Saturday, July 10, 2010

Saturday 10 July

~  In memory of my sister, her family and friends in New Zealand have set up a prize for 'wearable art' as part of a festival in their local town, which has just been awarded for the first time. My brother-in-law, H, forwards a letter from the prizewinner, who he didn't know before.  She tells how she too is grieving, for a husband still living but permanently hospitalized with early Alzheimer's disease, how touched she was by the sight and courage of H and his son together at the prize-giving, how thrilled she was by the prize money and how useful it will be as things have also been financially hard for her since her husband's diagnosis.  Once again I am struck by how people go on making and doing beautiful things even in sadness and difficult times.

~  We say we'll just make a start on the Radio Times crossword after lunch, and we get it finished, as we always have to once we've started.  Tom as the scribe does all the hard work while I just shout the answers.  We complain as usual about the badly done clues: anagrams of words not included only indicated, key-words like 'out' not properly used.  I get an alternate letter one which are usually my weak spot (I'm better at 'sounds like' ones), and we find we know more about the TV-based clues than we think we will, as usual.

~  Made a slideshow video at last of our walk at the Chaos de Gouette on Monday with Gillian and Barley, aka Rosie and Porridge, the bouleversantes, brilliant and beautiful Bitches about Brittany.  With music, which I don't know will be everyone's cup of tea. 


 I've given up with Vimeo as all they do is put me in an endless queue to convert, or fail to do so telling me only that my compression rates are wrong, without telling me what that means or what I can do about it, even though they've successfully converted a video made in just the same way before, and anyway, I don't think I should have to have a degree in geekiness to upload something made using standard up-to-date Windows software to their site.  So I'm afraid it's back to Youtube, which is a shame, as I made it HD enough to view full-screen but with Youtube that goes all wibbly-wobbly.  Rant over.  Ranting is not a beautiful thing, but Gillian, Barley, Molly and the Chaos all are, so please find the time to give it a look! 

PS Just going over to check the link, I find Gillian/Rosie has posted her lovely pictures of the same outing, which are better yet and quicker to look at, so hurry on over to her place and see! (And she's spelled 'Gouët' right too.)

10 comments:

The Crow said...

Have enjoyed the vicarious climbing over those wonderful rocks (have never seen any like them here) with all of you. Lovely video, Lucy, and really like the music.

Rosie said...

how lovely, it was like going there all over again. Jimmy says that you have some competition winners there...

marja-leena said...

Lovely place and wonderful video, even for YouTube! Looks like a heavenly and cool place to go to in a hea twave.

Catalyst said...

That's a lovely video with great music and beautiful dogs. Thanks, Lucy, for producing and posting it.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins said...

Lucy, just to report that on the last couple of comments you've left on my blog, the link to your site doesn't work when anyone clicks on your name. You might check it out.

Roderick Robinson said...

I had one intensive six-month period with crosswords when we were buying a house and I was commuting to London from Folkestone, home of my in-laws. Those were pre-Murdoch days and so I was OK with The Times. Later, my incipient politics became rampant and I switched to The Guardian, a much tougher row to hoe, crosswordwise. Mrs BB can still do it (even the dreaded Paul) but I have fallen away. The crossword mind needs continuous resharpening and my edge became blunt, then rusty, then turned to plastic.

Ate at the AW-T restaurant at Kew on Friday night. Something of a glorified steak-house though my starter of devilled kidneys was super and I would have appreciated more bread to mop up the devilment. On the journey down we were hideously delayed by traffic from and to the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. A condign fate you will say.

Lucas said...

So glad you grappled with the technology to produce this lovely video, a dream of Summer and beautiful scenery. Amazing how the dogs seem to be aware of the beauty around them in their explorative, own way. Oddly as I watch and listen, a TV promgamme of Columbo is on with a dog barking!

jmartin said...

What wonderful rocks, like outsized Chinese scholar stones. And of course, lovely damsels of every species.

The water/rock/stick combination always satisfies, but how grand the reminder (Chaos!) to enjoy their necessarily ephemeral arrangement.

zephyr said...

Like the music a lot...what is it?

yes...my clients are having trouble with vimeo as well, which frustrates me, as it is superior image wise...sad that YouTube/Google doesn't fix it...what with their vast resources for creating and building

20th Century Woman said...

My first visit to your blog via Rosie's, but it won't be my last. The slideshow and the music are lovely.