Tube shots

Steve and I spent a beautiful May Bank Holiday weekend in London.  Our approach to the city was via the Underground.

Photograph of photographers at Baker Street Station

Mind the gap

Approach

Descent

Arrival

Emergence

Photographer

This way

Us on the Underground

East, west, home’s best

So, we’re back home.  Well, Steve had to go right back out to work, but it feels good to be back at home base after our travels around Southern Ireland.  I’ve been unpacking, doing laundry, working on some publicity material for a couple of important art showings this late summer, went into Exeter on some errands and to meet a friend for lunch, had a nap, went to the gym, cooked dinner, Skyped with Steve.  In other words, I’m back to my day-to-day life, nuancing it to what’s happening now and in the near future.

I’ve also been thinking about our trip.  Sometimes when I travel, I feel anxious at times.  I know how I prefer my surroundings to feel and look – calm and quiet and beautiful and interesting.  When I’m travelling, the place I get to may not be how I envisioned it or I might look at the road not taken with a pang of yearning or feel overwhelmed with a place I love and feel a touch of melancholy when I realise that I can’t absorb it for as long as I’d like to.

What I love the most about travelling is finding the places and things which resonate deeply and find a Home within, experiences and people who take root in my Soul.  When it happens, it’s amazing, although I confess that I don’t enjoy every single bit of the travelling part.  That’s me though, an INFP (Idealist) and a Type 4 (Romantic).

A huge part of how I process my travels, is to reflect on them when I’m back in the comfort of Home.  Tonight I’m thinking about being on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry.  A place where the sea and sky disappear into one another and the setting sun silvers the water.

The land cradles and is cradled by the ocean.

I stood for a while on this clifftop and walked along the edge, following the Dingle Way for a few hundred yards.  Swallows skimmed the tops of the grass.  I wanted to keep going!

I’m also thinking of some of the Stone Age and later Anglo-Celtic art work I saw including Newgrange Passage Tomb, The Book of Kells, Bronze Age gold jewelry, Celtic Christian stone work.

Trying to keep this fairly short, but here are  a couple of favourites.  They are both about three miles from where we stayed, on the westernmost point of Ireland.

This dry rubble masonry oratory was built by a monastic community in the 7th century AD.

Gallarus Oratory (Irish: Séipéilín Ghallarais, literally “The House or Shelter for Foreigners”, the said foreigners being “those pilgrims who had come from outside the Peninsula.”

Next to it is this beautiful and simple cross-inscribed stone.  I love the cross-quartered circle.  This is an important symbol in both Native American and Celtic religions.

Cross slab next to Gallarus Oratory

The sacred circle filled with a cross, four equal lines pointing from the center to the spirits of the north, east, south, and west– or to the basic element: earth, water, air (or wind), and fire.  In Native American traditions, it forms the basic pattern of the medicine wheel and plays a vital part in major spiritual rituals. Many contemporary pagans consider it their main symbol for transmitting the energy of the goddess.  It’s been incorporated into the cross in Celtic Christianity.

I like the people who made these objects of simple beauty.  My curiosity is piqued and I look forward to finding out more about them.  It felt good to be there and to bring back some of the awe, peace and happiness that I felt from having encountered and experienced what they left behind.  My creativity is inspired to travel deep within and to discover where this new path will lead, following all of the artwork I saw on our travels.

Runnin’ Down a Dream

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, 1977

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are my favourite rock band, ever since my big sister gave me a copy of their debut album in 1977 when I inherited her Pioneer stereo.  I was 14 and have grown up over the past 34 years  listening to their music.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, 1976, album cover.

I was pretty excited when I saw an ad in The Guardian that they’d be playing at The Royal Albert Hall this June on their first UK tour in 20 years.  I had to work the day tickets went on sale, but I left Steve with strict instructions to get online and at the end of the phone at 9am.  He did his best, but tickets sold out in about 10 minutes.  I tried to be philosophical and not too bummed about it.  After all, I’d seen Tom and the boys at The Hollywood Bowl in the mid 1990′s and again in Raleigh, NC in 2002.  As a consolation prize, we bought Peter Bogdanovich’s excellent documentary on The Heartbreakers, “Runnin’ Down a Dream”.

We watched Part One and a week later, planned to watch Part Two.  I was on Facebook and decided to post the documentary trailer beforehand.  I found it on YouTube and somewhat cynically clicked the ‘On Tour 2012 Buy Tickets’ button.  It took me to the Official Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ website.  I trawled around in the Tour Dates area and saw that there was a show in Cork, Ireland on 6/8/2012.  I said “Whoa, they’re coming back in August!”  Steve said “Are you sure it’s not June 8th?”.  Ya see, I’m in the middle of two cultures and sometimes forget that the US and the UK transpose the month and day.

Anyhow, long story short, a Cork show had been added in June after their Dublin show.  Tickets went on sale the next day and we got ourselves two of ‘em! I’m officially stoked.

So we’re planning a road trip to Southern Ireland for our 2nd wedding anniversary.  Steve got a MP3 adaptor for his car cassette deck so we can spin Tom Petty tunes all the way.

Night Driver

‘Night Driver’ was the first one I played.  It’s one of my favourites from the Highway Companion album.

Koffie en cake

On our trip to The Netherlands, Steve and I bought a Douwe Egberts coffee grinder from a junk shop in Utrecht.  Steve likes his daily cup of Joe and I’ll have a cup about once a week, usually with cake or dessert.

By the way, according to the BBC h2g2 website, one theory of where ‘ a cup of Joe’ originates is as follows.  ‘Joe’ is a derivation of ‘Java’.   Java itself became a popular American nickname for coffee in the 19th Century when the island of Java in Indonesia was a major source of the world’s coffee.

