Town and country, and a party for a book

Last weekend, I went to Brighton on Friday night, and failed yet again to get any pictures of Jan, her flat or the views therefrom, or the Brighton ICHF Show. I started off well, with a nice photo of sunset over Chelsea Bridge [please correct me; I'm an ignoramus; from the map we thought that was the most likely candidate];

and then left my camera in the bag which was propping up a basket of yarn all day... But it was lovely, and Jan and Yvonne and Annie and Fred were there , and although I wasn't in the main drag of the teaching, I showed a few people a few techniquey-type things, and purchases were made. One has already been gifted, the other will be handed over tomorrow; and then There Was Yarn. Most of it has been dyed for the weekend. But I'll blog the rest as I knit it up...

Since then, I've tried to pack a five-day week into a three-day one, mainly by avoiding unhealthy things like sleep; but as far as I'm concerned, it's Friday night now...

Now going back to the title of this, and not wanting to get all Beatrix Potter on anyone (I'm not sure I was ever that keen, although Jemima Puddleduck and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle spring to mind, mainly because of pretty bonnets and sprigged gowns; the only one I really loved was the Tailor of Gloucester with its illustrations - cats, needles, cherry-coloured yarn, utterly unrealistic Christmas deadlines, nope, no idea why I liked that one...) , until I got this job, I'd have counted myself as a country-mouse; happy to go up to town every now and then but basically content to be provincial. On mornings like today's, travelling from this (village station, 8:03 am)

to this (corner of Westminster Bridge and Parliament Street looking over Westminster Abbey, 9:37 am)

is really very pleasant. (I've no idea whether it cleared up in the village during the day - the fog had re-descended by the time I got home 11 hours later...) I'm doing the village a disservice, but the Fens in February are not, and have never been, my favourite place to be. And there is something slightly unnervingly Ruritanian about those propane cylinders right next to the track, firing off semi-controlled pop-pop-pop-pop noises in little explosions under the tracks to keep the points ice-free...

Another thing about being a daily town-mouse is that you can get to events like this

even if you can't stay very long when you get there! That's Woolly Wormhead, signing my copy of her book. There were hats galore, a full array of the glamorous models from the book (I was leaving as the last arrived fashionably late), presents flying around, and lots of knitters. MLQ was also there, but we just sort of waved at each other in the distance... This blogging business is sometimes really odd - I think I'd met MLQ before at Ally Pally; but I'm not entirely sure...

The photo above is really unflattering; sorry, Woolly - you were looking very fine when not exposed to a horribly harsh flash!! So I'm also going to post this one, which probably qualifies as a Heroically Bad Photo, but actually conveys the essence better - I tried several without flash, but there was some Serious Explaining (and therefore general animation) going on... But once I cropped this, I really liked it...