A painting challenge

Well Saturday and Sunday went by really quickly. I got the dates wrong for the Garden Show - it's next weekend - oops. Managed to start some photo editing of the wedding I photographed in Picasa. It's giving me a feel for playing with light, highlights and contrast but the resolution isn't great. Will have a go with Darktable and another called GIMP before I try Lightroom again - yes am a little overwhelmed by LR still - it's going to take time and confidence.

Today I trekked out to Helensvale to go and paint the phone box I had been asked to do. It wasn't the greatest of neighbourhoods and I was very glad to have my friend Lucy with me. Was also nice to have someone paint it with me as it was a massive surface to cover. Lucy arrived with coffee (amazing) and my friend Nikki who commissioned me came with the enamel gloss paint which proved to be extremely sticky (I am still covered in yellow after showering and scrubbing). There was a lot of rubbish around the phone box and what looked like human poo - which was rather gross. A drunk dude came and relieved himself against the wall opposite me. There were quite a few Sunday drinkers loitering around and we had commentary from onlookers throughout - almost entirely male. The last guy to come over was very critical and I don't think his last comment in Shona was flattering. Oh well, we did it and managed to avoid the police on the way home - at one point a policeman passed on his motorbike and we worried he might come over and say we were vandalising even though we did have municipal permission to be doing it. Luckily he went away and didn't hassle us.

My painting on the left, Lucy's on the right

Tomorrow I start teaching my Chinese four year old again and I will meet his little baby brother for the first time. I also see my psychiatrist again for a check up. Apart from the usual nausea after I take my lithium I've been fine and managed on my own in France for a week OK. Looks like I will be house sitting for someone else after this for a couple of weeks. They have a swimming pool, which will be amazing as it is starting to get incredibly warm as we head towards the suicide month of October.

It's the weekend - happy dance!

Well it wasn't too strenuous a week, as I only started with the home schoolers on Wednesday and haven't got going with afternoon tutoring yet. I have lost one of my students for tutoring from last term but I had an interview to teach two teenagers from the French School, English language and literature. I have a trial lesson with them next Tuesday - will have to do some prep for that this weekend, read the syllabi and get organised. Planning to go past Textbooks for Africa on Churchill Road just now (just hope I don't encounter the police along there - am having to get my mind into gear on that front and plan my routes around town to avoid the police wherever possible).

With my four year old that I home school we've decided to maybe give Jolly Phonics a break for the moment. My friend who has done educational therapy following the US National Institute for Learning Development reckons phonics should only be introduced when you're six or seven as your brain only really grasps phonetics then. My four year old is a lot happier not doing phonics for now. Maybe can try again a bit later. He is crazy about dinosaurs now too and really enjoyed the book Gigantosaurus by Jonny Duddle that I got in England. We'll see how my other Chinese four year old likes it next week, when I start with him again.

Had my first personal training session today since I got back. I had forgotten I was in credit for one class which was nice. My trainer was very kind and did stretch today and we'll ease back to things - I had pictured having to do weights and cardio at the level I was at before I left on my first day, so it was a big relief. She was delighted that I had managed to lug a 25 kg suitcase up stairs in the Paris metro while I was away. I don't think I would have managed at my previous fitness level. I did have a really kind stranger come alongside me though at the Strasbourg Saint-Denis station, who hoisted my bag up two flights of steps and onto the metro - chivalry is alive and well in Paris.

Apart from work this weekend I have my depression support group meeting at a new coffee shop in Avondale tomorrow morning. There's a party at Reps Theatre that I've been invited to and then there's the Garden Show at Parklands. I have also got to try and paint a telephone box in Greystone Park. A friend has been given permission and has the paint. I have been given it as a blank canvas to brighten up - thinking of doing a larger version of my sunflower painting from last year. So I guess it's going to be quite a busy weekend.

Back to school and blundering through Lightroom

Today it was back to teaching my grade two and four year old in home schooling. For the grade two we have switched from the government correspondence course to following the Cambridge syllabus. So far, so good. I face a challenge though with the four year old, as he is really not enjoying Jolly Phonics. I think I need to make it more hands-on, as he likes making things, so maybe need to make snake S shapes and the like. Am going to meet up with a friend who has a nursery school on Monday to borrow her nursery school syllabus book and brainstorm on the Jolly Phonics conundrum.

