Did Eve stitch the fig leaves together?

On Friday I went up to London to see a couple of textile art shows. It was so sunny I didn't take a coat!
Today it is cold and raining.
The first exhibition was by the group I run with at times trying to get myself to make art.
They hold the show in galleries in the City, which is nicely posh but costs half your limbs in hanging fees etc. if you want your work shown and sold there, so the best you can do usually is come out even, if you are lucky.
This event was by about a dozen graduates, mostly they work part time, distance learning, so it takes years and much perseverance, moaning and groaning. Tutors come and go as i think they don't get paid much and find more and more work dumped on them. Having doyens of the stitching world on their books is very inviting to tentative students, who find that by the time they have signed up and shelled out -the likes of Alice Kettle, or Gwen Hedley have shaken the dust.
This year there were 3 or 4 students who had really done well IMO, and I was very tempted to just "do it".
I was overheard talking to one of the artists by another woman who was teetering on the edge of signing away her spare time and savings, and we started egging each other on in that supportive way women with mutual interests sometimes do.
I say sometimes in view of "comments" a previous blog attracted which didn't seem to share my experiences of female solidarity. I certainly never experienced it with my mother, but i have been helped a lot by the friendship of other women.
Maybe the personal does affect the political so strongly that it influences the way we perceive our lives. But perhaps being on ones own, trying to earn a living, without the financial support of a partner, opens ones eyes to the power of patriarchy outside the domestic experience.
I also went the Haywood Gallery on the South Bank to see the Crochet Coral, displaying the reality of hyperbolic space so colourfully. No photos allowed and no cards, so a memory only.
All of the above is usually women's art, or is it craft? It is certainly B list in the Art World.
Textile degrees are largely getting transmuted into some kind of Fine Art degree where work can be done with needle and thread, if one is stubborn. This is a good thing in the way that the art training can lead, but not so good that experienced textile teachers find it hard to get employed to pass on their skills.
Likewise City and Guilds stitching courses are closing all over the country, they don't fit into the curriculum funding or system, so the apprenticeship in practical study is also lost.
Some women somewhere have always stitched, always delighted in putting parts together to make a whole. I moved from sculpture to stitching so that I could pick it up at any time, fit it into my day. Maybe that is why it is so rarely Art, not sufficient tunnel vision, too much compromise.
Like my blogger friend who has changed her profile to mother and grandmother first, I think I will not sweep all aside to do the degree, but I will keep picking bits up and making something.

green & purple

I find, reading about Millicent Fawcett [see stitch in time] that there is a difference, jealously guarded at one time I expect, between a suffragette and a suffragist. I have not heard of the latter - it seems they were the non-violent wing of the revolution.
Just goes to show that if you want to get noticed, you have to make a splash, preferably of blood, sweat or tears.
At one time I marched - abortion, peace, ban the bomb, housing-before-townhall-car-parks.........topics large and small.
One thing i noticed even then was the preponderance of young men keen to sweep all before them. In time I began to wonder if the testosterone was the main stimulant, rather than the principle.
It wasn't until I had kids in the 70s, that I began to make sense of it all.
Until then, an only child, then a teacher in my own little empire I didn't really suspect that my frustrations may have political connotations. I just thought I was inadequate; terrified of not having a boyfriend, my main aim to be married and thus worthy.
Having children finally made me realise the dependency of my position.
I was reliant on my man, the system, the culture to support me, as I was suddenly in full time support of my kids, they had to come first.
I have always been self centred, willful but once a woman has kids, I felt I was vulnerable ......... No longer a free agent, had I ever been a free agent?
We moved to Carlisle and in a bid to meet people [women?] I joined a new group, the Carlisle Women's' Action Group, we read Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller and suddenly it all made sense.
Now, I find when talking to other women my age, they couldn't remember what the symbol for Women's' Liberation was.
The green and purple of the suffragettes also had to be dredged up from the recesses.
This week it is coincidentally 80 years since all adult women got the vote.
What would Millicent say if she knew older ones don't remember and younger ones feel it is irrelevant.

