Colours of Cheltenham

I have long since envied other people's ease with making collages, uploading from the Blipster app, and generally knowing what to do creatively with their iPad. I bought the iPad before I started taking photos regularly, and imagined I would mainly use it for looking at recipes in the kitchen, and for being on the move. Now it seems I mainly use it for looking at my blip subscriptions at the beginning or end of the day! I am a bit terrified of synching with the Cloud in case my iPad gets swamped, so my devices don't talk to each other. There, I have admitted it!

Last week I overheard someone (I think it was my sister, TMLHereandThere) talking about iPad editing apps, and thought, I'm going to try those! So I downloaded an app called Transfer, and another called Photogene, for the total price of £3.98, as opposed to whatever Photoshop Elements costs, and here is my first collage. It's not perfect, but Yippee! Progress has been made, and I didn't even have to go to college to do so.

CleanSteve and I went over to Cheltenham today, to the private view of my cousin Fiona McInyre's exhibition. Fiona is a painter, and the gallery is handily located above a brasserie in the Regency part of Cheltenham. We did not actually see any gentlemen in tight breeches and powdered wigs, more's the pity, but I have included one of Fi's paintings and a gallery shot in this collage. The crop is not perfect, but I have run out of time, or wine...

Next we went to Cafe Rouge, via the Neptune fountain and the rather Harry Potterish towers of Cheltenham Ladies' College, a boarding school for girls, partly responsible for giving Cheltenham its stuffy image. I have never entered its hallowed portals, but I did my aromatherapy training in Cheltenham, and would say that it is more moneyed, and less alternative, than Stroud, but does not deserve the reputation for being boring. Why, it has the UK's largest spy/listening base, GCHQ, whose portals I have entered, but I won't bore you with that just yet. Outside Cafe Rouge were a large number of red telephone boxes, which i have included, because they are a novelty these days, rather than something seen on each street corner.

At this point CleanSteve went off to the loo, and I nipped into the clothes shop next door, and he came out and thought his SLR camera was gone, so words were exchanged. When we reached the cookery shop with its inspirational slogan about chocolate I popped in to buy some wooden skewerish things at twenty times the normal price while, unbeknown to me, CleanSteve went into the basement to look at coffe making devices. I did not even know there was a basement, so when I came out and could not find him, I set off towards the car, thinking he'd waited outside the shop, got fed up, and then started to amble off car-wards . I thought I would soon catch him up....Ooops!

Several long minutes later, we were reunited beside the car, which did not have a parking ticket, thank God. Let's just say it was a stressful reunion rather than a wholly joyful one. Still, here we both are, and now I am off to cook a delicious supper, possibly using a recipe saved on the iPad, and then to veg in front of Downton Abbey. Damn, another secret is out...