Tulips Grow Anywhere

I am. I am indeed. But do you remember, even if you’re fifty-three, that feeling of school starting and being swept away with life and just cruising along for the ride? That’s what it’s been like. Hectic. Pandemonic. Chaotic. Fun. I miss last year, I do. I miss my old classes and my brilliant German teacher Mrs. J, and not having to think about what to wear in the morning (no uniform in the Sixth Form)…but as much as I miss them, I love Sixth Form. Sometimes I am filled with an overwhelming sadness that my years at school are ending. It’s bittersweet though, because it is coupled with a hope and a love for what is to come.

 My bike ride was GREAT! great, great, great. The atmosphere was just wonderful and it was so lovely to cycle past all those familiar landmarks without a red double decker of a tour bus blocking your view. Seriously it should be no traffic EVERY day….not sure how pragmatic that would be though! I especially loved cycling through Blackfriars Underpass - the NOISY zone - where everyone whooped and yelled in the echoey tunnel and rang their bicycle bells to high heaven! It was so much fun though. And a great photographic challenge. :) I am definitely signing up next year. For sure!

My friend M and I by Cleo’s Needle…on the Embankment. I’m the blonde :P

 Other than that I am reading Carl Bernstein’s biography of Hillary Clinton and it is brilliant! I’m not a huge fan of her, I like her so-so but I don’t love her or anything. It’s so well-written though, and so lovely to hear about her childhood. I support Barack Obama (woooo! shame I’m English and too young to vote) …. but anywho. Government and Politics is fast becoming my favourite subject. I love it…so current. I want to be a politician someday. Maybe. To feel as if I am shaping history. Even a tiny fragment. Even to change just one person’s life for the better for one single moment. That would be enough for me. :) And I’m quite excited because I just ordered ‘The Audacity of Hope’ by Obama and a biography of RFK from Amazon….yay! I am absorbing myself in books. School has reinvigorated my love for learning - not that it ever went anywhere though - and I just want to educate myself so much, to reach my full potential. I just don’t know why I love to learn so fanatically. But I do. And I love that too.

 Thanks for all your comments…apologies again that I haven’t been commenting much. I had seven essays to write last week so it was all a little frantic. Things seem to be slowing down now though. Phew! I hardly have time to think, let along photograph.

Have a good week.

 Lulu.

First I have to thank you all for your well wishes! :) I was so surprised, and delighted, to read your words of wisdom and consolations regarding my poor sick foot. Ha! Well, thankfully, no needles went near it. I was even more delighted about that. The doctor, gosh, how I love him for sparing me at the hand of the evil pinprick, said they don’t like to stitch the sole of the foot because it’s not very practical. How I had waited and hoped to hear those words! They gave me butterfly stitches, medicine to stop the swelling and a big bandage. So I spent two days off school watching The Daily Politics Show with my bandaged leg up on a chair. Fun! ;) Seriously, though, this taught me a lot. To not leave ringbinders on the staircase, to be more careful, to not freak out about the little things, to be more grateful when I don’t have a lacerated foot. It might seem a bit philosophical to see all these insights into such an insignificant event, but I guess that’s just me. And, for various reasons, the foot/ringbinder incident confirmed my view that some good always comes out of bad.

 Anyway…enough contemplation…I must sound like my philosophy teacher! Never a good thing. I’m so excited. Not because I sound like my philosophy teacher, but because tomorrow I’m taking part in the Hovis London Freewheel  - TFL, and Hovis, are closing off all the roads in the City of Westminster and in London, and opening it to 38,000 cyclists. I signed up a while back and finally received my (ugly) red bib and (cool) bicycle bell today. So roll on! Hopefully my foot won’t bother me too much. I’m so excited - and am definitely going to take my cam. Should be fun. I’ll just share one shot, showcasing my ’so-excited’ mood ;) Ta-da!