uncle's birthday

Out and about with elderly relatives again today, this time mother's younger sister [84] and her husband who is "one year older" today.
They emigrated 50+ years ago to Canada where he taught in "special" education so that in their spare time they could swirl round the provinces, bemusing all with their ballroom dancing lessons and exhortations to cook proper stews, not beefburgers.
Now they are two small tortoises, peering out of their shells, one with disapproval the other with a genial smile.
We had birthday lunch at the local pub, which was fairly vile but they worked at it solidly until they had cleared their plates, just as they commanded we should do when we were kids - "think of the starving children in Africa"
Now we taunt them with advice to "just eat what you want, leave the rest", knowing that they are congenitally incapable of doing it.
As a child, I used to hate marrow, parsnips and spinach, mother would make me sit there till it was finished, or serve it up for the next meal. Now I love them.
Meal times were often fraught, we had a small metal table in the kitchen goodness knows why it was metal.
The dog , as a bored puppy, left alone most of the day, would snatch out the cutlery drawer in his teeth and shake it all about, so I would return from school to mayhem. It must have made a satisfying racket.
My father was often short tempered, but mother insisted we three sat up together and had a proper dinner every evening, once the cutlery had been replaced, even though she was returning from full time work and I had already eaten school dinners.
Arguments often erupted, especially as I became a teenager, father would throw his dinner at the wall, mother would cry, the dog would cower in the broom cupboard. Such fun.
As they say - every family should have two parents; it makes such a good slanging match. Father blacked my eye, broke my ear drum, generally set about him. No doubt I was intensely annoying with all that arrogance that only a 14 year old can produce.
Benign Uncle would have been a different father, and I would have now been a different person.
My canadian cousin however rants about his termagant mother, of whom he is still scared.
I'm not frightened of any of them now, maybe it is easier for girls to separate as they move alliances; boys are always sons maybe, ashamed of abandoning their mother and trying to be better than their father; girls can't wait to ditch fathers for their partner and become sympathetic friends with their mother - or not.

stitch in time

Last week involved lots of stitching groupings and me with a nasty old cold, thus tolerance levels on all sides were tested.
The Regional Embroiderers Guild arranged for volunteers to go to the Steam Engine Museum at Leiston and do some research, in the hopes that we would cough up a textile response for exhibition next Spring.
I took a short cut by taking lots of pics and coughing up my own claggy immediate feed back, and then chugging off. Hopefully no-one got the lergy as a result.
The cogs and wheels with a side order of spanners were nirvana to the patch workers, but I am not so sprauncy at bodging a perfect circle.
However fortunately the Garretts who started the family business also spawned Millicent Fawcett and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson so hopefully a piece of purple and green and strong jawlines will evolve.
Then we had a work shop on printing on textiles [not computers, pretty colours]. The tutor was muscular in her approach, much like her work. No shrinking violet here, not when raging scarlet can explode forth.
She is of an age now when she would really rather we all pissed off, so she could get on with her own work.
Her spine is bending, a physical expression of her frustrations? There is a time to teach, and there is a time when it gets old. However, presumably she needs the money, which she did give value for, if in a rather disgruntled way.
She makes printing blocks from unlikely materials, and also runs a roller over them which transfers the pattern onto the roller whence it can be rolled off, until the colour runs out, on to the fabric.
This all looks a bit garish, but the trick is then to brush dyes over the lot, which unifies everything and gives some startling colour effects.
Finally I went to my stitching group where we are constructing Big Women, one each, larger than life.
By now I was thoroughly disgruntled myself, or maybe I had been all along, so I left early, lugging "Gertrude" with me.
She sits in the passenger seat quite comfortably [I don't let her drive - she has no head] no-one seems to notice.

aunty is ninety

My auntie is 90, [my mother, her younger sister by three years - middle one, explains a lot] organised a birthday party for her.
The youngest sister [by another three years] came over from Canada, aunty's son managed to dredge up in time, neighbours gathered, friends and family descended on the parish hall and a quiet time was had by all.
The three sisters circulated gravely, two husbands in tow. Elderly dinghies comes to mind, they are used to bobbing in the wake,though they would probably prefer to be thought of as tugs, bravely battling through - bringing the willful liner safely into port.
My father was more of a corvette [he was a torpedo man in the war, and that is not sexual innuendo, however appropriate in his case] smashing through the rough seas and dying off early.
My grand parents despaired for a son, and instead won three male grand children and me. Our parents each had one child [youngest sister married twice], which again says something about being bought up as one of three - sisters.
We four cousins gravitated to one table and circled the wagons against the wrinkles of time lapping at our beach.
Each of us has been divorced at least once, our parents not at all. I was the first of this generation, very embarrassing, but now with the Royal family adopting the technique it feels more acceptable, perhaps, to the aunties and uncles.
My uncle is 90 in nine months, I doubt he will get a party thrown for him. He did play Happy Birthday tho, on the piano, we all sang - auntie beamed.
It was as it should be.

