Jim’s photos just pop - the way he was able to catch the dramatic light make the photos feel otherworldly. And I do feel that it’s spring when we truly feel and see the evidence of our environmental impacts. Sigh.
(And yes, shame on you, Isla. Dishonour on you, dishonour on your family, dishonour on your cow.)
Jim is an outstanding photographer. Thank you so much for sharing his extremely high quality work with us! My favorite is the last photo, with a gloomy sky, an open ocean and a pebbly beach. Love love loved it!
Also, thank you so much for your kind mention! Writing "GENIE!" was a treat for me, I hope it is just as much of a treat for your readers too 🤗
I commend you on your research here, Rebecca. A beautifully composed piece with such variety! Please convey to oat-fed Jimbo, how much I admire his photography. Stunning images here. The first bar of White Cliffs of Dover brought tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat. I will never understand how one or two powerful men can decide it is time for war and then, instead of going them selves, send in all those beautiful young men to die, those who have barely begun to live. Such a terrible terrible flaw in our human species. Those yew trees are magnificent!
Rebecca, I too love the soft boiled egg from the shell and have egg cups for that purpose--the cups are delicate and wouldn't work for camping--but I found metal egg cups on Etsy in case you're interested. I had to look hard to see Jim's mark of the oats. I thought they were Jimbo Oats. So, two artists in your house. Grand, light hearted post.
Thanks, Mary! Actually, when I've boiled eggs in the van I've always held them in a napkin in my hand - but you've reminded me that I DO have a metal egg cup, which I might just put into the galley locker for next time!
Jim had done a good job with that blue pen, hadn't he?!
What a wonderful post!!!! I've often read about the White Cliffs of Dover in literature and I loved seeing Jim's photos and reading your thoughts!! It's a wonderful piece!! Thank you for sharing it!!! 💚💚💚💚
Some humans are like male dogs, compelled to lift a leg on every fire hydrant, park bench, bush and blade of grass...! At least that washes away with the next storm. Somehow, I have never minded spray painted graffiti that shows up on overpasses and otherwise unattractive sub/urban structures, but I realize it's an unfortunate and easy leap from there to condoning the defacing other accessible surfaces, with deleterious and costly effects.
I don't want to wish ill on Isla, but maybe a tattoo gone really wrong? Ugh!
I love your comparison with male dogs, Elizabeth - that's brilliant! And yes, how WOULD Isla feel with 'yew tree' inked into her torso, hmmm?! 😉
Thank you so much for the egg link! When we're camping on a campsite with electric hook-up I generally DO cook my eggs, because we can boil the water first with an electric kettle - but heating water from scratch on a gas ring - well, it takes forever! Breakfast in a car park rather than a campsite usually means porridge (or cold eggs cooked in advance!). 🤣
Clearly I'm not well versed in the technique for making porridge. I thought that, too, would require boiling water. Maybe just for less time? And forgive me getting all invested in this small detail. LOL!
You're right, but it needs less water than eggs need to boil in. For two generous bowls of porridge I use 100g oats, 250g milk and 250g water. To do my eggs I need a panful of water (enough to cover them) which needs to be boiling before I put the eggs in - so more water, more time, more steam. In the van, particularly for work trips, Jim'll have one of those tubs of instant oats, to which he'll add boiling water from the electric kettle, and I'll hog that gas ring for myself.
The colours in Jim’s photo!! The purple grey storm clouds, green water and brown shingle beach (nothing like our glorious cream and white sandy beaches.) Your chalk cliffs are famous worldwide and do look spectacular when freshly created. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be standing up top when they crumbled!!
Beautiful photos - my Jim and I both said, "Wow!" in unison. "Amazing!" "Beautiful!" Your Jim is beyond gifted. What an eye and intuitive sense of when to capture a moment.
We chuckled at Jimbo Oats. My Jim also eats oats for breakfast, and puts in cinnamon, flax meal, nutritional yeast, and shredded wheat. I eat breakfast at noon, and oats are not on the menu. I do, however, like them very much in cookies.
