explore - day three: Maps

We love maps, we have  a bagful and a small suitcase full. The bag is an old haversack that belonged to my dad, actually the suitcase of maps was his too, and the selection of maps is quite wide spread.
OH, OH I have just remembered that the map widget you can see on my blog is because they have a photograph of mine on there. I took a photograph of Warkworth Castle. We were sitting in the car waiting for the castle to open and I took a picture. I uploaded the holiday pics to my Flickr account and the map people saw it and asked permission to use it.
We go to lots of places that are shut. It seems to be a habit with us. We went to Jodrell Bank and it was shut, the Merchant's house in Tenby was shut. We even went to Bannockburn and it was shut and that is a field with a statue in it! But the best place we ever went was when the Vatican Library first went online. We were new to the internets then so we thought we would go and have a look. We clicked the button and waited (being on dial-up and using windows 3.11 it was slow) eventually the page opened and told us "We are sorry the Vatican Library Online is closed for refurbishment of the site".
I'll be back with more later.

Well I am back. I haven't done much with the maps except stick a few choice bits in my playbook and cut out some circles (I wonder what they could be for.... Hmmm). I am the map reader. Mr M can look at a map and have it in his head. There was a game for the computer called Dungeonmaster that required your character to walk along passages and fight monsters. Sometimes the monsters chased you and Mr M could make his character run backwards while throwing things at the monster and he knew which way to jump at all times. I need the map. I need it in front of me. Having said that I am a good navigator (or nagavator as it sometimes gets called by a six year old) I don't need to turn the map upside down to be able to give directions. OH, and when those directions are ignored I can get us back onto the road we need without having to turn around.
Mr M says that it is impossible to get lost in this country because the furthest you can be from the sea is 78 miles and there is bound to be at least one signpost between where we are and the coast. We have never ended up in someone's farmyard although it has been a close call on a couple of occasions. However there have been lots of serendipitous moments because of our detours the best one being the ford. This was a day when we were going from Bude to St Austell and when we got to three miles from Camelford we found the tailback. There are traffic lights in Camelford because of the narrow road. My map is dead good and shows ALL the roads. Mr M had his Jeep so we turned off the main road and followed the little lanes and byeways. Suddenly there was the ford. We drove through. Mr M stopped the Jeep, turned to me and grinned. He reversed back through the ford and then drove through it again.
"Will you take my photograph driving though?" he asked and the excited little boy expression on his face just melted my heart. Without a second thought I jumped out of the Jeep and prepared to take the pictures. He reversed through the ford again and then slowly drove forward so that I could take lots of pictures. I clambered back into the Jeep and we looked at the pictures just to make sure and then we drove on. As we came out of the lanes not far from the Eden Project Mr M said "It was so good to see you standing out there with the camera, just like old times." And it felt good too.

Explore - day two. A postcard

I have trawled through loads of postcards from various adventures and also read again the holiday journals. It is very hard to choose just one event as a significant adventure because they all have significance. I finally chose this picture, even though it is not a postcard, because it has all the significance in it for those people who know the background.
This holiday was a big adventure simply because of what had gone on before it. I was ill with Myalgicencephalomyelitis (ME) for about ten years until 1997 when it began to recede. I was just at the stage when I considered myself "back to normal" when circumstances meant that my elderly parents came to live with us. By 2001 I was clinging to my sanity and teetering on the egde of mental exhaustion. My parents moved to a care home and I began the struggle with agoraphobia. My Dad died in 2003 followed by Mum in 2006 and by that time I just didn't go out.
All this time Mr M was being a constant support and NEVER complaining. By 2008 I was beginning to go out with him in the car, sometimes just up the road and back and sometimes to the home of my favourite cousin. Gradually the times I could stay out got longer and we reached a point where my eldest son offered us the use of his time-share apartment in Cornwall for a week. I will gloss over the journey down there except to say I managed it. Then there were things like strange beds and shower rooms and french doors and different furniture. You get the picture?
On this day we went to the Lizard point and we walked along the path. I was clinging to Mr M and really scared because I don't do heights at all and this was a CLIFF TOP path.
Mr M said "Stand there and look brave and I'll take your picture to show everyone how brave you are"
So there I stand leaning on my walking stick at the edge of a cliff that is thousa....... about thirty metres high and I wasn't afraid because I was so concerned that everyone who saw the picture would see how fat I had become!
That was the turning point. From then on going out has become easier, the panic attacks are rare now, although we still talk of the one I had in Fowey and regard that as the benchmark for all others, and I can walk to the school across the road to collect my granddaughter most days from school.
So this is my most significant adventure and the one I would have written home about if I hadn't written it all in the holiday journal

Explore - day one. Eeek a self portrait!

 My first attempt EVER to take a picture of me in a mirror and for the first one I wasn't ready! can you believe that?
They both look strange but more like me than any other photograph I have ever seen. This, of course is because it is the me I see in the mirror every time I look while photographs taken by someone else are of me as they see me - quite interesting really.

I am also supposed to write a "Note to Self" about why I am doing this course and stuff like that. I wrote it in my playbook. Now that was fun to make even if I did get one of the pictures upside down ~sigh~ this meant a little jiggling of papers but I am dead pleased with it.

The second self portrait is kind of grainy and when I went back and looked at the mirror I realised that it has a thin coating of dust on it - I am such a good housekeeper that it has only a thin coating.
I am a follower of the Quentin Crisp school of housewifery. When the dust is a quarter inch thick it compacts down and protects the surfaces so under no circumstances should it be moved.
I am also a follower of the Chatsworth school of home decorating. They have rooms that were painted in 1796 and they haven't been touched since so I have decided that my house will not be decorated for two hundred years.... of course I won't care then will I? hee hee.
So I have embarked on my exploration - I wonder where I will go tomorrow.....

