Author: Yelly

Taking each day one smile at a time!
Yelly Snaps

Big Hat!

Yelly

I rarely take photos of myself.  No wait.  That’s a lie.  I take selfies.  But rarely post them.  I have loads that I’ve taken, saved and never ever looked at again.  In the same vein, I usually don’t like having my picture taken.  I will take photos of other people but I will very rarely take a portrait shot of me seriously!  I’m almost always pulling faces!

I do love this photo though.  It was taken by my friend Anila.  She’s quite clever ninja with the camera and I particularly love her portraits.  She kept asking me to do star jumps (which incidentally are also known as jumping jacks!).   I wasn’t going to because I’m such a klutz!  I’m more likely to slip on landing and break something vital!  So this was the closest Anila was going to get capturing me in a star jump pose!

I am (awkwardly) posing under Anish Kapoor’s At the Edge of the World II at the Everything at Once exhibition at the Store Studios at 180 Strand.

You’ve got to look at Anila’s amazing photos.  She’s @sparkle71h on Instagram and her gorgeous portraits account is @akhussainphotography.  I love her ballerina photos (you half expect the ballerinas to start pirouetting) and her portraits (I love how she captures the light in a person’s eye, it’s just magical!).  She’s also generous with her camera knowledge.  I know for sure that my light trail photos are much better after her tips!  Give her Flickr page a visit!❤️

Yelly Writes

Instagram-Schminstagram

Yelly

Once, several months ago, an instagram acquaintance posted a comment about a photographer that I follow about how they didn’t think this photographer was an instagrammer.

It made me think.  It’s made me wonder where the comment was coming from.  Because I, very clearly, thought the photographer I followed WAS an instagrammer.  What was this person’s definition of the word “instagrammer”?  Was I an Instagrammer in this person’s eyes?

How does one become an instagrammer?  What’s the criteria?  Is it based on the frequency of your posts?  The number of followers?  The number of features you get from instagram hubs?  The number of likes your posts get?

I googled instagrammer and these were some of the definitions:  According to MacMillanDictionary.com, an instagrammer is a user of the Instagram social network. Slangit.com says that an Instagrammer posts images and videos on Instagram and may even comment on other people’s posts. According to the urbandictionary.com an instagrammer simply means a person who gets on Instagram. Better used for a person who gets on often or is obsessive over Instagram.

I posted a question on Instagram and I got the consensus that an instagrammer, as defined by people who have Instagram accounts, is someone who has an instagram account and uses Instagram.

I listen to Sara Tasker’s wonderful podcast Hashtag Authentic (I may have waxed lyrical about how amazing this podcast is in a blog entry) and her podcast on 25 October where she has a conversation with Tara Swiger.  One thing they discussed resonated with me so much.  Tara said that the numbers about your engagement on social media platforms does not necessarily reflect the value that you provide to the people who follow you for the right reasons. A big audience or following does not necessarily mean expertise or value.  It may reflect on the reason why you’re on the social media platform: whether you’re on it to offer a service (which means your provide expertise) or if you’re on it to receive some kind of validation (which relates to the need to pay attention to your stats) or if it’s another reason which is an amalgamation of the two.

So whether you have 100,000 followers or 100 on Instagram or Twitter, or any other social media platform, it does not matter as it doesn’t devalue the material that you post on social media.  It doesn’t make you any less of an Instagrammer if you only have a handful of followers, it just makes you less of a player of the Instafame game; as long as you use the platform you are a whatever-er (an Instagrammer, a person who Tweets, a blogger..you get the idea!).

Having said all that, it is important to remember that people’s personal definitions of ideas or concepts is completely subjective and is completely defined by their experiences.  So there isn’t really a correct or incorrect definition of what an instagrammer really is.  Our personal definitions are based on our experiences, our interactions and our motivations for being on social media.  I think what we need to remember is that we need to have is an awareness that our instinctive reactions, i.e. knee-jerk, are based on our personal experiences, definitions and biases.  If we remember this, then we avoid making sweeping generalisations and/or saying them out loud.  Brilliant, I think, for avoiding foot-in-mouth situations!

