The Gallery

It has been a long time since I took part in The Gallery at Sticky Fingers, a weekly linky where you share photographs on a theme. I was reminded of it yesterday with a tweet from Tara Cain, author of the blog.

'Body Parts' was the theme for week 41 of the Gallery and has been resurrected for this week, week 162 (it really has been a long time since I took part!). And yes, @PaulaHaylock (aka me) did post a picture of a willy.

I am joining in today with the following Body Parts.

This was an attempt I made to knit Usain Bolt during the excitement of the 2012 Olympics. The poor woollen chap has spent the last year buried in my craft cupboard in this dismembered form. I fear that may be as good as it gets for him.

For anyone interested, here is the link to my original Body Parts contribution: 

http://qwertymum.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/gallery-week-41-body-parts.html

The Gallery - Sunshine

"A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love."

Max Muller

This little cactus lives on a sunny windowsill in my kitchen. I was quite surprised to see that it was forming a flower bud and delighted yesterday when it opened up into this beautiful bloom.

I left it on the windowsill to photograph it because I liked the way the sunshine made the petals glow. I used the black corrugated packaging material from the top of a box of chocolates (that also bought some sunshine to my day!) as a makeshift backdrop to give the definition I wanted.

This is my attempt to capture sunshine and my contribution to this week's Gallery.

The Gallery - Week 95 - Colour

At the start of the year, my mum and I both began a knitting project to make patchwork blankets for my two little ones.

Last week my mum presented my son with the finished piece. It is a glorious explosion of colour with plenty of child appeal thanks to little knitted mice and mini beasts that she has sewn onto it. It looks beautiful on his cot and makes a perfect subject for this week's Gallery.

My own blanket is still very much a work in progress!

The Gallery - Week 87 - Eyes

I have brown eyes.

Five out of my six children have brown eyes, ranging in shade from greenish brown to nearly black, but still brown nonetheless.

My husband has blue eyes which in a metrosexual moment that we never let him live down, he described as slate. 

Our little Addy somehow got the mix of genes that have given her vivid blue eyes.  I still find it slightly odd when she looks at me with them - they feel so unfamiliar. 

To capture the image for this week's Gallery I experimented with my macro lens, which was a lot less tricky than trying to get Addy to sit still and open her eyes for 5 seconds!

The Gallery - Week 84 - My Awesome Photograph

I took this photograph at Chester Zoo. I can't help thinking he's admiring his own reflection. If you look closely you might see exactly what he's admiring!

I love the vibrant green, the interesting textures and the gentle humour that make up this photograph which is why I am choosing it as my entry into this week's Gallery.

The Gallery - Week 77 - Colour

My daughter brought home her first art work from Nursery School this week. I was more excited than she was. I congratulated her on her choice of beautiful autumn colours and asked her what it was. She shrugged nonchalantly and said "It's just paint". I guess sometimes you're simply not that inspired!

The Gallery - Week 75 - Guilty Pleasures

One of my Guilty Pleasures is watching the X Factor.

I know the whole thing is the most contrived lot of nonsense ever but that does nothing to detract from the pure entertainment. I love it.

One of my daughters auditioned for the X Factor some years ago. The reality of the first round of auditions was nothing like how it was portrayed on the telly. Simon Cowell was nowhere to be seen for a start. My daughter was not bad enough or great enough to make it through to the next round. All the sitting around and waiting gave me a monumental headache so I was not unhappy that our X Factor adventure was over before it really started.

Last year, I entered a competition on Chicago Town Pizza's Facebook page. The prize was a performance in your home of one of the X Factor contestants (Danyl, if you remember him - I must admit I struggled to recall the name for the purpose of this post - how quickly they are forgotten). To enter, you had to upload  photographs of you having your own X Factor party. I am always happy to have an excuse for a party so we did. The food included Chicago Town pizza (obviously!) along with homemade 'Cheryl Cole-slaw'. We actually had a lot of fun with it all. Sadly, the photographs I uploaded never appeared on the page - lost in cyberspace forever - so I doubt our entry was ever even considered. Shame - I would have quite enjoyed being serenaded by Danyl!

I am grateful that this week's Gallery prompt has given me the excuse to revisit my old photos, reminded me of the fun we had and got me looking forward to this weekend's X Factor (which for me is even better than before because I am a little bit on love with Gary Barlow!)

The Gallery - Week 74 - A Happy Memory

Divorce, as inevitable or ultimately for the best as it might be, is still incredibly hard on the children of the divided family.

