Wight. And in between we saw the Needles, some very big container ships and a huge cruise ship. I managed to take loads of photographs, I'll know what I'll be doing this week. On our last day we sailed to Portsmouth. We had some lunch and spent some time seriously tacking our way out of the harbour.

A day at Tate Modern

I'm now sitting on the Tate Modern's roof terrace enjoying the sun. I've spent the morning exploring the exhibitions here. I started off with the Rodchenko & Popova exhibition. It was fairly interesting but I must say I preferred the earlier works. In particular I liked Rodchenko's explorations of the line. Spotted two paintings that I think my brother would like.

Their paintings' geometric patterns seemed to lend themself to weaving. Need to show them to Mom. I've got some ideas for curtains to the lounge. Diagonal lines with a floating grid ontop... I better start drawing before I forget the idea.

Next I went to see the Roni Horn exhibition. To be honest I knew nothing about her and her paintings didn't do much for me. However her photos did. She had some fantastic photos of water and a few very dreamy photos of the sea melting into a misty sky. They were superb. Need to go to the sea now for a new photo project.

So feeling all inspired I decided to continue with the permanent exhibitions. I now have even more ideas. I want to continue with creating mobiles and I want to make one hanging down the stairs. Perhaps lend some ideas from Rodchenko's constructions in plywood or use more of what you can find in the nature. Perhaps spray paint some interesting leaves and feathers mixed with driftwood. Hmm need to develop that idea a bit more.

Resting time is now up. One more floor to explore before a little bit of shopping. At least I've got my ideas written down. I'll keep you posted on any further developments.

Jelte BBQing

We're at Jelte and Linda for an Easter BBQ. We are very lucky with the weather. The sun is actually shining after four days of rain.



However, Jelte's BBQ technique might just need to be a tiny bit improved... Or is it just down to the raw material... 85% vs 96% beef burgers...

Little horses

On Sunday L and I continued our healthy weekend with a walk to Eashing. Didn't find to much on the way capturing our photographic senses so we ended up mostly chatting and enjoying being out in the fresh air. As always you get hungry after a while so a lunch stop at the Stag was called for.

When we asked for the menu we were told that the waiting time would be 1 1/2 hour. No time to lose, we quickly got our orders in and the waiting time had miracules dropped to 1h 10 min. We called R&I to tell them it was time to finish painting their banisters and come and join us instead.

To our surprise after having waited for 25 minutes our food arrived. It was all very jummy so we were all very happy. Just as we were about to finish R&I showed up. A quick drink and we were off again.



As always when you are out and about the countryside you have to walk through some animal fields. This time we walked through a horse field. Three little horses were waiting for us close to the exit stile. All very curiuos and determined not to let us out until we had said hello. We were all racing to reach the stile first. We won but not until the horses managed to get a sneak cuddle first.




Safely on the other side we felt more at home to give them more cuddles. And it proved a good time for some close-up shots of pretty horses.