I was in the UK in 1977 and thought the white cliffs were fantastic and so very British. My dad, at the ripe age of 19, was a navigator of a B24 bomber in WWII, and he mentioned the cliffs as a welcome marker, too.
Graffiti and "taking just a tiny piece" of something, natural or constructed, is indulgently selfish. Shame on those who think it doesn't matter. Great post, as always.
Oh, how lovely - thank you, Mary and your Jim, for the lovely compliments about my Jim! I shall pass them on!
The Jimbo oats are such fun - I've recently bought our next packet, actually, and to my dismay Mornflake have redesigned their artwork. To our disappointment, although the word 'jumbo' is still there, it's much, much smaller and down at the bottom, so it's rather less fun to change it to 'Jimbo' because you can barely see it. 😕 Mind you, there are far worse things to worry about, aren't there - I should maybe let this one slide!
Breakfast at your place sounds delicious!
I love that you've seen our white cliffs for yourself! And in the late Queen's Silver Jubilee year as well - so I'm going to add an EXTRA 'very' to your phrase 'very British'!
I purchased quite a few things for my mum relating to the Queens Silver Jubilee and she's handed them back to me. It was a glorious summer for me to be in Europe. The entire 6+ weeks we were there, and in every country (9 in all), we had sunshine and warm temps. Not one drop of rain. I can't wait to return some day. Rats about Jimbo text being smaller due to a redesign. Perhaps there might be a large ceramic container with Jimbo on it, that the Jimbo oats could live in . . . .
Oh wow - 9 countries in 6 weeks - that's AMAZING! I'm not sure I've done that many in 49 years!!!!! 🤣
I love that you've taken on your mum's Silver Jubilee goodies - how lovely. Those 25 years of the Queen's reign seem like a flash in the pan now, given that she made it to her Platinum Jubilee! My parents still have my engraved metal Silver Jubilee mug which I *think* I can remember being given.
I'm thinking about writing to Mornflake about a reBRAND rather than a redesign - I think the market is ripe for across-the-board Jimbo oats! 🥣
I think the Silver Jubilee mug *must* be yours . . . . Also, my Jim said that he's up for calling the Jumbo Oats people and ask them why they reduced Jumbo. Not only is a bad idea, it's also an oxymoron to have the word Jumbo not be Jumbo. 😅
I love CK's suggestion to write Reb-egg-ca on the egg cartons. That is what they shall for evermore be known in our house!
What an interesting post! Thank you so very much for kindly linking to my cliff-crumble post. It is inexorable! Another stairway, the last in our village from the cliff top to the esplanade has been shut due to another recent small slide. We are now limited to one road at each end of town to get up and down from the beach. I don't begrudge the closure, if only there were signs (beyond the many that say CLOSED) that there are efforts to remediate the situation. Hopefully our citizens will not start writing their complaints into the cliffs and the trees that are at least partially responsible for holding up the cliffs. You are right to be annoyed with such vandalism as am I. Please also send Jim my kudos for his amazing photos.
Thanks for the reminder of the lovely White Cliffs of Dover: yet and another reminder to see those cliffs once again!
If I may, I highly recommend an electric egg cooker if you ever don't want to mess with boiling. It uses a tiny bit of water to steam the eggs. I think there's also a microwave version, but I can't vouch for it.
Oh Jacquie, I had one of those at my old house, and it was amazing - thank you so much for reminding me about it! I used to have a Rayburn oil-fired range which took care of central heating, hot water and cooking - but it was only hot (for cooking) when I needed it to be. Heating up several tonnes of cast iron simply to boil eggs in the morning would have been too expensive and environmentally inconsiderate, so I had one of those egg boilers! Soon after I moved house (where there is an electric stove!) the egg boiler's element bit the dust - so I just started using a pan on the hob instead. Since then I'd forgotten ALL about it - you're a genius, thank you!
I shall get hold of another, and save myself a steamy kitchen every single morning. It'll work in the van, too, if we're on a campsite with electric hook-up.
It's arriiiiiiiived! Testing it at breakfast time tomorrow.