My children, especially my oldest daughter, had been through so much with a father who seemed incapable of putting them first, even for a moment, and a paternal grandmother who actually seemed to delight in digging the knife in and twisting it viciously. I never tried to shield them from the reality of the divorce. I felt that the best I could reasonably do would be to reassure them of my love and devotion to them and try to rebuild a strong family unit. I was so impressed by the way they all pulled together and the sacrifices they were prepared to make when our financial future was so uncertain.

When I got together with the man who was destined to become my husband, I wasn't sure what it would mean to my children They were very supportive and happy to see me so happy but would they feel that they would now have to share my time and my love? Would they be resentful or were  their hearts big enough and undamaged enough to let someone else in? As he was living and working in Switzerland at this time I wasn't even sure how our relationship could work in a practical sense and whether he would be up to the challenge of being a father figure to another man's children. I was particularly sensitive to this after their own father had told them that if they could not accept and respect his girlfriend, he wouldn't bother with them.

This man was not a stranger. He was an old friend I had known at University many years before. I showed the children photos of us together. They laughed at my eighties hairstyle and how chubby I was.

They met him briefly when he brought me home from our romantic Paris break, when friendship first blossomed into love. They had some contact on MSN but the first occasion they actually got to spend any time with him was when he booked a short holiday for us all in a Bed and Breakfast in Lancing, near Brighton where his parents live. My girls had no reservations about going on holiday with a man they barely knew. I like to believe it was because they had complete trust in me but it was more likely that the promise that we would be visiting the Dr Who exhibition on Brighton Pier was enough to overcome any objections!

Right from the start it was a wonderfully relaxed holiday that felt very natural. My youngest was won over  immediately by his tireless willingness to play 'thumb wars' with her. The other girls were completely sold when they found out he had bought tickets for us all to see the Rat Pack Show at the Theatre Royal. He took them sailing. We visited his parents who were kind and lovely in the way that you would want grandparents to be.

The slightly eccentric lady running the B&B with her yappy little lapdog, Bijoux, insisted on calling him dad despite our initial attempts to correct her. She couldn't quite get her head round the idea that we were vegetarian so breakfast would consist of her bringing out a huge pan of beans and slopping them on our plates with a bit of toast. It was sitting round that breakfast table with a glorious view of the seagulls on Lancing beach and the waves beyond with our ever attentive host yielding her ladle and asking More beans for dad? that I realised, without any doubt, that we could be a family.

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The Gallery - Week 73 - Shoes

I have written several blogposts about shoes: my love of shoes, winning shoes, tiny shoes, favourite shoes, back to school shoes ...

In Show us your Shoes I included photographs of my faithful, battered DMs, my totally impractical but mouthwateringly gorgeous Italian leather killer heels, my Zombie wedding shoes that walked down the aisle and the trainers that helped me count down the kilometeres in my Race for Life.

So what to feature for this week's Gallery prompt Shoes?

After much deliberation, my contribution, synonymous with summer, is Festival Footwear (taken at V Music Festival, Weston Park):

The Gallery - Week 72 - Animals

I've always had a fascination with pachyderms but this Indian Rhinoceros from the collection at West Midlands Safari Park was, for me, a totally remarkable beast. It is also known as an Armoured Rhino for the obvious reason. 

I love the textures and shapes and the sheer elegance of the design. If Darwin's theory is correct, then this is evolution at its best!

Watching these magnificent, powerful animals moving around their paddock did make me feel a little bit like I was in Jurassic Park walking with dinosaurs.

The Gallery - Week 69 - Water

On the occasion of my 45th birthday, my husband hired a hot tub for a long weekend. We certainly got our money's worth, taking every opportunity to relax in the warm, bubbly water. I loved it - especially after dark, gazing up through the steam rising from the surface at a canopy of stars. I loved it so much we actually considered buying one but were put off by the idea of maintaining it and keeping the water in a sanitary condition. It all seems a lot less romantic when that side of things is factored into the equation.

My daughter, Charis, loved it too - using it more as a very small, very warm swimming pool!

My husband also gave me my Digital SLR camera as a birthday gift. I took a lot of photographs to try out my new toy, including a series of shots of Charis in Hot Tub Heaven. These are two of my favourites.

The Gallery - Week 66 - Travel

Apart from a school cruise on the infamous SS Uganda and a handful of trips across the Channel, I had not  travelled when I met up with my current husband.

He was living in Switzerland and had previously lived in France, Greece and the Caribbean. His passion for sailing had taken him to places I could only dream of.

Did I feel envious or inadequate? Not really. My life was different - more home centred, wrapped up in being a mum to my little brood. I had had opportunities to go abroad with my first husband but the truth was, I didn't enjoy spending time with him so they never happened.

