Earrings

Another of Danielle's birthday presents were these earrings from Jenny [the bigger round ones].

MLK day

Rowan has sent us through some photos and video. This video [very very short] is of the Martin Luther King Day march that she went on in Philly last week. And the photo is from the march with her friend.

Meal Out

Friends Siobhan and Pete invited us round for dinner; which after our snow trek in the Pennines was particularly welcome. Great evening, great food, then cycled home on the tandem.

Another photo from our walk near Oakworth.

Kings Very Cross

Anyone who has visited the new Kings Cross concourse with the spectacular roof will know what a great building it is. It was therefore dismaying to find a portion of that valuable space taken up with, of all things, a car. Some 4x4 irrelevance, trying to make you covet it I think. That will be the day. So I took this shot of the roof reflected in the windscreen as some sort of statement about it. It does not really work but the thought was there.

West Yorkshire Moors

I bought Danielle a calendar for her birthday that has a hand drawn map of a walk on the West Yorkshire Pennines for each month.  http://www.amazon.co.uk/West-Yorkshire-Moors-2015-Calendar/dp/1909837164/ref=tmm_other_meta_binding_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

 The plan is that we get to walk in a new place each month. Saturday was the first such walk, ten miles from Oakworth on the moors above Keighley. Quite heavy snow, off piste routes, a lot of slush, helicopter over head, not another walker up there, it was all pretty dramatic and exciting. Then on the way home we had the Cup on the radio in time to hear Chelsea and City both being knocked out, if Preston had held on to beat the Blades then it would have been a perfect day.

Workshop

Today I ran a photography workshop at the York Museum linked to this years Open Studios. I really enjoyed it, there were some great people on the course who really wanted to learn and had real talent. Very uplifting. I met Danielle for lunch in town when it was over so it was a good day.
Here is another photo from the Oakworth walk, Danielle in the snow on the tops near Wolf Stones.

St Giles Circus

It was a pleasure to be walking the streets of London with Danielle this week. En route to the Portrait Gallery at Trafalgar Square we passed through St Giles Circus which is being revamped [it needed it]. Here is how the area is looking now.

National Portrait Gallery

Tuesday evening Danielle got invited to a reception held at the National Portrait Gallery, which is one of our favorite places. So I came too, met some interesting people, had experts tell us about some of the paintings. Very pleasant. We stayed at a hotel at Kings X that had this view of the station out the window; it is certainly improving around there.

The Week In Pictures

Rowan is happily back at school; she made it into "our week in pictures" on the school website last week. She is not happy with the photo, I quite like it!

Alternative Jukebox

Another present for Danielle were these three plants which look good together.
The book is one I gave Danielle for Christmas. She is a bit of a 6 Music fan and we are working our way through the book, listening to the tracks on Spotify as we go along; really interesting and educational, a nice thing to do together. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Radio-Musics-Alternative-Jukebox-Extraordinary/dp/1844037843

Sloe Port

We watched the movie Nebraska on Saturday, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska_%28film%29 , a fantastic black and white Wenderesque road movie. Recommended.
I saw friend Paul for a pint in the York Tap pub on the station http://www.yorktap.com/ it is a great addition to the station. The building used to be a rather down-at-heel model railway exhibition run by a mom and pop operation; Rowan and I visited of course.
Danielle got a lot of great presents at her birthday party - this is Sloe Liqueur made with Port "made" in Yorkshire. It is delicious and, as you can see, going down well.

First Daff Day

January 16th was Rowan's birthday. First time she has been away from us. It was also First Daff Day, which was a nice compensation. Previous years have been,
2006 Feb 5
2007 Jan 14
2008 Jan 6
2009 Jan 24
2010 March 20
2011 Feb 26
2012 Jan 23
2013 Feb 2
2014 Feb 23
2015 Jan 16
so this is about average. We actually had a dusting of snow on Monday for a day, but it is still proving to be a mild winter again ... flw

The Ouse got a bit flooded last week. It had not rained a lot here in York, but it had poured down over the Dales and all the water from the Dales comes down here.

Danielle@50

So here is a [mercifully?] short video of highlights from Danielle's 50th Birthday party last week. It was a great vibe and I hope that comes through. It features short bits of a toast from Emma, a speech from Danielle, clarinet from Carl, piano and voice from Adrian and Cathy, a song from Rob, viol from Suzzana and noisy blues from me and Greg, then dancing.

Fordon

I got out to the Wolds for a walk, a bit of an achievement as work is full on at the moment. It was great to walk the lonely sheep-walks again. The snow just held off long enough. This is a dry valley just near Fordon, a tiny little village that no one has heard of.

