Hello

Sunday night and it's almost midnight, not long back. It's been a family day today, stayed with eldest nephew last night, and his fiance and their gorgeous little boy. Today been for a walk with them, and my sister, around a marina, called in a coffee shop for cappuccino and cake, then met up with sisters hubby and we all had a late lunch out. Very enjoyable. Then called in to see uncle and aunty before coming home. Busy day.

I've had two fantastic days walking, even though it was a little bit scary getting lost in Sherwood Forest in the dark without a torch, but that's a story for tomorrow. I'll get the photo's sorted. Goodnight, sleep tight, and don't let the bed bugs bite :o)

Delicious veggie meal

Just popped in to say I'm away in the morning, off to see Robin Hood and his merry men. If todays weather is anything to go by I'm going to need my shorts, it's been very warm here, I was amazed when I stepped outside it was like a sauna.

I've made a bit of a pig of myself with my dinner tonight, but it's ok, it didn't cost very much, and it needed to be used up. One whole bag of prepared veg, 20p, steamed in a pan, and a third of a punnet of reduced price mushrooms, in home made sauce. The yellow is the turmeric, most of my food is yellow, ha ha. I reckon about 50p for this. I'm stuffed, it was lovely.  

I will leave you with this unbelievably amazing money saving tip. When you get towards the end of a jar of mayo, don't bother to try and scrape the last dregs out with a spoon, you never get it all out. Instead, stuff a few sprigs of lettuce in there, wipe it around with a fork and fish it out. You can use any food you happen to be eating at the time if you are not having salad. This will get every last bit out, unless you have a tongue which is long enough to reach the bottom, ha ha. Brilliant eh!

Toodle pip. See ya Sunday.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park (the rest of it)

Right, here we go again, part two of your virtual tour. The artist who created this installation is Polish born Magdalena Abakanowicz, it's called Ten Seated Figures. You can see more of her work on her website. 

 http://www.abakanowicz.art.pl/

Sophie Ryder is the artist who created this sculpture out of wire mesh. It is a human body with the head of a hare. You can see more of her work here.

http://www.sophieryder.org/

There is an old glasshouse....

Full of huge bushes. The flowers are not fully opened yet, I bet it will be stunning in a months time.

A water feature in a recess.

A huge sculpture made up of slices of a tree trunk, like sliced bread, individually carved and stacked on top of each other.

Here we have a group of quirky looking trees, constructed from iron tubing, sprouting all manor of objects you will find around the house. I really like this installation.

Bretton Hall is a college which stands in the middle of the park. There is no access to the general public, so it's not a place you can look around. Looks lovely from the outside though.

I continued my walk around the lake and came across the Shell Grotto. It's like an igloo built of stone, covered in creeping ivy.

Inside looking up into the roof you can see some of the shells which were used to decorate it many years ago.

This is the Cascade Bridge between the lower and upper lake.

I carried on walking up a long stretch of field edge towards the Longside Gallery. Although this gallery is closed at the moment while they install a new exhibition, I want to see two more artworks further on.

This is called Basket, by Winter/Horbelt, a German artist. It's a two storey steel pavilion set on a high ridge overlooking the Longside Valley. It is supposed to provide shelter and spectacular views across the landscape. There wasn't much shelter however, as it is constructed of mesh steel panels and the wind blows straight through. It is also fully enclosed so the views are slightly obstructed. nevertheless it is an interesting piece to explore, the inside being full of dead ends, a bit like a maze.

One view looking across to the college from outside the Basket.

The second installation I wanted to see is Andy Goldsworthy's Hanging Trees. Along the edge of the park is a drystone wall, and Andy has built three enclosures of huge bath size proportions incorporating the original walls, and suspended three old tree trunks horizontally within them.

This one is my favourite, it looks like the limbs of a human form suspended in mid air.

The holes which accommodate the branches have been cut to perfection, there is no evidence of them on the outside.

There is a longish trek through woodland down the seventy one steps of Oxley bank,  to the Dam Head bridge. There is a lot of landscape work going on, on the other side of the bridge. It will have waterfalls, it's going to look lovely when it's finished.

