happy christmas!

no longer a white christmas but with wonderful moments, quiet as well as busy ones: midnight mass in westminster abbey and a drive through town on christmas eve (and some pressies already out as it is cusatomary in this mixed nationality family), more parcels to unwrap and an early pick up for diane and the boys from heathrow on christmas day, with a big turkey to come home to, a walk in greenwich park and more terrific food on boxing day kept everybody busy and happy. soo many things to look at and read and do (deac by now totally occupied with his kindle, rike trying out the new riding gear in the stables and me eating every pralinee in sight...)

HAHC christmas concert

rike sang and played in several concerts in the last few weeks with her school as well as her orchestra and the southwark concert band but also had to abandon one or two because of the snow. a formidable line up pictured here at the annual christmas concert at goldsmiths college which reportedly drew a big crowd. 

snow, snow and snow again



views from various windows of our house into the garden and the street showing off that rare thing in london - clean snow!

after another day of travel misery we've now been told that slush is all we get for the next week, but yesterday we really had a winter wonderland. on my epic journey to highgate (to my beloved hairdresser tony) i ended up in hampstead instead and had to walk along the top end of the heath towards our old neighborhood - and even with slippery shoes and by then two and a half hours late it must have been one of the most magical moments in london ever... 

and all things nice...

in my very first own apartment, a large 3 bedroom victorian flat, unmodernised and with no proper bathroom, which i started renting at the tender age of seventeen in hannover's albertstrasse, i painted all walls dark brown and furnidged the lot with my grandmother's unwanted and faded masterpieces. i remember that i took great care not to have a single modern item in the kitchen, and even all spices, sugar, flour and salt had their own old glass containers, labelled in old german letters and adorned with little embroidered hats. a year later i was over that period and re-did the place in new wave garish...

i don't remember how much mocking i had to endure because of this but i was fairly convinced not to find another human being to be quite so determined, particularly as for the last ten years every little herb container had to be rummaged for in a box in a dark corner of the basement pantry, which meant that few spices ever saw the light of day.
how surprised therefore was i when with the new kitchen this spring dear husband demanded a proper shelf for his new chilli collection. and then one day i opened the cabinet to find this - some fifty neat little glass jars all properly labelled! just pinch me that i did not do it myself...

zoom in @ lambeth wide open

© franek strzeszewski

just missed the chance to see some of london's emerging photographer talents at the lambeth wide open exhibition for zoom in but i should not fail to report that the very talented franek strzeszewski is represented there and most certainly worth to study closer. check out his interesting work also on his website on our artists list!