My experience of the wider world was seriously limited.

Getting together with my well travelled husband, it seemed that this might all change. The children from my first marriage were growing up and there was nothing really stopping us. We had a romantic liaison in Barcelona, I visited him in Switzerland and there was the trip to Paris where we first met face to face after our internet and phone exchanges. I was starting to get a taste for it.

We booked a family holiday to Greece so my girls could be included. It was just before we left that I discovered I was pregnant.

Having a baby did change the focus of our relationship. Ideas of exotic travel were put on the back burner. We were more likely to be seen walking out of Mothercare than a Travel Agent and honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way.

We did manage a family holiday in France with my girls, the two children from my husband's first marriage and our new little one but we had to hire a mini bus to achieve it. It does all get quite difficult!

The photograph I have chosen for The Gallery was not from a holiday. My husband had to go to Switzerland to meet with divorce lawyers. It did not cost very much more to take me along so we decided to try and turn a stressful, unpleasant business into something more pleasant.

The baby took air travel all in her stride and we stayed in a lovely hotel with a balcony overlooking Lake Geneva.

Inevitably, the time spent in Court was horrible but what better way to unwind and relax than this?

The Gallery - Week 65 - Grandparents

I know of several sad stories of Grandparents who, through no fault of their own, lose contact with their  grandchildren when families fall apart and marriages end. My heart goes out to them.

This was not exactly the case when my marriage ended.

My mother in law did not like me, she did not like the way I brought up my children and I don't honestly think she liked my children either (on one memorable occasion she did accuse 2 year old Taylor of being spawn of the devil because she was crying - and without a hint of jest).

In her defence, I think there were some mental issues at play coupled with an appetite for alcohol that exceeded normal limits. She was a formidable woman but when she screamed at her own son that he was dead to her and tried to attack my children, my maternal instincts did not allow her to have her way. After this event, my eldest daughter, who was only 8 years old at the time, was terrified of her.

Sometimes she would phone me very late at night, usually waking me up. It was often incoherent with slurred words. It was always angry. One time she was shouting about how she never got to see her grandchildren. I reassured her that she was welcome to visit us and see the children whenever she wanted. She practically spat at me that she didn't mean my children.

I did feel sad for my children that they were missing out on all the wonderfully enriching things that grandparents can contribute, but the blow was softened when they were all 'adopted' by the grandparents of their cousins, my sister's in-laws.

At the time of my divorce, I had neither seen nor spoken to my mother in law for quite some time.

My eldest daughter was about to start University and our uncertain financial future was a cause for concern. I remembered that when she was born, her paternal grandparents had set up a savings account for her into which they had paid a small but regular sum of money for her future. Her future was now and although  I had no idea how much there might be in the account, I couldn't help thinking that it would be a great help for her to have it and possibly even a way to establish an independent connection to 'post-divorce grandparents'. I encouraged her to mention it to her father (by now he refused to speak to me so I could not broach the subject with him). That conversation (conducted by Instant Message on the computer) did not go well but he must have mentioned it to his mum because shortly after, my fragile, damaged little girl received an evil letter from her grandmother accusing her of being 'the daughter of the money grabbing mother' and telling her in no uncertain terms that she did not feature in her life nor would she feature in her death. It was two A4 printed sheets of absolute hatred. Just to be fair, although the letter was addressed to Liberty, she told her that ALL her sisters were included in how she felt.

The man that my children had once called Grandpa was not a blood relation. My mother-in-law was divorced from my husband's biological father and by all accounts he was no good. My husband had had no contact with him since he was a child. I had always been vaguely curious about him. In 2009, I got the chance to meet him.

After the dust had settled on my horrible divorce and my girls and I were happy and settled in our new home with our new family, I re-established contact with my ex-sister-in-law. I was really surprised to find out that she had made peace with her real dad and was working on building a relationship with him.

When I took three of my girls to visit her, he came across to meet us all.

I was quite taken aback by the resemblance between my ex husband and his biological father but this man seemed kind, gentle and meek with a softness to his face that made me warm to him almost instantly. He spoke so fondly of his ex-wife, my evil ex-mother in law, saying that she could light up a room. I wish I could have known that women. I wish that woman could have played a positive role in the lives of my girls.

The girls enjoyed meeting their absent father's father but there is so much more to being a grandparent than biology.

The Gallery - Week 59 - Mustachioed

I hope Ivy (now 20 years old) will forgive me for using this photograph of her as a partially clad, quirky little bundle of loveliness.

She put the box on her head, stuck the sticker to her upper lip and called herself Grandpa.

Never did quite understand how her mind worked!