ghost writer

Obviously bread pudding is essential to recuperation, as I still feel wobbly, not quite in focus.
I must wobble up to the shop in a mo and see if they have some.
In the meantime I shall blog, which will reassure me that I do exist.
Maybe blogging is an alternative to appearing on the television - the ultimate endorsement that one is really here?
If so - what has television, blogging etc. replaced ?
Perhaps, once, people were more secure in their own place in society, - you knew where you belonged. Maybe - these days - [probably not a phrase we used when we were younger] a good proportion of youngsters just feel even more alienated from that feeling of belonging
Now we are led to believe young persons just want to "be famous", which no doubt makes some of us feel very smug and virtuous. Especially when the rider is added - "or infamous, tho i doubt they know the difference"
Cultures do move on, I always thought i would be in touch with the zeitgeist, I think am curious, empathic, fairly adaptable and most of all creative, which always supplies the itch to move on, explore further, never be satisfied.
But here I am sidelined and in the main, preferring it. I don't want to take on windmills any more, just photograph them, and then niggle away at the frustration of making something individual of the image in my mind.
Dunno why, should stick to gardening really, but looking at the jungle that has shot up this week while I have been out of it, I understand why gardening is not enough. I want to make things that stay where I put them.
Ceramics is even annoying as the bloody things get knocked over and break.
I want to stay where I am, my utmost creation, never broken.
Silly girl.
So, to stagger after a thought, long since cruising over the horizon, as society gets faster, more diverse, fragmented, all those things which make me feel I never catch up with myself - do ambitions get more ephemeral?
Maybe younger persons feel being famous [in the media] makes one part of the rush, integrated into the glitter.
Whereas old sods like me, just see the negatives. But for the bulk of the ill educated poorly paid, career-less young - there is no chance of making it in the present society we flourish smugly in their faces.
Or do I just need bread pudding?

bread pudding

I have a horrible, horrible cold and I feel foul.
I couldn't go to pottery yesterday nor could I go to the Threads and Fabrics Sale today.
Will I get up to Leiston Museum tomorrow to partake in the Embroiderers Guild response work day, I wonder.
You can bet that on Sunday I will be able to go to Auntie Cinders 90th birthday party.
The only good thing is that I have a yen for bread pudding, which is sold by the village shop, and being as I am ill, I can justify indulging it.
However it transpires that they have none.

in my shed

Very sunny today, so sitting in my shed [with benefit of extension lead].
I have been trying to Do something with the honesty, in a half arsed way. TAGS exhibition theme next month is Imprint so I thought I could print the honesty ?leaves on some see thru material, with white paint, as a starter. hmmmmmmmm needs more work/thought.
I am not good with "fragile", the effect I am after.
Have started reading the Reluctant Fundamentalist, which is either very good or very annoying, not sure which yet. It comes after a medieval who dunnit so a good contrast anyway.
I walked doggy in my crocs this morning [as opposed to the wellies of yore] and then got trapped by a huge lane filling puddle or three. Clambered round the edges OK, but crocs have these magic holes which admit water, sand, stones, anything I would rather not get between my toes. Had to clean same with leaves once on the dry side, and felt very medieval.
Amazon finally tipped up with some hard backs today. I do the free postage if you order more than £15 or there abouts, but the orders seem to take ages lately, so I guess they are trying to dissuade me from this method.
I think friend P has paid for a years free postage, and she gets her books toute suite, but it does seem to be a contradiction. I must stop being stubborn and ask details.

Spring into Summer

Saw the Summer Exhibition at the RA, a bit pedestrian except for young Tracy's room.
She at least did have some contemporary stuff, and most had attitude - so as a viewer I had a reaction beyond the irritated puzzlement most modern art engenders in moi.
The pile of pink willies which shadowed a 2 faced man on the wall was clever, the black balustrades were a poor copy of Louise Bourgeois' "people" [however her own saggy lump was not exciting]. The rampant zebra was trying too hard, in all senses, as was the triangle of pubic hair. Tracy's own painting was bold and delicate at the same time, and unsettling.
One huge painting in the other rooms that I did like was a painted mass of white ovals, which reminded me to try and do something with the honesty which is raining seeds all about me, even now, as it dries. It's clear whiteness reminded me of being in Anthony Gormley's Cloud Room, but the painting was more peaceful {I got the frightened giggles in the Cloud Room]
Lots of RAs had put in lots of big works, much like last years, presumably they sell, there can be no other excuse for boring sexy collages and spiky cactus's repeated ad nauseam. Lucian Freud had a nice low key portrait, pointing up the pomposity of many of the RAs even more.
Most of the other stuff was crowded in at the end, squashed in irregular tiers reaching the ceiling. You couldn't concentrate on one piece, without all the jostling crowd teeming round it, capturing your attention too.
The Anthony Caro in the courtyard is now boring - it might have had more oomph possibly in the 70s, however it made excellent seating for the weary.
We didn't buy anything, the white ovals were on a canvas bigger than my room I should think, and I have enough pubic hair to deal with already.
Having lunch on the South Bank was perfect in the hot sun, and made me envy all those MPs who can have a second house in London courtesy of the tax payer.
The rest of the week has been teeming rain and grey skies.
Unusually I was out stitching in various locations almost every day last week. June and July are frenetic in Sewing Circles, workshops, exhibitions, Open Studios.
I suppose it is all part of the spring ritual, sap rising, birds nesting, England beating New Zealand at cricket, [beating anyone at cricket is a surprise].
Just half listened to Nadal beating Federer, seems all wrong. I tend to favour the oldie in these situations these days.
I took myself to see Sex in the City on Tuesday, it was quite good/naughty fun, but I came away a bit depressed.
In the series the women seemed livelier, more open to choices, in the film it all centred on getting your man, even tho 3 of them are supposed to have careers no import was attached to them except making Miranda too tired to have sex with her man.
Samantha had her 50th birthday at the end and freed herself to go hunting, but I was left with the feeling that from J Austen till today the story seems to stop when the woman marries.
At my age I need more encouragement than that.
Am I am forgetting that men still control Hollywood, or do women still buy that storyline - as Carrie might ask .