Yelly Snaps

A London sunset

Yelly

 

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

This photo was taken on Saturday.  I still can’t get over how beautiful the sunset was!

Yelly Writes

My father the superhero

Yelly

You are my hero, my strength, my inspiration and my guiding light.

I am who I am and where I am because of everything you have done, risked and sacrificed. I will never be able to thank you enough. I am blessed because you love us and have always expressed it in word and deed so that we are never in doubt of it. And though we are not together, and your illness prevents you from being the Aba we know you to be, I see glimpses of the father I adore when you smile when we FaceTime and when you try to say our names and tell us you love us.

Happy birthday Abadabbadooooo. I love you

Yelly Writes

When I get there…bygones!

Yelly

“Wisdom tells us that the best time for silence is when we are mad or upset.”
– John Patrick Hickey, Oops Did I Really Post That?

 

I am working on a very important project.

I am working on ME.  I thought I was over this thing, but like a masochist out for pain, I still needle the emotional scab and allow the pain (and all the negative emotions that go with it: anger, annoyance, impatience, self-doubt, pettiness, you get the idea).  I repeatedly told myself to draw a line.  I told myself that I wasn’t going to let this overtake my life.  But it was still there, like an irritating mosquito buzzing, hovering in the background.

In the end, I came to the conclusion that I was going about this whole thing the wrong way.  I was telling myself that I shouldn’t let myself get angry; I shouldn’t give in to the negativity; that the high road was to let this go.  But in going into denial about how I felt was negating myself.  I was, basically, telling myself I was wrong.  I was invalidating my own opinions.  Granted, it wasn’t the healthiest of situations, and sometimes you just want to just get on with your life.  But I wasn’t moving on.

I have allowed myself to be angry.  I have allowed myself to feel the hurt.  I have actually said to myself, “Well, I didn’t draw first blood, so it’s okay to feel offended and violated!”  I have actually allowed my inner mean girl, my inner Regina George to come to the fore.  I am allowed to lash out.  If only verbally and if only to myself and the bathroom mirror.

I will continue write things out, because I process things better when I write things down.  I think the trick is to allow myself to feel my feelings.  Because they’re mine.  One can immerse in the feelings, but it is important to remember that it’s not healthy to stay submerged in these feelings until one goes emotionally pruney.  I think I’ve been able to express my feelings enough.  Maybe I will try to not talk about it (fat chance of that happening as when I am angry, I keep wanting to talk about it!  Silence and keeping schtumm when angry is still something I need to learn.).

I know one day I will be able to say the immortal words of Richard Fish in Ally McBeal: “Bygones” and mean it.  Until then, I will keep on keeping and keep on healing.

Yelly Snaps

O2 features ME!

Yelly

I am still tickled pink!  On Sunday, O2, my mobile network, featured a photo I took of St Paul’s Cathedral on the O2 UK Instagram account.

It’s already Thursday evening and I still grin like a Cheshire cat when I remember!😍

Yelly Snaps

Strength and safety in numbers

Yelly

This is one of my favourite streets in London.  Mostly because it has so many museums and it leads straight to Hyde Park.

At the moment, it is the focus of of news reporting because of an incident.  Apparently a car hit a number of pedestrians.  If you want to keep updated on news, you can either google or follow this link to the BBC website.

As bad as it sounds, I’m just hoping this is just a serious road traffic accident instead of an act of terrorism.

Keep safe everyone.  Stay alert.

UPDATE as at 19:00

The Met Police have advised that this was a road traffic accident.  More details on the BBC website link I placed above.

But still…STAY ALERT.  KEEP SAFE.

Yelly Writes

Forgiving myself

Yelly

I have deliberately held off writing on the blog for a long time because I was dealing with a personal struggle.  I know myself well enough to know that if I allowed myself to write about the experience before I’d processed it, the entry would become a rant.  That was the last thing I wanted to do because I needed to understand how I was feeling and why I was feeling what I was feeling.  Cryptic enough?