😁😁😁😁😁😁😁
It's much more attractive than my last egg boiler! Same shape, but with a Perspex top, not aluminium. I'll get to watch the action - no, the eggtion! 🤣
Oooh, so eggciting! My first egg cooker was shaped like an egg and had an aluminum top also. A coworker gave it to me as a gift, and I was so sad when I finally burned it out. But I have to admit, I really like seeing the little eggs through the clear top on my new one! Happy breakfast, and may your new cooker meet all your eggspectations! :-P
What's an egg boiler? I just shove them in a saucepan and bring the water to the boil. I stick a piece of tin fil in the water to prevent them splitting open. I boil them for exactly 2 minutes and 58.5 seconds. So why would anyone neen an egg boiler, whatever it is?
six minutes?? That makes eggs as hard as rocks. Egg boiler: good grief. What's an oil range? We have gas rings: you only have to iuse one, not the whole cooker. Nothing gets steamed up. I can see I'm going to have to write Cooking with Lord Tel
Nope, it doesn't - I can only assume that in London water boils at 50 degrees hotter than it does here if six minutes for a room-temperature egg renders it 'hard as a rock'!
The oil range in question: the Rayburn at my old house. And the village isn't connected to the gas grid, so there.
OMG it gets worse. I bet when Jim plugs his electric razor in, all the street lights go out. Regarding boiling, you seem to forget that you are nearer the equator, and we are virtually in the Arctic cicle. It makes a difference, you know
Tin foil? 🤔 When I'm boiling them I prick the wider end (the one with the air bubble) with a pin - it's fun to watch the bubbles of air stream out when they hit the boiling water, and they don't crack.
What gorgeous photos by Jim! The carvings of names reminds me of my own youthful etchings in the cliffs of Cape Breton - all of which are eroded now, but we were quite pleased with them for a few years before they vanished entirely. Then we got into burning our names on our own porch steps!
Very informative, love the photos -- amazing what you can do with an Instamatic -- and I love Seaford. I'm with Jim, marking his porridge is essential. Even if you don't steal his oats, a bird might consider doing so. As for that 'marry me' grafitti, I'd like to know how Kathryn responded. I wonder if she said she could never marry a bloke who defaces things.
Oh, I'm imagining now what Kathryn might have said.... 'Trev, until this moment my love for you had been as tall as this cliff and as deep as this ocean. The pebbles on this beach number but a fraction of the future kisses my heart had contained for you..... until you proved yerself to be nothing but a graffiti oik. So hop it, handsome - yer ditched.'
Jim’s photos just pop - the way he was able to catch the dramatic light make the photos feel otherworldly. And I do feel that it’s spring when we truly feel and see the evidence of our environmental impacts. Sigh.
(And yes, shame on you, Isla. Dishonour on you, dishonour on your family, dishonour on your cow.)
LOL - Isla's really got it coming, Bryn! 🤣
Thank you so much for your lovely compliment to Jim - I have passed it on! 😊
Rebecca, I adore Jim’s photo, perfect and so atmospheric
Love Sheila C xx
Thank you, Sheila! 😘
Jim is an outstanding photographer. Thank you so much for sharing his extremely high quality work with us! My favorite is the last photo, with a gloomy sky, an open ocean and a pebbly beach. Love love loved it!
Also, thank you so much for your kind mention! Writing "GENIE!" was a treat for me, I hope it is just as much of a treat for your readers too 🤗
Oh, how kind, Punit - thank you - I have passed your lovely compliment to Jim.
And I was so happy to share 'GENIE!' - it's superb! 👌
Jumbo oats. Hehe. You can write Reb-egg-a on the egg carton.
Beautiful photos.
Reb-egg-a! ha ha ha
🤣🤣🤣
🤣🤣🤣
Carissa, you're a GENIUS!!!! Heading that way with a Sharpie RIGHT NOW......!
🤣🤣🤣
I commend you on your research here, Rebecca. A beautifully composed piece with such variety! Please convey to oat-fed Jimbo, how much I admire his photography. Stunning images here. The first bar of White Cliffs of Dover brought tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat. I will never understand how one or two powerful men can decide it is time for war and then, instead of going them selves, send in all those beautiful young men to die, those who have barely begun to live. Such a terrible terrible flaw in our human species. Those yew trees are magnificent!
