Category Archives: My Family

Loving Hands…

I love hands for many reasons…creativity, the ability to hold things, expressiveness. Hands can have a calming influence, think massage and caresses…they can protect, and they are mechanically amazing!

I loved drawing my hands when I was doing my GCSE’s…(not so keen on drawing my feet though!)

My father has big, strong hands…hands that made me feel safe no matter what. In fact, it was straight into his hands that I was delivered as a newborn baby…

When I was a child I loved slipping my hand into his and feeling his fingers close around mine with warmth and security. His hands, though calloused and scratched at times, were always soft and smooth and comforting. It was his hands that blessed me when I was sick, held mine while I cried and taught me the principles that I should live by. I loved that his hands always held my mother’s.

When I first met Vince, I shook his hand, a month later that hand took mine and led me onto the dance floor, from that moment I didn’t want to let go…

The strength of his hands and forearms are the most attractive part of a man to me…
I love being held, and hand-holding is a universal way of showing affection. When two people walk side by side and their hands search for each other and take hold, don’t let go of the feeling that ensues…that rush of love and closeness…

If you ever get lonely, 
look at the spaces between your
fingers and remind yourself 
that mine fit in there perfectly. 
My husband’s hands are like my father’s, large and firm… I smile when our fingers touch and when his hand holds mine I feel as though I am where I belong. His hands hold mine when I need comfort and assurance, they help me when I’m burdened, they guide me when I need it and catch me when I fall. 
More than that they do the same for our children…
The most beautiful thing in the world is to watch your child walk hand in hand with their father…
Photograph: Two Hands by Lisa Shambrook (Please do not use without permission)
I hope my girls seek out a man with strong hands, hands that work hard, that comfort, that teach and love…
My son is a hand-holder, an affectionate young man, with hands that are growing and learning. I love holding his hand and take pride that he is not ashamed to do so! I love watching my son grow…his hands are no longer the hands of a boy, but have an assuredness and firmness of a young man. Hands that I know will cherish and love in the future…hands that will hold newborns, hands that will bless his family, hands that will teach and lift and inspire…
I love hands…  

All Together Now…

I love having my photo taken and it’s accompanied me into my adult life…not so much the vanity of photos of me, but photographs of my family.

I’m a perfectionist, so family shoots, taken with a tripod at home, have sometimes been somewhat stressful, but I love documenting our family and growth!

I have many, many family group photos to choose from to document my own family over the years. Check out our latest offerings: Steampunk and Post-Apocalyptic

Now, my Dad was a photographer, and I loved the shots he got of me when I dragged him out to accommodate my teenage posing…but I am surprised that we don’t have many family group photographs from my childhood. Not always easy, I understand, as there were 15 years between youngest and oldest, so to get all four of us together probably wasn’t easy over the years…so I searched to see what I had

 

This is the earliest I have, Dave, Mark, Jules and I, back in 1983 when Jules was almost 7, Dave was 11, Mark was 22 and I was 12.

 

 

Then three years later in 1986, recreating the pose…

 

 

And 1989, another three years later and I’m eighteen…

 

The next time together was for my wedding in 1991

 

 

Seven years later Mark came over from Switzerland, I came down from Wales and we all met up back in Brighton1998

 

 

Another big gap of thirteen years and we have all just got together again just this month, August 2011
So there we are my siblings and I over the years…
 
When it comes to complete family pictures it’s the same story…I can only find two with all of us and my parents and a twenty year gap between each photograph…my wedding and this month…

 

The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.