Have a fun day tomorrow, and thanks for all your comments. =) Love ya, Lulu.

In a nutshell, that is me. You wouldn’t think it if you saw me. Twelve years of ballet gave me a little grace and poise, so you wouldn’t think me clumsy. I guess I’m not a klutz as much as accident prone. Last week at school I skinned my heel (through my Mary-Janes…erm….how does that work?!) on some steps outside and there was blood everywhere. I have a very low pain tolerance and the slightest bump causes me excruciating pain. So you can imagine how much that hurt! And then, this past Sunday, I managed to ride my bicycle INTO the blackberry bush; resulting in 22 long, thin, delicate red lines on my left leg. I just hope they don’t scar. And yesterday, to top it all off, I had my worst accident yet. I’d left my English folder on the stairs and was running up with a heavy laptop in my hands, I slipped and slammed my left foot down on to the folder. The metal rings of the ringbinder pierced through the front cover of my folder and into my foot. I was quite proud of myself for not screaming out in pain. It was agony. I thought I’d just hit it on something though until I stumbled to the kitchen and found a huge trail of blood streaming behind me. It was horrible. Literally. My mum immediately wrapped the teatowel she was using around my foot (how hygienic, lol) and it stained crimson in minutes. I really should have gone to A&E but I hate hospitals. Just thinking about them makes me nervous. I am terribly scared of needles too. There was no way anyone was putting one near my foot. In fact writing this, I am close to tears. I hate hospitals that much. I wish I didn’t but I do. That’s life, I guess. I’m going later to the Minor Injuries Unit…it’s not bleeding, apart from a little sporadically, but I can’t put any weight on it without being in terrible pain. I know they’ll want to stitch it. I just know it. And I’m trying not to think about it. I know I’ll cry hysterically when I get there, smell that disinfectanty smell only associated with hospitals, feel my feet (or foot) against the squeaky clean floors, see all those people in white coats striding about…it’s so scary to me. It’s the one thing I hate most in the whole entire world.

Anyway, sorry for the rather depressing post. I thought I’d blog since I’m not at school (due to the foot…a one-legged Lulu might not go down very well, and since I don’t possess a pair of crutches, I think I’d get a wee bit tired hopping round all day). Wish me luck. Thanks for your comments on the last post too. And sorry I am in such a negative mood. I’m happy most of the time, but when I’m not…that sadness or anger could cover oceans and mountain ranges. That’s just me.

 Have a nice day and don’t leave any ringbinders on the stairs, okay? love, Lulu

Remember I visited Canada this past summer? The trip I have hardly blogged about, the trip from which I still have hundreds of photographs to proof and develop and print…well, it’s time. Yes, Miss Ellen. 

I took perhaps three hundred digital images in Canada - a mix of buildings, Starbucks frappucinos (LOL), people, little details, lakes in the North, my feet, my reflection in skyscrapers… and I love them. They are such a wonderful reminder of the fun and laughter we shared whilst there, and those photographs will I treasure forever. But I recently got some of my film images back from the lab, and when I heard the quiet thud of the brown envelope as it fell through the letterbox, as I sat down in the kitchen all ready to open it up, as I looked through slowly smiling at each one of the 72 pictures….when I came across one of my little sister, sitting quietly in our log cabin on the lake, writing or drawing, or perhaps both, with the morning Ontario sunlight spilling through the screen door…forming pretty patterns on the floor…I knew that would be my favourite picture from my visit, no matter how many others I looked through. I just knew. It’s not such a great photograph technically but it conveys such an aura, such a time and a place, that I cannot help but adore it. So here it is…taken with my beautiful little Pentax 35mm and a 50mm lens. I Love It.

There are many more where this came from. So I promise, and this time I promise to keep to it, that my next post will be about Canada too. I’ve gathered all my images and am getting round to proofing and thinking about it. So…I’m ready.

See you, have a nice Sunday and give me some blog lovin’ ;)

Lulu.

