the rest of easter (in pictures) and thoughts on the stokes croft riot

 a royal egg for granny the monarchist. kate middleton sporting a vintage lace veil. there was a wills egg as well.

 nick cl(egg) (who lost in the first round of egg rolling)

 granny egg

tesco stokes croft protestor egg, which fought against the police egg in the egg rolling competition and won.

 eggs ready to roll

 frenzied egg rolling

 dead eggs

 easter monday lunch

 chocolate quail's egg

wine and quails' eggs carried me through to the finish line. last night i completed the first draft of my first empirical chapter. there will be many more drafts but it felt like such an achievement to work so very hard over easter, get tonnes of writing done and still have a lovely time with regular breaks and lots of laughs and chats with family.

the tesco protestor egg was a reference to the stokes croft riot last thursday. i am not anti-tesco and do not boycott it but i do appreciate the frustration local residents' felt at their (year-long) peaceful protests not being listened to and i do think the homogenisation of high streets is a shame. i do not intend to say any more about it but fritha has written a good post here and jonathan taphouse took an *amazing* set of photographs which (you might have seen if you are in the uk) made it the front page of the guardian (as well as being featured in other national newspapers and on the BBC and Sky). also amazing was the front-line reporting from elly and dan (who live and work in the area). elly's twitter pics, together with dan's pictures and mobile phone footage, were used by the BBC and can be seen here. i had been having a break from regular twitter use but was drawn back into it when the riot began. it was a far better way to get a sense of what was going on than following local and national news reporters who did not really pick up the story until the following day. but these are only the views of people on twitter, on blogs and those who have actively protested (peacefully or otherwise). it would be interesting to see what the majority of stokes croft and cheltenham road residents think. i will follow the story (including whether the tesco store re-opens again) closely.

if you haven't already seen this, this is a very funny clip of armando iannucci's time trumpet sketch on tesco's world domination.

also, on a lighter and more positive note, my granny won the egg rolling. she always wins! she's 85, very frail and in a wheel chair but she instructs the design of her eggs and nominates people to roll them on her behalf. eggcellent :)

easter saturday

despite working for a large proportion of today (and getting lots of good writing done. hurrah!), i managed to have lots of fun. here's the day in pictures

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

there are more egg pictures but, for some reason, blogger won't let me upload them so will add them to a post about egg rolling. yoda was rowan's first entry, the tardis was faye's first and the long-eylashed egg was my first entry inspired by the only way is eggssex.

the girls were gripped by the new season of dr who. i'm not a fan but it was fun to watch them and it was very exciting to see some corridor shots from the glamorgan building at cardiff university where some of it is filmed and where i go for my PhD supervisions. the girls (addicts) were impressed.

then faye styled my hair into milk braids which i'm just thrilled with.

what a truly wonderful easter saturday it has been.

iced-coffee and a dreamy soundtrack

today has been much better. it's been gorgeous weather and a perfect day for iced-coffee . plus i've been listening to a dreamy playlist all day. this has included anything from camera obscura's albums 'my maudlin career' or 'biggest bluest hi-fi'

and 'the moon' (cat power), 'love and affection' (joan armatrading), 'gypsy' (suzanne vega), 'who knows where the time goes' (fairport convention), 'fade into you' (mazzy star), 'one evening' (feist) and 'A&E 'by goldfrapp who gets a video. goldfrapp always gets a video. (i saw her live at the royal albert hall a few years ago and she was AHmazing).

simple treats

the last few days have been pretty tough. but i don't want to write too much about my PhD on here because i spend so much of the rest of my time thinking about it!

i've been finding nice ways to relax or switch off which, other than brunch with friends over from spain, (hola rosana if you're reading this) does not include socialising. at the moment i'm not actually very good company so hermit land is still suiting me just fine.

but here are some sweet treats from the past fortnight (in no particular order).

 homemade (by my dad) sloe gin. lush!

 brunch

 new old shoes ordered after spotting them here. currently winging their way to me :)

 more to be revealed on this soon...

 today's lunch-break activity - collecting a posy of wild flowers

 taking time away from the screen to just sit and stare at the beautiful trees

 reading and snoozing in the sun during a break

 continuing to work outside whenever the sun shines. the weather is so gorgeous at the moment.

 sherry

 catching up on grey's anatomy. i love this show.

 my favourite guilty pleasure - the only way is essex. i smile the whole way through the show and think joey essex (pictured above sporting his reem whip) should have his own spin off show.

watching babies. this is a *fantastic* film. absolutely fascinating. basically a documentary following the first year of four babies' lives in namibia, mongolia, san francisco and tokyo in the style of a wildlife documentary. i will definitely watch it again and again. in fact, i think i posted the trailer a while back on my blog but can't be bothered to find it so will post it again here. also, if babies aren't your thing, i think you'd still find it enjoyable and the cinematography is just wonderful.



it's a truly hilarious film and well worth watching the interviews with the director as well (if you're interested about the parenting, development and research side as i am).

what are your simple treats?

short-term incentives

i have draft posts piling up in my head as i write up the first (of four) empirical chapters of my (eight chapter) thesis. the road is long.. and the posts (on italy, china, things i've knitted recently, knitting for japan, bristol, why i have no interest in pinterest, mini rant (oops trying to stay positive) etc etc) will have to wait.

the good news is i'm enjoying the process more than i thought i would. the bad news is i'm a week behind but i can't let the deadlines shift or i'll be still be doing this at christmas. but let's get back to the positives. i am going to be able to take a (wait for it) WHOLE day off on easter sunday. and i have spotted a few fun things on the interweb i'd like to make. chances are i'll just flake out, eat lots of yummy food and cuddle with my almost-too-old-for-cuddles nieces, which will be just lovely too. i also hope to make some sort of interesting alcoholic concoction or lavender lemonade but can't find the links (mine and others) just now as my mind is fRRazzled.

botanical eggs. spotted here and instructions here.

bunny biscuits. spotted here and recipe here.

pattern here

all a bit cutesy but fun (i think) too.

have a lovely easter everyone x