By this time the park was closing so I made my way back to the exit, and back to the car. It was a very enjoyable day out, a place to visit again when the new exhibitions have opened in the Longside Gallery and the Underground Gallery, both of which are closed untill next month. Thank you for tagging along with me, I hope you have enjoyed your virtual visit to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, a lovely day out and it cost nothing except the petrol to get there.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park (some of it)

Good morning. It's a good job I went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park yesterday, as that nasty wet stuff is coming down today, and it's blowing around a bit. So, I am going to split this topic into two posts because it's taking a while to upload all the photo's, as usual I have taken lots. Yes, the park is free to enter, free to look round all the exhibits inside and out, free to walk round all 500 acres should you wish to do so, but there is a £5 per car parking charge, except that this old biddy doesn't pay for parking. No no no, I am a pensioner, let the rich folk pay. I found a free parking place on the other side of the motorway, under the railway arch, about half a mile along on the road to Woolley Edge. Have legs will walk :o)

They very kindly give out free maps when you go in, this is very usefull to plan your walk. I didn't enter at the main entrance, but a little further along at the Coffee Shop which is only open at weekends and Bank Holidays. However there are picnic tables to use if you have brought your own. I had a bite of my sandwich and a drink first.

The leaflet is full of info to help you find the bits you want to see. It has details of the current exhibitions, and the permanent static outdoor ones as well. First I headed for the Chapel.

This is the banner advertising this exhibition

And this is it inside the chapel. You enter the large room through a black curtain. Inside it is dark except for a very large screen, carefull not to stumble over the benches. I sat down and started watching, wondering what was going to happen next. I blinked and nothing happened, I seemed to be watching a very nice picture of a woodland scene. 

After a few minutes I was thinking about leaving, I didn't have time to sit around all day if nothing was going to happen. Just how long am I expected to sit here. I wondered if I was missing the point, so I stared at the screen a while longer, but then something magical happened, and I started to understand what it was all about. The picture was changing very very slowly. There is no sound, you need to watch in total silence. I was on my own for a while and I was completely moved to tears by the beautiful scenes which unfolded before my eyes. This snapshot is just one of 18,000 photographs, yes eighteen thousand, which were fused together by the artist Jem Finer. The film goes through all the seasons, night time as well, the camera never moves, it is fixed in a tree.  

I sat for about half an hour or more, completely mesmerized as if in a hypnotic state. People came and went, they didn't get it, they missed out on a beautiful experience. The film goes through all the seasons in very slow motion, so slow it is hard to detect the changes. People appear then disappear, deer enter the scene and fade away again. You think there is not much going on but as you watch you see the gift of changes that mother nature rewards us with. 

Check out the Sculpture Park web site for more information of this stunning artwork. To experience the full pleasure of it you have to see it live, however. It is here untill May, so look out for it advertised in other art galleries after that. 

http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/jem-finer-still

Out into the fresh air again, this is the Archway Lodge near the main entrance. There is no vehicle access through here, except for agricultural vehicles. Parking for staff is through the main entrance and round the back.  

The walk towards the main auditorium and shopping centre/cafe is over this iron footpath, which has thousands of names cut into the metal. I guess they must be sponsors as the park is a registered charity.

This current exhibition is by Donna Wilson, entitled Endangered Species. If you google her name she makes loads of stuff for the home in her quirky designs. Here we have a world of knitted trees and curiosities.

Back outside again and here are just a few of the many exhibits you see as you walk around the park. 

Jonathan Borofsky is the artist who created Molecule Man.

I like the way these clay pipes have been assembled to create an interesting feature alongside the path.

It's lunch time, I'm off for a bite to eat, plenty to go at in my kitchen. Catch you later.

Late shopping on the way back

I'm a wee bit late tonight, had a lovely day out at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield. This has been on my list of places to visit for a while now, and the weather looked promising this morning so it was a spur of the moment decision to go. It's about 45 miles away, via Doncaster and Barnsley, I always manage to get lost going through Barnsley, the sign posting is a bit confusing.

