Introductions and Dedications

I would like to introduce you to Claire. She has a delightful blog about her life, her quilts, her family and weird things that might show up on an xray. She recently offered me an award, a friendship around the world blog award. She wrote lots of nice words about me. Thanks for that, Claire. Please go and visit her. You won’t be disappointed.

I don’t have an award to give her, but I will put this song right here for her. It is quirky and lovely. I hope you like it.

I also want to dedicate this song to Mary. Listen to the words, Mary, it seems so very applicable and especially poignant right now. For everyone else this song comes with a language warning. Don’t listen if you might be easily offended.

I think we’d all like to live in that lighthouse from time to time.

Queen’s Chamber

At Versaille you can tour the bedrooms of kings and queens.

Tall canopied beds decorated with gold and feathers, where royalty once slept.

Decorated in a style that could never be described as understated,

Nineteen royal French babies were born in this room.

Nineteen babies opened their tiny eyes and saw this ceiling.

Quite a welcome to the world!

Organising

RIGHT…

I have been busy. I have lots of things on the go right now. One thing on my to-do list is to join Flickr. This now has a star beside it on the list. A star means it has begun, but not yet finished. I cannot yet give it a tick because…oh my, it is a big job.

I have begun by uploading my European holiday photos. There are quite literally thousands of these. I think every one of them is a great photo, but that criteria is just not rigourous enough when making decisions for Flickr. I am being very strict on whether or not a photo is Flickr-worthy.

I added a widget in my side bar just over there —–>

so that you can go and have a look at them if you want to. I wanted the widget to do that thing where it shows a few of the photos, but I can’t seem to make it work. It most definitely links to my photos though, so we’ll just have to go with that for the moment.

I’ll leave you with a photo that Ashy took. It shows the Tuileries gardens in front of the Louvre. If you look hard enough you might even see my Pete and I at the bottom of the stairs.

I’m on Top of the World

This post requires a sound track. Please press play.

Good things are happening at the house of peppermint.

This year I have been quietly working on a project. It has been bubbling away for some time, just waiting for the perfect time to emerge. I am not usually very good at waiting or keeping secrets, but this project needed to be loved and nurtured until the time was right.

Last week a national quilting magazine asked if they could do a profile about me.

All the stars are aligning – I will launch my new project with this profile.

It needs a lot of work between now and publication time.

I have a computer guy coming to see me on Monday to get things going.

It is so very exciting!

I’m on top of the world…

An Unscheduled Outage

My apologies for my absence. I have no particular reason for taking a week away, a few things have meant a delay in blogging. I could list them here, but they just sound like whinging. Basically arriving home from a seventeen day power holiday after a thirty-six hour journey at 1pm on a Sunday, then presenting two seminars on a new computer system beginning at 8:30am the next day is not conducive to jet lag recovery.

I have been asleep at a very early hour each day. This is most unusual for me. Generally I manage my sleep requirements very well and actually feeling tired is so peculiar that it scares me! Now, however, I have had a few days off and am once again feeling on top of my life. (HA! That makes it sound like I’m organised.)

I have a few tasks to do before I begin to actually feel organised. I have several thousand photographs to review. Most days in France I took roughly five hundred photos. I have now transferred them from the laptop to my computer. They look even better on this screen! Once I have been through them I need to join flickr and post those that are worthy.

Ashleigh has arrived home safe and sound. She has begun working in a coffee shop and will continue for the next few months until universtiy begins.

Pip has begun playing indoor soccer. His first sport since his surgery. He has had one game and enjoyed it so much that it was a delight.

All in all life feels balanced and even, and I like that.

Jetlag…

is not good.

Jetlag is not fun.

I am not entirely certain that my head and my body are in the same place.

I think about this now, but have forgotten it already.

I must remember that, but I don’t know what it is.

AND I wish that the world would STOP swaying.

Travel is great, it would be so much better if you could do it without travelling.

Eighteen is a very good age

Today we visited the Champagne region of France. We saw the grapes growing.

It takes a combination of three particular grapes to make champagne.

We took a tour of the Mercier Champagne caves. These are vast labyrinths carved with pickaxes in chalk beneath the city of Epernay. This one was more than eighteen kilometres of tunnels that were 150 years old.

Down here it is always ten degrees and ninety percent humidity. The perfect conditions to age a bottle of fine champagne. Some of these bottles are aged for forty-five years before being made available for sale.

What a fabulous place to celebrate your 18th birthday.

Happy birthday beautiful Ashleigh.

Eighteen is a very good age.

Bienvenue a Pithon

Welcome to Pithon (say pit-on)!

This tiny village of just one hundred people has been home to Ashleigh for all of 2008.

It is the sort of place where poppies grow wild on the side of the road.

Where apples, corn and sugar beets are grown.

Where sheep, cows and chickens stand in the afternoon to feed in the fields.

Where the railway station has been converted to a home…

because the railway bridge was bombed during the second world war and never repaired.

Where a wide human-made canal that once had huge draught horses dragging barges of freight is now the perfect pathway for an afternoon stroll.

Where flowers grow in everyone’s garden. (just as a very vain aside…I think this may be the best photo I have ever taken)

This place is her home for just one more week. Next week she will leave here and return to us in Australia. We are so glad that we were able to come and see it through her eyes for just a little while.

The Somme

Right now we are in the Somme region of France. This is an area that has a strong military connection to Australia. This region was called the Western Front during World War One.

One particular town, Villers Bretonneux, identifies itself with Australia. The streets are all named after towns in Australia. There are images of kangaroos everywhere and the school makes a point of doing Australian cultural studies. This is because ninety years ago this town was liberated by Australian soldiers.

Not far from this little village stands the most incredible memorial to the foreign soldiers who defended this area.

Forty-six thousand Australian men lost their lives in this region in a matter of three years. All young men, in the prime of their lives, at a time when our total population was only four million.

Their names neatly engraved on wall after wall of sandstone, lists so long that it is agonsing to stand before them.

Row after row of white headstones mark the passing of each soldier.

Many of the headstones stand for soldiers who could not be identified, but whose family ached for their loss.

The inscription on this one just broke my heart.

The day we visited was cold and rainy. It seemed entirely appropriate.

Lest we forget…

Images of London

Our first day in London was our only dull day. It was quite late in the afternoon when we went up on the London Eye.

Just to prove that I did actually go up there…

although I did not stand up (or even look very happy).

Some iconic images.

The Thames…

Big Ben (although I realise the name refers to the bell which is not visible)…

the changing of the guard at the Tower of London…

the Tower Bridge..

Carnaby Street (where I whistled the Austin Powers music in my head the whole time)…

the tardis..

and the West End theatre where we spent our last night with tears of laughter rolling down our faces.

We have now moved back to France for our last few days in Europe. We are in the northern area – where Ashy has lived this year. She is going to show us her highlights.

France de Ashy…