 

Families are like fudge – 
mostly sweet with a few nuts…
 
…and that says it all…

A Childhood Dream…

Caitlin asked me the other day when I first dreamed of being an author… I’ve been drawing and writing ever since I could pick up a pencil, and I used to staple ‘book’ pages together when I was a little girl. I even have a little notebook containing a long story and my own illustrations written at 12 and treasured, though I cringe when I read it now!
Writing has been my life…my escape and my fantasy…I adore words and love exploring my imagination.
Eleven years ago, when Cait was a baby I began reading ‘Harry Potter’ and thought I could do this…so I began putting pen to paper. Within a year I had written my first novel, a dragon filled children’s adventure, my own children listened intently and loved it, four years later and two sequels had been completed.
Then I spent several years getting rejected from publishers and agents. I even paid for a highly recommended critique service to help hone the novel. We worked well and the changes I made were well received, but ultimately they told me most publishers had closed lists and weren’t taking on any new authors, (despite their advertising) and that book reading was taking a downturn…Agents told me the same thing, they loved the book, but couldn’t take anyone on.
It is a completely demoralising process…where the only way to succeed is if the book is sent at the right time, to the right person…and how do you know when that is or who that is?
I’m not blowing my own trumpet…the books may just not be good enough, but I can only rely on the feedback I’ve personally had, and the old adage…don’t give up!

So a couple of years ago I put away my fantasy adventures, (for now) and worked on a new idea…out of it came ‘Beneath the Rainbow’:


Death is an inevitable fact of life, indifferent to whether you are seven-years-old, or an old age pensioner who has lived a long fulfilled life. This is the heart-breaking and uplifting tale of Freya. Freya has to come to terms with her own untimely death and the impending death of terminally ill Old Thomas, who has but one dream left to achieve… Freya’s story of grief, hope, ultimate fulfilment and joy.’

The first line of the book invaded my head and I had to go with it… ‘Freya was seven-year-old when she got hit by the car. It was a 4×4 with a bull bar.’ The book goes on to deal with grief and bereavement on both sides of the veil. Freya has to adjust to death and the life she finds after it and her family have to accept and learn how to deal with the loss of their oldest daughter. 
When Freya and members of her family discover Thomas, dying of cancer, they learn that dreams are important, they learn that we must live life to the full and dreams help us do just that…
‘Beneath the Rainbow’ came from my heart and spilled into my life and it was suggested that I try Amazon’s Kindle publishing. 
And remember you don’t need a Kindle to buy and download it…on the right of the Amazon page you can download a free Kindle program to your PC…
So here we are in ebook form…
It is, technically, a dream come true to see the book available to purchase…but my greatest wish is for people to enjoy the story, to escape into Freya’s world and share time with her…
I am both elated and terrified to see it in print…I love the book, my husband cried when he read it to the children, but the true test is how it is received by the general public…
So I would love to know what you think of it…and maybe, just maybe, one day it will end up in paper print on a bookshop shelf…
That is my dream…


Another Time, Another Place…Rayn’s Art

Today we saw Bekah’s Art Exhibition at school…some of the work there was very impressive, and I am obviously biased that my daughter’s was pretty good too!

The first theme she worked on was Mental Health. She took photos depicting six areas of mental health: Depression, ADD, Anxiety, Tourettes, OCD and Insomnia. She then made a strait jacket, tea-dyed it and attached the photos. This became her installation in a black curtained room with an abstract video playing alongside:

Her second theme was ‘ Explore Another Time, Another Place’ and she began with retracing iconic ‘looks’ of the past century: She recreated their make up and portraits:

She then moved on to recreating the character theatrical looks for Tim Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’:

Cait, Dan and I allowed Bekah to make us up as Alice, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts, she made herself up as the Knave.

She designed a pair of shoes to indicate ‘stepping into another time and place’, and decorated them with period jewellery, keys and watches to match the theme. The keys also showed being locked in another place…and this took her to nightmares and the ordeal Cait endured being made up as a Zombie:

There’s a funny story attached to the zombie look…Bekah completed the make up and she and Cait ran down the front garden steps to take photos on the road outside the house. They took the pictures and Cait overacted as a zombie would. It was only moments later when they noticed a bemused family sitting in a car behind ours watching the scene with astonished expressions! They were next door’s family visiting…didn’t expect a zombie invasion when they arrived! When they saw Cait, un-made-up the following day they commented with a smile that “she looked alot better, much more healthy!”

All images and content by Bekah Shambrook (& Lisa Shambrook) (Please do not reproduce without permission)

Her installation and display is to be photographed by the school and sent off to the examining board, as requested, as an example of A* work… so there we are.

