Waiting, originally uploaded by kcm76.

June self-portrait for Flickr 12 Months group.

This week’s Flickr meme is about shopping: name your 12 favourite shops. This is quite hard for me as I don’t do shopping; with a few exceptions (most notably food and shoes) if I can’t buy it online I don’t buy it. But anyway here is a selection of the ones I do use:

1. Waitrose (UK, top of the range supermarket)
2. Ocado (the home delivery arm of Waitrose)
3. Marks & Spencer (mostly for food as well these days)
4. Any bookshop (better if it’s a secondhand bookshop tho’)
5. Any produce market (we are foodies; we always cook from scratch; so good produce is always on the schedule)
6. Hiltons (our nearest “wholefood” butcher; lots of organic, free-range and humanely reared meat; seriously good meat; and a wide variety including game too; but not cheap)
7. Amazon (books again, but also lots of other merchandise)
8. George’s (men’s outsize clothes with a shop in Chester and an online shop; very helpful; good quality tho’ not cheap)
9. eBay (is there anything you can’t buy on eBay?)
10. Abebooks (more books! Abebooks is in my view the best of the secondhand book aggregators; watch the postage costs tho’)
11. Clive’s (my barber; always a friendly chat; never stressed or hurried)
12. Borough Market (the place in London for fresh produce especially on a Saturday morning; worth visiting just to look! And next door to the delights of Southwark Cathedral)

As always these photographs are not mine (except for #11 which is mine) so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Waitrose’s Green Nanas, 2. 28 Days of Gratitude: Feb 1 (YIP), 3. Mussels from M+S, 4. Zafóns Bookshop?, 5. http://www.flickr.com/photos/adevlinphotography/2849393569/, 6. Traditional butchers, 7. Amazon Cat, 8. Gremlin or Mogwai?, 9. Upay with Ebay!, 10. Divine Comedy, 11. In the Barber’s Shop, 12. Borough Market

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

This week’s Flickr meme is about how your household runs; here are some questions and answers:

1. When does your garbage disposal happen? Early Friday morning
2. What special jobs are assigned to other people in the house? All of them if I could get away with i; but seriously we don’t tend to assign special jobs, except that I always do the finances and Noreen always does the garbage
3. Who is responsible for bathroom cleaning? Both of us
4. Who cooks? Mostly Noreen these days; but it should be me
5. Who washes the dishes? The electric scullery maid
6. What temperature is your heating set at? Comfortable for nudity, usually about 20 Celsius
7. Who does the washing & ironing? The resident costume curator
8. Who pays the household bills / is financial controller? Me; well most of it anyway. We have our own bank accounts and our own money but I pay most of the bills as I earn the more
9. If you have a garden (or houseplants) who looks after it? Both of us plus Tom the gardener who does the heavier, and more boring, work
10. Do you replace commodities when they run out, or do you keep a spare? What do you keep a spare of? We keep spares of most things we commonly use; like everything from toothpaste to garlic paste
11. When is your heating on; some hours or 24/7? Morning & evening during the week; morning ’til night at weekends; unless it is bitterly cold of course. And yes, our house is naturally warm
12. Are there special jobs done on particular days? Not really except for the garbage and the finances on pay day

As always these photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Chicago, early morning, 18 April 2008, 2. ColOurs… all of tHem…, 3. Just the two of us…, 4. KC the wundermutt upclose, 5. AKIBA Scenario, 6. day one hundred five, 7. Musketeer, 8. I’m sick as a dog….., 9. Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. –Marcel Proust, 10. What do you call Romanian toothpaste, 11. Good Morning, 12. O.P. (Organizing Principle)

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

This week’s Flickr meme is again simple: share 12 things you want to do before you die.