broken pots

I hung my big red bath towel out to dry this morning and it hasn't stopped raining since, this is not the way to start a new day/week/month/rest of my life.
The garden has had loads of rain already. The grindel [stream that runs under the hillside and pops up in the water meadow down by the river] is very full of itself, all the bird baths are smugly reflecting the grey clouds, the footpaths across the farm need wellies to make them passable, enough is enough.
We had a dry and sunny day for our local arts and crafts exhibition on Saturday, 14 of us demonstrated our creativity to the gawping public.
Much gawping, little buying.
We covered our costs, bonded affectionately as we sat and worked all day, and bathed in the glow of praise but the result one desires is the committment of passing over money and proudly taking the prize home [seller and buyer].
I sold some textile postcards, and some picture cards of my stitchings, and bought a pair of earrings from Silver Mongoose, on the table opposite.
No change there then.
Lee brought a kick wheel and lots of kids and parents had a go at throwing a pot to general hilarity.
The patchworkers bought their machines but people weren't as interested in having a go as we thought they would be. Nearly sold a beautiful quilt, that would have swelled the coffers.
Everyone was fascinated by the two lacemakers tho.
Jo had made a selection of baskets; of course our woodturner sold most, people really like the gorgeous grains and silky smooth textures. Perfect unbreakable gifts, unlike one of my bowls. I managed to knock the head off one of the ladies cavorting down the sides of one as I packed them in the car boot to bring home. Bloody ceramics, not reliable. Spend hours trying to perfect them, risk consigning them to the vagaries of the kiln, and then break the bloody thing.
Pottery did improve my behavious in one way tho; I used to throw my creations against the wall when I lost my temper, to show my partner how anguished were my feelings I suppose. In the end I realised the only result was a lot of broken pottery.
Gus sat next to me and carved wooden spoons, so nice to have a personally carved spoon to stir ones soup. He claims the skill is just called Spooning, but initially he uses a Bodgers workhorse to saw the rough shape.
Bodging - an activity I practise every day.

behind the .........

It is raining again, the only consolation is that it is raining in Paris too [according to the tennis] so I don't feel totally victimised.
C, who lives in Scotland records that her town is twinned with the Germans, [well not all of them] and that some of her neighbours are not keen.
I found, when in Wick, that some Scots prefer the Germans to the English, a salutary lesson, reinforced annually now by the Eurovision Song Contest.
Here, we are twinned with the French, which leads us to cadge coach lifts when the local junior Jazz band etc. are practising detente. Arras is a market town like us, except most of it was not knocked down in the enthusiasm of the sixties to build rectangular brick blocks all over the place.
We do still have town square with a pompous Victorian town hall and even some outside cafe bars in the summer.
Arras however has two huge and magnificent cobbled medieval town squares, either side of their Gothic town hall. The edges of the squares have ancient stone pillared colonnades and 16th and 17th century Flemish style houses provide the shops and hotels.
Both here and there market days bring in some life, in Arras at religious festival times they have processions and a big fair which rackets round most of the night.
Here we have one small roundabout for the holidaying kiddies and a poor droopy Xmas tree, fenced off in case the local gentry should take a fancy to the few trailing bits of tinsel that miserably cling, until the cold winds whip them away.
Actually Arras town hall and much of the town was flattened by said Germans in the First Big War, but was carefully restored in the twenties when presumably one could do such things without being allied with the likes of Prince Charles.
It is nice for me that in medieval times [and between Other Quite Big Wars]it was a textile town, specialising in the tapestries that Polonius? had to hide behind.
When I was doing my C&Gs creative Embroidery we took an swap exhibition over there to some enthusiasm. We went with the Fine Arts faculty who were very proud of their melted marshmallows dripping down boards etc. The French, bless them, seemed to prefer our more colourful contributions.

