Archives

You are currently viewing archive for June 2010
28 June 2010
Sounds like fun. The festival Doune the Rabbit Hole takes place around Doune castle, Stirlingshire, on 30-31st July. It promises "poetry, dancing, philosophy, forests, stories, lights, trees, cows, theatre, comedy, dressing up boxes, whisky, games, face-painting, giant mushrooms, rainbows (but no rain), local ale and cider, and lovely organic food"

The bit about "no rain" shows a cheerful optimism. Hurrah!

If they make any profit it will go to the deaf charity, Dummy Jim, which is named after
profoundly deaf Scotsman James Duthie who cycled from Scotland to the Arctic Circle for just £12.

By the way if anyone's interested in doing the same, to raise funds, go here.. Oh, and look out for the film of Jim's story, which is on its way.

to get an invitation for the festival, BUY A BUTTON for £48 ... and the invitation comes free.Buy one, get a free invitation
25 June 2010
What could be more fun than a Mad Tea Party? Niko here couldn't resist the red and white curly England wig

null

...and in fact, he couldn't resist the brown wide-brim hat either... or the white furry one....
null

And the pink one was a big favourite...

null

Everyone had fun trying on the hats

trying on hats

They admired themselves very much....

null

There were plenty of teapots ...including some mad ones... here's one shaped like a cottage...

cottage teapot

Vanessa told them Lewis Carroll's story of the Little Foxes, and they were all extremely glad when the Foxes go their tea ... and they had some chocolate cake themselves.

chocolate cake

And did some games and dancing

dancing

And everyone had a great tea party...Niko found yet another hat to go on top of all the others




And thanks to Vanessa Valencia at A Fanciful Twist for having me as Guest of Honour at HER party!

null




11 June 2010
Vanessa Woolf, Nigel and Kids

We had loads of fun with a group of kids at Boutcher School in Southwark yesterday. I'll be writing all about it on 26 June. Meanwhile, here's Nigel of Bermondsey doing his Bob Dylan impression

Nigel of Bermondsey


09 June 2010
One of the best things about writing the book about Carroll is that I've met so many interesting people who are also Carroll fans. One of them is Susan Sanford, whose work I've mentioned before in this blog. Susan lives in California but was over in Britain for a while, and we met up last week at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington. We visited the Medieval Gallery and the Costume court, and the funny thing is that I thought I'd visited both of them recently, yet both were entirely different from how I'd remembered.

I was glad that Susan and I finally had a chance to chat in real life rather than via a keyboard. She has an interesting and individual outlook on life, as you'd expect from her site. And, I was so pleased when she gave me one of her artworks to go on my wall.

null

She had brought along some other originals of the pictures on her blog including a number of "doctored" Victorian cabinet photographs - beautiful objects in their own right. My favourite one of these was Deranged Domesticity. As a tangible (as opposed to a virtual object) he had a curiously compelling presence...

(I've just scrolled back through her site to find this, and am intrigued again by the consistently curious quality of her vision. )