I love art, I love painting, scrapbooking, sketching, photography and any other art, so I have loved watching Bekah’s talent develop and look forward to seeing so much more!

Brighton Rocks…

After a weekend away in my hometown, I see how much I really miss Brighton!

I miss the sea so much. I used to live one mile from the ocean, and now I’m so much further from the sea in Wales.

That’s not to say I’m not happy with the welsh beaches I live close to, I adore the sandy shores of Pendine, Pembrey and Llansteffan…miles and miles of broad sandy beaches, perfect for walking the dog, splashing through the waves and soaking up the sun. They don’t get as busy as Brighton beaches and they’re still my favourite places to be.

But, and it’s a big but, I miss my childhood beaches of Brighton and Hove. I don’t understand why, but I even have fond memories of climbing up from the sea, across the pebbles ‘ouch’, hopping and stepping carefully to find your towel, placed strategically far up the beach… I remember wandering, again stepping carefully, across the beach trying to find the patch of sand that you know is there…but where? Then you find it… A metre square patch of golden sand…what a find, a real treasure! And sitting on the pebbles, throwing stones at drinks cans lodged ten feet away! And I love the ‘plop’ of stones as they arc and plunge into the sea as they escape your hands.

I love the big stone groynes placed between the beaches, I can remember spending warm evenings sitting on the end of these watching the sun go down and enjoying friendships and romances! I loved late evenings watching the sunset with the ocean stretching out in front of me…

I remember the magic of walking on the Palace Pier as a young girl, and staring down through the weathered wooden boards at the green ocean twinkling and sparkling in the sunlight below. The salty smell of the ocean and the wind rippling through my hair…I relived all these last week!

 So, I miss Brighton…I think there’ll always be a magic in your place of birth that you won’t find anywhere else!

I find ecstasy in living; the mere sense of living is joy enough. (Emily Dickinson)

41. Dan, Vince, Roxy, Cait, Bekah & Lisa, Jan 2010 crop I’ve often wondered what brings real happiness… after all a couple just won £56million on the National Lottery, would that bring me happiness? Erm…probably! Yet I don’t have a fraction of that and I’m happy.

There’s no doubt that a million or two would contribute to my happiness, but money won’t be my ultimate path to happiness!
‘All you need is Love’… maybe, but not necessarily that recently celebrated Valentine love…it does help to have a soul mate and a friend, but the love I’m talking about is the love you have for yourself.
‘ To love oneself is the beginning
of a lifelong romance’
(Oscar Wilde)
I turned from a quiet and shy schoolgirl, into a teenager caught within a cage of responsibility, desperately trying to assert and rebel, to a young woman finding love and needing acceptance, but I had no idea who I was… I had become a wife and a mother, but who was I?
Are we ever truly happy with who we are? Seven years ago I extricated myself from a breakdown and set about discovering myself…
Back in 1989 I wrote: ‘I want to be everything everyone wants me to be, but I’m not sure I know how, I don’t even know how to be me…’ then in 2004 I began to exorcise my demons: ‘I wanted to be everything everyone wanted me to be, but I didn’t know how to be me, so I tore off my mask and ripped out my heart, and left my soul bare to bleed. I clenched my fists tight and screamed out loud, now I’m learning how to be me…’ It took another four or five years before I could close that chapter: ‘My heart is now open and clear to see, and I don’t feel the need to please. People can take me for what they want me to be, but I only need to be me. My heart can soar in a world of its own, and no one can stop me at all. For over the years there’s a lesson I’ve learned, and I know exactly how to be me.’
So what makes you happy? I think it’s knowing who you are and making the best of yourself and finding joy in what is around you…allow yourself the freedom of being who you are meant to be.
To me, that’s recognising your greatness within.
‘To be a star you must follow your own light,
follow your own path,
and never fear the darkness
for that is when the stars shine their brightest.’
(anon)
Happiness for me is…family, a walk in the snow with a loopy dog, throwing snowballs, laughing and being together…it is writing and losing myself in the story within my head…creating scrapbook pages full of memories…painting and drawing…knowing who I am in the great scheme of things…and sharing that love with those around me… and yes, I found myself. ♥