PS Thanks so much for the shout out on my post about the ancient stones in Orkney and the harrowing ride getting there!
An absolute pleasure - it was a brilliant read and I was keen to pass it on! 😊
Oh, that's so kind of you - thank you! And I will certainly pass on your compliment to Jim.
That song is goosepimpling, isn't it - and yes, it brings up such a mixture of thoughts, from the harrowing to the hopeful. 😕
Rebecca, I too love the soft boiled egg from the shell and have egg cups for that purpose--the cups are delicate and wouldn't work for camping--but I found metal egg cups on Etsy in case you're interested. I had to look hard to see Jim's mark of the oats. I thought they were Jimbo Oats. So, two artists in your house. Grand, light hearted post.
Thanks, Mary! Actually, when I've boiled eggs in the van I've always held them in a napkin in my hand - but you've reminded me that I DO have a metal egg cup, which I might just put into the galley locker for next time!
Jim had done a good job with that blue pen, hadn't he?!
What a wonderful post!!!! I've often read about the White Cliffs of Dover in literature and I loved seeing Jim's photos and reading your thoughts!! It's a wonderful piece!! Thank you for sharing it!!! 💚💚💚💚
Thank you so much, Sue! 😊
Some humans are like male dogs, compelled to lift a leg on every fire hydrant, park bench, bush and blade of grass...! At least that washes away with the next storm. Somehow, I have never minded spray painted graffiti that shows up on overpasses and otherwise unattractive sub/urban structures, but I realize it's an unfortunate and easy leap from there to condoning the defacing other accessible surfaces, with deleterious and costly effects.
I don't want to wish ill on Isla, but maybe a tattoo gone really wrong? Ugh!
Also, I wonder if you know this technique for cooking eggs and/or whether it would give you a way to have your eggs in the campervan -- https://www.loveandlemons.com/how-to-make-hard-boiled-eggs/ 😁
I love your comparison with male dogs, Elizabeth - that's brilliant! And yes, how WOULD Isla feel with 'yew tree' inked into her torso, hmmm?! 😉
Thank you so much for the egg link! When we're camping on a campsite with electric hook-up I generally DO cook my eggs, because we can boil the water first with an electric kettle - but heating water from scratch on a gas ring - well, it takes forever! Breakfast in a car park rather than a campsite usually means porridge (or cold eggs cooked in advance!). 🤣
Clearly I'm not well versed in the technique for making porridge. I thought that, too, would require boiling water. Maybe just for less time? And forgive me getting all invested in this small detail. LOL!
You're right, but it needs less water than eggs need to boil in. For two generous bowls of porridge I use 100g oats, 250g milk and 250g water. To do my eggs I need a panful of water (enough to cover them) which needs to be boiling before I put the eggs in - so more water, more time, more steam. In the van, particularly for work trips, Jim'll have one of those tubs of instant oats, to which he'll add boiling water from the electric kettle, and I'll hog that gas ring for myself.
The colours in Jim’s photo!! The purple grey storm clouds, green water and brown shingle beach (nothing like our glorious cream and white sandy beaches.) Your chalk cliffs are famous worldwide and do look spectacular when freshly created. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be standing up top when they crumbled!!
Thank you so much, Beth - I've passed your lovely comment on to Jim! ❤️
And gosh, yes - I always have to catch my breath when I see people right at the edge. It's terrifying! 😕
Beautiful photos - my Jim and I both said, "Wow!" in unison. "Amazing!" "Beautiful!" Your Jim is beyond gifted. What an eye and intuitive sense of when to capture a moment.
We chuckled at Jimbo Oats. My Jim also eats oats for breakfast, and puts in cinnamon, flax meal, nutritional yeast, and shredded wheat. I eat breakfast at noon, and oats are not on the menu. I do, however, like them very much in cookies.
