as time goes by

That's an interesting question C asks in her blog comments, do these words mean anything to me?
In this Blog. I don't think they do, it's a diary really, fills an hour in the day when I am too tired to do anything else, but rather fulfilling. A feeling of satisfaction at a job done.
So few tasks in life get a tick for completion, they bleed into each other and haver on in the background, sapping energy and confidence.
I love to see the words all printed up on the screen, I feel privileged that 2 people in the world are reading some of them.
A process, like my stitching. I am making something - therefore I am. I make do, therefore - I am a woman?
My gay mentor, sorry, our gay mentor insists that we should ask the question "What is it about" re our work.
A very good question.
I went to Ely yesterday and saw a small textile exhibition at the cathedral, rather uninspired in contrast to the surroundings, tho the work was supposed to be a "response" to the epic building - something ventured - not much gained.
The English stitching group is affiliated to an American one, none of whom visited the cathedral, getting their inspiration from pics on the web.
Inspiration was in low supply that day, it seems.
I liked only one, where she had bleached some areas of black dyed broadcloth so you saw an inspired move from dark into light, otherwise I thought the work banal raising occasionally to mediocre. [Had better hope only two people are reading this blog!]
While I am ranting, there was this ghastly, larger than life painted statue of a golden haired lady in a long clinging blue dress high on the wall above the altar of the Lady Chapel, arms stretched high in dismay, no doubt at the sheer bad taste of her existence.
It was a hot day for April, we slogged on to Oliver Cromwell's house, which was boring and mundane and cost £4.50 each to listen to an anodyne recording skim over some of the facts of his life on one of those machines.
Each room was dark with panelling and drawn curtains, on entry, silent people stood alone, each with a hand pressed to their head - loyally listening to an light weight slip and slide through history, without touching any topic involving the spilling of blood, except poor James and his lack of head.
This is Oliver Cromwell they are talking about!
Mrs Cromwell loved him it seems, wrote him love letters, bore him nine children, cooked him eel stews. Got on and made do.

foot wear news

Today, 26th April, I wore sandals for the first time this year. Now, unfortunately I have to do something about those hairy legs.

what's in a name?

Groucho said he wouldn't want to join any club that would admit him.
Strange to be more arrogant than The Mouthy Marx, but I often feel I cannot bear to be thought part of this group, i.e. older women in sensible shoes.

The lady with the curly hair is called Glenda too, I do try to collect them, with variable results.

I go to many textile exhibitions, forums, groups - the ways in which the female of the species tries to ape the male in "networking" to raise our status with the weight of our own self interest. Trouble is we rotate within our own ripples without breaking out into.......the waves?

For some reason using a needle and thread isn't accepted as an Art method. To be honest most of the practitioners do fall into the basket of Craft, and yes there is a difference. I suggest most want to "make something beautiful" and quite a lot succeed splendidly, sorry that is patronising, especially as i couldn't raise to their level of competence in a month of Sundays.

It's a big subject "women's stitching" and I am avoiding trying to actually tackle it needle in hand, by ruminating about it. So, what is true [to me].

At the Forum on Saturday 70+ women gathered together to conquer the world, or at least the part from north London to the Norfolk Coast. We didn't sing "We are women, we are Strong", most would have left in embarrassment if we had.

We had a male speaker would you believe, but he is delightfully gay, so really was one of the gang, we loved him.

He was also excellent, and I want him as my mentor, except he practises his art up North, and anyway maybe a shooting star should just illuminate, get too close and my own candle would have trouble lighting my way, as it were?

Some fool handed me the mike and I did a turn, but because I don't really think I belong in that club I don't really feel many heard. My mum says join a club, you are bound to find at least one person on the same wave length, but what if it is the wrong club?

My ma is happy in her present club, the Widows Mafia, terrorising the neighbourhood with their free bus passes.

