pirates of the mediterranean

pirates of the mediterranean from nancy west on Vimeo.

a wonderful trip and i managed to capture some of it here. photos to follow...

slalom skills

here i am on my fourth ever day of skiing practising my slalom skills on the nursery slopes of stoos. i managed a red run the day before with no falls but definitely think i need to keep learning the basics before i feel comfortable on the big runs. really really loving it though and it's so exciting to see what progress can be made in just a few hours. raffaele, of course, continues to be a wonderful teacher. we had a fantastic three days skiing when friends, sam and lucy, visited us from bristol and my parents arrive tomorrow for six days so we'll be up on the mountains lots more over the next coming week. i just LOVE swiss life!

thalis and his adventures

posting the video of me skiing inspired me to finally get around to editing some footage i took my lovely friend lara's *gorgeous* boy thalis when they came to visit us in bristol last summer.

the music for the first video is in the back of a taxi by penguin cafe orchestra and the second is tantz glassidic by moishe's bagel.

piste life

today was one of the best days that i've had so far in switzerland. which, considering swiss life is bloody fantastic, is really saying something.

today i went skiing for the first time. it was *so* much fun. when i last lived here i didn't get on that well with snowboarding and was worried i wasn't cut out for piste life of course i have a lot to learn and i took some nasty falls today but i could really see how much progress i was making.

the weather was terrible and visibility was poor but this meant there were hardly any people on the piste which was perfect for me. so excited to go again. and again. and again...

here is a little video raffaele took of me. he was a brilliant teacher. really patient and often pushed me up the slope to ski back down before we thought i was ready for the lift.

raff on the beach

as hoped, i have worked my way through a tough blip on the PhD and, despite being unsettled by some news at the weekend, today i have a spring in my step and writing is going very well indeed :)


so, in a very short lunch break (got to harness this high motivation), i thought i would share the second gif. i love how the water, as well as raff, moves.

to everyone in the uk, enjoy the last day of summer!

fun with gifs - part 1

i have been meaning to post some gifs on here for an age. but then i realised that viewing more than one gif at a time is messy. so, i'll post a series of them and break them up with some nice photos (or some other posts). just because...

first up, i was re-inspired to create some gifs when i spotted this *lovely* one back in july:

caught in the rain
via