Thornes Park

When Rowan was here she got in a high jump training at Wakefield. It was like old times, tea at Ikea on the way back, and I got a walk in as well. This is a secret garden part of Thornes Park, a lovely spot with a typically dramatic Pennine light.

A Year In Cycling

I took the stats off of the Garmin this week. For last year I rode 5,500 km, climbing 40,000 metres, max speed of 73.9 kph. Not sure if this is a lot or not, I'll find out this time next year.

This is a photo Rowan took on her phone at the Sherlock Holmes exhibition in London. I love it.

The Morning After

The morning after the party we walked into town and had brunch with Carl, Jill, Kath, Mark, Mandy, Lily, Emma, Jenny and Sarah. We went to a cafe, the Brew and Brownie that recently contacted  me to see if I wanted to show some of my work on their walls. I did, and so we had some Wolds canvases to look at as we drank our Americanos. It is a great cafe run by a really nice young couple who are from the Wolds originally.

The photo is of Carl, Jill and Helen from the party

Danielle@50

Danielle was 50 last week. Surprise party [no surprise there] last night. A smallish [35] gathering of people from London, York and beyond who have know Danielle for up to 30 years plus. Everyone was told to arrive at 7 exactly - and they did. So we had a big reveal to Danielle, then Emma made the toast, Danielle made a speech, Carl played a clarinet piece, Adrian and Cath performed a song at the piano, Rob sang two songs on guitar, Zan played a beautiful piece on viol [she is a professional musician] and Greg and I played Happy Birthday Blues by BB King and a couple of other songs.
It was a really great evening.

At Seventeen

Rowan went back to the States on Monday, so she will not be here for her birthday. So we had a pre-birthday before she went. Here she is wearing the onesie her Granny gave her, about to cut the cake her Mother baked her.

Brentano String Quartet

We went to see the Brentano String Quartet at York University. The best quartet I have ever seen - which is really saying something. They did Bartok's third which was fantastic, the whole audience could sense they had witnessed something special. After that the Brahms was a bit of a let down, but it did not matter. http://brentanoquartet.com/about/

The photo is of some of the lovely compost I just got from the compost bin. Yum yum - the magick strikes again.

Changing of the Trope

City gents walking across London Bridge in bowler hats to work was a common trope. It has passed away to be replaced by this modern version: tourists traipsing across the Millenuium bridge to the Tate Modern from St Pauls.

The Shard

I had not really appreciated the Shard before. It has a strange other-worldly feel to it; like the forbidden place that mere mortals can not hope to visit. Pretty accurate really.

NYE

Friends Robert and Helen who live across the Moor, have an annual New Years Eve meal and party. It is a great occasion, lot of chat, great bring and share food, kids all disappear [Rowan went into town to see the year in at York Minster], really nice.
I got this shot by looking up from the tables and catching the reflection in the skylights. Not a classic but I like it; and I'm in it for once.

City Walk

Leaving the Holmes exhibition we headed past St Pauls over the Millennium Bridge and on to the South Bank. Lunch at Nandos then over a tourist infested Tower Bridge, past the still-muddy-from-the-poppies Tower of London and back to Liverpool Street for the journey home. A great day.
I saw this man with a pipe in the cold winter sunshine and was glad to catch the plume of smoke.

Sherlock

Tuesday Pete, Rowan and I caught the train into London from Wickham Market. A quick walk down London Wall from Liverpool Street and we were at the London Museum for the current Sherlock Holmes in London exhibition. It was great fun, really well put together. Recommended. All three of us know probably too much about the canon, so we got plenty out of it. Here is Rowan in front of the Reichenbach Falls.

Thorpeness 2

Another shot of the beach.

Thorpeness

Monday we all went to Thorpeness and walked on the shingle beach that unusually had some sand upon it. It is one of my favourite places to photograph with a winter sun. This is Ro and Danielle with Milo heading into the sun. Mother joined us for lunch in a fine new cafe just off of the beach.

Norwich

Sunday we drove down to Norwich for a big family lunch;
Generation 1 - Mother
Generation 2 - Ro&Pete   Simon&Danielle
Generation 3 - Tom&Catherine, Sarah&Markus, Will, Rowan
Generation 4 - Edward, Iona, Constance, Rosalind, Imminent Bump
Went very well, then we had a nice walk through Norwich centre. Looking at the Cathedral after York Minster does beg the question "Where's the rest of it?" though.