After teaching I went to a friend's as she has the photo editing program Lightroom on her mac and she said we could try work our way through it together. I had watched a couple of youtube tutorials. One seemed fairly straightforward but a second one became very technical very quickly and I was left feeling even more intimidated. I'm afraid we didn't get very far today, as when we started off trying to upload a photo to edit from my SD card Lightroom seemed to have uploaded my entire 32 gigs of photos onto my friend's laptop and it started saying it had run out of memory space and the hard drive was full. As we both don't really know Lightroom we didn't know where it had stored the photos and where to go to delete them - we searched in all the main folders and programs on the laptop. Am now trying to google where it might be. Oh dear!

This tutorial left me feeling fairly confident.

This left me feeling overwhelmed.

I did learn though that I can practice basic photo editing using Picasa and a friend in Switzerland has also suggested an open source software called Darktable that I might try out. Watching the tutorials though you realise, a) you needed a good photo to start off with (although a few that looked too dark were amazingly rectified) and b) you can go extreme and totally change what was originally there. I have til now been happy with what I capture as it is but guess it's a new skill I should try learn and it is a bit like art and painting a picture with a bit of science and computer geekness thrown in.

My other little bit of research is that I have been asked to collect sphagnum moss samples and post them to Switzerland to see if they contain testate amoeba. I need to find out if I'm allowed to send moss in the post and also check with the people doing the study if I have to keep the moss fresh. In addition, will need to think of places in Zim to go off sampling. I might ask someone at the UZ for some help.

Exeter, Oxford, a few others and then home

Since my last post I have arrived back home in Zim. In between then and now though I visited Exeter with my sister for the day as my brother-in-law was working in Tiverton. Beth and I went on a tour of the underground passages of Exeter which were built in the Middle Ages to bring clean water into the city. I'm afraid I chickened out of the last tunnel that was less than a meter high - I don't think I would have fitted through, my sister did it though. We managed to catch a free tour of Exeter cathedral which was interesting and then unintentionally joined a tour group seeing the entrance to the university dean's residence - we saw the door open and thought it was open to the public - oops (it was an interesting door). The next day I caught the bus to Oxford to see friends. Went to lunch on the same road as the language school where I was supposed to teach. Then went to a well put together exhibition of artefacts and information on Jane Austen at the Bodleian Library. I ended up spending an extra night in Oxford as I was going to Milton Keynes on the Saturday to see other friends and it made sense to not go all the way back to Swindon. Visited a friend's lovely cottage in Moulsoe, just outside of Milton Keynes and I managed to bring some sun. I travelled back to Swindon and then on the Sunday, we went to cousins in Reading and had quite a gathering. My cousin's eldest daughter is about to start junior school and she enthusiastically brought down her entire school wardrobe and modelled her various outfits for us.

My last week was mostly in Swindon. Met up with another cousin who drove through from Crowborough to see my sister and I. I wandered around the Outlet Center in Swindon and tried not to spend too much. I could have gone to the Steam Museum, as Swindon is famous for its railways. On Friday my sister and I went to Marlborough which is not far from Swindon, to see a family friend from Zimbabwe. We were treated to tea at Polly's Tea Rooms. On Saturday, the day I flew home, my sister organised for us to meet up with my cousin Carly and her boyfriend and my friend Suba came too. We went to Cliveden House in Maidenhead. When we drove up we were all ready to pay when the attendant said there was one day a year when entry was free of charge and it just so happened that that was today - score! The gardens were lovely and we had fun getting lost in the maze and walking along the Thames.

