Gina Collia-Suzuki's Blog

Well, fan my brow... I'm a frightfully clever girl today. I have finally managed to write an 'xml' file and upload a podcast to iTunes. Apparently these days everyone has to have one you see, and it sounded so easy. So, I went in search of a 'quick and easy podcast creator' which would hopefully involve no more work on my part than pressing a button. Whether or not there is such a thing out there, I didn't find one. Instead I found a lengthy guide to writing the xml file from scratch... which is

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When I asked my husband to pick up a book for me from the shelves in the living room, and he spent about fifteen minutes trying to find it despite being given a map, I thought it might be time to rethink the organisation of our bookshelves. Our books are not arranged by subject, letter of the alphabet, author, or even colour. They are arranged according to which ones I like most, have the nicest covers, are used most frequently, or are linked in some way in the chaotic cataloguing system I call

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We went to the woods again today. We've had a fair bit of rain recently, but today the sun was shining and it was quite hot. The good news is that the great tits are all doing fine. They're difficult to make out in this photo, as they'd snuggled up right at the back of their tree house, but they've got their yellow breast feathers now. The first time we saw them they had little bald pink chests. There were two adult great tits flying around the nest today, so perhaps one was their daddy.


Today wa

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A while back I posted about the number of requests for help I get from people who have stumbled across my Japanese art blog whilst trying to identify and value their family heirlooms. And when I say 'request' I am being polite... I actually receive rather rude demands, and sometimes pretty offensive follow-up emails when I don't comply. At the time, I put their lack of understanding regarding the acquisition and value of knowledge down to the fact that they had never gone through the process of

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This afternoon, armed with a picnic lunch and my camera, we headed back into the woods. I think it's pretty much safe to say that we are now obsessed with the place... it's hard not to be when it's so beautiful. There are so many areas to explore, and we're experiencing a real desire to learn more about the things we're seeing. I feel a trip to Amazon coming on.

We didn't go looking for the tree that's home to those baby birds we saw last time, as neither of us thought we'd be able to find one tr

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Having enjoyed our explorations in the woods a couple of days ago, we decided to go back this evening. The sky seemed rather grey and the wind was picking up, so we thought we wouldn't be gone for long, but once we were amongst the trees there was no wind, the sky was cloud-free, and an hour and twenty minutes was gone before we knew it. Being a bit of a photograph-aholic, I took my camera again. I don't know what I did before digital cameras were invented... these days you can snap seventy to a

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When we first moved to Weston-super-Mare, we had such plans. We were going to get bicycles, go walking, and really take advantage of this wonderful location. Unfortunately, the very first day we moved into our home the real-life Guppys who inspired 'The Wonderful Demise of Benjamin Arnold Guppy' started putting all of their energy into making our lives a complete misery. Bit by bit, as the Guppys worked their magic and involved every man and his dog in their campaign, Weston became a smaller and

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I'm posting this video clip this evening for no other reason than it contains one of the greatest songs ever written, sung by one of the greatest singers of all time. Yup, I'm a whopping great Bowie fan... and this is the song that my husband and I think of as 'ours'. Listen and enjoy...

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Our roof's in a bit of a bad way at the moment (understatement of the century), and it's going to need extensive repairs (and when I say 'extensive', I really mean 'expensive'). Having said that, the need to get the roof looked at produced some lovely shots of the view from amongst our chimney stacks.

I never get tired of living here, which is unusual as my husband and I have moved about a fair bit over the years. Each day I discover new things to love about the place, and I can see us ending our

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I've been asked this question a lot recently, and without giving it much thought I always say 'yes'. Having reflected further, however, I realise that this wasn't always the case. In actual fact, before the age of five I wanted to be a pirate captain and have my own ship. I was planning to put to sea before my fifth birthday, but then someone told me about swabbing and scurvy... neither sounded very pleasant, and the latter sounded decidedly itchy. So, I was in the market for a new profession by

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