Roald Dahl memories

Last week photos were popping up all over my face book of my teacher friends and children in fantastic fancy dress for Roald Dahl day, celebrating what would have been his hundredth birthday.

I loved his books as a child, BFG was amazing and The Twits has induced a life long hatred of facial hair on men (but also a brilliant book)!

But it brought back a memory that I hadn't thought about for a long time.

When I was a little girl my Mum was very active in setting up the Children's Library in Guernsey, and there used to be Book Gatherings every year, where the kids would have fancy dress competitions and children's authors would come over and do reading, it was brilliant, I loved it.  I still remember my friends Hayley and Douglas dresses as the most amazing octopus with huge papier mache heads and crepe paper tentacles!  Funny what you remember isnt it?

Any how I believe these were organized through the Puffin Book Club 

Every year the Puffin Book Club also organized a massive one of these every summer in London and one year Mum and I went.  And the headliner that year was Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake, totally my heros, so I patiently stood in line for their autograph.

And I still have that treasured memento hanging on my wall.

Stunning glass jelly fish

Last week I popped into our Island Museum as they had been doing some major work to the main exhibition space and the first section was now open. Which does look very impressive.

But the exhibit that made a huge imprecision, literally blew me a way,

was the display of glass jelly fish

Yes you heard correctly, glass jelly fish!

Portuguese - man - of - war about 30 cm high

Turns out they are the work of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka

These Bohemian glass blowers in the late 1800 mastered a technic of replicating

invertebrates and plants in blown glass. 

This was for scientific teaching, as invertebrates like jelly fish were impossible

to preserves for research.

Harvard University has an amazing collection of their plants. Can you imagine the difficulty of shipping such delicate objects across the Atlantic.........

But as you can see these objects are stunningly beautiful and so lead to their popularity with Victorian collectors, in the island Mr Guille and Mr Alle were two such gentlemen.  They were the founders of our local Library having taken inspiration from the Public Library in New York.

Their library surprisingly called the Guille Alle(!) also was home to the first museum in the island predominately made up of their collections and that of their friends.

It wasn't till 1979 that the museum got its own purpose built home up in the grounds of

the Priaulx Library, where it still is today.

I was mesmerised by them, the back lighting casting such beautiful shadows.

So amazing that they have survived so well in storage, I certainly don't remember ever having seen them on display before, and I have hear rumours that there are few more still in store....

If you get chance to pop in do and I hope you will be as amazed as I was.

(I did ask permission before taking these photos, but only had my photo with me which is why they arn't great, sorry)

cant beat a Guernsey sunset!

Beautiful day yesterday, so after work Chris and I headed down to the west coast to enjoy the sunset.  Tide was too low for a swim,

but we found a peaceful spot over looking Lihou Island to enjoy our picnic

 .

 Chris doesn't take the easy option with a picnic,

oh no we had mussels steamed in onions, garlic and Breton Cider.

Absolutely delicious!

And as he had decided to drive I could finish the Breton Cider my self!

Ok, we forgot the glasses, so I had to drink from a bowl, but that felt very Breton, though it was plastic not one of those classy china cider bowls...... 

Then the entertainment started.

Not a bad sunset at all xxx

Tumbling toms!

Chris and I have always been a disaster when growing tomatoes,

we don't have a green house,

so they go on the flat roof to get the most sun,

but consequently we forget to water them and

I end up making vast vats of green tomato chutney.......

Its different this year, saw a clip on Gardeners World on growing them in hanging baskets,

and I thought this could work! 

So Tumbling Toms were brought, and have thrived,

I wont say its been a bumper crop, but its been a steady crop perfect for the two of us.

And the basket is on the wall by the hose, so no chance of forgetting to water them!!!!!