Top Tips


I have been reminiscing by exchanging my favourite Viz Top Tips with a friend over the last few days.  Here's my top 3;

avoid buying costly binoculars simply by standing closer to the object you wish to view

paint a large blue rectangle in your garden, then people flying overhead will think you have a swimming pool

and finally..

always carry a packet of lard in your pocket, in case you get your head stuck in railings.

Have you got any?






image:  http://moblog.net/view/279954/viz



Don't waste money buying expensive binoculars. Simply stand closer to the object you wish to view





The Paris Wife by Paula McLain




Cat and Tatie

The Paris Wife is the story of the first marriage of Ernest Hemmingway to Hadley Richardson and is based on known facts. At the beginning we meet Hadley, a woman in need of a life raft to rescue her from a family that threaten to pull her down into it's undercurrents.  Hadley's father is dominated by her mother, becomes a drinker and ultimately loses his own battle to stay afloat, Hadley's mother is domineering and controlling, and her sister wants Hadley to stay and keep her company in her own toxic marriage.  Unsurprisingly, Hadley is desperate for love and escape. 

Then along comes Hemingway, a force of nature, but also a man in need of his own life raft.  Hemingway wanted to escape his domineering and controlling mother, and the emotional injuries which he sustained whilst fighting on the Italian front in the First World War.  

Very quickly Hemingway and Hadley met, fell in love, got married and moved to Paris to hang out with the literary demi monde; the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and James Joyce. 

The marriage had many challenges; Hemingways attitude towards women, his fast and loose attitude to friends, his constant need for adventure and his ferocious literary ambitions. Paula McLeans portrait of Hadley is of a gentle, if a somewhat naive woman, who loves her husband but struggles with his huge personality and with life in bohemian, literary Paris in the 1920's.  Hadley held on tight, but it was a bumpy 6 year ride; from 1921 to 1927.

Even though I knew Hemingway was married 4 times,  I needed to know what happened to Hemingway and Hadley, or Cat and Tatie as they called each other.  I read The Paris Wife quickly, over one weekend, but it will stay with me for much longer.  I would like to read A Moveable Feast next, Hemingway's account of his life in Paris, which he wrote when he rediscovered his notebooks in 1957, stored at The Ritz, in Paris, for nearly 30 years. 

16 Days


Continuing my photography challenge for 2012 of a photo a day.

16th -  a new, colourful addition to my shop


17th - the awesome Gareth Malone at The Albert Hall (well, the back of his well lit head)


18th - Focus on breakfast


19th - tray chic


20th - baby trees!


21st -  a fluffy pigeon enjoying a rainy day bath in the gutter


22nd - A giant mural in the John Radcliffe childrens hospital (windows give scale)


23rd - using up last summers walnut jam for banana cake


24th -  Nigellas chocolate and lime cake, yum.


25th - pretty pistachios


26th - Denman's Midwifery (dated 1805) shortly to go into the shop


27th - thin skinned, inside the skin of an onion


28th -  silent, but deadly..


29th - bulbs of hope


30th - hyacinths for the soul


31st - super, duper, mini, Mini Cooper