The Way of the Wombat

This is a post purely to share some of my daughter's pictures of Florence, taken a couple of years ago, after I mentioned them yesterday.

I visited Florence when I was much younger - and would like to go again sometime. I rather fancy travelling, as Brutti-ma-Buonni did to Austria recently, by train... one of these days.

So - to help maintain that feeling of warmth and serenity from yesterday - here is Florence

( Under the cut... )

It's wet and windy outdoors this evening. Not unusual for the time of year. Sadly, for her, D-d is currently being tossed on Manannan somewhere between England and home. She is coming home for half term - which she usually doesn't, but she decided she needed the break, and her home friends and family, so she left college at lunchtime, packed, got a train to Liverpool, and is on her way home.

So - to while away my time until I go down to the Sea Terminal to collect her - and to brighten up everyone's day with some remembered summer sunshine - under the cut are photos she took in Venice in July, but we never got around to sharing them.

( picture heavy clicky )

Now to go and put some shoes on and go down to collect her. the boat was due in at 22.30 - but the website says it is now due at 23.00...

Tonight I have uploaded a few more of D-d's pictures of Florence onto Flickr to share. Again they reminded me of my own visit there so many years ago, although she also saw things that I didn't... including what is now my favourite ceiling of all time and the world's most distracting place to hold a conference...

( pictures under here )

Totally unrelated; today is my sister's 50th birthday. I can remember, as a small child, spending the summer with my grandparents and there being a phone call one Sunday morning from my Dad to say that I had a baby sister. I was sent to tell my grandfather, who was in his office 'doing the books', a walk of about half a mile - it seemed a perfectly reasonable thing for a five year old to do, here, 50 years ago.

We are going out for a big family lunch tomorrow - I do love a meal I don't have to cook!

When I was in lower sixth, so sixteen going on seventeen, I went on a cruise on board a school ship.

I don’t think they have them any more – they were very much a thing of the sixties and seventies I think – a way of showing us something of the world whilst making use of troop ships built in the days of national service and then found to be surplus to requirements. I went on board Nevasa.

I worked all summer, in a local grocer’s shop, to earn half the cost and my pocket money for the trip, as my family really couldn’t have easily sent me, otherwise. My, older, cousin had done the same thing, some six or seven years earlier, and had sailed on board Dunera.

The children slept in dormitories, and we ate in a huge canteen. There were classrooms where we learnt about the countries we would visit, and about the seas we were sailing on. We had ‘social events’ in the evening, and had to be quietly in our bunks, lights off, by 10pm. But it was the most amazing event of my pre-university life.

What has brought this to mind is that we called into Livorno, on the coast of Italy, and went, for the day, to Pisa and Florence.

And under the cut I have some of D-d’s pictures of Pisa and Florence. It was fascinating looking at them with her – and discovering that certain things not only had not changed, but struck us both in exactly the same way…

( under here for the pictures )

There will be more pictures of Florence – definitely.

And in other news, S2C has bought me one of these - a Logitech lapdesk with built in fan and speakers – which is much more useful than you might think! My laptop is really happy – not only is it home again, and able to charge up, but it no longer overheats. Really good bit of kit.