playing skittles

I receive emails from the Cancer Charity that I support, todays asked me if I read the e-newsletter and what ideas I had for revamping it.

I never read it, and don't usually read the emails. I coped with my breast cancer by being frightened out of my socks, slowly recovering some equilibrium and ever since, about every six months, descending on the doctor witha new ache that i want to be reassurred about. Not very mature perhaps but that's the best I can do.

I reckon spending the rest of my life fighting morbid thoughts is burden enough, without adding new information on which to brood.

The cancer was twenty years ago now, and I don't think of it every day, but getting newsletters doesn't help this rickety fence of denial.

I am willing to support the ladder to help out others who find themsleves in a similar hole, but in the main I want to get on with Life.

The shock did make me re-assess to some extent, I became much less - discontented, less ambitious, not so full of myself. But of course I also have become much more full of myself, hugging myself close..................that's only human, being able to hold fast to two totally opposing positions at the same time.

It is heartening that throughout this time others that have been skittled by the dreaded Big C mostly seem to still be with us, so I guess the money is at least going to good effect.

PS Didn't have a piece involving skittles, so this merry romp is meant to remind me to have fun.

grime and crime

Sunshine after rain - couldn't really avoid doing some gardening.
We inherited these tall daisy plants [White Choristers?], which spread like billio, but are useful at this time of year, displaying an elegant sea of white. Very fresh.
However, once they have gone over, it is just a junk yard of dead heads towering above all else, so had to get out there with the secateurs, heaving some of them out every now and then, when the rest weren't looking.
Hidden below are other late summer plants requesting their turn for some sun, but also a carpet of the many varieties of grasses, some short, some long, all defiantly rooted and clinging on for dear life, cunningly they delve their roots under "proper" plants resulting in minor earthquake if I try and yank them up. I have the broken black nails and 3 plasters to evidence a battle well fought.
There is also creeping buttercup which i intend to spray with nasty stuff. We did have terrible Ground Elder, which has driven many to despair, but I upped the solution and frequency and for now it is subdued, it has obviously called up reinforcements.
We have a brown bin, which means once a fortnight the local council comes round and empties said bin of weeds and composts them. We have various composting arrangements in the garden involving worms in one and gentlemen peeing occasionally [at dead of night] on another, but weeds need the compost to reach a certain heat to destroy them so we assign them to the authorities to do with as they wish.
Sort of Vegetable Guantanamo.
Which leads me to our own home grown terrorists, who struck last night, presumably after the pub closed.
They ran amok down the lane destroying house signs and chucking solar night lights as they cavorted along. They ignored our doggy and the two dogs of our neighbour [fair enough as all doggies ignored them] and broke the Mercedes insignia off their elderly car. Lady down the hill lost her bird table.
The community policewoman has been informed so I expect developments.
I always fancied writing a crime novel so maybe this is the beginning.

fitting in

Have been invited to contribute to an exhibition on The Seven Deadly Virtues. H the gallery owner has done a fair bit of wikipedering to nudge us into pastures new.

Lust is already born,

and I have this lady

which deadly virtue I wonder?
My boxed ladies can probably be despair, it can be a creative emotion at times.

The Warring Angels must fit in somewhere. Obviously I just need a weird title and all my stuff finds a place!

tracy 4 coffeespooner at 10th August

Thoughts have been well manured, buried deep, time has passed, result may not make a beautiful plant.

dancers

cats and dogs

PS Just checked the Orwell diaries blog and he had similar weather "today", but more acceptably it wasn't cold and dark when the hard rain fell in Kent [with snakes].
Since my complaint the sun has come out and Hats and I had a lovely walk and met a cockerpoo, or spoodle, whichever you prefer. P craves one, I had been dismissive, but Chloe was very sweet and scampered gamely around as Hatters bowled her over and tried to roll her creamy, newly trimmed fur in the mud.
Owner - new to the village, otherwise i wouldn't have expected conversation, obviously - has problems in that her husband seems to be allergic to the house they have just moved into. Had to take him to A&E a few days ago, hopefully the surveyor will uncover the sacrificed outsider, or whatever, under the floorboards and all can be exorcised.

august

My environment has suddenly changed, which has at least jolted me out of neutral.
It is pouring with rain, and so dark with heavy clouds at 9a.m. that the lights have to go on.
This is August, I cannot believe it.
Already this month is a strange one, everyone with kids goes away, is getting ready to go away, getting over going away. This is pointless to older persons who have just got their garden looking nice, [though actually it is going over a bit now], but one does expect to sit out there beneath the sunshade and read the odd crime story.
But no it is dark, cool and wet.
In a way it is cosy to be in with all the windows pulled shut and the lights beaming out, but it all feels wrong.
Now the wind is gusting and the yews and hollies in the churchyard are writhing in quite an alarming manner. In the garden some of the hollyhocks have bitten the dust/mud and the passion flower I am trying to distract, so the wisteria can take over, is whipping around flinging hard little green fruits [full of pale little seeds], does anyone do anything with them?
The postman has been and gone accompanied by much barking from Hattie. She knows perfectly well who it is but she likes to remind everyone that she may be old and grey, but, like her mistress, she can still raise a racket if need be.
This postman is a locum, and rather than toil round in his baggy shorts, complaining that my herbaceous border gets his legs wet, this one speeds up in his red van and drops a load of pamphlets through the cat flap [we don't have a letter box] and roars off again.
I rarely get mail, as i rarely write letters.
God's business however often appears on the mat - hidden behind the window of an anonymous white envelope, fortunately addressed to the Treasurer of the Church - not me.
It would be disconcerting to actually receive a bill from God[dess] I would welcome the reassurance of a metaphysical being, but quake before its demands no doubt.
It would only end in an argument, there is, after all, much to complain of, despite the get out clause of free will, - starting with the current weather.

