Now, I hope you’re not getting sick of the ABC Wednesday posts. I’ve never been one for formula posts, but firstly I’m quite enjoying this one, and secondly, I’m just plain sick.  To be accurate, I have a stinky virus thing I picked up on one of my therapy visits with The Princess.  As they say, no good deed goes unpunished!

So today we’re up to the letter ‘K‘, and fortunately, there are plenty of things in my house beginning with ‘K‘, so I haven’t had to stir myself very much.  And some of my favourite things are represented by this letter.

And, to be fair, one of my less favourite things.  Up there, you’ll see the first picture which is a little plaque I keep on the shelf between my kitchen and the lounge.  It illustrates perfectly how I feel about kitchens.  We don’t have chairs in ours, or a dining table, or I might feel differently. No, ours is a working kitchen.  You go there to wash clothes or dishes, prepare food, or - perish the thought - actually cook!!  I used to cook a lot, of course, for my growing family, but I’m well and truly disenchanted, which may have something to do with the fact that I can’t eat any of the fun stuff anymore, or I balloon.

Now, I’m sure some of you will remember that I like knives.  Alright, I love knives.   This one is my latest acquisition, a sweet little Sabatier, less than six inches long and sharp as a razor.  There’s no problem with the perspective in that picture, the blade really is that short, less than two inches, I’d say.  Beautiful!  But, as you see by the dings and scratches it’s already managed to pick up, it’s a knife that I use quite frequently.

Staying in the kitchen, my next favourite thing is fruit.  In this case, kiwi fruit. This one has its own special, one-free-with-every-pack, kiwi fruit spoon.  It’s an odd looking thing, isn’t it?  I haven’t actually tried it yet, because I tend to just cut them in half with a knife, then eat the flesh with … a … spoon …

Oh.

Um … yeah.  That’s what the ’spoon’ is for, right?  Maybe I’ll try that sometime!

In the dining room, we have a large, custom built piece of pine furniture with shelves for books, and drawers for videos and DVDs.  Naturally, the drawers are at the bottom, and when we first got The Princess, her bed was in here.  Did I ever tell you that she was a chewer?  No?  Well, there’s the evidence.  She chewed about six of the lower drawer knobs till we realised what she was doing and moved her bed away.  She’s such a lazy hound, you see, that she will only gnaw on things she can reach without getting up.

And there is a drawer where we keep our keys.  This is one of my keys - it has a recycled circuit board tag, which I rather like, and - oh look!  Guess who it is in that film cell inside the other tag?  Yep, it’s Johnny Depp, in his role as the deliciously sombre and opium-addled Inspector Fred Abberline in the movie ‘From Hell’.  It’s not really a horror movie, but it is a slasher, because it’s a fictionalised account of the Jack the Ripper murders which took place in Victorian London, and which were never solved.

Another favourite thing of mine is jewellery, and this is a piece of homemade thong jewellery. Yes, I know that ‘J’ was last week, but look closely, and you’ll see that this necklace is made to be adjustable by means of two knots.  Clever, huh?  I thought so!  And look closely again, and you’ll see a tiny knife.

You all know that one of my most favourite things is my dogs, don’t you?  Well, dogs have to eat, and this is a bag of their usual kibble.  It’s not the most expensive, but it’s not the cheapest either, and it seems to suit them, so this is what I mostly buy.

Last, but not least, here’s a movie from my Johnny Depp collection.  What’s that?  Yes, I know.  The movie title doesn’t begin with a ‘K‘, does it?  Nor does Johnny Depp.  No, I know.  But what you may not know is that Johnny plays Jack Kerouac in this movie!  There.  Quite legitimate.

Told you I was enjoying this one!  How about you?

So, here we are again on ABC Wednesday, with the letter ‘J‘.  At first I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t find enough to post for this one, but in the end I found I had to prune a little.  So many ‘J’s, so little space…

First of all, I know you wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t post at least one picture of a very famous ‘J‘, Johnny Depp, so here he is.

This one was taken at the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory premiere in London’s Leicester Square by my own fair hand.  It’s a wonder there isn’t a serious amount of camera shake on that one, since he was only a few feet away and coming my way.  It’s a miracle I had the presence of mind to point and shoot, it is really!