I truly am! No blog post for eight days - EIGHT! And I don’t think I have commented on any other blogs for at least that long. So please forgive me, I truly do not deserve your lovely comments but thank you so much for leaving them. I just adore reading them. : ) School is super! Super, super, super. I love it as much as I always have. Politics is beyond interesting - so incredibly current that I can’t help but love it - , German as wonderful as always (despite one crazy teach…!) and Religious Studies is fabulously fun most of the time, although Mister Plato bores me frozen. And English Literature, of course, is lovely. I have two brilliant and marvellous teachers, and we are reading the best books: Antony&Cleopatra, Persuasion, Snow Falling on Cedars… it’s just so much fun.

I have been busy as banana jam with homework and getting back into the swing of thing; practising piano, a Brownie outing to London Zoo where little Freya got bitten by an alpaca (it sounds hilarious now, but it wasn’t at the time!) and just having fun. I love Year 12. We’re in Sixth Form now so we get lots of free periods and we’re allowed to go home or wherever we want during lunch, and no uniform too….! I’m having a ball in my dresses and tunics and woollen skirts and all. Today two lovely girls from my Politics class and I popped out for frappucinos at lunch, and we had so much fun just chatting and watching the world go by. I am loving Ancient Greek too. It’s a lot of fun. How many times have I said the word ‘fun’? Haha, I hope you’re not counting. I haven’t taken too many pictures but I have snapped a few and…so I thought I’d share two favourites.

 This one is sooooo my life right now - school work and reading for English and polka dot mugs of wintery hot chocolate….all wrapped up with school and happiness and life as a 16-year-old kid. I’m loving it. And, of course, my infamous pink wall from the music room at home had to make an appearance!!!

And this one, I just loved the light. IKEA Lantern love. Gotta love it!

Thank you for reading…and I promise to check out all your blogs asap! I really do. I was going to check them earlier, on Tuesday, but I was feeling so sad about 9/11 that I just didn’t have the heart. May God bless those families. Hugs to you all. Have a nice Friday tomorrow.

Love, Lulu.

It truly feels as if autumn is here, doesn’t it? The days are darker, the leaves more crimson, and there is that crisp fresh breeze in the air that one could only associate with autumn. : ) I love it. School starts tomorrow. I had to go in yesterday too - to meet my form tutor, my new form, and to have our photographs taken. There are sixteen - yes, SIXTEEN! - new girls. Sixteen! How will I ever remember them all? I met some lovely people though, and one lovely Victoria is going to be in Ancient Greek with me so I’m happy about that. My form are nice too, and my form tutor is a little strict (still lovely though) but I think she’ll improve.  I liked my photograph too….So, yes. It should be fun. I’m taking English Literature, Politics, German, Religious Studies and Ancient Greek - and I can’t wait, strange as it sounds, to be doing homework again and going to the library for private study and eating in the lunch hall. I just love it. As you well know!  I have a few photographs I was pleased with to share. They so signify that autumn feeling to me - the light, the bokeh, everything…. - I love that it’s coming. It makes me so happy.

And, what else…minus my autumn loves and rambles…well, I picked up my apples for my teachers today - tradition we have - and I had my hair chopped…yep, yesterday before I went into school. All my beautiful long curls gone. But I like it. I needed a change. Not to self: take an SP sometime. It was just getting unmanageable, it was so long…truly. It was hard to wash and I never ever blow-dry my hair so it took forever to dry naturally, and it was all tangly and full of split ends. It’s still classified as long though. :) . And I looked after my cousin today - he goes into Year 2 tomorrow. How adorable is that?! He is getting so grown-up though, and guess what…? He wants to be a photographer when he’s older. I let him use my old film SLR for fun, with no film in, and he loved loved loved it. And it gave me a chance to capture him…. :) Here.

….a little self-portrait ;) …

And, one sans camera…. :)

And that’s all from me….