Then yesterday we went to a Textile Exhibition actually in an Arts Gallery, now that is unusual, rubbing stitching shoulders with Modigliani and Francis Bacon [it was an eclectic collection]

In the main I got more from young Francis, but I am going to try and marry him to my threads and see what happens.

never ending

The gorse is very yellow at the mo, and lots of it. Otherwise Green-fatigue could set in as everything is burgeoning away to it's heart content.
Canadian Cousin is over on a trip, so had to take the obligatory trip thru the countryside to show him what he is missing these days living in Calgary.
He is more impressed by the number of channels we can get on Sky compared to his cable. Never thought this was an area in which to score points.
New neighbours are "working from home" so BT has to put in their Broadband etc. which so far has involved 4 vans and cherry picker all at the same time in our Lane. nothing else, as that fills it.
They tightened a low hanging wire passing thru our magnolia, apparently the pole on the other side of the Lane had fallen at some time and the lines were held up by dead elms, always knew there would be a use for them. Being deepish rural idyll no-one had noticed as the bracken or the brambles or some other green form of life is always as high as an elephant's eye.
Dead elms edge all the fields, pointing tragically at the sky, like Lady Macbeth, or grainey pictures of First World War battle debris.
Country folk who know about these things, or have a good line in leg pulling, tell me the elms can grow up to 18' but the beetles that carry the virus fly at that level, so then they land and things go from bad to worse.
I am typing this under assault myself, as The Canadian has discovered the Sky Sports Channel and is beside himself with glee soaking up the loud wrestling.
The magnolia is losing it's fat pink petals in this high wind, the cypresses are undulating in a slightly menacing manner just above my eye level, beckoning into the church yard................
One unexpectedly nice thing I did this week was go to Languard Fort at Felixstowe. Obviously it was a stitching referral that took us there, but both the fort and the exhibition were rather marvellous. I can't quite explain the fort, it was big and round and hollow, like a huge car tyre.
It was built in the nineteenth century against Napoleon, and if I understand it rightly the army made sea mines there, with which they defended Harwich harbour.
I think there was a lot of munition around - and lamps, which do not go well together, so there were long winding tunnels within the walls to carefully take many lamps and place them in niches to light the munition rooms on the other side, without a spark drifting over and blowing the whole caboodle up.Mines were then floated into the sea attached to long wires to detonate them if needed.
Must have worked as both Harwich and the fort are still there.
All round the first floor of the massive walls are now empty cold rooms, glaring out to sea, and within these Textile artist Fran Crowe is exhibiting the results of 3 years walking British beaches.
She picks and sorts the plastic litter, and each room had an installation of the results. It's sounds a bit worthy, but actually it was rather glorious and ghastly at the same time - to think so much litter is strewn blows ones mind [without wires attached].
Also pics of what it does when eaten by birds and seals - not nice.
Some rooms and there must have been 15+ had a stone on the window sill with a hole in it, tied in the hole was a label recording how long she had walked a particular beach, and the weight of plastic she had picked in that one time.
One room had a selection of brightly coloured plastic cigarette lighters ranged neatly along the bottom of the wall, another - balloons, another - bottles. All so elegant and all so deadly, plastic never bio-degrades.
One floor had a huge circular pattern of cheerily coloured nets, ropes and lines, another had polystyrene sculpturally placed in another circle, with bird marks where they had chipped bits off thinking it would feed them, not kill them.
But Harwich, the Fort and We are still here, birds still fly, we may make it right yet.
However BT has just driven up again so they are not so confident.