Next, I suppose you’ll be wanting a picture of Jack Sparrow. Well, sadly I’ve never met Johnny all dolled up in his Jack Sparrow costume, but I can do you a nice mural, which is painted on the wall just inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, LA.

We had plenty of time to look at this one, on account of the fact that the queue - the horrendously long queue - goes right past it.

Now, of course, when you think of Jack Sparrow, you might also be thinking of rum, might you not?

It so happens we have some in the drinks cupboard right now, so I took a photo… and then did a little Photoshop magic on it.  I’m sure Jack would be proud.

Let’s leave Jack right there, shall we, and I’ll show you a picture of my own Jolly Nice Chap - Mr Yellow Swordfish himself, otherwise known as my Other Half.

That’s him at the back of the ride there in the blue shirt and the genuine Ecuadorian panama.  This was taken in Red Canyon, Utah, earlier this year. We booked a trail ride and it was one of the highlights of our holiday.  It was just such fun - and the scenery was incredible, as you can see.

Talking of drinks (yes, we were - don’t you remember?), here we have some jars from the kitchen.

Three different flavours of instant coffee. Yes, I freely admit it, when it comes to drinking coffee, we are mere dilettantes.  We only really like instant, but we like trying different flavours.  I have to tell you that the amaretto and the caramel are disappointing, but I’m quite addicted to the vanilla.

And talking of kitchens, here is one of my favourites from my collection of pressed glass jugs.

It’s a Chippendale jug, but the pattern for this utility tableware from the twenties and thirties was sold a few times and was known in the US as ‘Krys-Tol’ glassware.   I love it. It’s heavy and durable and very elegant.  It’s also very old-fashioned now, but I don’t much care. I still use this little beauty.

Oh, you’ll love this one.

My very own junk drawer!  Yes, this is what it really looks like - all I did was pull it open and shoot.  Well, OK, I shoved a small plastic bag of seeds out of the way so you could actually see what else was in the drawer, but that’s it.

This is my beloved James, my first ever dog, and our first greyhound.

He came from the Wood Green animal shelter in Godmanchester where he’d been taken after wandering into someone’s garage to eat their cat food.  He was mangy and scarred, with broken teeth and a piece missing from his tongue, but Wood Green treated the mange before they’d let us have him and he turned out to be the very best dog in the world.  I loved him dearly.

Eventually he became known as Jim, and we lost him at the venerable age of (somewhere around) thirteen and a half. He had congestive heart failure.

Jim would have loved Joe Jack’s dog food, but we hadn’t discovered it then.

You might not be very surprised to learn that in my house there are several Johnny Depp movie posters.

These two are at the bottom of the stairs.  Dangerous, really .. but no-one has yet fallen down while gazing at him, so I guess we’re alright.  The Pirates movies were produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, you know.  I just thought I’d throw that in.

And this is in the guest room.

Now, I know you’re going to ask what Dead Man has to do with the letter ‘J‘, but if you look closely, you’ll see that this is a Jim Jarmusch movie.  And a darn good one, at that!  Spoiled (in my opinion) only by the soundtrack, which is not only Neil Young, but far, far too loud.

Last but not least, here’s a picture of some jewellery.

Yes, it is.  Jewellery. See?  Bottom left hand corner on the wrist of that girl in the crowd - and the one next to her!   Oh, yeah. You might notice Johnny Depp is in it too - and the suit partly obscuring the man himself belongs to one of his minders, whose name, I believe, is Jerry.

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?  And I didn’t even get to use my Don Juan poster, or the Benny & Joon poster, or the packet of jelly, my leather jacket, or a nice big close up of Johnny Depp’s jaw.  Of course, to do that I’d have had to steal a copyrighted picture belonging to someone else and I might have ended up in jail.

That’s Alcatraz, by the way.  Not a nice place to be, but luckily for me, closed for business!

Well, in my dreams, he is!

I’ve been tagged by English Mum in Ireland for a rather interesting meme.  I get to invite any eight people I want to dinner!

Now, like EM, I’m going to have to say that my first guest will be my dearly beloved Other Half. Firstly because he is dearly beloved, and secondly because he’d be very interested to meet my second guest - the lovely Johnny Depp.  And thirdly, because if I don’t include him he’ll kill me be very hurt.

