Thursday, November 9, 2017

Post No. 300

Hello, Blog Friends!

In only three other of my ten blogging years have I put up more than 300 posts, so I'm happy to see I've reached number 300 with this one.
And it's a happy one: 
looking for more about mender-extraordinaire Celia Pym [article about her in Make It Last], I saw she teaches darning workshops––in London.  I immediately signed up for her March workshop;
it starts a couple weeks after my 57th birthday.*

I've barely been to London since my 40th-birthday celebration in March 2001, when several friends and family members joined me for tea at the Hotel Russell in Bloomsbury, London.

That's me [gosh . . .] in London at forty, far right, below, with my sister and my father, who, obviously, both came. (Gee, sad to think my mother was still alive, but too emotionally incapacitated to come.)

Well, huh––the Hotel Russell is reopening this winter as The Principal and looks impossibly expensive.
Hardly any birthday guests in 2001 drank actual tea there. These are most of them, below--you can see they were drinking G&Ts and fruity cocktails.

L to R: my art-historian friend ATK, toasting me; my sister; father (he was in that sour of a mood); and my friend Barrett:


L to R, below: the lovely Polish waiter taking the request of Ms. Borealis; Mrs. and Miss Martyn; and me:
 __________________
 * After I signed up for the darning workshop, I realized there's a small problem:
the second-of-two classes meets March 30, and I'm supposed to be in Dallas on April 4 to talk about my toilet history book on a nonfiction-authors panel. (I don't think I've mentioned this yet. It's for the Texas Librarians conference!) 

But, it's more important to me that the darning classes take place close to my birthday. (Maybe I'll just skip the second class, so the travel doesn't make me ill--signing up for the class is partially an excuse to make this trip.)

2 comments:

bink said...

You look so young! And others look so not dead! It is jarring and yet delightful to see these old photos. Look at how dark your hair is! What a lovely memory to have.

Fresca said...

BINK: I know! I know! So many emotions: I had to sit still for a long time after looking through the scrapbook these photos were in (my last paper scrapbook!)..