composted for coffeespooner

I have been reading various reviews of the Tracy Emin exhibition, which is frustratingly in Edinburgh, rather a long way to go.

I have seen quite a lot of her work, starting with the tent with the Names of Everyone I have Slept With stitched all over it at the Serpentine some years ago. It was quite a shock in a challenge kind of way, the rest of the exhibition was progressive textile work, but I kept returning to circle and peer into the little enclosed space.

At first I was dismissive, anyone can stitch, not very neatly, names of far too many men onto this unprepossessing surface. It took some time to twig that the names included Everyone she had slept with, - her family, her friends, the foetus from her abortion.

The enclosed space, womblike itself, became a more tender enclosure, the rough stitching a much stronger expression of all the feelings that the names anchored into the fabric. I had never heard of her, but I thought she had used the shape and the stitching to communicate so much to me. Moreover it was textile art, definitely not craft, [the materials and finish were not paramount}

As with most of her work I felt it wasn't just her life, it was an aspect of female experience that she was representing. She gave the terrible mess we make of our lives from when we are adolescent - status and understanding, instead of guilt and dismissal.

Since then I have tried to see what she does next, not usually too difficult as she also has excellent skills in doing work that gets noticed by its notoriety rating. As with most contemporary artists she deals in life & death and identity and sex, but perhaps she gets more stick than most because it is female angst that she explores.

I find her work disturbing because she excavates all the feeling and fears I have experienced and now try to forget, and don't have the courage to explore in my stuff. I sit on my hill hoping I won't have to face any more hard work, just yet.

Contemporary art requires we bring our feeling and thoughts to the piece, it literally doesn't "paint a picture" . To make themselves heard artists have to have a status in this celebrity culture, make a splash. damian hurst's diamond encrusted skull says it all to me death and terrible beauty - the futility of trying to grasp riches, at the same time that he does it himself an annoying contradiction that worms and burrows into ones consciousness.

Tracy Emin is confessional, on one level exploitatively so, but also honest. I am not sure how I would react to rooms and rooms of her howls of out rage, it may seem too one note, i would love to find out.

water ways

Have been away for a couple of days thanks to the Queen Mother [long story] no doubt influenced by our birth signs we set course yet again for water, and ended up cruising up [down] the Thames in the rain. More fun than it sounds.

The boatman, stoutly Chelsea, intoned the list of interest, MI5 - not where I thought they were, MI6 - who were.

Lord Archer's somewhat dilapidated penthouse suite raised a small communal raspberry as the road bridges slid overhead - painted sage green, pretty pink with gilded fripperies.

This one, for good measure, has worthy Victorian statues. This is Art, they were all women which was rather sweet or irritating..

The railway bridges are more solid and serious. Many more trees than you would expect when pounding the fume filled city streets.

The splended power station is Listed, meaning the main structure must remain; after many attempts to turn it into a disco, may now become guess what, luxury apartments.

Gradually the trees win through and there you are in Kew.

If you are lucky and have caught an earlier tide you can slide thru the cool green locks at Teddington and end up at Hampton Court. But it is a tidal river, which I should have remembered, [after all we live next to one here too], and we couldn't get that far this time.

Three men in a Boat has always been a favourite of mine, Hattie could be Montmorency and I would definitely remember the tin opener, as I like pineapple a lot.

Next day it was raining rather more aggressively, if in spurts, so we ended up at the National Portrait Gallery as a reverse oasis.

The annual Portrait Competition was on, rather irritatingly it was obsessed with painting of the photo realism variety, huge and pockmarked faces gazed soulfully out. Rather clever but boring IMO, everyone looks mournful as if they can't remember where they left their smoothie.

Foyles provided further shelter, now swept clean of all idiosyncrasies; no more running around with slips of paper to at least three different pay stations before they would deign parting with a book.

I bought two of the long list Bookers, no display of the collection as yet, Foyles does at least maintain the dignity of less haste - Case of Exploding Mangoes [reportedly funny about general Zia, neat trick if true] and Child 44. This one is the first ever? Thriller to make the Booker lists. It is unremittingly tragic - it would take a heart of stone not to roar with laughter or curl up and whither away. Only those with a strong sense of humour should take the journey.