Now, since I have Johnny Depp seated dead opposite me where I can see him to drool properly, I’ll need to invite Mariella Frostrup too.  No, Johnny doesn’t have a thing about Mariella (not that I know of) but OH does - at least, he has a thing about her voice, and he likes intelligent women - so if I seat her next to OH, she’ll keep him nicely occupied pouring her honeyed tones into his shell-like ear, while I talk to my other guest.

Er .. guests.

Hmm.  The rules say I have to have eight people, so I need a few more … let me think.  Oh, I know someone!  But first I have to tell you a little story.

Back in 1985, I was a very tired young mother with a four year old, and a new baby who was a very happy little soul just so long as he was being carried or cuddled.  So each evening, OH used to take Son No. 1 up for his bath and put him to bed while I sat on the sofa with Son No. 2 and nursed him till he fell asleep.  And so it was that I discovered American Football, and Walter Payton, because one of the programmes that would come on while I was pinned to the sofa by a combination of a demanding baby and mind-boggling fatigue was the Channel Four American Football game of the week.  I’d watch the little figures on the screen milling about and falling over and it was chaos.  But I thought I’d try to get to grips with the game and over the weeks of that first season, I gradually sorted out the rules and the teams and the personalities.  Now, 1985 was a very good year for the Chicago Bears, so they were featured quite often, and their star running back was Walter Payton. Even to me, he stood out as a stunningly good player, and he was a joy to watch.  By the time he hung up his boots, he’d racked up some amazing numbers and held several records, and was loved by team-mates and fans alike.  He seemed to be such a nice guy.  So nice, in fact, that his nickname was ‘Sweetness’.  Only a few years after retiring, he died of a rare liver disease … I’d been hoping he’d get a coaching job somewhere or even buy into ownership of a team, which was something he’d wanted to do, but it was not to be - he didn’t even make it to 46 years old. So, I’d like to have him as one of my guests so I can tell him how pissed I am that he died. *Sigh*

John Cusack.  Another very decorative and extremely talented actor, who has made some great movies.  He seems to make similar choices to Johnny Depp, going for the quirky, the strange, and the unusual … but he’ll put in time on the pot-boilers too, to finance the stuff he really wants to do.  One of my favourite Cusack movies is Grosse Pointe Blank, another is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  I’ve watched most of them, and there’s only one I regret, and that’s 1408.  It would have been fine, if only I hadn’t picked up the director’s cut by mistake.  As it is, I can’t tell you when I’ll be ready to stay in a hotel room again - maybe never.  I might have to put in a complaint about that, too.

So … who to choose next?   I think it has to be Judi Dench.  I admire her so much. She has a quick wit, a dry sense of humour, and despite her status as a Dame of the realm and a great actress, she seems very unassuming and sweet.  And she loves Billy Connolly - didn’t they do well together in Mrs Brown?  And who could forget her performance as ‘M’ in the Bond movies?  Oh, and the TV series ‘A Fine Romance’ would have been very ordinary without her, for sure.  Anyway, she is also very fond of Johnny Depp, having starred with him in Chocolat as the redoubtable Armande Voisin, and he is fond of her too, and that’s one of the things one needs to bear in mind when planning dinner parties, isn’t it?  Will the guests get along?

Let’s see: Me, OH, Johnny Depp, John Cusack, Walter Payton, Mariella Frostrup and Dame Judi Dench.  A well balanced table would need one more woman …  but it’s my fantasy dinner party and I can do what I like, so fuck it, I’m going to choose Leonard Cohen.  He can bring his guitar and sing to us.

Leonard Cohen has been a  hot topic among bloggers and friends just lately for some reason, and I’ve been reminded how much I love his music.  I dug out the CDs we have and played those, then I bought myself a new compilation album which included some tracks I’d never heard and I’m really enjoying it.   He always considered himself a poet first and a singer second, but he has a hypnotic voice and his songs are the kind which stay with you for a long time.  I always tell people I don’t much like poetry, but I love Leonard Cohen, so maybe I just like my poetry sung to me instead of recited.  Listen to the tragically lyrical Closing Time or the enigmatic Sisters of Mercy and tell me that’s not poetry.