We were lucky with the weather at Cliveden as when I got to Heathrow thunderclouds prevented us from taking off for an hour and a half. The guy who sat next to me got on the plane and promptly fell asleep but in the most awkward position - he must really have had neck ache when he woke up. He maintained this position until we had taken off, whereupon when he could, he put the tray table down and doubled up over it, with his hoody pulled over and with his face apparently plastered into the plastic bag of his blanket which he was using as a cushion unopened. I did at the time wonder if he was asphyxiating himself. He did seem to still be breathing though. To make him wake up the air hostess seemed to purposefully say breakfast instead of dinner to him when she asked if he wanted any. He briefly lifted his head, grunted and then went back to sleep. In the morning when we were served breakfast before landing he was still in the same position and the air hostess asked me if he had moved during the night. When I said yes, she said she was relieved as she wondered if we had a corpse. The thought of being squashed in by the window by a dead body had crossed my mind too, but he had moved and did get off the plane when we landed.

All things French

I think I last blogged just before my birthday. My brother in law took the day off on my birthday and after we made lasagna and a granadilla cake for a games evening with friends we went to Cirencester for the day in the Cotswolds. Saw some lovely crafts and pretty Cotswolds cottages and things. On the way home we stopped in Cricklade and saw where the Thames River begins. I was briefed on how to play the game Munchkin for the evening but we ended up playing Would I Lie to You. In one of the final rounds I misread the card and so was inadvertently lying on all of them - oops.

On the Wednesday after my birthday my sister, her husband and I went to Warwick Castle. They had impressive displays of jousting, which were used to tell the War of the Roses, and falconry. My personal trainer would be chuffed that I climbed the battlements. Beth and Andrew had booked for us to also do the dungeon tour. It was quite grisly and gory and I nearly had heart failure towards the end when we were in a hall with mirrors and someone just emerged from the mirror in front of me in the dimly lit passageway. On Thursday I hopped on several buses and made my way to Streatham in London to spend the night with my good friend Pippa so I could get on the Eurostar on Friday morning. Pippa kindly helped me get an oyster card which is very useful to have and helped on my return journey.

And so my French adventure began. I found that when I attempted to speak in French everyone was very friendly and helpful - well apart from the waiters (although I did have one that was charming). I got into Paris and managed to get a passe navigo decouverte which allowed me to get on and off buses, the metro and RER trains as many times as I liked for a week. Other friends heading to the wedding in Rambouillet gave me the heads up on where to go to get the train ticket at Gare Montparnasse. I hopped on the train and caught my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower through the train window. Had a momentary panic on arriving in Rambouillet that I had gone to the wrong one (there are two) but it was all good. There was a UCT gathering as everyone assembled to catch the shuttle my friend Gail had organised. Everyone had brought something to contribute to a picnic that evening and we had a pleasant soiree drinking wine, eating cheese, cherries and nougat.

The wedding itself was lovely and we luckily had the rain hold off. Am so glad I managed to go and to have been there. The setting of the Abbaye Vaux de Cernay was a beautiful and very majestic. It was good to reconnect with people too. With the sun going down later I didn't realise how late it was and danced away until 2.30 am. There was a slight confusion with the shuttle the next day as myself and some of Gail's PhD colleagues from Switzerland didn't realise the shuttle was a large bus and couldn't fit through the abbey gates. After piling into a small car with suitcases on our laps and racing to the farm, we thought it had definitely gone without out us and were about to book a taxi when miraculously it appeared.

Had a bit of a challenge finding my Airbnb in Montreuil but when I did it was super and had everything I could need - including my own nespresso machine! The owner was very helpful although we had a slight miscommunication mid-week when I whatsapped her to tell her the lid of the loo had come loose. She thought I meant the entire toilet bowl and came rushing over. Could see the relief on her face when she saw what I meant. My time in Paris was really good. I did a fair deal of walking - the first day I walked from Chtâtelet, past Notre Dame to Les Jardins du Luxembourg and then up to the Opera House and through to Montmatre and the Sacre Couer. I think the place I enjoyed most was Monet's garden in Giverny with all the colours and feast of flowers. I met two friends of a friend back home at Les Halles and then two friends I met in Switzerland on the Youth Encounter on Sustainability course in 2008 at Republique. Was very special to see Damien and Luisanna again and meet Luisanna's family.