a feminist issue

I have spent most of the day making a fat lady, or another fat lady if you count me.[here's one i made earlier}
She is calico bound and stuffed with lots of wadding and old wools which I always knew I would find a use for one day.
She, [must give her a name], is life size but not very demanding as yet, as she has no head, arms or bottom half of legs. She does have, however, a lovely fat tummy and bottom and a fairly fine pair of boobs. I suspect the latter need some help, boobs [and lips] are always more subtle than one would think.
I shall call her Clarissa.
Clarissa comes about because my stitching group, S.L.A.P.P.E.R.S, had a rush of blood to the collective head and decided to make 6 life size fat ladies the centre piece of our next exhibition.
The concept was keenly adopted before common sense could prevail and additionally it was decided that each F.L. should be covered [dressed] in the method of her downfall.
Clarrisa is to be dressed in crisp bags.
Her friends will display the wrappers of sweeties, booze, advertising, cakes and for some reason the last - will be covered in zips and buttons [her maker is a Danish lacemaker and makes up her mind differently at times...........]
Stitching crisp bags together will be interesting, tho not as interesting as sweetie wrappers or cake ?tins perhaps.
I do like making female figures in whatever medium, what to do with them, once I have finished, is more of a problem.
I led a workshop for another of my stitching groups, T.A.G.S,[what diverting names we have, not as good as hairdressers tho] in making wire figures a month or so back, which we will display in a Circle Dance at our July exhibition. Although they enjoyed getting a figure together, only a few really developed the figure further -into something individual and different.
I suspect there is an Art and Craft division there.
I tried to explain to the members that I like to make fat-ladies because they have female strength, rather than be judged as sex objects. They took it personally unfortunately and were not best pleased.
The local exhibition this weekend is with yet another group, Peninsula Crafts, a rather down to earth name,, where we will each demonstrate our art/craft. The plan is that each will have a table and 2 screens behind, where we will do, for the day, whatever it is that keeps us off the streets.
We aspire to sell some of our stuff and also encourage other local people to join. Usually we have a rather pompously contrived "exhibition" where I suspect I provide a backdrop for the wood turners and jewellery makers to sell their stuff.
Truth is that if I try and make cushions or something useful I just can't get it together to make anything worthwhile. What I like doing is to cobble together my ladies in whatever medium happens to be at hand.
I do have some quite nice pottery figures this year, but will have to sell them for twopence to get rid of them, which I should do, but I get shirty and pompous myself about selling so cheap.
Last week I made a rather nice little clay figure, but just as I had successfully fired her once and was ready to fire her glaze, I knocked her off the stand she was perilously waiting on, and she broke her foot.
At least with fabrics I can drop them and the cat can sleep on them and they still come up smiling.
What I am doing in all these groups is - mostly suffering. I am not at ease in any situation in which I am not firmly in charge, and then if I do manage a coup, the resultant responsibility destroys me.
However one must get on with it, or go potty at home.

42

"If we had a keen vision and feeling for all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity".
Just struggled through Zadie Smith's article in today's Guardian, discussing Middlemarch - and George Eliot's exploration of a search for - truth.
I relate to the thought, as the wind from that roar gets in my head quite often, blogging is one of the activities that quietens it.
GE/ME/ZS felt Spinoza got to the core of the meaning of life with the advice to cling to - feeling into knowledge, knowledge into feeling.
This rooting for feeling appeals to me, rather than trying to rid oneself of all emotion.
GE, Zadie claims, I think [and I am grateful for any help either can give me to unpick what each is going on about] that through our own experiences and imagination we can learn what it is that each of us needs to grow. Not so much through theories or explanations of "facts". Most of all the experience of love helps us to grow.
I guess loving child/partner/friend/parent does eclipse at times the terrible fascination with oneself.
I have read Middlemarch a couple of times I guess, but I think i will give it another go this summer.
I once read Daniel Deronda in it's entirety on a fast train to and from Granada, but I couldn't remember a word about it, and when I tried again recently I didn't like it much, and didn't finish.
Hopefully Zadie and Dorothea will encourage me forward.
Re-reading books at different ages is interesting. I loved the Golden Notebook in my 20s, Womens' Room in my 30s but a couple of years ago I couldn't get into either of them.
Once on a train [again] to and from Cornwall I was reading Mr Pickwick, when we got home I couldn't extricate my mind from the characters and was very confused indeed until revived with a cup of tea, followed by a long sleep.
David Baddiel, again in the Guardian Review today rings the bells for Jane Austen - no it is the Books section of the Times [we have both so him upstairs can go to the pub and do the crosswords].
DB says she has "all the key modern realist devices; ironic narration; structural unity; transparency of focus; ensemble characterisation; fixed arenas of time and place and most importantly, the giving up of the fantastical in favour of the notion that art should represent life as it is actually lived in all its wonderful ordinariness"
Coo.
But I like it.