I was going through a period of self-doubt and I was asking myself a lot of questions that demanded a lot of self-honesty, looking at myself in the mirror very critically, a lot of soul-searching and I was praying a lot about a decision that I’d made.  I felt torn between deeply regretting having to act on the decision, and knowing, with absolutely certainty, that what I’d done was the, really, the best course of action.

I’ve never really known how to cut myself off from people who affect me negatively.  I always thought that holding on and not giving up on relationships meant that you cared about the person.  I always thought that if I continued to treat the person in the way I wanted to be treated, it would eventually lead to them doing the same thing.  I was, also, never a quitter.  I never gave up on things, tasks, and most especially people.  I am a Christian, with my faith so steeped in my life and my psyche that it was difficult to switch off the “not giving up on people” because God never gave up on me.  So stepping away was not an option.

Also, I can’t remember where I learned it, whether I heard it from someone or I read it somewhere -that what you despise in others is what you hate in yourself.  I wondered whether in this situation, it was the case?  I had to ask myself that several times.  Was the negativity I was feeling a reflection of how I was feeling about something in my life.

I kept asking myself, what lesson was I supposed to learn from this experience?

After all that thinking, praying, reading and soul-searching, I came to the conclusion that I needed to learn to look at the unhealthy patterns in certain relationships and learn to put a stop to it.  To learn to extricate myself from the situation so that I would be set free – from the negativity, from the unkind thoughts, from the self-doubt, from the annoyance.  My response to this negative situation was eating away at me.  I didn’t like how I was reacting.

I was struggling to find what the Christian response was to this situation.  Then I read something that Debbie McDaniel wrote.  She said: “God’s greatest desire is to set us free…and what propels that change is for some brave soul to be willing to say “Stop, no more.” One who will choose what is better…and set boundaries.”  Because, in the end, if you remove yourself from the situation, the negativity stops, the unchristian thoughts stop.  Because in the end, sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind…to everyone, including yourself.

Maybe one day, when the opportunity presents itself, I will tell this person how much their behaviour has affected me.  Because I believe authentic relationships require honesty.

One day, maybe.

Until that day comes, I will tell myself that I did what I could in my position.  And while it is still a challenge, I am going to have to forgive myself for walking away.  Because at the end of the day, I wanted to stop myself from being mean and unkind, if not in deed, it was certainly in thought.  For now, that will have to be enough.

Yelly Writes

You win some…

Yelly

Sometimes you have good weeks and sometimes you have bad weeks and the days before Open House London were…challenging.  A storm had been brewing in my personal life and I was wondering about the choices I was making.

I think the universe knew I needed a distraction because I was overthinking things (as I usually tend to do) and I was starting to doubt my decisions.  So I got this message on Instagram on Friday.

I was so excited!  I’d been looking at my friend Ella’s little Apple pen offerings on Instagram and I was missing being able to doodle and I thought I’d get myself a few drawing pencils and a few watercolours and I’d start waving a brush around!  But as luck would have it, I won a gorgeous “starter” set from Reeves from an Instagram competition that Boxpark in Shoreditch ran.  Reeves was running a pop-up shop in Boxpark for a couple of days and this competition was part of that promotion.

I was asked to go to their pop up shop to claim my prize and we were served with welcome drinks and invited to colour postcards, paint plant pots and colour fish themed flip books.  We were also given canvas totes with more art supplies samples.  I wanted to stay and colour the postcards because they were “I love London” postcards but we had an appointment with 55 Broadway (we’d signed up for a tour of the TFL office which was participating in Open House London) so we had to quickly say our goodbyes.

