Snow came late this year

After a week of the Siberian deep-freeze, a lot of this finally came down overnight, turning the world silent ...

and leading to sights in the morning we'd been missing this winter ...

Let me back in, mummy, it's cold outside!

January Photo-a-day Challenge

For fun this past month I joined a photo challenge created here by fatmumslim. For each day in January there was a specified topic for a photo, which you could interpret as literally or imaginatively as you like. The idea was to take a more or less spontaneous snap of whatever represents the topic for the day, play with edits or filters if you feel like it, and share it on some site. 


All these were taken with my new, compact little Canon Ixus (see Day 31) that I got for Christmas and which lives inside my handbag (see Day 13!) ...

January 1. You

2. Breakfast

3. Something you Adore

4. Letterbox

5. Something you Wore

6. Makes you Smile

7.Favourite

8. Your Sky

9. Daily Routine

Snapped in the nano-second before the tube door closed. Sometimes the most spontaneous of all produce interesting results!


10. Childhood

11. Where you Sleep

12. Close-Up

13. In your Bag

14. Something you're Reading

15. Happiness

16. Morning

17. Water

Manky bit of the Thames made to look more interesting than it is with some nifty filters.


18. Something you Bought

Lunch on my desk at work


19. Sweet

20. Someone you Love

21.Reflection

Shot while driving in the rain. Don't try this at home, kids.


22. Your Shoes

23. Something Old 

24. Guilty Pleasure

Tiny but wonderful French café round the corner from my workplace in north London, where I sometimes pop in for lunch or a coffee, happens to be called Le Péché Mignon (transl: guilty pleasure), and so it is indeed.

25. Something you Made

26. Colour

27. Lunch

28. Light

29. Inside your Fridge

Yikes! This was almost as hard as having to expose myself. You're getting both soft-focus and a Lomo-ish effect here.


30. Nature

31. You, Again

This was fun to do. I might do the February challenge - check it out here if you're interested in joining in.  

Of antiques and dogs

This last weekend I popped in to the Winter Antique Fair held in Battersea Park ...

... where once again, it was a dog's day out for Chelsea's pampered pooches. Whether a Louis Quatorze or a mid-20th century arm-chair, the little darlings had their thrones ...  

from which to keep a watchful eye over proceedings.

The fair was a book collector's dream ...

... in fact a dream for collectors of just about anything. Ammonites? Thread spools? Pomegranates? ...

I would have liked to be able to buy this whole shelf-full of old ironstone and creamware, not to mention the urn ...

and a giant clock or two ...

but was more than happy with my single purchase of a worn and well-used 18th century pewter dish ...

Exiting through the foyer I wondered if the posh pooches didn't feel their water bowl a trifle sub-standard ..?

(So many thanks to Karin from La Pouyette for kindly mailing me an invitation to the fair - her own old haunt - yet again!)