Marvel

This is my Marvel stitching machine, which I still haven't quite sorted out. It looks more like a syringe for delivering heroin than a lady's stitching aid.

Maybe I should have tried it out today, in one form or another, as I made a right mess of covering some cushions with my patchwork fat ladies.

I really should stick to Art, I am not clever enough for Craft. I expect in 1918, whoever first had this gadget was a marvel of neatness and expertise.

The only needlework I was taught at primary school [or not] was to hem round a napkin [no, no, those stitches are far too large] - encouragement was not yet considered a teaching aid.

When I was eleven we girls all had to make an apron for Domestic science, while the boys knocked up a table or something manly. My green check pinny turned out wonky, as did my later fish pie or fruit salad. Neither of which troubled my parents dining table, as there was no way they were going to survive the three mile trip home on the top deck of the No. 62 bus.

Hastings

Once again we invaded Hastings, for the fifth time it seems. I could never understand people going back to the same holiday time and again, but now we seem to have joined yet another club I never foresaw.
The cottage is in the Old Town, under the East Cliff, a terrace of 5 built in the first decade of the 1800s for local fishermen, just one room wide, 3 stories and now Grade 2 listed the owner boasts. Didn't stop him bricking over the back garden since we last visited.
All the fishermen's houses have small gardens I note, no time to plant and weed, no energy left perhaps. The rest of the area is old and higgety piggety, poor man's Brighton lots of arty types pottering about, now growing lots of colourful flowers in as many pots as they can stack.
After a late breakfast we climb Tackleway and then the steps through the trees, up onto the cliffs grassy tops, led by Hattie's waggy tail. Lots of nesting magpies, skylarks and very noisy gulls.The magpies are extremely arrogant and just sit on the ground eyeing us with one gimlet eye, deciding whether we are worth moving for, usually not. Likewise the baby bunnies, but in their case maybe it is youthful ignorance.
The gorse is over now, concentrating on making seeds to pop in the heat of August
so the broom is taking it's turn before the bullying brambles and unfurling bracken subdue everything.
I am impressed that I now know this succession, having grown up on a new post war council estate. I was allocated a small strip in our unruly garden and poked in lupin seeds, which obligingly grew, so i have been fond of them ever since.
Lunch was often taken at the FILO [First in Last Out] and dinner at the Dragon [arty wine bar, mixed matched tables and playing the blues].
George Street in the Old Town has many many junk shops, tho some proprietors would not relish the title.
I bought a bag of abandoned white damask napkins for 50p to dye and stitch, some mixed threads - I can sell anything she proclaimed, wet fish, anything and an old Hand Stitching "machine", patent 1918 applied for, broken needle but may be fixable. Given that the parts may not all be there, I beat her down from a fiver to £2.
It was great to be away, no surprises, every minute of the day comfortably programmed ....oh dear.
The fishing boats are more adventurous,adventuring out to sea all night, smashing back onto the shingle at high tide, dragged to safety by their own tractor. Each has a long line up the shingle of piles of nets and tarpaulins and mysterious paraphernalia, reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut's alien characters that see everyone in the context of their previous life, all their individual histories trailing behind them.
I realised when I was away that sometimes I feel like those boats, now in one element [the sea - happy creative] and then beached in total misery. Come to think of it I have yet to see the boats ?dragged out to sea, maybe that is my problem. I get stuck in the sand too often.

tripping

Sunshine beats fog. It is very hot today.
L. just got back from a sketching trip in Namibia [posh or what] and reckons it is hotter here. ["Different kind of heat" - of course].
She sketched a purple and orange ochre land, with giraffes and seals and lions.
I am off to Old Hastings tomorrow, seagulls, chip papers and fishing boats rushing straight onto the beach, bow first - then a tractor pulls them further up, used to be a horse or two. I like the confidence as it crashes up out of one element - smash onto another.

howl

Some days a dark fog descends and there is nothing to do but howl at the moon, or in my case become intravenously linked to the television until mind reboots.