reunion

Watching one of my favourite films on the gog bought a smile to my face, Grosse Pointe Blank, great fun - reminds me of the awful school reunions I have been to. I drank so much whisky to give me courage at the first, I seriously thought my head would explode during the night.
Or perhaps it was just swallowing too much bile.
I don't usually drink due to migraines, I host all kinds of theories as to what might set them off. So no chocolate or cheese, red wine, citrus fruit, you suggest it might be the cause - I will run screaming from any proximity.
Doesn't stop me having 2 major migraines per month however, tho the modern pills do quite a good job, just that I am not allowed to take more than the prescribed each month, as they do things to my blood vessels, which in turn makes me wonder, if I am not careful I will kill myself with the tablets instead of womanfully putting up with a little pain and vomit.
To return to John Cusack and Minnie Driver territory, as I wish I could.
When attending reunions I should have invented an assassins life for myself, even packed a gun to stop some of those terrible people talking so much endless rubbish. What a joy it would be to line those fat blokes up against a wall and puncture their pomposity, likewise the self satisfied women, oh dear I suspect some grinding of .........what does one grind? besides teeth.
None of the women went to university, quite a few of the men did. I went to Art school ,and ran away. Girls dressed in black practising judo in the loos, quite a shock for a girl from a council estate. Wonder where I would be now if I had stayed, probably ended up in teaching, just the same.
I would really have liked to be a broadcaster on a local radio station a la Minnie, she was a very smooth disc jock. I listen to a lot of Radio 6 Music now, the blokes are OK, if a bit full of themselves, the women are vapid. Whatever happened to feminism?
Most of my school mates stayed within the area, - Barking, East London if you ask,and stayed married. Does one pay the price for security, or does one always pay a price.
No-one I knew votes BNP, probably, as they mostly seemed to get secure jobs in Local Government or the motor trade and thus have mortgages paid up and secure retirements, but they don't like the way things are going, and the nationality of each miscreant mentioned waves loud, if not the colour. With the advent of the freedom of the European market, incomers are reassuringly white these days but make noise, steal and generally invoke fear and resentment it seems. So maybe the BNP does come to call.
My school is now a comprehensive of course. Pretentious, but brick cloisters all closed up now it seems, health and safety probably,
I have never been back.
Our school houses were all named after monkish gangs, I was in Benedict [green], we also had Charterhouse [blue] Citeaux [yellow] and Clugny [red]. Our school shield was refused by the heraldic powers that be, as it was "colour on colour". Our head master swirled his gown and successfully pointed out precedents.
Our prefects' blazers were thin stripes of red, blue, green and yellow, my beret [detention if not worn All the way home] was royal blue with a long red tassel. pretentious moi!?
Obviously the secondary modern [for those who failed the 11+] wore unadorned green, if forced. I don't think i ever had a conversation with my primary school friends once I started at the grammar, even those who lived in the same road.
I won't go to any more reunions, they won't miss me.

jolly good

Yesterday we went up to the big city and went to see a play!
It was "God of Carnage" at the Gieldgud - doesn't that spelling look strange? I had to check it on the programme which we bore proudly home from our dash of culture.
It was written by Yasmina Reza who also wrote "Art" - which I had heard was excellent and now I wish I had bestirred myself to witness, as this play was excellent.
Very funny, very witty, intelligent and often surprising.
Sadly as I am an old codger a Matinee was thought appropriate. I assumed it would be half full with coach loads of Japanese, or similar. However, what do I know, not a lot, obviously.
The theatre was packed, and if my neighbour was any guide - well heeled and ....... arrogant. Well that is probably unfair, she had a loud, toffy nosed voice, and allowed her Chanel like jacket sleeve to dangle over the seat edge into my territory.
This is annoying to moi, I am always willing to fight for my share of the arm rest in any circumstance, this dangle was more subtle, but non the less encroaching.
I tried to ignore it, unsuccessfully, I tried leaning heavily on it, so that when she shifted in her seat she would feel the pressure, obviously the upper classes don't shift about, as no response.
In the end the play was so entrancing i forgot about it, most of the time.
It was so exciting to my tiny world to see Ken Stott in the flesh, sweating; Ralph Fiennes sneering - he seemed to continue thus throughout the curtain calls so maybe he was in that mood. Tamsin Greig, my hero from so many gog gems [Black books, Green Wing, Happiness, Love Soup] was excellent but dressed in a somewhat dowdy black jersey dress that didn't quite cut it as a well off Parisian [and she had a jumper on underneath] and Janet McTeer who had wandered in from Sense and Sensibility and undergone a complete change of century and personality.
It was great. How can they do that 5/6 times a week tho. Logically they could film it and then ........show the film...............but then I wouldn't have got splashed with water from the flying tulips.
Afterwards we pottered around, not a total joy as I rarely wear my respectable shoes, and eventually ended up in a wine bar, which normally i wouldn't dream of approaching, but somehow hoards of shouting young persons, gathered in single sex groups round scrubbed tables is entrancing in London.
It was like being in the parrot house at the zoo just as the keeper throws a packet of peanuts in the air.
The food, when served after several aeons, was very tasty and by the time we left the place was only half full, but still as noisy. I wondered if the sound was actually piped in as at new football grounds to establish atmosphere.
Coincidentally, on return, we found we had timed our re-entry into town to coincide with the locals exiting the footie. Altho they had drawn with Cardiff, they were not happy and wandered morosely to their cars, driving off with an apathy that meant it took twice as long to escape to rural peace.

