Pictures

Michelle has just done a lovely picture meme and so here is mine.



1. a lovely evening cruise, 2. eye candy!, 3. wyrdwoods_MC_03, 4. Mom's dried roses, 5. Jared Leto, 6. Cactus Club Cafe bellini, 7. I want to be where the Sun warms the sky, 8. Yes....oh....YESS, 9. Best little book store in the world, 10. bookshelf spectrum, revisited, 11. Bookish creature, 12. Petronella de la Court’s Dutch Cabinet

Here’s how you play:
type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr search.
using only the first page, choose an image.
copy and paste each of the URL’s into the mosaic maker over at FD’s image maker.

The questions:

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favourite food?

3. What high school did you attend?

4. What is your favourite colour?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. Favourite drink?

7. Dream vacation?

8. Favourite dessert?

9. What do you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. One word to describe you.

12. Your flickr name.

Cattitude Problem

Esme doesn't like it when I clean or tidy. She'll sit there and watch me and then wander off and express her displeasure.

Sometimes this is by waiting until I have a full black bag and then chewing a hole in the bottom of it. Sometimes she will knock over the big pile of books that I have just collected from all over the house (a very common occurrence).

Usually she just goes and wees in the bath.

Today however she found a new way of expressing herself.

Because I was cleaning the bathroom the bath was full of bleach so she decided to wee somewhere else.

She chose the washing basket.

When I'm doing a load of washing I leave the basket on the floor in front of the machine so that I can just pull it out straight into it, luckily I was using the white basket so I noticed the next time I went into the kitchen. (I'm oh so very glad it wasn't the red one...)

Esme is now sulking in the armchair, the washing has been hung out (after being put in the red basket) and the white basket is full of hot water and bleach and sitting in my nice clean bath.

I must also confess that while my first reaction was Bloody cat!, my second reaction was that of a small child... Look at all that wee! *giggle*.

House of Many Ways - Nom Nom Nom Nom

After reading Caroline's post about shopping for books and seeing her mention Garden Spells at the end, I decided to read it again.

So I took it to work with me this morning, and read the first chapter or so while waiting for our morning meeting to start (and then delayed the meeting slightly by raving about it when Bod asked me if it was any good (having sold one to Jo after I'd recommended it to her))... anyways, so I planned to read it again today.

Then all my plans went out the window when Donal phoned up from Goods In to tell me that House of Many Ways had just arrived. So naturally I read that instead.

Once again, Diana Wynne Jones has written a brilliant book. Now it's "A chaotically magical sequel to Howl's Moving Castle" so I was very much looking forward to reading a little more about Sophie and Howl (and Calcifer) - and I wasn't disappointed. One of the things I loved was the dog called Waif. Now in the film (that Scott Pack prefers) there is a dog called Heen that is small, scruffy and very wheezy. Heen doesn't appear in the book, the dog in the book is the combination of Wizard Suliman and Prince Justin that the Witch creates (another bit dropped/mixed up from the film, read about him here and discover the whole point of the scarecrow turning into Prince Justin (something Richie Fingers asked me about)).

Ahem.

Anyways, Waif is basically Heen, but with a new name and new purpose. I love the fact that she's taken this film character and transplanted it into a new book!

Now if none of that makes any sense, I do apologise - basically I recommend it!
(and I've now seen the American cover and may just have to buy that edition too...)

Sunday Reading

A few weeks ago I was tidying the kids table at work and picked up a book called Stoneheart. Now I'd been picking this up and looking at it for a while. I liked the cover and loved the first part of the back cover blurb...

Deep in the City something had been woken, something so old and so ordinary that people had been walking past it for centuries without giving it a second look...

So I opened it up and read the first couple of pages. Then I walked over to the shelf and picked up the second book Iron Hand. Then I put them on our reservations shelf until lunchtime when I bought them both (as well as the new Sarah Dessen book, Lock and Key).
I read all of Stoneheart in my lunch break then I polished off Iron Hand at home that evening. Then I read them both again a week later.

Now I read a lot of kids books, I read a lot of books full-stop, but these... It was like the first time I read The Hobbit/Howl's Moving Castle/Saffy's Angel/I Capture The Castle. Just oh-my-god-that's-so-good!

Someone else loves them too.

I now have to wait until September for the third book Silvertongue - I may just explode with impatience before then.

One of the reasons I found these books so amazing was the way that while I was reading I was in London. There is a wonderful passage where the Raven has been sent to fetch the Minotaur...

In a direct line between him and the gherkin, about half a mile in front of it, was the eastern edge of a massive complex of concrete and glass, like a fortress assembled from ziggurats and thin spiky towers. Inside the boundaries of this futuristic urban citadel there were fountains and walkways on different levels, and there was more concrete. The Raven knew that below the surface of the southern end of this sprawl had once run the ancient city wall. And he could remember when the dwarfed white church marooned in a startling patch of green within the cement bastion had been the tallest building in the area.

Now as soon as I read that, I knew it was the Barbican. I've been there enough times to know it, I'd just not necessarily have described it like that, but it's a perfect description.

These books have meant that my much wanted trip to London will now be featuring a tour of the statues mentioned in the books. I've managed to find some photos of a couple of them, The Sphinx and The Royal Artillery Memorial, but I want to see all of them. I want to see the Grid Man, the clock where they hide, the statue of Icarus and the lair of the Minotaur.

If these books had been published twenty years ago, I would have been taking that tour with my dad as he'd have loved these books. Instead I shall take my camera and Anthony (bribed with a visit to the F1 shop and the Imperial War Museum) and make it my third reason for my trip to London.

Bad Girl

I know I'm a crap blogger at the moment, I just can't seem to get anything to stick together enough to write it down.

But I did photograph my new shoes for you, even if I have not written about looking for them and asking the salesgirl for "impossible shoes really. Cream sandals, must have an ankle strap, preferably a kitten heel that's no more than an inch" - "Yup, they're impossible shoes" she said, and sold me those instead. Well I say sold me, sold Anthony actually. But he picked them out and I'm going to wear them at two separate parties in the next month so that justifies the price (which Emily would say is not a lot for shoes but I think they were expensive). (Oh, I wrote about it...w00t!)

Go and play the first line guessing game on Michelle's blog instead and I shall go and play some more WoW and make notes whenever I think of something I could possibly blog about.

New Cream Shoes

CreamShoes2
Originally uploaded by Petronella Rose.

New Cream Shoes

CreamShoes1
Originally uploaded by Petronella Rose.