Daily Prompt: Clean Slate

The Daily Post’s prompt is “Clean Slate”

Explore the room you’re in as if you’re seeing it for the first time. Pretend you know nothing. What do you see? Who is the person who lives there?

I came into this room in the conventional way…through the front entrance.

The first impressions were of a light, airy, open-plan room. The large folding doors stood wide open and looked straight through to more open doors that led onto a verandah.

The colours of the walls are very neutral.

Catching my eye was a big square blackwood dining table surrounded by eight dining chairs. Do the occupants like entertaining? Do they have a large family?

Further glances around the area showed the open-plan kitchen and then the lounge area. Clearly, whoever spends time in the kitchen wants to be part of the goings on in the house and not shut away whilst preparing meals etc.

Further inspection showed photographs of young adults.  Two were different wedding photos…was it their sons, daughters or a son and daughter who got married. Another photo shows a couple and yet another of a single man.  On closer inspection, the likeness of three of the boys shows them to be brothers and one presumes that the other wedding photo is of a daughter and a son-in-law.

In the lounge, the basic colours of the furniture, curtains and walls is very neutral, with accent colours being brought in with the throw and cushions. Definitely, someone who is going for safe option in decorating…neutral on the large areas and be a little more daring on the things that are easy to change.

Something was missing…ah yes…there was no art on the walls. Why?

 

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31 May…

Goodness me…five months of 2011 have gone! Now I am on countdown till I go to the UK at the end of July in preparation for my daughter’s wedding at the beginning of September. Nettes, if you read this, I hope you are going to have everything done and your mother can have a holiday – hehe!

Meanwhile, I still have some duties in Lagos, one of them being the Bridge at the yacht club. On Saturday the boats went offshore and gave me  sometime to wander around and take a couple of photos.

One of the buoys had been taken out of the water and given a revamp. In fact, it looks as if they have done a new one. I wonder what they are going to do with the old one. The new one looks very smart…

(Click on the photos to get clearer images)

Our worthy Commodore was not sailing and decided to clean his boat. He called me over to photograph his shiny, clean boat that was standing next to the Rear Commodore’s dirty one! Some people love to show off. The Rear Commodore, by the way was working on the Bridge with me 🙂

That is the last of my posts for May and I am NOT going to pressure myself into doing a Post A Day again – haha.

Departing Ship…

I always find it fascinating to watch tugs manoeuvre ships in and out of harbours. It seems to defy the odds that such a small boat can push a much larger one. But, I am told, these tugs have very powerful engines, thereby giving them the ability to do the work.

(Click on the photo to get a clearer image)

That golf thing…

Oh dear…I have not achieved my goal of doing a Post A Day for this month. Oh well, that is too bad…I could not do it…I am not perfect. For one of my views on the subject of perfection read this.

On Thursday and Friday I played in the Club Championships at our golf club. My game was dire!!! Everyone else also played badly so I should not be so hard on myself. Friday’s golf nearly got rained off, because there was a big thunderstorm and it rained solidly for several hours. Some of the ladies went home, but most of us sat around and eventually were able to tee off around 12:30 – four and a half hours later than scheduled!

No photos of the golf itself, but a golf-related one…

…and a couple of quotes from this book…

“Whoever said putting was a pleasure obviously never played golf.” – Michael Green

“I think I know the answer to your putting problems. You need to hit the ball closer to the hole.” – Valerie Hogan to her legendary husband Ben.

What Would I…

What would I be doing with all these things together?

Well they sit in this…

…on the coffee table next to my chair where I sit and watch TV! I might need a pen or a pencil or I might need to file my nails or cut something out of a magazine. As for the crochet hooks…well who knows when one might need a crochet hook for something…I don’t know what, but something 🙂 And, heaven forbid that I should have to get up and go and fetch required item from where it really should be kept!!

Reflections…

It has been raining today, so this afternoon I went out into the garden to take some photos of the puddles of water and the reflections in them.

The first thing that I saw was this…

This puddle was not from the rain, but because our driver was washing the car. It still made for interesting reflections.

A rain puddle in the driveway…

Most of the expats have drivers here and we are no exception. The driving and traffic here is crazy and parking is a problem too. Tom often drives in the evenings and at weekends if we are going out in our local neighbourhood. However, he won’t let me drive as he does not want to get a phone call because the “police” have decided to stop me and try and get money from me. Trust me, that happens here. I put police in “..” because some of the people are not police and try to extort money for trumped up reasons! The frustrations of this place! One of my sons, said that the very things that frustrate me are the things that make it interesting here. Hmmm…I could do without many of the “interesting” things!

Anyway, Tayo, was going to fetch Tom from the airport and decided the car needed a wash (which it did) before he fetched his boss.

I am linking up to this week’s Black & White Wednesdays

Notebook…

This notebook has a list of the contents of the boxes when we moved house last year. I am embarrassed to tell you that several of those boxes are still full! I have not had the inclination to unpack them. It goes to show that we obviously do not need most of the stuff that is in them!

Still, it was a good thing that I wrote down the list of contents, as every now and again I need something and at least have an idea of which box to find the required items.

Flowers in the Garden…

Armed with my camera and my 50mm f1.4 lens I went into the garden to see what I could find. The only colour I could find, apart from green, were these tiny pink flowers.

Then I noticed a spider’s web that has obviously been there for a while! At least it made for an interesting photo.

Another Boat…

I have not taken any photos for a couple of days, so I am resorting to playing around with editing older photos. This one was only taken a week ago. I edited it using my newfound vanilla-coloured fill. I have a feeling you might see lots of photos with this fill!

This container ship came into the harbour, bringing a load of lorries. Well that is what we could see on the open deck. It is not easy to see, but  some of the lorries were sitting at funny angles. Their cabs had probably been tilted so as to able to load them more efficiently. Either that or they had had a rough journey at sea!

That PS Thing…

I appear to have resolved part of my Photoshop problem. I managed to uninstall and then reinstall my PS CS4 – phew! The only glitch, so far, is that it will not recognise and open my RAW files. I have tried the things suggested by the PS website, but without success, so I will just have to work in JPG until I can get further help. Meanwhile, I should be able to edit my photos as normal….I HOPE!

Today was bridge duty at the yacht club again, so I am posting a shot of boats, that I took last weekend. After converting the photo to B&W I played around with various Colour Fills and hit up this Vanilla fill. Now I cannot remember if I did it in Overlay or Soft Light – how careless of me not to take notes! Anyway, I like the “vanilla” look!