St Mary at the Quay

Mrs Lusty is in a church, one of those surplus to requirements. It is pared back to the plaster, cool and high, soulless, definitely redundant. The altar is fenced off to protect the loss of ritual being exposed, tidied away, no longer needed on voyage. Redundant.
We spent a week in Norfolk once exploring redundant churches, they have a society of course, and thus a leaflet.
Most were sitting quietly in the fields, churchyards full of the black death that finally left them abandoned.
Mostly they were built 12th centuryish, small, walls white plastered at a later more severe time but now peeling damply back to shyly reveal the red ochre outlines of paintings that used to revel in the Holy stories.
Very quiet in there, just the noise of the scraping as the big iron key turns and the doors open.
You have to collect the key from a nearby cottage, from someone who now works in the town, or maybe commutes to a bigger one.
Or probably goes nowhere much these days.
The fields around are wide and flat, a few clumps of trees, lots of sky, some rooks and often a skylark shouting excitedly, too high to see.
Mrs. Lusty's church is right in town tho, on the road that runs by the docks, one of many, many churches built later in the fifteenth century and onwards when the town was rich and rich men wanted to buy a place in heaven too.
It has a hammer beam roof and tall, tall arches the length of it. But the water it is so near - that floated the barges that carried the trade that paid for the church that fatty built - made it very damp, even then.
Then the Germans bombed the docks, leaving it wobbly, so now it is only good for arty types to camp out in and do their strange stuff until someone with the right forms can get it dried out and steadied and then do some worthwhile social work from it's shelter.
So there is Mrs Lusty. Looking a little fragile herself, uncorsetted by a frame as she is, but proud to be shown with other Art, no Craft in sight.
Quite a lot of avant guarde student art, Union Jacks splashed with rude words and pixelled hugenesses titled Portal and the like.
Being as it is now on a noisy one way system, out of the shopping town with no parking places, it is doubtful that many will get to view, but display has it's own rewards at times, as long as it doesn't involve raincoats.

making a spectacle

I have two pairs of spectacles now, one for Blog etc. and one for every day life. I can't see real life with these specs, every thing is blurry, not as blurry if I take them off altogether.
I don't need number 1 specs to read, or eat and I usually take them off when I am speaking to someone face to face - eyeball to eyeball. I have them on a chain round my neck, number 2 specs are supposed to sit on my desk, here, waiting to be useful.
Of course this morning I set out in the car with No.2 specs on my head and No.1 specs on my nose.
I measured the distance I needed for the optician by reaching out my arm till my fist hit the screen, straight from the shoulder.
Direct hit, no fannying around.
I obviously don't have much to write about today, but I am averse to fighting my way back into Blogspots good books, so I am trying to keep the contact regular, and thus be recognised and allowed entry.
It hailed today.
Very English, discuss the weather when all else fails.
The hailstones were large and sparkly in the sun. I didn't witness the hailing, as i was in an alternative weather zone 2 miles away where there was a thunder and lightening storm. I feared no evil being balanced on my four trusty rubber tyres.
It is sunny again now.
I took Mrs. Lusty down to a local exhibition yesterday, and tomorrow we will go and visit her at the Private View.

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.

stoney path of good intentions

Cor! sun in the sky, washing on the line, children playing in the gardens on their Easter holidays, must be Spring.
T is patrolling the churchyard checking for falling gravestones. Government health and safety directive;- someone kneeling to pray, replacing a wind-blown plastic flower, getting a stone out of their hoof, may lean for support on a gravestone - it may topple and they may then ...........need a funeral in double quick time.
[Added problem - The Crematorium is backed up as usual I expect.]

