As Tidy As It Will Ever Be...

Over the past month or so I've been "sorting" A's bedroom. This has involved re-homing a couple of bookcases from elsewhere in the house and moving some of the other pieces of furniture around a little. Oh, and tidying... lots of! I know many will still consider it very cluttered, but we do have a lot of stuff. She loves reading and has an excellent library of books. I would say that about 80% of her books have been bought from charity shops, an excellent and cheap source of good quality children's books.

The sun was shining a little this morning so it seemed a good time to attempt some photos of her room. I find it hard to take good quality indoor photos without flash. After some trial and error I think it's best to use my camera on the night time setting and rest it on something steady if it's going to be a longish exposure. The photos are still a little dim perhaps, but they'll do! By the way, my camera is a Fujifilm Finepix f100fd.
 
OK, here are some photos of the room in its tidy state (incase you were wondering!)

I was tempted to dig the African Flower blanket out the wardrobe for some staging, but didn't.

Now there's absolutely no more room for any more furniture. As more books come in we'll need to say goodbye to the ones she's grown out of. Of course, there'll be ones which we'll keep, indeed, some of the ones she has now were mine when I was younger. In those days books were relatively far more expensive than they are now so I didn't have many. I like her room, it's the kind of room I would have liked when I was little. I don't think I've imposed it on her though, there's enough of her own personality in it to make it hers.


Anyway, here, for comparison, are the messy photos...

And here, while I'm at it, are two photos I found of her room when we were just beginning the process of converting it from being a spare room...

Unfortunately, I can't find any photos of it as it was when we moved in. Imagine a dark underwater cave - dark blue carpet, navy skirting and cornicing, and dark blue walls. Believe it or not, the yellow, scrambled egg effect sponging was an improvement...

Castle #1

We have just recently joined Historic Scotland (similar to English Heritage in England and Cadw in Wales. Is there an equivalent in Northern Ireland?). This means we can go and visit lots of castles! We started on Monday which was the last day of the Easter holidays.

Looking at the photos I took though, you'd perhaps be excused from realising we were at a castle. This is because not much of the original castle is left, and much of what has replaced it is currently covered in scaffolding. However the location and situation were excellent - we had a good climb and excellent views. There was plenty to see and photograph, it would seem I was in texture study mode - lots of shots of different stonework, brickwork and peeling paint, in addition to the views, a hairy caterpillar and the odd flower.

So, where were we? The answer: Dumbarton Castle.

"From the 5th century AD until 1018, Dumbarton Rock was the capital of the British kingdom of Strathclyde. Legend tells of Merlin the magician staying at King Riderch’s court there in the 6th century. The Rock was besieged several times, but the Viking assault in 870 was by far the worst. After a four-month siege, Kings Olaf and Ivar of Dublin carried off the slaves and looted treasure in 200 longships."

"Substantial new artillery fortifications were built in the 17th and early 18th centuries. These are what the visitor sees today, for nothing survives from the Dark-Age fortress, and precious little from the medieval castle."

Here is a photo of how the garrison and rocks look from across the Clyde (and without scaffolding):-


  © Copyright Dave Hitchborne and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

There are 557 steps to climb to see all there is to see...

A Wee Break.

We've been away and now we're home again! For four nights of the week just gone I took the children to visit my parents who stay in the south west of Scotland. Of course, I took my camera too, here are the results...

First we went to Threave Gardens, a last visit before our NTS membership expires. It wasn't terribly exciting as it's pretty much still in its winter state. The famous bank of daffodils was not yet blooming, in contrast to our visit last year when we only just caught it as the flowers started to fade.

 Walled garden gate detail.

Rhubarb forcers.

Hot house flower.

 Fly cemetery.

Eagle sculpture.

Cowgirl atop belted galloway.

 Catkins detail.

 Catkins against stone wall of bat roost.

Now a quick trip into town. 

 A fine view along the river into the sun.

 A "shop" view, probably soon to be demolished.

We also made a brief visit to a brand new dinosaur park. The kind of place you just visit once; I wonder how well it will do once the initial rush to see it fades.

Back to my parents' and just a few photos of Mum's garden. Very little in flower so far this year...

Ummm, I've forgotten what this was called, it was a very pretty shade of blue.

Hellebores.

 Anemone blanda.

Now to my favourite outing. I picked the worst afternoon weather-wise, but at the time I just felt the need to get out the house and breath! So we went to Rockcliffe, a tiny village set in a lovely bay - sea, sand, rocks and walks. Perfect...

On our last morning we went back into town. The children enjoyed a whirl on the merry-go-round (not a traditional one, they chose the Ben10 jeep to ride in), we admired the railings of the tower, took a wander back down to the river and made a few purchases at some of the many charity shops...

... my favourite things I bought were a lovely stripey 100% wool scarf (99p), and a copy of Nigella Express (£4).

I took the big granny square blanket with me, hoping to complete sewing in the ends during the quiet evenings. However, I soon realised that was going to be an impossible task, there are just far too many of them still. At least I'm well over half way now.

I also took my new gadget - I've got myself a smart phone. It was very nice to be able to use it to read some blogs while I was away (though I'm afraid I didn't get round to making any comments - will rectify soon!) It's interesting to see how blogs look on a smart phone, for example I hadn't realised that the whole sidebar disappears. For me, the biggest downside to this is that I wasn't able to use my blog roll for accessing blogs (I've been setting up Feedly to use instead, which seems to work fine). Perhaps that's why genuine blogrolls seem to be disappearing from so many blogs. I say "genuine" as sometimes when a blog does have a blogroll it's so carefully edited to be tasteful that it only contains a dozen or so entries. I think this is a pity. Blogrolls are a great way of finding new blogs. The chances are, if you're visiting a blog you like, their blogroll will contain other blogs you'll like too. Making new connections is good, let's not lose that ability. Let's keep blogrolls alive and well!


Right, the washing machine has finished and there is much tidying to be done, must go...