I was in the UK in 1977 and thought the white cliffs were fantastic and so very British. My dad, at the ripe age of 19, was a navigator of a B24 bomber in WWII, and he mentioned the cliffs as a welcome marker, too.
Graffiti and "taking just a tiny piece" of something, natural or constructed, is indulgently selfish. Shame on those who think it doesn't matter. Great post, as always.
Oh, how lovely - thank you, Mary and your Jim, for the lovely compliments about my Jim! I shall pass them on!
The Jimbo oats are such fun - I've recently bought our next packet, actually, and to my dismay Mornflake have redesigned their artwork. To our disappointment, although the word 'jumbo' is still there, it's much, much smaller and down at the bottom, so it's rather less fun to change it to 'Jimbo' because you can barely see it. 😕 Mind you, there are far worse things to worry about, aren't there - I should maybe let this one slide!
Breakfast at your place sounds delicious!
I love that you've seen our white cliffs for yourself! And in the late Queen's Silver Jubilee year as well - so I'm going to add an EXTRA 'very' to your phrase 'very British'!
I purchased quite a few things for my mum relating to the Queens Silver Jubilee and she's handed them back to me. It was a glorious summer for me to be in Europe. The entire 6+ weeks we were there, and in every country (9 in all), we had sunshine and warm temps. Not one drop of rain. I can't wait to return some day. Rats about Jimbo text being smaller due to a redesign. Perhaps there might be a large ceramic container with Jimbo on it, that the Jimbo oats could live in . . . .
Oh wow - 9 countries in 6 weeks - that's AMAZING! I'm not sure I've done that many in 49 years!!!!! 🤣
I love that you've taken on your mum's Silver Jubilee goodies - how lovely. Those 25 years of the Queen's reign seem like a flash in the pan now, given that she made it to her Platinum Jubilee! My parents still have my engraved metal Silver Jubilee mug which I *think* I can remember being given.
I'm thinking about writing to Mornflake about a reBRAND rather than a redesign - I think the market is ripe for across-the-board Jimbo oats! 🥣
I think the Silver Jubilee mug *must* be yours . . . . Also, my Jim said that he's up for calling the Jumbo Oats people and ask them why they reduced Jumbo. Not only is a bad idea, it's also an oxymoron to have the word Jumbo not be Jumbo. 😅
"It's also an oxymoron to have the word Jumbo not be Jumbo" - you are absolutely right, Mary! 🤣
I love CK's suggestion to write Reb-egg-ca on the egg cartons. That is what they shall for evermore be known in our house!
What an interesting post! Thank you so very much for kindly linking to my cliff-crumble post. It is inexorable! Another stairway, the last in our village from the cliff top to the esplanade has been shut due to another recent small slide. We are now limited to one road at each end of town to get up and down from the beach. I don't begrudge the closure, if only there were signs (beyond the many that say CLOSED) that there are efforts to remediate the situation. Hopefully our citizens will not start writing their complaints into the cliffs and the trees that are at least partially responsible for holding up the cliffs. You are right to be annoyed with such vandalism as am I. Please also send Jim my kudos for his amazing photos.
Thanks for the reminder of the lovely White Cliffs of Dover: yet and another reminder to see those cliffs once again!
Thanks, Sabrina! Gosh, your access to the beach is becoming ever-more limited - it's such a worry on every scale.
Thank you for the compliment to Jim - I shall pass it on! You're very kind!
If I may, I highly recommend an electric egg cooker if you ever don't want to mess with boiling. It uses a tiny bit of water to steam the eggs. I think there's also a microwave version, but I can't vouch for it.
Oh Jacquie, I had one of those at my old house, and it was amazing - thank you so much for reminding me about it! I used to have a Rayburn oil-fired range which took care of central heating, hot water and cooking - but it was only hot (for cooking) when I needed it to be. Heating up several tonnes of cast iron simply to boil eggs in the morning would have been too expensive and environmentally inconsiderate, so I had one of those egg boilers! Soon after I moved house (where there is an electric stove!) the egg boiler's element bit the dust - so I just started using a pan on the hob instead. Since then I'd forgotten ALL about it - you're a genius, thank you!
