When I was setting up the Just Add Attitude I added an About page (that’s the page that tells you a little about the person writing the blog). However I was so totally thrilled that I had managed to grasp the technical necessities to get the blog up and running in the first instance, and in my haste to start scribbling away and posting posts I just added one very uninformative sentence to my About page. I have thought, many times, about updating the page but never actually got around to it – until today. It’s not really all about moi just ten random things which I hope give a flavour of who I am. Here’s what it says.
Moi!
Filed under Musings
Beauty: Au Naturel
During my teens I was intensely addicted to reading Georgette Heyer’s romantic novels. As a side-effect of this addiction I was fond of imagining I had been born in the wrong century and that really my life should consist of a never-ending round of candlelit balls and enchanting encounters with dashing heroes instead of endless hours holed up in classrooms. What my sixteen year old self totally failed to take into account was that if I had been born a few centuries earlier that in all probability I would have been an under-parlour maid who rose at some ungodly hour to start an unremitting daily round of dusting, cleaning and polishing.
Filed under Beauty
Paying it Forward
I cannot recall how where or even when I first heard of the notion of paying it forward. But I know it sounds like an eminently sensible and betwitchingly powerful idea. I am not even sure my hazy notion of the principle behind the concept is strictly accurate. I believe the theory is that when someone does something good for you that instead of seeking to repay them in someway you pay their kindness forward by doing something good or kind for someone else. The concept has been very much on my mind this week as I was recently on the receiving end of a random act of kindness.
Filed under Musings, The Universe
Saved by Cake
I was never going to buy another cookery book. Never ever. For a start the bookshelves in my kitchen, of which incidentally I am inordinately proud of having assembled from an IKEA flat pack, are stuffed to capacity. I was especially not going to buy another cookery book with instructions for making cakes because I must already have a zillion recipes for sweet confections. And as for buying a cookery book with a saturated pink cover which has a photograph featuring a cheesecake with a lurid lime-green topping made from jelly – now that would be totally out of the question.
Words
I cannot claim to have had a lifelong fascination with words. In the past I tended to look upon them as a collection of letters, albeit often a bewitching assemblage depending on the skill of the scribe, flitting across paper or a screen. That of course was before blogging. Once I started to write Just Add Attitude I became more conscious of the way I used words and acutely aware of how many words I simply didn’t know the meaning of and that there were, most likely, many thousands of words that I had never come across. So, I began a quest for a greater command of the language which has become a three-pronged tactic. I am aware that makes it sound like a very deliberate strategy but in truth it is just a way of trying to increase my vocabulary that has evolved in a very natural fashion.
Filed under Musings
Coffee in Dublin//Seven: Clement & Pekoe
When I am in town, I am constantly on the trail of the holy grail of caffeine – a decent cup of coffee. Town incidentally is Dublin, which is actually a city but for some reason native Dubliners, myself included, often use the noun town when talking about it – as in ‘going into town’, ‘working in town’, and ‘shopping in town’. Anyway that semantic digression aside the good news is that there is an excellent newish café/shop called Clement & Pekoe serving equally excellent coffee (and teas) at 50 William Street South in the centre of Dublin.
Happy Easter
Hello! The Easter Sunday weather in these parts is good for the time of the year; it’s dry and although the sky is filled with a mass of clouds there are patches of bright blue through which the sun may shine later. It’s still a tad chilly though and venturing outdoors without a coat or jacket is only for the brave or the foolhardy. We are betwixt and between at the moment as there is still a bit of spring to run before we tumble into summer. I love this time of year, the past-their-best daffodils may have there heads bowed but pretty as a picture magnolia and cherry blossom trees in bloom abound.
The shop shelves have been piled high with all manner of Easter eggs these past few weeks. I haven’t bought one for myself, mainly because I left it to the last-minute and I couldn’t find a dark chocolate egg (seventy per cent plus cocoa content being my chocolate of choice). I have some Easter decorations dotted about the place: an easter tree hung with cute yellow wooden chicks and some what incongruously white wooden apples; some slate rabbits; and my favourite a set of two beribboned Easter bunnies.
I may not have an Easter egg but I do have a box of chocolates so I am off to indulge…
Happy Easter.
Filed under Celebrations
Romantic Writer: Abby Green
I met Daisy Cummins when I went to stay at Cloona Health Retreat Centre in the west of Ireland in January. I seem to remember that I was too preoccupied during the first few days of my stay coming to terms with the restrictive but inordinately healthy diet I was eating to wonder too much about my fellow guests. Continue reading
Filed under Books
This Week
This week I went to my last digital photography class at the Gallery of Photography. I had enrolled for a set of four evening classes. The first two classes covered the taking of images and the last two Photoshop. I am not the brightest bunny on the block when it comes to matters technical so my mind is dizzy with concepts such as ISO, aperture size, shutter speed, metering, and stops. I think I have managed a shaky grasp of the basics of shooting images in manual mode; hopefully some practice and a little reading to revise will allow everything sink in. Photoshop is a different matter, what seemed somewhat easy to do in class has proved difficult to replicate at home even with the aid of Photoshop Elements 10 for Dummies. Aargh!
Filed under Musings
Almost French
In a hierarchy of compliments that I would like to receive, being told I looked French would be close to the top. Naturally I am not picky; I am truly grateful for any compliment I get. Unsurprisingly I am seldom never told that I look French. I could cling to the deluded belief that this is due to my pale Celtic colouring but in truth it has more do with the fact that I lack the myriad of attributes that looking French implies; I am not super slim, über chic or drenched in enigmatic mystique.
Just Add Attitude
Just Add Attitude 