Resistance is useless I am 203 of several hundred

I just couldn't help myself. I tried, I really did. I need to sign up for another class like I need a hole in my head. I kept away from Shimelle's blog so she couldn't tempt me. I ignored all the stuff on Farcebork because I really, really don't want to struggle with another class.

Well, here I am. I have signed up for Explore. I am looking forward to the daily prompts dropping into my inbox. I haven't the faintest idea what it is about but I know it will stretch me in unexpected directions. I know it will make me think really hard about what I am photographing and what I am journalling, in short it is bound to be another great Shimelle class and resistance is useless.

A book! a book for us!

Today a slim brown paper package was pushed through my letterbox. It was a book, from Mel at I Speak Melsh She listed several books in her blog as part of her operation de-clutter and I put my hand up for one of them. This mean that I will be able to use the book during the summer holidays to give the divine Miss Em a project. We shall make some punched cards for her to give this Christmas.
I will register the book at bookcrossing and when we stop using it I will put it into the Official Bookcrossing Zone in town. Never heard of bookcrossing? well it is a wonderful way of relieving your bookshelves of books you will never read again simply by registering them with bookcrossing - here and then leaving them somewhere for someone else to find.

I heard the sharp intake of breath then, I really did. It is a very hard thing to do, release that first book "into the wild". I took a book out several times and was unable to just put it down and walk away. I made some labels that said FREE BOOK in quite big letters and then stuck them on the outside of the book with repo glue. I left the first one I ever released in a coffee shop and the buzz I got when I walked away was fantastic. I have released several hundred now and it is still a good feeling, try it!

!0 on the 10th

I have a huge amount of things to do on this 10th of the month. Tomorrow is the annual Open Day of the Gwent Family History Society and as Chairman I am the public face of the Society - at least until October when I finish my three years. Incorporated in this Open Day for the first time is a family reunion for the descendants of James and Mary GIBBON. As a member of the family and keeper of the family tree I have a list of ten things I simply have to take with me. For my first ten on the tenth I give you my Things for the Reunion list

1. My camera. This goes everywhere with me but I always put it on every list incase someone else loads the car!
2 Two folding tables. We don't know how many will be available at the venue and the needs of the Society come first.
3. Albums of family pictures, cuttings and memorabilia - yes there are at least ten of these.
4. The research folders - goes without saying really doesn't it? but.... that's right just incase someone else is loading the car.
5. Posters. These are A3 size sheets to tell the family where we are in the venue simply because they will stand about outside and mutter that they don't know where to go.............I could... no.
6. Laptop and scanner. Just incase they remember to bring the pictures and things I mentioned on the invitation
7. Basic show kit. Anyone who has ever done a craft fair or an agricultural show or the village fete will know that you have to have basic stuff like scissors, sticky-tape, blu-tack, drawing pins, dressmaking pins, safety pins, pens pencils rubbers, note pads, post-its, double-sided tape, glue-sticks, a small screwdriver, pound coins, a ball of string and a small plastic bag with elastic bands in it. OH and some paper clips.
8. Bottles of water in the cool-box. There will be refreshments available but from experience I know that having my own supply of water is essential
9. Portfolio with the family tree charts and the relationship chart plus the small trees for each sub group so they can find the mistakes and correct them with glee!
10. The Special Edition of the Gibbon Gazette. This is the irregular family newsletter that gets sent out to everyone for whom I have an address or an email addy. Trying to get stories for it is like finding hen's teeth but everyone seems to love it and will always ask when the next one will be available. The special edition is the story of my eldest grandson's Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme Gold Expedition, with loads of pictures. Perfect.

So there you have it. No pictures of anything because this is all preparation stuff. Tomorrow I will attempt to get pictures of everyone and also stories of their parents. I intend regaling them with the information I have found about The Real Uncle Charlie so we should have a good day.

How to use alpha stamps

I have seen a lot of how-to blogs with pictures and videos lately so I thought some people might like to see a special one.

This is called how to work with Alpha Stamps. You begin when Grandma buys two big sets of scrapbooking stuff from Costco and then gives you one of the alpha stamps sets for your very own.

First you get your Grandma to write the words with a pencil on her notepad so you can copy them. Then you stamp each of the letters across the top of a 12 x 12 piece of white paper - Grandma has a lot of these from her scrapbooks and she lets me use them for drawing and stamping and cutting out too.

 This next picture looks like I am banging the stamps onto the paper, but I'm not doing that. Grandma showed me how to ink my stamps properly and then how to press "firmly but gently" so that the letters don't smudge.

 Then you keep on inking each stamp in turn and making sure that they are lined up properly before pressing them onto the page. I like stamping and Grandma allows me to use her special clear stamps with the blocks you can see through. They are much easier to use than wooden ones and I am dead good with those. You can see the other picture in front of me. That is one of my Princess pictures. We had to use tissue paper and felt pens and a glue-stick. I drew the shapes and everything

 Now I have finished stamping I must make sure my stamps are clean so I use a baby wipe. Grandma has a big packet of them on the shelf and I am allowed to get one out as long as I make sure the funny lid is closed and then we turn the packet upside down to keep the wipes moist. I have no real idea what this means but it seems to keep Grandma happy when we do it.

The next thing to do is to put all the stamps back in their special container and then put them into my craft box.

Grandma gave me my own craft box when I was nearly five. I keep my stamps and my pens and my glue sticks in it and I have small containers with sequins and beads and flowers too.
I love to scrapbook with my Grandma and she says she likes to scrapbook with me too. I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial on how to use alpha Stamps.  Emily. age six.