When I finally got the chance to open my lovely prize, I couldn’t quite believe how generous Reeves were.  In my lovely prize box was:

  • a 6 piece acrylic paint starter set with brush
  • a 9 piece watercolour pain starter set with an HB pencil
  • a 12 piece soft pastels
  • a 6 piece set of sketching pencils
  • a 4 piece set of acrylic paint brushes
  • a pad of watercolour paper
  • postcards to colour with 7 coloured pencils
  • a watercolour mixing plate

Thank you sooooo much Reeves, I can’t wait to get started!❤️👩🏻‍🎨

…well, okay, to be honest, I’ll have to recover from Open House London first!🙈

Yelly Eats

Something about the Bird

Yelly

So…I’m all for second chances.

Last year, we went to Bird in Shoreditch because I wanted to try the chicken.  I think I’ve written about my love of chicken so many times that this trip to try Bird’s chicken is completely self-explanatory.  I also had my Chicken Bucket List (I will be posting an update to that post in the next few weeks, so please watch this space!) to consider.  So off to Bird we went!

And needless to say, I was quite disappointed.  If you want to find out how dismal our dining experience was, read about it here.  The chicken was dry and overcooked, the service was a lackadaisical and a bit blasé and I said I was never coming back to any Bird branch ever again.

Until we saw a voucher for Bird on TimeOut London for a three-course offering (sides, a chicken burger and a dessert).  Alan said there was no harm in trying Bird again, especially at that price (I can’t remember exactly how much that voucher was for but it was something like £15 per person plus drinks).  So I reluctantly agreed to purchase the vouchers and off we went.

The two visits couldn’t have been any more different!  It was like coming into a different restaurant all together.  I mean, same name, same decor, same menu, same venue…BUT totally different dining experiences.

The staff were absolutely friendly, and wanted to talk about their food.  I know the word passionate is overused in the food business, but they were.  They were actually excited about their food!  They were completely happy that we had the vouchers and they explained how we could get the most out of our vouchers.  So order the food we did!

We both ordered wings as sides.  Alan ordered wings with the honey and ginger sauce.  The sauce was on the sweet side but had that lovely ginger hit that stopped the honey from being sickly sweet.  It was a lovely sauce for the perfectly cooked wings.

I ordered the buffalo wings.  I loved it because it wasn’t blow-your-head-off spicy.  I love spicy food but I like it when it’s not so spicy that you can’t taste what you’re eating because it was too hot!  It was just the right blend of spicy, tangy and the floral peppery notes.   Plus, the accompanying blue cheese sauce was yummyyyyy and was an absolute bonus.

Then we ordered the chicken burgers.  There are 6 burgers to choose from the menu.  Being the buffalo addict that I was, I ordered the buffalo blue chicken burger.  This burger is a battered boneless chicken thigh fillet served on a brioche bun with buffalo sauce and a blue cheese slaw.  I don’t think I got a chance to take a photo of Alan’s burger but he ordered a bacon cheese burger.

Then we ordered Bird’s doughnuts for dessert.  Alan ordered a doughnut ice cream sandwich which I thought was a dessert big enough to feed a family of four!

I ordered the daily glazed doughnut special – which was, on the day, a mint chocolate glazed donut.  I thought it wouldn’t be as formidable as Alan’s desert of choice, but when my dessert arrived, it was bigger than I thought!

It was such a HUGE MEAL and which came to about £20, including drinks and service charge, per person.  But it was such a different experience from our first Bird meal.  We were looked after, but it wasn’t saccharine-sweet sincerity.  It felt very genuine, and they really wanted us to have a really good Bird experience.  We didn’t feel smothered and I was quite impressed because they asked us if the food was okay before we took bites, which I thought was nice.  It’s never nice talking around a mouthful of food.

When they saw me taking pictures, one member of staff, a cheeky but charming French guy (I wish I’d taken his name), encouraged me to take photos and to tell people about Bird and to write a review on TripAdvisor!  I thought was brave because he hadn’t asked me yet whether we had a good time.  I think he knew that we ate well and that the food was good.  That confidence in their product speaks well.

And to be fair, we like it so much, we went back again for just the wings!