(image ©️CathyG Photography)
Month: February 2018
Mad March Hares
Did you know that male and female Hares are known as Jacks and Jills?
Did you also know that ‘boxing matches’ between Hares – which you may be lucky enough to catch a peek of at this time of year– are not Jack against Jack?
Jills actually tend to be bigger and stronger than Jacks (go Jills!). The boxing you see is the Jills batting away the jacks until they select the fittest mate, not unlike a Saturday night in most city centres.
This was taken at The Sculpture Park in Churt in 2010, using a Canon EOS 500 35mm and I developed the film myself using the College darkroom. I first visited in 2006 and although it’s changed a lot since then there are still some sculptures that have been there since the early days changing and moving with time and seasons. They’re all for sale and they sit in over 10 acres of arboretum and the mixture of woodland, water, wildlife, gardens and sculpture is a favourite place for me when I feel like a walk and a few hours with a camera. (My Gallery from The Sculpture Park)
(Taken on my first iPhone – iPhone4 in 2011 and post-processed in Hipstamatic)
What Colour Was Your Year?
This was my year of colour. The colours that were most prominent and most liked in my instagram feed over the last year, I’m surprised there’s not more red – want to see your own?
Mersea Island
Back in May 2017 I spent a fabulous weekend on Mersea Island in Essex with one of my best friends – Debbie. We hadn’t seen each other for a few years and were long overdue a proper catch up. Deb’s MIL owns a caravan in Coopers Beach resort which she was kind enough to let us use for a few days.
It was a beautiful, sunny weekend we talked, we solved the problems of the world, we drank wine and ate a lot of Oysters.
We started the weekend with a pit stop at the West Mersea Oyster Bar to grab some take-outs to eat back at the caravan (note to selves – in the absence of an Oyster knife get them shucked before you take them away with you) after a few glasses of wine the hammer and large knife approach just wasn’t working but the few we managed to free from their shells were delicious 🙂
There was a food/music festival on the island for the weekend full of delicious local food and drink and plenty of opportunities to eat more Oysters, ready-shucked this time.
I loved Mersea but there’s a lot more to see and I’m looking forward to heading back soon for more time with Deb, more Oysters and more of the island.
10 Reasons We Love Lists – You Won’t Believe #4
Ok, it’s not really a list but I couldn’t resist the title.
I’ve tidied up my blog a bit lately and I’m trying to post on a more regular basis. I use this blog as a journal and a general brain dump and I’ve noticed that more and more of my posts and pages are lists and so much web content and news is formatted as a list I wanted to find out more about why we all love lists so much.
There’s a lot more to it than having to try to remember what you need to buy at the shops and this article by The New Yorker – A List Of Reasons Why Our Brains Love Lists explains it very well, I’d recommend you nip over and read it (I’ll just wait here until you get back).
There are a lot of sites and tools that encourage us to use lists to organise our lives and achieve goals. I started my Never Ending Life List years ago (I don’t like the idea of a Bucket list, it sounds too final. Unless you know you have a finite time to be able to do the things you want to then surely it’s better to have a list that just keeps on going?). I started using Trello a while ago to organise my ideas and challenges and give me a visual representation of the quests that I’d completed, then I began adding photographs to the items once I’d done them and from there decided to use the lists as inspiration for blog posts and combine the list(s) with my love of photography to create a visual diary for me to look back on. (It’s also spurred me on to post on my blog more frequently and posting should help my creative-writing which in turn should help me finish (start?) that book that I know is in me somewhere and is one the things on my life list, or at least that’s the theory.
Stephen R.Covey categorises the first generation of time management style as…
Notes and checklists
An effort to give some semblance of recognition and inclusiveness to the demands placed on time and energy.
I listen to The One You Feed Podcast sometimes, I find it helps me focus when I’m spending a long time in the car commuting to client meetings and provokes thought on subjects I never would have considered (I’d recommend it if you’re looking for an interesting and inspiring podcast). I’ve gone through some of the older episodes and came across an interview with Chris Guillebeau who wrote a book called The Happiness of Pursuit. He focuses on the benefits of having a quest in your life and how that can bring you happiness. Chris chose to visit all the countries in the world as his quest (193 in total) and achieved that before he was 35 – that’s a little too much for me to take on, but I view my Never Ending Life List as my list of quests. I’m not setting any deadlines and I’m regularly adding things to the list as a source of ideas for things to do, things to try, new challenges and (of course) new lists.
About Time. 
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