Self went around her backyard today, taking pictures of her garden (in close-up), selecting subjects that matched Cee’s current Fun Foto Challenge: Vibrant Colors.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
More Vibrant Colors for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge
September 19, 2018 at 8:36 pm (Flowers, Links, Places)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Garden, photography, Redwood City
More Lime or Light Green (Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge)
September 5, 2018 at 4:26 pm (Food and Drink, Places)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Garden, Golden Gate Park, Menlo Park, San Francisco, summer
Self really loves the Cee Neuner Fun Foto Challenge this week:
LIME or LIGHT GREEN
So, she had another go at it.
At the Conservatory of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, July 2018
Also from the Conservatory of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, July 2018
Food Truck, Menlo Park Art & Wine Festival, July 2018
Summer 2018 was GREAT.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Reminds Self of Marguerite Duras
August 10, 2018 at 7:07 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Places, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Daphne du Maurier, English writers, Fridays, novel, reading lists
Still Chapter 4, Rebecca:
As he spoke, the car became one of many once again, dusk had fallen without my noticing it, and we were in the midst of light and sound in the streets of Monte Carlo.
Oh how beautiful the tone of that passage is.
Stay tuned.
Ch. 2, REBECCA
August 8, 2018 at 1:20 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Places, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: biographies, Daphne du Maurier, English writers, novel, reading lists, summer
- I know the name of every owner of every British moor, yes — and their tenants too . . . The state of the crops, the price of fat cattle, the mysterious ailments of swine, I relish them all.
Rebecca had its inception in Daphne Du Maurier’s intense unhappiness at being forced to follow her military husband to the city of Alexandria, early in her marriage.
The novel became a beast and overshadowed everything.
Self began reading it in the wee hours, after finishing Manderley Forever, the biography by Tatiana de Rosnay. (She’s on a Daphne Du Maurier kick. Five stars to Manderley Forever)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Sentence of the Day: Manderley Forever, p. 85
August 1, 2018 at 3:27 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Places, Recommended, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: Berlin, biographies, Daphne du Maurier, Paris, reading lists, summer
The next day, a walk in the Tiergarten pales beside Daphne’s memories of the Bois de Bolougne: the passersby all look so dour and plain, and while the Kaiser’s former palace in Potsdam is undeniably impressive, as is Frederick the Great’s Sanssouci Palace, it still isn’t Paris.
One Summer Evening, on p. 57
July 31, 2018 at 10:00 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Places, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: biographies, Daphne du Maurier, Paris, reading lists, summer
No need to mention the book, as anyone who follows this blog well knows: it’s the biography of du Maurier. Self is just crawling along, reading at a snail’s pace.
P. 57, one warm summer evening, “after dinner,” Mlle Yvon, du Maurier’s current crush — true artists do not discriminate, a crush is a crush, whether male or female — takes the students “up the hill” behind the villa, “close to the remains of Mrs. Panckoucke’s Chinese pavilion,” where they sit and “contemplate the view of Paris. The air is deliciously perfumed.”
Read this book if you want to swoon into that kind of summer idyll when you are young and you speak perfect French (while being English) and you’ve got a crush on your teacher (who knows it, of course — what teacher worth her salt wouldn’t know if a student had a crush on her)
Mademoiselle poses a series of questions (which should be used in every Bachelor or Bachelorette or Proposal reality show, they are so much better than the questions on those shows):
- If you were invisible, what is the first thing you would do?
- What is the most foolish thing you have ever done?
- If you were a meal, what would you be, and how should you be eaten?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: WOOD
July 29, 2018 at 4:46 pm (Food and Drink, Links, Niece, Places, Relatives)
Tags: Cee Neuner, desserts, San Francisco, Saturday, weekends
Another Cee Neuner Fun Foto Challenge! For the next few weeks, Cee asks us to take inspiration from a photograph. Here is the photograph for Week 3.
Self got to spend time in the City yesterday. She was with her niece Angela, who introduced self to the wonder of Tea Bear Café, whose walls were either real or synthetic wood. And self has no idea what the dice were meant to represent:
Saturday, 28 July 2018: Tea Bear Café, San Francisco Chinatown
And there’s an adorable picture of the bear in Tea Bear!
The Bear Has Its Close-up
And here’s the view just outside the café: Washington Park, where a Chinese dance performance was happening.
Washington Square, Chinatown, San Francisco
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
#currentlyreading: MANDERLEY FOREVER: A BIOGRAPHY OF DAPHNE DU MAURIER, p. 17
July 25, 2018 at 11:05 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino Writers, Places, plans, Recommended, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: Benedict Cumberbatch, biographies, London, memories, reading lists, summer
Cannon Hall, Hampstead, London
November 2013
As I emerge from Hampstead tube station, in the north of London, the first thing that comes to my mind is that I have been here before: I came when I was a teenager, to visit the house of the poet John Keats, on Primrose Hill.
In self’s mind, memories of 2015 (or could it have been 2016?) when she met Emily in Chez Nous on Hanway Place off Tottenham, just before Emily moved from the Bloomsbury Hotel to Hampstead Heath, and offered to show self around, in a bid to get self to move from Russell Square to Hampstead, where Emily rented a room from a woman who lived in a big, old house not far from Benedict Cumberbatch’s.
Fun times.
In the end, self listened to her old Assumption Convent classmate who advised her to stay put. She’s lived in Russell Square every year now for five years, when she comes to London.
Stay tuned.
Favorite Places
July 23, 2018 at 11:59 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Places, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, Cork, Dublin, Garden, Ireland, London, Manila, memories, Mondays, museums, Paris, Redwood City, San Francisco, Tyrone Guthrie Centre
Self started reading a new book this afternoon: Manderley Forever: A Biography of Daphne du Maurier, by Tatiana de Rosnay. It begins with the most fabulous quote.
- People and things pass away, not places. — Daphne du Maurier
The quote really got her thinking about a few of her favorite places. She decided to share pictures with dear blog readers.
The Art and Natural History Museum, University of Santo Tomas
Paradiso, Cork: Early November, 2017
Display Window, Cow’s Lane, Dublin: 9 November 2017
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Things About the Magritte at the San Francisco MOMA
July 19, 2018 at 6:22 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Family, Food and Drink, Lists, Places, Recommended)
Tags: art, desserts, exhibits, happiness, museums, praise, restaurants, San Francisco
Self has seen it three times.
The Magritte-themed food in the fifth floor café is so much fun:
In the adjoining sculpture garden, you can pose in front of this sign and you will look fabulous and so ‘San Francisco’:
Andrew and Jennie, 14 July 2018
There is a great, really great interactive portion at the end: Raise your arms, and YOU’RE the Magritte!
More later. Stay tuned!