Love ya, Lulu

My garden is a treasure trove. Really. You can find anything there. Our bonfire pit is piled high with old floorboards and bed slats, a hedgehog’s nest (don’t SOS, I would NEVER let my father make a hedgehog pie on the bonfire…never…I’m a vegetarian!), chipped ceramics and who-knows-what-else. Because I certainly don’t! We have pear trees, blackberry bushes, a hoarde of bluebells and grape hyacinths in spring, a small colony of brown-eyed Susans and a whole orchard to keep me happy. Plus a shed filled with paint cans of every hue under the sun, that smells absolutely gorgeous - of turpentine mixed with fading lavender. My favourite smell in the whole world!

 So yesterday my friend M and I were sitting in the orchard reading and just chatting really when we happened to gaze upon this old desk that has been sitting on the bonfire since we moved to our house, in 1994.  This desk goes way beyond 1994, however. According to the writing scrawled on the underside it belonged to a Miss Molly Cordelia Gilfitt (Cordelia obviously came back to haunt me!) in 1919. Can you believe it? Old is sad, and sad is happy for deep people, apparently…and I can see what that means. Knowing that Miss Molly is probably long gone now, but her desk lives on, made me feel so delighted.

The desk was chipped and bare and needed a good sanding, but there’s *nothing* a good lick of paint can’t fix. So M and I, we decided to give little Molly’s desk a tidy-up. We spent the whole day sanding and painting, careful to avoid the historic scribbles of Molly and friends on the bottom of the desk. And it looks lovely. Really. I can just imagine sitting in my beloved orchard with Miss Molly’s desk, doing my homework. I think it is Molly’s gift to me. So, of course, I just HAD to take pictures. Here they are.

And the desk itself, which I think looks wonderful…I can’t wait to find a little girl willing to pose with it for me. :) Miss Molly’s great-granddaughter? Anywho, I was just excited to find such a beautiful antique archaic little desk with such historical value - and with a STORY - and to be able to paint it and give it a little extra shine. I wish I had taken a ‘before’ and ‘after’ photograph but I neglected to. So.

Thanks for reading! Love Miss Lulu…and Miss Molly. ;)

Hello! How are you all? I was so delighted to read all your comments on my last post: glad to see you have not deserted me! Summer is almost over here, if it ever started. I love every season: spring for the hyacinths and bluebells and newborn lambs it brings, summer for the long hours of golden sunshine and the happy carefree feeling that comes with it, autumn with its crunchy red and crimson leaves is beautiful and I love the feeling of starting up at school again …. a fresh start. And winter - my favourite - for its snows and frosts and beautiful barren trees, and for that Christmas feeling that is like nothing else in the entire world!

 This summer has been an odd one here in England, with floods galore and politicians calling for aid for those affected, and ministers labelling my generation as the epitome of moral breakdown - especially with the shooting of beautiful little Rhys Jones last week. My heart just aches for his dear family. Yet this summer was a sacred one. This summer was the summer we have waited for for our whole lives - the summer after GCSEs, after those huge looming exams, when we would have nothing to do but laze in the sun and get up around noon. Now that always sounded terribly boring to me; I am a morning person through and through, I always feel as if I am missing out on life if I sleep too late! So it’s been a busy summer, with day trips here and there, and visiting museums and galleries all alone by myself whilst my friends sleep until 44 minutes past noon, and visits to the ocean and our wonderful trip to Canada.  38 books, 73 newspapers, thousands of images later: here I am. School starts on Monday and I could not be happier. Much as I love holidays, August makes me restless. There is not much news for all the important people are on holiday, the weather is too hot or too rainy for much and parliament is not in session so no interesting laws are being passed. I cannot wait to be in Year 12 - to be learning again, making new friends, meeting new teachers and walking through those halls again where my heart is at its most content. Yet as much as I want to go back, I have loved this summer.

