I meant to post these photos sooner, but didn't have time.
The annual Christmas-Card-making session that I go through each year is somewhat of a tradition. For me, it was my Dad with his almost religious devotion to hand made Christmas Cards, who has made this become a task which under no circumstances should be neglected over the festive season. So, every year I set about making my Christmas cards.
There are 2 basic requirements:
- It has to be festive. Normally I like to focus equally on Christmas and New Year, without any religious connotations. Yes, I realise its Christmas but Christmas has long been a concoction of various traditions. Besides, I send my cards to many people, not all of whom celebrate Christmas (!). However, I believe we could all do with some good-will and peace on this tiny rock we live on.
- It has to be simple. The practicalities of making rather a lot of cards in one go should be considered. Some years I've had more complicated designs that are harder to mass-produce and with little time, the quality can suffer as a result.
Of course, if you're on my Christmas-card list then you already know all this. Anyway. This year I went with a Christmas Tree theme. The thick stripes of 'tinsel' on the tree came to mind after remembering some 80's album cover designs.
I went to Malta last week for my Mums birthday. A small family holiday. It was great. Weather was a bit mixed and I managed to almost cut a finger off whilst trying to rescue some wine but I had a good time.
Here are some photos.
That hurt! It looked alot worse the day before though...
I recently had the chance to spend a week in Korea as part of NCsoft's 'Global Stars' program. Aha - That overtime did pay off!
It was an absolutely great week, spent enjoying the food & drink, discovering Seoul, visiting the G Star games expo, and generally learning about Korean culture. Here's a few photos from the trip...
Seoul - Lots of tall buildings, you find yourself mostly looking up...
...not all buildings are tall thankfully.
Thought this was cool. A little service area for your Nintendo DS, complete with clearning solution, screen wipes and dust blowers.
Life is THIS happy! Korea is full of cute things, this is part of a booth at G Star.
The inevitable booth babe shots. These gals are promoting upcoming NCsoft title, Aion.
Pretty feathers.
They start 'em young in Korea.
Percussion freaks!
Wow, the XBox360 has a Karaoke title!?
The upcoming game Punch Monster had some of the cutest characters I've ever seen.
The toilet was a new experience. No longer is there just a button for 'flush'.
Had a lovely weekend in Edinburgh, er - last weekend. Took a few photos...
Rather fun promotion for the Andy Warhol exhibition inside...
Great street performer called James James who did all sorts of clever magic tricks with Oranges and Melons. "Where would we be without humour?" Answer: "Germany".
The awesome watchtower at Edinburgh airport. A bit like a reverse Gherkin...
Spent last week in Cornwall. Bit of bad luck with the weather though - heavy rain and force 8 gales for most of the week. Camping anywhere in England during the week of Glastonbury = bad idea. Sought refuge at my Mums house mid-week to dry off and put the camping plans to rest.
Oh well. Caroline and I managed to enjoy the week none the less. Random pics...
The heat in the Eden Projects' Rainforest Biome is incredible. As are the plants, their scale is awesome.
Peter Randall-Page's Seed. It really was beautiful...
Fridge magnets in a section of the Eden Project.
This one particuarly caught my eye (no idea who made it)...
I had a lovely bank holiday weekend with Caroline and her family in her hometown of Amiens. I spent much time at a big family gathering, meeting over 88 family members in one weekend (that's a lot of kissing and hand shaking) - which was great. Lots of food, lots of wine - my kind of gathering.
The rest of the time, I had a chance to look around Amiens, which is a really nice French town with a huge cathedral. There is a nice town centre with some lovely restaurants along the river. Oh, and the river has a statue of a man in it that students reguarly dress up in different clothes.
There is a rather special clock in the town centre, nick-named the Marie sans chemise. Paid for by Mayor Lewis Dewailly as a monument for art and industry, it was originally unveiled in 1896, dismantled after World War II and then reconstructed, and unveiled once more on New Years Eve 1999. It's fantastic.
Carolines parents' traditional French town house was beautiful. I've always liked houses with high ceilings. The staircase has a lovely warm wooden handly that curves smoothly and steeply up to the two floors above, and there was the lovely pattern in the front inner door...
Oh, and may I introduce you to Guillaume, who pretty much has this expression on his face all the time and just asks you "Quoi ça" every 30 seconds. He's lovely.
Shoreham Airport isn't the first place you think of travelling from when you're flying to France. But it should be. I can honestly say it was my best ever experience of flying. The lovely 1930's airport terminal is a lot nicer than airports such as Gatwick, both inside and out. They are civilised enough to do a full English breakfast at 9am on a Sunday morning, the staff are nice and friendly, and the check in time takes a smooth 2 minutes, if that (though the nice lady at the counter will come and get you from the terminal should you still be chomping on that breakfast).
Sky South have been doing flights from Shoreham to France for a while now, and I can highly recommend them. The whole experience is brilliant. Flying from Shoreham to Le Touquet, the tiny little plane flies right along the coast until Eastbourne, where it heads over the channel. The cosiness of the plane is lovely, peering over my shoulder I could easily read the altitude and even the GPS screen - though I spent most of the journey enjoying the view with my complimentary Orange Juice and Shortbread biscuits.
At the other end, Le Touquet has an equally small and charming little airport and the town certainly looks nice from the air, with a huge sandy beach stretching for miles (we didn't hang aroung so I don't know much more about the town).
So yes. Flying from Shoreham airport is fantastic.
Actually a seeing our position on the GPS navigator was neat :)
Seeing the runway as we came in to land was brilliant...