The only not so nice experience was that a man followed me home from the metro on my last night in Paris. I decided to do a detour into the supermarket when I realised he had followed me two blocks. He followed me into the supermarket and hovered at the end of my aisle. When he seemed to have gone I quickly went out but he was waiting outside. I managed to dash into my apartment though and lock myself inside. To counterbalance that though I had a very kind man come alongside me in the metro the next day, and pick up my suitcase along with his and carry it all the way up the stairs for me and onto the metro. (Pack light she had said to herself, there will be stairs she said - hmmm).

On returning to England I had lunch with my cousin Carly and caught up on all her news. We also had a look in the Harry Potter shop at Kings Cross Station. Also had coffee with my Cape Town house mate Wendy which was nice, before I caught the bus back to Swindon. Tomorrow I'm going with my sister and brother-in-law down to Devon. OK that was a long spiel.

I brought the sun with yesterday

Mbare

Flew out of Harare on Saturday. It had been quite an eventful week as on the way home from seeing a friend in Hatfield on Wednesday our car's clutch gave out. It started playing up as I drove through Mbare at rush hour. Luckily made it further into town before it completely gave out by the Polytechnic but right in the middle of the road at peak hour - not fun, there was nothing I could do. My mum got a lift to where I was with a driver from the school and our mechanic came. The same friend who rescued me on Saturday kindly came with his tow rope and towed the car home. Cephas the mechanic then had to go in search of parts - not easy. It was still not fixed on Saturday, so the H.I.S. driver took me to the airport. He was late though as there seems to suddenly be a fuel shortage in Harare again and he then took a very circuitous route to the airport to avoid police but I did start panicking when we seemed to be going in completely the opposite direction but I made it.

Boarding the plane in Harare the aircraft was stifling as apparently some charger in the engine wasn't working and therefore the air con wasn't working until we took off. I did hope that the air con was the only thing that wasn't working. In Joburg I had to have my eye and fingerprints scanned. I then had to wait it out for six hours. Missed having my mum and friend Vee with me this time to while away the time with. I must have walked across the duty free area six times and tried not to spend too much. Had a very chivalrous Chinese man next to me on the next flight but he watched movies all night and the flickering light from his screen kept me awake. When we landed at Heathrow the pilot said it was 12'C - pretty much our mid-winter temperature at home, but when I got out it was warmer than that and I had managed to bring some sunshine with me.

I was met by Beth and Andrew and they had quite a day planned. We went to see our friend Mags in Virginia Water and I went with Beth and Andrew to church at Christ Church Virginia Water where Beth and Andrew got married last year. We walked from there to lunch at Savill Garden with Mags and some others. We then stopped via Reading to see Andrew's parents on the way back to Swindon. I did feel a little exhausted by bed time but it was good to maximise on the sunshine. Today is a bit overcast. I am going to go for a walk just now and then will make babotie for dinner. Will go to Beth's pilates class this evening.

Savill Garden

All was well, well except the very end

Thanks for all the encouragement for my first wedding shoot. Once I got cracking the nerves went and it all went really well. I may have to do a bit of photo editing with some of the lighting and see what I can do there. Although it was a little chilly, the sun did come out at key moments in the day. My friend made a beautiful bride and has found her prince.

My camera battery miraculously lasted the whole day - I should really have a spare in future just in case. Some of my night photographs have come out quite well. A few I will have to try sharpen or lighten. There was a photo booth that printed photos at the reception which was a lot of fun and will help to have captured more of the guests.

So it all went swimmingly until I stopped for fuel on the way home at the garage by Classic Desserts on Churchill. I had to get out to go swipe at the kiosk shop and forgot to turn my lights off. When I came back the car was completely dead and wouldn't start. This was now at about half past midnight. The garage attendant and the security guard tried to push start it but still nothing. I then discovered my phone battery had died but luckily the kiosk cashier had a charger and let me plug my phone in. I had to squat down next to cartons of oil and make a phone call first to my mum and then I tried our reliable taxi driver. He didn't answer. I then thought about two friends that are usually still awake at that time on a Saturday or should I say early Sunday. The first's call kept cutting off and when I first tried the second my phone somehow phoned someone else. Luckily I finally reached the second person and they very chivalrously came to my rescue along with the first friend I had tried who happened to be with them. Had to leave the car at the garage but the security guard promised to watch it overnight. The mechanic came this morning and it's the starter switch but he fixed it.