It has been a rather lonely summer. My mother and father work full-time, and blessed are we that they do, for they work so hard to send us to the school that they do and provide for my sister and I. I am incredibly lucky in our world today. My sister spent two weeks in Scotland, nine hours away, with a friend and I was left to my own devices for those 15 days. I picked blackberries in our garden, sat in the orchard and read for days, I wrote poetry, and started up on my novel again, and I took countless pictures. I would sometimes take the tube to the end of the line, just to see places I hadn’t been before. It felt so incredibly independent. The girls at my school I saw sometimes, but not too often, and I was happy to do my own thing. I like being by myself. I always have, although I savour company as much.

So this image really represents my summer - just my flip-flops, me by myself and alone, yet happy (hmm does that gorgeous F/1.4 bokeh signify happiness? *sigh*). I love it, taken with my new 50mm F/1.4 lens that is divinity itself!

Thanks for reading my ramblings. :P It makes me so happy :) sad as that may be! Have a fab evening (and rest of summer), love Miss L.

So. I’ve been tagged by the oh-so-lovely and amazing photographer Brenda, and the equally talented and so sweet Leah, AND wonderful Mrs. Angie Penrose! I have to list eight interesting things about myself, if there are eight (!), and then tag 4-8 (it seems to vary) photographers to do the same. Sounds fun! So, here goes. : )

 1. My favourite colour is white. I love its purity, and cleanliness - and its connotations with angels and so forth. I always thought it was a very… honest…colour. If you can have such a thing.

2. I sometimes think my life would be easier if I was named Cordelia. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore my name, and I don’t know anybody else named Lulu (do you?), but still. We always wish for what we can’t have, I guess!

 3. I sleep with a St. James edition of the Holy Bible (a Bible, basically) under my pillow at night. It makes me feel safe. The only way that could get any more interesting is if I was an atheist, LOL…I’m not. : )

4. I have a 50mm 1.4 on the way!! It should arrive on Wednesday and I am so so excited!

 5. I love school. Okay, you probably already knew that, in retrospect. Umm, well, I love it because I get to do all my favourite things there - read, write, learn, meet new people, see my friends…stuff like that. It’s my second home and I never ever ever want to leave.

6. I am completely COMPLETELY completely addicted to ice lollies. Yum. I find them so so sooooo delicious. How could you not? I don’t care what flavour, what shape, what kind - give me an ice lolly and you are my best friend for life! I don’t actually eat them that often because I am atrocious at making them myself (lol, how hard can it be? but, nope, I can’t) and my mum never ever buys them because she knows they will have been devoured in ten seconds flat!

7. My favourite thing about my appearance is my hair. It’s naturally very blonde and curls at the end. I used to have a whole head of ringlets, hence my nickname Curly Mop-top (don’t even ask!), but then it went straight. But now I am older it is curly again, just loose ringlets, and I couldn’t be happier. I love it!

8. My absolute all-enduring hero is Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968). His triumph over moral evil, his courage, his belief in his duty to do right…I just find his message so inspiring. I think, had he lived, he would have won. I think he would have won.

 How was that for interesting? I hope I didn’t bore you toooooo much. : ) Now I’m tagging lovely Jeanette, beautiful Ellen, sweet Lottie and amazing Amanda! Until next time (and I promise to have a Canada post for you, Miss E, who knows who she is, this week sometime) !! ; ) I’ll leave you with a favourite, although old now, shot of mine. Your loving friend, Miss Lulu : )

Hi, and welcome to my new blog! Isn’t is pretty exciting? My old blog (which can be found here) was playing tricks on me, and has been for a while, and I am busy as banana jam, getting ready for the new school year  - picking up textbooks, and stationery shopping (my favourite!), and all that jazz - so have no time to sort out the craziness of Blogger blogs and folks. So I hope you won’t all desert me now I am officially a Blogger traitor! I’ll leave you with just one that I love…my funky lomo lavender : )