Churches, Crypts and Clerics - A Walk with the London Goth Meetup Group

My best friend Eve has always been a Goth, and she has always been telling me, very fondly, of all the lovely people in the "London Goth Meetup Group". So finally, here was the ideal chance for me to go and get to know them a bit: James, the Curate in Weybridge, whom I know through work and who is a friend of Eve's through the group, was organising the March Walk, under the name of "Churches, Crypts and Clerics". I met Eve and another friend, Martin, around midday in Staines and we took the trains to London/Temple and walked from there to Blackfriars because the station at Blackfriars was closed. Most people were late because of that, so we sat at the pub with the few that had got there on time. The Blackfriars is a lovely pub, very beautifully decorated inside, no TV!!!, friendly staff, good food (so I was told - I couldn't eat anything but a salad without the dressing because of this diet...), and it was a lovely sunny and warm day, too.

The Blackfriars Pub

We finally got off for the walk at 3pm and it took us a good 3 hours, to Fenchurch and back to Monument in a big circle, taking in several of the oldest churches in London, or at least visiting the sites where they used to stand. James had a fascinating lot of poetry, contemporary prose and just little "useless bits of knowledge" to go with the places.

Me (right in the middle) with Eve,
Martin and some other Goths

We heard about the church porch that was officially used as a ladies' lavatory; the biggest dog turd ever seen; undercutting prices for wedding ceremonies; the vicar who didn't like being around the poor; and the poor vicar of Bethel Green who had such a large parish and no help that he had to conduct 800 baptism, 300 weddings and 600 funerals in a single year!

Having a rest (right to left): me, Eve, Martin, Lena

We had a refreshing stop in the rest garden inside the ruin of a chuch (St Dunstan's of the East) but didn't go inside St Paul's cathedral because it is so expensive (£12 a head!).

St Paul's Cathedral

A real treat for anybody who likes the macabre - which by default includes all Goths! - was the entrance to St Olave's Hart Street with its spiked skulls carved over the gate. It's otherwise known as "St Ghastly Grim" and Samuel Pepys described it so: “The gate is ornamented with skulls and crossbones…wrought in stone; but it likewise came into the mind of St Ghastly Grim that to stick iron spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled, would be a pleasant device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust through and through with iron spears.” Charles Dickens felt eerily drawn to them one dark stormy night: “…and found the skulls most effective, having the air of a public execution and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the pain of the spikes.” (from “Uncommon Traveller”)

The entrance to St Olave's Hart Street

But in the end we were all glad when we reached St Mary's Woolnoth, because James had the key to that one and we could actually go inside and sit on nice plush cushioned pews to listen to the last part of the "sermon" on the old London churches! A really entertaining and educating day out in London...

James "preaching" in St Mary's Woolnoth

"365 Photos Challenge" Blog

Just a quick note to say that I've opened another blog where I will be showing small scrapbook layouts for a daily photo challenge. This might be quite interesting/amusing for you to follow regularly with all kinds of odd things turning up!
The challenge started Jan 1st, so I'm a bit behind, but luckily I had taken lots of photos of all kinds of things and events this year anyway, so at least I've got the material... The first two layouts are up, so do have a look and click on the "follow" button at the top left to bookmark the site for you.
Here's the link - but for the future it will also be in the links section on the right under "Links to my other websites".
http://petra365.blogspot.com/

Pancake Day at Treffelin

I know - we are about three weeks late but since I missed the "real" Pancake Day this year (I was convinced it would be the week after!) we simply had it today. However, what made it remarkable was not the date but the fact that with the new diet I can't have shop-bought pancakes anymore - I had to make them myself. BUT - I'd never before made English-style pancakes (the type that you flip over in the pan...) before, so I required a lesson off Sean! After some initial problems with the oil beading in the non-stick pan and the heaviness of the buckwheat batter (I can't have white flour, either), he got things going, while really showing off doing flips and double flips half-way up to the ceiling. Then it was my turn - the first ones were decidedly frilly at the edges and folded over or landed on the edge of the pan, breaking apart. But all in all, only one ended up in the dog (off the floor!) and we had sufficient not only to eat but to freeze a batch, too - apparently, I'd been a bit optimistic with the amount of batter (or pessimistic, depending on how you look at it...). Plus: I had a thoroughly good time cooking tonight!

