This is the life
Isn't this great? I'm taking a few weeks to recover before I start thinking about what to do next and it's just lovely.
We went to Ascot on 23 June, here we are in our finery just about to leave:
The new Grandstand is awesome - a beautiful building. I don't know who designed it, but it's like an airport - big and airy and full of natural light:
I found myself checking out the materials used, the fixings, the concrete, wondering how it was all put together, thinking about the design of each and every aspect. Sad, that's what I call it. I even took some photos, but I'm too ashamed to show them.
It was a lovely day - saw the Queen, that's Prince Philip behind her. It's amazing the lack of security there - they searched my bag at entrance (it's about 2" square) but Tim could have been hiding an AK47 under his tailcoat - there were no metal detectors or anything like that, and Her Majesty was only a short distance away from us. Lucky we're not terrorists.
These events always make me laugh - at the start everyone looks so wonderful, the men all done up like dogs' dinners and the ladies in their ridiculous hats - everything is so refined and demure. But at the end of the day, after drinking your own bodyweight in champagne and losing the contents of your TESSA on a 50:1 outsider in the last race, it's like carnage. People staggering around, hats all over the place, shrieking women with no shoes on, harrassed officials trying to herd everyone off the premises. I was laughing my head off, because I'd managed to stay reasonably sober. I even saw a man pushing a supermarket trolley full of drunken women towards the car park. They just couldn't make it. I don't know, youngsters nowadays, just don't have the stamina necessary for these occasions.
Tuesday 27th found me at Lords for the Twenty Twenty match between Surrey and Middlesex. I'm not normally a cricket fan - dull dull dull are the three words that spring to mind when I think of cricket, but the Twenty Twenty matches are quite good because they don't last very long. It started at 5.30 and was all over by 8.30. Now that's the sort of cricket I can put up with. No photos of that I'm afraid - but there wasn't much to see to be honest.
Wednesday 28th and off to London for a visit to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. Interesting stuff. Some really good models and images by architecture students - and a fantastic sculpture outside by Damien Hirst. And more free champagne, which is always nice.
You may have noticed a lack of anything garden designy in my life currently. Well, that's completely deliberate. I finished the year never wanting to see another garden again, hating plants, hating materials, hating the whole bloody industry. I had had my fill of it.
But a soupcon of curiosity is slowly coming back to life now, a feeling that maybe I will one day actually want to use what I've learnt.
Tonight I'm off to see New Landscapes 2006, the exhibition by the Landscape Architect graduates at the Menier Gallery in Southwark Street and tomorrow I'm taking my Mum to the Hampton Court flower show, so hopefully these events will ease me back into the scary world of garden design.
Hope everyone's having fun - see you on 24 July, if I don't bump into you at Hampton Court!
We went to Ascot on 23 June, here we are in our finery just about to leave:
The new Grandstand is awesome - a beautiful building. I don't know who designed it, but it's like an airport - big and airy and full of natural light:
I found myself checking out the materials used, the fixings, the concrete, wondering how it was all put together, thinking about the design of each and every aspect. Sad, that's what I call it. I even took some photos, but I'm too ashamed to show them.
It was a lovely day - saw the Queen, that's Prince Philip behind her. It's amazing the lack of security there - they searched my bag at entrance (it's about 2" square) but Tim could have been hiding an AK47 under his tailcoat - there were no metal detectors or anything like that, and Her Majesty was only a short distance away from us. Lucky we're not terrorists.
These events always make me laugh - at the start everyone looks so wonderful, the men all done up like dogs' dinners and the ladies in their ridiculous hats - everything is so refined and demure. But at the end of the day, after drinking your own bodyweight in champagne and losing the contents of your TESSA on a 50:1 outsider in the last race, it's like carnage. People staggering around, hats all over the place, shrieking women with no shoes on, harrassed officials trying to herd everyone off the premises. I was laughing my head off, because I'd managed to stay reasonably sober. I even saw a man pushing a supermarket trolley full of drunken women towards the car park. They just couldn't make it. I don't know, youngsters nowadays, just don't have the stamina necessary for these occasions.
Tuesday 27th found me at Lords for the Twenty Twenty match between Surrey and Middlesex. I'm not normally a cricket fan - dull dull dull are the three words that spring to mind when I think of cricket, but the Twenty Twenty matches are quite good because they don't last very long. It started at 5.30 and was all over by 8.30. Now that's the sort of cricket I can put up with. No photos of that I'm afraid - but there wasn't much to see to be honest.
Wednesday 28th and off to London for a visit to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. Interesting stuff. Some really good models and images by architecture students - and a fantastic sculpture outside by Damien Hirst. And more free champagne, which is always nice.
You may have noticed a lack of anything garden designy in my life currently. Well, that's completely deliberate. I finished the year never wanting to see another garden again, hating plants, hating materials, hating the whole bloody industry. I had had my fill of it.
But a soupcon of curiosity is slowly coming back to life now, a feeling that maybe I will one day actually want to use what I've learnt.
Tonight I'm off to see New Landscapes 2006, the exhibition by the Landscape Architect graduates at the Menier Gallery in Southwark Street and tomorrow I'm taking my Mum to the Hampton Court flower show, so hopefully these events will ease me back into the scary world of garden design.
Hope everyone's having fun - see you on 24 July, if I don't bump into you at Hampton Court!
posted by Jackie Edwards at 9:45 am
3 Comments:
I was at the 20:20 cricket too.....but I saw Kent v Middlesex. It was my first 20:20 match, but to be honest I prefer the test matches. Some drunk Kent supporters on a stag do kept us more entertained than the players! See you at Hampton Court. P.S You look very lovely in your regalia for Ascot.
Cor Jackie you scrub up well. Glad to hear you have a social life again. Mine is much more tame. Sorry I won't be at Hampton Court. See you on the 24th with another daft hat!!
You looked just 'braw' the pair of you! So glad you're enjoying life. I am too, although perhaps not so glitzy - back to mucky old shorts and gardening boots, and sweat. Not a pretty picture, I know!!
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