I shall get hold of another, and save myself a steamy kitchen every single morning. It'll work in the van, too, if we're on a campsite with electric hook-up.
Hurrah!!!!!!!
Yay! It really is the perfect appliance :-)
Ordered it last night - thank you soooooo much! 🙌
Eggcellent! :-D
It's arriiiiiiiived! Testing it at breakfast time tomorrow.
😁😁😁😁😁😁😁
It's much more attractive than my last egg boiler! Same shape, but with a Perspex top, not aluminium. I'll get to watch the action - no, the eggtion! 🤣
Oooh, so eggciting! My first egg cooker was shaped like an egg and had an aluminum top also. A coworker gave it to me as a gift, and I was so sad when I finally burned it out. But I have to admit, I really like seeing the little eggs through the clear top on my new one! Happy breakfast, and may your new cooker meet all your eggspectations! :-P
What's an egg boiler? I just shove them in a saucepan and bring the water to the boil. I stick a piece of tin fil in the water to prevent them splitting open. I boil them for exactly 2 minutes and 58.5 seconds. So why would anyone neen an egg boiler, whatever it is?
It's this: https://www.lakeland.co.uk/18921/lakeland-6-boiled-egg-cooker-and-poacher
Perfect for when you don't want to fire up the oil range just for a couple of eggs - or so that your van or kitchen don't turn into a Turkish bath.
HIGHLY recommended.
(In a pan I boil mine for six minutes. I'm horror struck at your boiling yours for shy of three!)
six minutes?? That makes eggs as hard as rocks. Egg boiler: good grief. What's an oil range? We have gas rings: you only have to iuse one, not the whole cooker. Nothing gets steamed up. I can see I'm going to have to write Cooking with Lord Tel
Nope, it doesn't - I can only assume that in London water boils at 50 degrees hotter than it does here if six minutes for a room-temperature egg renders it 'hard as a rock'!
The oil range in question: the Rayburn at my old house. And the village isn't connected to the gas grid, so there.
OMG it gets worse. I bet when Jim plugs his electric razor in, all the street lights go out. Regarding boiling, you seem to forget that you are nearer the equator, and we are virtually in the Arctic cicle. It makes a difference, you know
1. He has a beard.
2. WHAT streetlights?!
3. You are a mere sixty miles northeast of me, and hardly in the Arctic Circle! Hyperbolist...........
Tin foil? 🤔 When I'm boiling them I prick the wider end (the one with the air bubble) with a pin - it's fun to watch the bubbles of air stream out when they hit the boiling water, and they don't crack.
🎶 I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air, they fly so high, nearly touch the sky, then like my dreams they fade and die <sob>
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
You're SO dramatic.....!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ97jkVnX0A
Beautiful! Thank you.
Stunning photography + a captivating travelogue = the perfect vacation for this armchair traveller. You two are well-matched!
Oh, how lovely - thanks, Amie! 😊
What gorgeous photos by Jim! The carvings of names reminds me of my own youthful etchings in the cliffs of Cape Breton - all of which are eroded now, but we were quite pleased with them for a few years before they vanished entirely. Then we got into burning our names on our own porch steps!
Wow, Alison! And thank you so much for the compliment to Jim - I shall pass it on! 😊
Very informative, love the photos -- amazing what you can do with an Instamatic -- and I love Seaford. I'm with Jim, marking his porridge is essential. Even if you don't steal his oats, a bird might consider doing so. As for that 'marry me' grafitti, I'd like to know how Kathryn responded. I wonder if she said she could never marry a bloke who defaces things.
Thanks, Terry!
Oh, I'm imagining now what Kathryn might have said.... 'Trev, until this moment my love for you had been as tall as this cliff and as deep as this ocean. The pebbles on this beach number but a fraction of the future kisses my heart had contained for you..... until you proved yerself to be nothing but a graffiti oik. So hop it, handsome - yer ditched.'
🤣
Great photos!
I don't know why people have to deface things that are not theirs.
Thanks, Matt!
You're right - I feel exactly the same.