Mother's Day

Mothering Sunday and first an indoor boot sale at the Memorial Hall. Found a nice big heavy frame for my railway tickets. Painting it black ( now in summer house ). Also a double CD of old Beach Boys stuff "Friends" and "20/20" which came out in the late 60's. Overlooked at the time and contain some nice tracks not heard before. Hazel got a tin photo of a little girl and keyhole cover. Archie found a musty frame. Archie had made a delicious carrot cake with cream cheese topping which we took over to Granma's in the afternoon to have with coffee. hazel and Archie did some gardening - planting some flowers they bought. I read the local paper. News isn't good - banning parking on all roads round Hartford Station - new shopping precinct stays empty - local Tory MP gets away with murder etc. The collage above is my Mum when she was a young woman back in the 40's on her wedding day.

Amsterdam

Nice to get back to Amsterdam if only for a short weekend. Tried to recreate the photo in the middle of the bench we took 31 years ago. Not quite the same but a nice dutch girl took one for us. Great flea market reached by free ferry from behind Central Station on Saturday - got lots of bargains including a tin house, tin signal, tin rocket for Archie ( who had to stay at home and paint the bathroom floor. ) tin electric bell for dolls house? and numerous other gew-gaws and stuff. Loved every minute of it except the walking and the sore feet!

Berlin

Just a few random images from the many photos I took in Berlin last week on a 5 day (four nights) trip with students from MMU. Saw so much great stuff including the Technik Museum , Museum der Dinge ( Museum of Things ) and Berlinisher Gallery to name but a few. So warm we even had waffles and ice cream outside in the sunshine one day! It was snowing in Manchester apparently. Managed to find some nice food places too including a great pizza , celery burger and chips, a Turkish bakery where they sold cream cakes, only one cafe was rubbish so won't mention them! The hostel was OK - very cheap and cheerful - a bit noisy but Hazel told the students next door off and they reduced the noise considerably. Managed to figure out how the Ubahn and Sbahn worked and only got lost twice. Berliners are usually very helpful and speak some English so always found our way eventually. One kind lady went out of her way to lead us up lots of steps to the Ubahn platform we needed. Of the art we enjoyed John Bock's playful junk sculpture/film/installations at the Berlinisher Gallery and Christian Falsnaes videos also in the same place. Good to see again the Twombly's, Beuys and Warhols etc. at the Hamburger Bahnhof, also installation by Adrian Piper.