Steve and I normally buy Douwe Egberts ground coffee and use a cafetiere.  Douwe Egberts (often abbreviated as DE) is a Dutch corporation that processes and trades coffee, tea, and other groceries. Its full name is Douwe Egberts Koninklijke Tabaksfabriek-Koffiebranderijen-Theehandel NV, which translates as “Douwe Egberts Royal Tobacco Factory – Coffee Roasters – Tea Traders, Plc.”.

Coffee was introduced to Europe from the Middle East via Italy in the 1600s.  The race among Europeans to make off with some live coffee trees or beans was eventually won by the Dutch in the late 17th century, when they allied with the natives of Kerala against the Portuguese and brought some live plants back from Malabar to Holland, where they were grown in greenhouses. The Dutch began growing coffee at their forts in Malabar, India, and in 1699 took some to Batavia in Java, in what is now Indonesia.

Within a few years the Dutch colonies (Java in Asia, Surinam in Americas) had become the main suppliers of coffee to Europe.  By 1780 Douwe Egberts started processing and trading coffee, tea, and tobacco.  So our new little coffee grinder has quite an illustrious provenance.

We cleaned it up (discarding the second hand coffee beans that came with it)

and installed it next to our tea and coffee corner.

To celebrate, I made Dutch apple cake to have with our first cups of freshly ground coffee.  This recipe is from Rachel Allen, who is apparently the blonde, Irish version of Nigella Lawson.

Dutch Apple Cake

• 2 eggs
• 175 g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 85 g butter
• 75 ml milk
• 125 g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 2 cooking apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
• 75 ml double cream, to serve

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Line the sides and base of a 20 x 20cm/8 x 8in  square cake tin with parchment paper.

2. Using an electric whisk, whisk the eggs, caster sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl until the mixture is thick and mousse-like and the whisk leaves a figure of eight pattern (this will take about 5 minutes).

3. Melt the butter in a saucepan with the milk, then pour onto the eggs, whisking all the time. Sift in the flour, cinnamon and baking powder and fold carefully into the batter so that there are no lumps of flour. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the surface.

4. Arrange the apple slices over the batter. (They will sink to the bottom.) Sprinkle over a tablespoon of sugar and bake in the oven for ten minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 180C/350F and bake for a further 20–25 minutes or until well risen and golden brown.

5. Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool in the tin. Cut into squares and serve warm with cream.

Heerlijk!

‘Joe’ is a derivation of ‘Java’. Java itself became a popular American nickname for coffee in the 19th Century when the island of Java in Indonesia was a major source of the world’s coffee.

Time After Time

Steve and I have just returned from Amsterdam, which is one of my favourite cities in the world.  I love the creative vibe in the air, all of the interesting shops and galleries, the wide variety of excellent options for eating – restaurants, takeaways, markets and most of all, that I can stand on a busy street and no two people passing by are wearing the same clothes.  There is so much individuality in Dutch style.

Steve and I went to celebrate the 2nd anniversary of the night we met (September 5th).  We love travelling and exploring together.  One of the things we did was pay a visit to the Prins Hendrik Hotel, where American singer and trumpeter Chet Baker died on May 13, 1988.

A plaque outside the hotel now memorializes him.

Chet Baker (1929-1988) was an idol during his early career in music. Good-looking, talented, he played trumpet mainly by ear and sang in a soft, attractive style. He won polls, travelled to Europe, made recordings, was in films, played with Charlie Parker, and featured briefly in the remarkable Gerry Mulligan Quartet, unique for its not have a piano in the band.

Baker developed a heroin habit in the 1950s, something that would plague him the rest of his life and cause him to spend time in prison. Some of his recordings are brilliant, while others are unfortunate, driven more by need than inspiration. There was a time when damage to his teeth limited Baker’s playing; he eventually had dentures made and slowly relearned his playing ability using an altered embouchere. By the mid 1980′s, Baker was in good form again.  Fans and critics alike agree that the live album Chet Baker in Tokyo, recorded less than a year before his death and released posthumously, ranks among Baker’s very best.

In May of 1988, Baker’s body was found on Prins Hendrikkade, near Zeedijk, on the street below his second-story room at the Prins Hendrik Hotel in Amsterdam. There were wounds to his head. Drugs were found in his room. There have been many stories about whether he fell, jumped or was pushed, but an autopsy revealed no evidence of a struggle, so his death was ruled an accident.

Chet Baker gave us some beautiful music, music that will endure.  Steve and I discovered his music about a year and a half ago, and put some of his recordings onto our wedding reception playlist.  I made this video from film that I recorded on Raamgracht, a canal near the old part of Amsterdam, set to one of my favourite Chet Baker covers Time After Time.

Chicken saté, frites and a Black Russian

You Are Here

A couple of our friends went to Mexico earlier this year.  Jenny is a visual artist and Simon is a photographer with a fantastic blog.  They sent us a pair of birthday cards made with photos Simon took in Mexico City.

I’ve been so busy with my recent quilt deadlines that I didn’t manage to get a birthday card off in time for the day, so to continue in a creative vein, but working in mixed media, I made a special belated birthday card for Simon.

I’m really interested in maps and layers.  I made a card with a map of Ravello, Italy (on the Amalfi Coast where Steve and I spent our honeymoon) and a some of my street photography.  I printed the map onto handmade paper and deckled the edges, then printed the photo onto acetate and riveted it to the card.

Here are a few more of my photos from Italy and a promise of more to come.

Vespa

Amalfi

Shoe shop, Capri

Bambino

Atrani cat