Kaleidoscopic week and goodbye to KEMAR

It's been a kaleidoscopic week, so many extremely different things that I can hardly remember what I have done myself.  Here are a few bits to give a flavour of it.

The BBC project is still alive so far. (don't you like the retro logo?)   It goes to the next stage now.    These days BBC pitches include photos and snatches of video, and are almost like mini programmes. I will let you know when we have some news, but don't know when that will be... fairly soon,I suppose. But it all feels very much out of my hands.

Our schools project is on the move.  We'll be blogging about it and I'll let you know when the blog has been set up. Meanwhile, Vanessa (storyteller)  Frank (designer) and I had a meeting in a cafe in London Bridge to start our planning.  You see we were working hard.

Actually we were working.   It's surprising how many of the other customers in certain central London cafes seem to be business people, such as those guys in the background. Now so many people work freelance,  I guess business is done in coffee houses again in London, just like in the eighteenth century.

Can't say that lot look as if they are doing business, mind you....

It's time also for me to say farewell to KEMAR, the life-sized Manikin  who has lived upstairs in our house for years.  T no longer needs KEMAR for his work.

I have always liked KEMAR's thoughtful and mysterious face. He/she is an androgynous torso, and is used for  evaluating sound quality, testing headphones, hearing aids, and so on, hence the detachable white ears.
KEMAR is life sized but small,  a composite of male and female measurements taken from all over the To me, he/she is the kind of fairylike creature you might meet one day in a deep mysterious wood.

Went to a friend's birthday party.  His neighbours, who are pastry chefs, rather conveniently, made him a wonderful cake with chocolate coated strawberries, coulis, cream and all sorts of other things. Sorry the photo is a bit blurry. Most of my pics today were taken on my phone. I ought to upgrade the software to see if that will improve the camera - or at least learn to hold the thing still when I take pictures.

We've had hot weather and the gooseberries were ripe at last, so I picked loads. Yay!

I am a rotten gardener but thankfully, most plants seem able to grow on their own.  A blackcurrant bush appeared last year against the wall and has had a good crop this year, and probably will be even better next year.  And a few years ago I sowed a few poppy seeds and they went feral. They now appear all over the garden in places they shouldn't be.   They look wonderful though.

A neighbour told me they should call me "Jenny Poppyseed."  Not sure if that is a gentle hint about not introducing plants that spread all over the place.

Took various trips out to the London suburbs for various reasons.  On one of them I caught this view of the distant Shard out of the train window as I returned at sunset.  I think the Shard is London's most exciting new building for a decade (read about it here)   I like the way it echoes exactly the shape of the church spire in the foreground, all lit up by the evening sun.

We also made a visit to Merton, Southwest London, to visit a friend who is confined to a wheelchair, and we took him out to Morden Hall Park.  It's owned by the wonderful National Trust and is a piece of countryside in the middle of London's southwestern suburbs. The River Wandle, which was once heavily polluted, now runs clear and bright amongst the huge trees. The occasional distant statue, like this one standing alone (can you see it in the centre of the picture) and the reflections of the water, add a feeling of mystery.

Quite the kind of wood I imagine KEMAR living in.