Anyway, I have lots of photo's to sort out, it's getting a bit late now so I'll post them tomorrow. Halfway between Doncaster and Barnsley there is a man who sells vegetables from his trailer in a layby at the side of the road. He has been there years, but I have never stopped before because he has very large bags and he dosen't split them. The sign said Carrots £1.50, so I pulled in. Here is my bag of carrots, it is a massive bag, the type you see in supermarkets, they cut the bag open and you choose your own. I don't know how I'm going to fit all those in my fridge, ha ha. I also bought a bag of potatoes for £3.00. The man said they would keep for ages in a cool place. I'm well pleased, they will keep me going for ages. 

As usual I timed my return to call in at Tesco on the way in. I was a bit too early for the really cheap reduced stuff, but I got some bread and mushrooms, better than nowt. I went down the long life milk aisle to get some evaporated milk. I am quite liking this at the moment, as an alternative to soya milk. Last week it was 59p a tin, and as I dilute it for cereals I thought that was a good buy. I had a bit of a surprise, there was a whole shelf full of it, and it was marked at 30p. I checked the date, Feb 2013, so what's the catch, perhaps they had too much of it. I bought 24 tins, I might go back for more.

I need some more cat food so I went to Sainsbury's just down the road, as they have a two for £5 offer on. I stocked up and bought 12 boxes. I'm glad I went because they had just done their final mark down for the night, I managed to get all this, bread, salad, Houmous, fruit and vegetables, for £2.09. That's cheered me up no end, I'm dead chuffed with that. I'll enter all this in the food diary tomorrow.

Look at Mayze watching me putting the shopping away, she makes me laugh.

I'll catch you tomorrow, nighty night.

Cast your mind back to..........

I've just got to post some more of these clips, ha ha. My goodness, I've gone back to my childhood. Click on these if you want to go down Memory Lane. There are a lot of the old original programmes in full on youtube, who needs a tele when you can get everything on a computer.





























Report on the soya milk yogurt I made. Nothing special, not as nice as the real milk one, strange taste to it. I am using it up on stewed apples, won't use soya milk again.

Today has been a doggy day. Henry choc lab has been to visit, a long walk this morning of almost two hours, and this afternoon Henry and Rocky for 1hr 20mins. The weather has been kind of bracing I think they call it, a sharp cold blast of arctic wind coming across the river. Certainly made the nose dribble a lot, ha ha.

A few sessions on the new machine, think I'm getting the hang of the computer bit now. Watching the time and distance slowly increase spurs me on to do a bit more. Just another five minutes, or just another kilometer. I'm not pushing myself too hard though, don't want to bugger the knees up. It could be quite addictive, move over Jodie marsh, I'm a comin, ha ha.

Kitty Cats in the garden

A straight hedge that's starting to get straggly bugs me, I've just got to get my shears out and tidy it up. The hedge divides the garden up nicely, this side is the lawn and shrubs, the other side is the veg garden.   

That's better. It's been a lovely sunny day here, time to start thinking about what needs doing in the garden. Tidying the raised beds and digging in the compost is the next job, then it wont be long before it's time to start sowing seeds. The potatoes are chitting nicely on the window sill. I will be growing some veg again this year, as it saves quite a lot of money. It will be the usual things that I know will grow without too much mollycodling. Potatoes, beans, peas, courgettes, salad leaves, and carrots.

The cats are out in the sun today, Mayze is her usual mischevious self, climbing on the garage roof. Hey look at me mum, up here, ha ha.

Bugsy prefers to sunbathe.

And here we have a visitor, it's Micky on the prowl for food again.

Hey Missus, please can you spare a morsel for a hungry cat. Micky, you are always hungry, don't come to me with your sob stories. Oh alright then, come on in.

Mayze has other ideas, oh no you don't this is my patch, and you can skidaddle.

Lily was fast asleep in bed while all this was going on, he missed out on the fun.

I've made some more yogurt today, this time using Soya milk, I'll let you know how it turns out, it will be ready at 11pm tonight.

The maps are printed for my visit to Sherwood Forest at the end of the week. If there is anyone in the Edwinstowe area not far from new Ollerton, I shall be at the hostel on Friday night, and walking in the area on Friday and Saturday. I wonder if I shall see Robin Hood. Ha ha.

Here is the theme song from this popular programme, I remember it well do you? All sing along now, Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen.......