Venice-bound

Mrs C and I will be going off to Venice next week, for a short stay.
It will be our first visit there, and we're feeling excited about this
trip. Two of our relatives organised the trip, getting the flights and
finding an apartment to stay at (close by San Marco Square), and invited
us to join them, all of which has saved us a lot of time.

I'll be taking my smaller camera with me ... the Canon 350D, which is
not as good as my super-duper Canon 5 Mk 11. However the smaller one is
better for foreign travel, especially as we're not taking any suitcases,
just hand-luggage. I do resent paying the extra charges the airlines
impose for carrying suitcases in the hold ... just one suitcase can cost
£60 for a return journey.

I haven't got any other major news for you ... life is carrying on in
much the same way as before. You'll see a bit of what I've been up to
on my Flickr site, a link to which is in the right hand side-bar.

This past week ...

... it's been very cold outside, with daytime temps around 1 deg C,
and night-time ones as low as minus 8-10 ... unusually low for us,
here in the Midlands. A few days ago, we experienced a modest snow
-fall, some of which is still lying around, despite a slight thaw.
So the highlight of the week for me, was to go out and photograph
some of the scenery and people having fun in the snow.

I must have taken 50 - 60 photos, but I've only put two of them
up onto Flickr. I'm saving one or two to use for Xmas e-cards, so
I'm not putting them on show as yet.

I think this first one looks rather surreal ...



The next one shows families having fun in the foreground, and a
light industrial landscape in the background ... the disused Home
Ales brewery is rather prominent, and you'll see that the lake is
partly frozen over ...



I've also taken a few pics of an exhibition that's on at The Nottingham
Contemporary Art Gallery ... put together by a group of architects
who have had a go at depicting the border area / no-man's land between
Israeli and Palestinian territories, and what's going on there ....
here's one of my photos ... there are a few more on my Flickr site.



I've spent 2-3 days putting together a slide presentation all about
online supermarket shopping (to present in about 8 weeks' time to my
local U3A computer group). Not rocket science, but it might be of some
practical use to those who haven't shopped online for food and other
items before, plus it would be an introduction for some members to
using a few keyboard shortcuts and also an explanation of what cookies
are all about ... not chocolate chip cookies, unfortunately.

We're off to London to stay at our daughter's again for the next few
days, weather permitting. Talk to you soon.

Since my last post ...

... Mrs C and I went to see The Enchanted Island in Nottingham, which
was broadcast from the New York Met ... a stellar cast of singers, and
fabulous music and sets. A truly wonderful experience.

Another highlight was seeing a play at our Theatre Royal: "The Inspector
Calls", which had an interesting plot based on the suicide of a young
woman ... what had happened to her, to make her feel suicidal?

We went down to London last weekend, for Mini's 5th birthday. Her mum
had been busy organising a large birthday party for her, with her entire
class of schoolchildren invited along ... but Mini was too ill to attend!
(She developed a fever together with a bad sore throat and cough). Her
Dad went along to help out and to entertain the kids, and came back later
with a large sack of pressies for her (too many pressies I thought).

This week - spent doing Mrs C's online tax return, last minute as usual ...
with the help of an accountant friend. How I hate having to do tax
returns. Took the car in for an MOT and full service ... the car had
a few problems with the brakes, which were sorted out by a very
efficient mechanic (B., my cousin-in-law). The bill came to £540,
which is the downside of running an older car ... however the lower
depreciation of older cars is a huge bonus.

Yesterday, I met up with a friend in town, and we visited three
exhibitions that are on in Nottingham - local artists, local photographers
and an architectural one at the Nottingham Contemporary. The best bit
about the latter visit was the excellent pot of tea we drank in the cafe
downstairs. The photographers were members of the brilliant Flickr
Nottingham ... there are some fabulous photos on this site, including
a few of mine. :)

Today, I met up with my singer-songwriter niece about setting up a new
website for her (to display her music and paintings, and to set up things
like a forum for her fans). I'll be using Wordpress Twenty Eleven as the
basis for the new site, which I'll highly customize ... I haven't used
WordPress before, so I'm spending a lot of my spare time reading up about
it (and watching lots of YouTube videos about WP). I'll keep you "posted"
on this. :)