So, there you are.  If you’d like to have a go at this one, here are the rules:

Pick 8 people you’d like to invite to dinner, dead or alive or re-animated/resurrected.
Say why
Link your answers back to the lovely Lottie
Give credit to the person who tagged you
Tag three others

I’m tagging Mr Nighttime, I’d Rather Be Blogging, and YellowSwordfish.  Tee hee.

Oh - and that pic up there? That’s me and No. 2 son doing the demanding baby and mind-boggling fatigue routine early in 1986.  I might even have been watching the Bears at the time that was taken.

After seeing a wonderful post on Mrs Nesbitt’s Place last week, I’ve decided to take part in ABC Wednesday.  This means I take photos of things beginning with the chosen letter of the week, and post them here, and link back.

This week it’s the letter ‘i‘, which I thought was a bit of a challenge at first, but in fact there are plenty of things out there beginning with ‘i‘ - and I shall show you some of them!

Anyone who’s read this blog for very long will know that I’m fond of insects, so that’s the reason for that jolly little fellow up there!  Mr Ladybird, as you will know, is a beetle.  And a beetle is a type of insect.  You knew that - of course you did!

I have pictures of other insects, too, but we’ll come to those in a minute. Don’t want to go frightening people all at once, do I?  Tee hee…

Here’s an iron milestone which sits rather drunkenly in the grass verge just to the north of my village.  I don’t know how old it is, but it must have been there for quite some time.  I keep expecting it to disappear - and I expect one day it will, just as soon as some idiot manages to trip over it and complains to someone.  Meanwhile, I rather enjoy the way it reminds me of days gone by.

Another favourite thing of mine is reading.  We have a lot of books in this house, both fiction and non-fiction, and pretty much any genre you can care to name.  These two shelves could be labelled ‘Information‘.  They are part of our reference section.

Are you ready for another insect?

This time it’s a hoverfly, which could be mistaken for a wasp.  It’s easy to tell the difference, though.  Hoverflies are flat-bodied, they don’t buzz, and unlike wasps they can hover almost motionless in the air, while wasps tend to zig-zag to stay in one spot.

How about some ivy?  We have rather a lot in our garden, of all types; variegated, dark green, light green, huge-leaved, frilly-leaved .. this one is rather a pretty, pale and frilly-leaved ivy that climbs up our rocket-shaped conifer.

One more insect? Can I get away with one more?  It’s a pretty little Small Tortoiseshell butterfly.  We see a lot of them around here, and this one was in the field where we walk the dogs.  I think it’s pretty old, although it’s not too ragged.  It was bumbling around in the grass.

Now.  See The Princess?

She’s showing off her incisors!  She loves to show off, so she’s only too happy to help me out here by adding another ‘i‘!  The brown marks you can see on those teeth are there because she chewed the wire of her kennel when she was a racing greyhound and living with her trainer. She was owned by someone else then, we only took her on when she retired.

And here’s Johnny Depp.

Yes, that’s him, signing autographs for the fans at the Pirates of the Caribbean ‘Dead Man’s Chest’ premiere in London. I was there, you know.  I spoke to him and everything!  And of course, I took that picture.

What do you mean, you don’t know what he’s doing here on ‘i‘ day?  See that pen in his hand?  It has ink in it, doesn’t it?

By the way, there’s ink on his inner right forearm as well, if you look carefully. It’s one of his many tattoos.  And also, that piece of cloth wrapped around his wrist is covered with ink.  His son Jack drew pictures on it.

And look!

Here he is again.  I mean … um …  Just look at that wonderful fancy ironwork on the Radisson Edwardian hotel in Leicester Square, London.  Just amazing.  See those slender twisty pillars and the scrollwork canopies? I don’t know if it really is Edwardian, but it could be.

As it happens, yes, Johnny Depp does happen to be in that picture, purely by chance.  As it happens, that’s his neat little derriere you can see, clad in pale biscuit coloured trousers. He’s wearing a perfectly ironed shirt, too.  I would like to say he’s the same shape as the letter ‘i‘ as he stands there, but sadly, he’s more like a ‘j’, isn’t he?

Perhaps I should have kept him for next week?