colours

Managed to put some seeds into a tray today, so it really must be Spring, in spite of two days of snow showers. The snow falling amongst the big pink flowers of the magnolia was pretty impressive.
I saw some wonderful petrol blue agapanthus last summer,at Walberswick, and managed to get given some seeds, from a friend, so I bunged them in the tray; plus some Four o'clock plant seeds I nicked last autumn from the bank side down our lane.
I have just paused to look them up on the web, as I just arbitrarily decided what they are as the flowers come out in the later afternoon and seem to have more than one colour on a plant.
On the whole I know sod all about gardening, but seem to have all these snippets of what i choose to regard as information in my mind, could just as well be hallucination.
We bunged in some roses, after getting carried away at the Chelsea Flower Show, and then got bought a lovely purpley pink bush for our anniversary. Altho we have a fairly spacious garden, a lot of it is at 45 degrees, so bushes are not really appropriate as they tend to tip over and straggle down the hill. Eventually I found a space outside my work room window, so I am hoping to open the curtains one day and be serenaded by their colour and scent.
My workroom is colourful in itself, covered in fabrics and threads, but it is also a -black hole isn't appropriate, - more like one of those Damian Hurst swirly paintings, but more interesting.Unhappily it is a monster in that it eats things. I made some parts of an tassel for a bookmark, -The Golden Notebook specifically. As ms Lessing divided the book into the red, blue, black and yellow notebooks I thought it a good wheeze to make tiny ones for incorporating into the tassel, now nowhere to be found.
This is extremely annoying. Also I feel silly to be so disorganised, maybe they have slipped down the hill, maybe at the bottom amongst the hawthorns I will find all those things I have lost, including some interesting facts I can no longer remember.

stuck in a box

Well unfortunately you sometimes get what you wish for - big funeral yesterday, poor bloke who didn't want that trip to the crematorium, - leaving behind his wife and kids.
As I drove up round the corner of our lane there were two black coated undertakers directing traffic into the bungalows. Bit of a shock.
Huge turnout, church was packed, so was the road as a motor cyclist crashed, or was crashed into, up on the corner, so the main road was totally blocked, for hours.
Big black stretch limos; shiny hearse, sun heartlessly glinting off the engraved glass shielding the polished wooden of the coffin and stacks of irritated drivers, trying to thread through.
When I was a kid if we saw a hearse we used to touch our collars, and hang grimly on until we saw a four legged animal. The drivers were longing to touch their horns to clear a path, but under the circumstances just maintained a fierce stare.
Today there is a sad little parade of wreaths outside the church door, the flower shop girl[?]has carefully written out the messages, they can only be trite, but the sadness struggles through the banal words.
Words are so often banal, I write a blog almost nobody reads, I should know. We think in words, I think [ha] without words we would think in what, feelings, colours, dreams..........dunno.
I am going stir crazy again - being in the village too much; being retired; being old; again dunno.
I spend a lot of my evenings, let's be honest every evening watching television and stitching, I can't watch and do nothing, then I really go crazy.
It is like the box is my Sheharazade, every night more stories. Fortunately I can create my own schedule by recording what I want to see, and if necessary skipping the commercials to maintain the reality of the fiction.
Either that or read books, alternating genres, but always more stories. Very strange. Is it a need for words, ideas, an input of unreality, how much time do I spend in what passes for reality?
When I walk the dog, I day dream............and problem solve.I definitely work things out while I walk, maybe because I am insulated from all those words, except those inside my head.