The Master Chef at work...

My first try...

Getting better...

Buckwheat batter in the pan.

The final dish out of the oven: buckwheat pancakes
filled with a thick salmon & asparagus sauce.

Back into crafting

I can't believe that I haven't done any crafting for almost a year, apart from a few cards for SfP. It felt REALLY strange when I finally picked up scissors, cutters and rulers again and set to work on a scrapbook page. It took me much longer than it should, and not only because the printer went temperamental when I tried to do the journalling... Anyway, I tried to pick up where I left off - on the theme of a scraplift challenge, recreating every single layout shown in a chosen magazine with your own twist, without buying any extra goodies. Only - I couldn't find the magazine I'd used! In the end, I chose a different one which is all about holidays and the first chapter is all seaside layouts. I don't have many seaside photos but decided I could tweak them to suit other themes. Also, the magazine is a rather old one, going back to the times when most layouts were done on plain papers or rather lary patterned stuff and with none of the sophisticated embellishments we have nowadays. So I set myself a new challenge - not only to scraplift all the layouts but to convert them into modern style, using the papers and embellishments more common today. Here's my first offering with which I'm quite pleased:


For those who are interested: all the papers used including the white netty stuff are from Club Scrap's "Weather" kit and the alpha stickers are from their "Salsa" kit. I used a Quickutz alphabet called HONEY and Quickutz elements for the mattes of the alphas. The photo is Sean paddling in the salmon steps in the Barle river - this was quite some years ago, maybe 2001 or 2002, and he was literally fishing for some missing gear a boy had lost while capsizing on one of the steps (quite a dangerous thing to do but he got away with it...). And here is the original LO from the magazine:

The Diet

It's been a while again since my last post and I felt that I should be putting something on here but to be honest, there has been very little happening that would be worth telling. I did not go on my holiday to Scotland because I still didn't feel right, hadn't been dancing much for weeks and simply didn't feel I would have the energy for travelling, early mornings and late nights, and all the exercise of a week's worth of classes and dances... More's the shame but well...
Instead I went to see a Nutritionist in Addlestone, a nice Russian lady called Olga, to see if I could get some advice on my diet in general and on the anti-candidiasis diet I'm intending to do this year in particular. We spent an hour talking things over and I thought she had some most peculiar ideas which were very contrary to anything I'd heard and read so far - really rather heavy on protein and speaking quite loudly against grains (not only wheat but all grains) on the basis that our "stomachs are not adapted to so many grains because in our original hunter-gatherer lifestyle there would have been no grains because agriculture was unknown...??? I think I was too baffled to reply much to her theories - but I mean, does she think agriculture invented the grain?
So well, now I'm rather confused as to what I should eat - I admit my normal diet was rather based on grains, veggies and pulses supplemented with nuts and dairies. For a long time I did not eat any meat or fish at all, and only recently had I started to use some meat again in home-cooking, buying from a butcher in Laleham who provides meat from traditionally raised animals. I will probably have some more of that, but I cannot see that my diet will ever amount to Olga's suggestions... Hmmm.
Having said all that, I am since Ash Wednesday on this Anti-candidiasis Diet to which Olga prescribed some supplements (probiotics) and gave some further explanations. It all sounds okay at first hearing but it's really rather difficult: no yeast, no sugar, no refined carbohydrates and no stimulants. That obviously cuts out bread and Marmite, and all sweets, tea and coffee. BUT - there are sugars also in dairy products, fruit and many other things; everything fermented contains yeast and it's also in almost everything readymade like condiments, sauces and dressings; chocolate is a stimulant - and so the list goes on. It basically means cooking everything from scratch and learning to substitute in recipes, but planning a week's worth of meals is a nightmare, and I kind of have to relearn cooking as well. With Sean rarely coming home before 7pm or later it makes going out difficult - no more "ready pizza in the oven at 11pm" option; and eating out, even at friends, is almost impossible unless I want to hassle them up front with instructions. Whatever I'm going to do to survive Spring Harvest this year I haven't figured out yet? That will be the week before Easter, coming back on Maundy Thursday...
Well, so far the news - it remains to see how I'm going to do on this regime since I'm not known for the amount of discipline I can put up for anything I don't much like...