This isn’t necessarily the definitive set, but here goes with a selection …

1. Retire
2. Win the lottery
3. Fix my depression
4. Celebrate our pearl wedding anniversary
5. Have a swimming pool and swim nude every day
6. Be able to afford it (for any chosen value if “it”)
7. Have a naturist holiday
8. Have another 3 wishes
9. Get a knighthood (or peerage); not that there’s any chance of this.
10. Grow old disgracefully and in good health
11. Become skillful at dowsing
12. Become immortal

As always these photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. retired, 2. 2009: Another Year …., 3. If my hair looks good that’s all that matters……., 4. peach bridesmaids’ bouquet, 5. swim, 6. Maybe I can afford it one day!, 7. More for friends, 8. Three Wishes, 9. Gulf Coast Renaissance Faire, 10. By the Waters Edge…., 11. Pendulum1, 12. Immortality

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

As most UK readers will know Desert Island Discs (DID) is a radio programme where a celebrity is asked to nominate the 8 records they would want if cast-a-way alone on a desert island. They are also allowed one book (they get the Bible and Shakespeare as well) and one luxury item (as long as it doesn’t aid them in escaping). It has been broadcast every week for well over 50 years!

This week’s Flickr meme follows the DID theme: chose 5 CD’s (to be loaded onto an iPod), 2 books, 4 luxury items and 1 food item of which you get an unlimited supply.

OK, so here are my choices:
1. CD: Monteverdi, 1610 Vespers
2. CD: Beatles, Let It Be
3. CD: Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
4. CD: Granados, Goyescas (Piano Music)
5. CD: JS Bach, Complete Organ Works
6. Book: Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time (yes, I’ll have all 12 volumes, thank you!)
7. Book: Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
8. Luxury: Digital Camera with Assorted Lenses, battery charger, etc.
9. Luxury: PC with Internet Connection and Photoshop
10. Luxury: Prolifically Fruiting Avocado Tree
11. Luxury: Large Swiss Army Knife
12. Food: Nuts (assorted types)
Oh and I’ve mixed it up a bit as every one of the images is a collage.

This week’s Flickr meme could go one of two ways: either show us 12 of your favourites from other photographers or show us 12 favourite pictures you’ve taken! I have chosen to do the former; so here are 12 of my favourites from 12 other photographers — and not a pretty girl in sight (for once!). I might do 12 of my own favourites later in the week; or I might do 12 pretty girls from amongst my Flickr favourites.

1. Detail2 Poppea, 2. Art Project I, 3. Two lost souls, 4. The Crooked Coda: Toccare, 5. Orgelmuseum Malchow, 6. Sparkle With The Joy of Life, 7. Tales and Legends ~ Alice in Wonderland, 8. four amigos (hockney style), 9. Collage fragment3, 10. avocado, 11. Swiss army yo-yo, 12. Well Grab Your Drink And Clear A Space, I Think It’s Time To Torch This Place

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

I am so drained this evening after a non-stop, battering day at work that I just cannot get to do anything! Sorry to those who are waiting for emails or literary society work from me; it just cannot be did this evening. I can’t even concentrate on writing a decent weblog post! So I decided to do a second version of this week’s Flickr meme, only this time containing some of my favourites from amongst my own photos. Looking at my Flickr Photostream it contains an awful lot of crap, but amongst it the odd gem. These aren’t necessarily my best shots (anyway who is to say what is best, you or me? — your best is my rubbish) but are the first dozen I picked that I like. So have an evening off and enjoy! Now I shall go and read.

Oh and just for the record these shots span some 20+ years. #9 is the earliest; taken I think in the mid to late 80s (and obviously on film); #10 is the most recent taken just a 3-4 of weeks ago.

1. Apothecary’s Rose
2. Tabby Tiger
3. Red Shoveller Duck
4. Iris 3
5. Double Departure from Alexisbad (3)
6. Warbrook House (Rear)
7. French Lavender 2
8. Deep Pink Cyclamen
9. Floss Cat
10. Camellia
11. Armco Sundown
12. Early Morning December 2

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.