plantings

First day warm enough [for me] to do some gardening. The soil is sandy and free draining here, but is saturated today with all the rain we have been having.
I think I read once that Native Americans despair of our English attitude to rain, they say that if we only reported it as a blessing, instead of moaning, we would have a happier more balanced reaction to weather.
I suspect the NA may not have lived in Carlisle, which should be pronounced phonetically to rhyme with drizzle.
Rain was forecast but so far has not arrived to bless us.
I chopped down a large portion of the yucca. This fat spiky fellow had outgrown the conservatory, and so after much kicking at it's stubborn pot, was eventually separated from same and placed in the common soil outside my workroom window.
I assumed it would then not do very much, facing early morning frosts and winds straight from Siberia,topped off with a weedy English sun.
However it grew an even sturdier trunk, divided to make a tree, and threatened anyone who approached with blindness. But over the years I have ceased to admire and become querulous, how about my yellow rambler rose in the shade behind this exotic, where ever yuccas come from they can now go back.
I threw some little daffodil bulbs, [received from polite ladies who lunch, a gorgeous yellow on a dank day, but now just straggly leaves], into various holes had a word with the lilies [all soggy and not trying] and pronounced myself - Done.
Most of the flowers in the church yard are plastic, and have added some gaiety to counter the threat of the dark yews.
When the church was demolished by the doodle bug they rebuilt it with an entrance path from the road. I suspect they [god's bureaucrats] sold off some church land to pay for the concrete eyesore they then erected, which meant the original path was leading nowhere - no comment].
However the yews that stood along the abandoned way still gloom at each other.
I take the doggy that way so she can wee in the pightle that runs round the outside of the churchyard and not on the incumbents, but i don't walk between the yews.
God's busybodies have tried to ban doggies and plastic flowers at different times but failed.

keeping my head above water

After a good run of books, I seem to be chucking them to one side lately, untidy, impatient, expensive, loads of sins.
I can't seem to get into Benjamin Black [ aka John Banville - Booker winner] even tho these 2 latest books a have a crime inserted [thus the name disguise] and have been widely praised. I knew I would never read his winning sad story [life is sad enough] but at the mo his thriller has underwhelmed, tho I will give it another go.
I also got [i.e. paid Amazon] The Race by Richard North Patterson, as I had heard it enthusiastically reviewed on radio 5 [3pm Thursdays]. On the whole they do tend to review positively, maybe because the author is usually there, but the phone-in civilian reader is often harder.
The Race is a novel about the American election for POTUS, and was said to be uncannily prescient as the candidate is black. However I have tossed it aside as the author is one of those who describes people and things happening from the outside, rather than .......as they happen, if you see what I mean; an excess of adjectives may be another way of saying it. [Also the way i write I fear].
I picked up my next purchase "Body of Lies" , novel by David Ignatius, also a R5 choice, and another American, maybe that is where I am going wrong. At first it comes across well, he seems to have a deep and informed knowledge of the current situation in Iraq, his CIA character is an unlikely sensitive agent, I was steaming along, nodding my metaphorical head at the insights examined until it came to the blond with blue eyes. Things went down hill rapidly as Mr. Iganatius tackled sex and romance.
When I was young enough to go to Saturday morning pictures the boys used to sit up the front and boo and hiss when Hopalong Cassidy kissed Dale whatsit, some men still feel the same but are convinced by their agents that they can write about the sloppy bits if they try.
As an antidote to current issues I decided to have a go at Lark Rise to Candleford. To tell the truth I was annoyed at wasting money on my 2 hardbacks and wandered round Waterstones picking up 3 for 2, always disastrous as i can never find a decent 3rd one.
However after enjoying all ten episodes of L to C on the gog, I did think I would read the book, as the reading experience is usually even better.
Hmmmm. I am up to page 37 - I know how to kill a pig and chop it up, hang the bits and swop them with the neighbours, I have been led to appreciate the joys of growing turnips, but i have yet to be introduced to a Character.
I also "got" that Anne Enright book that won [hurray] The Gathering. At first i really enjoyed it, she is a very poetic writer, but after a while the depressing weight of damp pink flesh [one of her favourite topics] got me down and it has been thrown aside in favour of retaining a sense of humour.
I am not a book snob, I enjoy rubbish, if it carries me along with enthusiasm. The library van comes twice a month [I know there is a crudity in there] and I read both of the latest David Baldaccis, The Camel Club and the Collectors, they zing along, has creaky old persons as it's heroes and only becomes unbelievable when you realise how perfect the American good guys always are [ no friendly fire]. DB is OK, he writes a wildly patriotic plot while cunningly pointing up the flaws of American diplomacy, including water boarding.
Mr Pip also arrived on the library van, [Lloyd Jones], excellent stuff, unusual use of Dickens on New Guinea island, but after three quarters of joy it suddenly turned very nasty and I felt a bit mugged myself.
I heard Sara Peretsky on this week, she has written Bleeding Kansas, not a V I Warsawski which i usually enjoy, tho they can be over researched to my taste, but a "stand alone" as they called it about the reactionary inhabitants of Dorothy's home state. The reviewers praised it, but the phone-in said it was dead boring and he couldn't finish it, so now I am torn.
Lee Child was there too, but I had visitors and could only discern general cooing form the radio in the background. I haven't read any of his, so would be grateful for a steer.
I have the paperback of Donna Leon [in my 3 for 2] Suffer the little children, which i don't think i have read. [Oh the horror and shame of unwittingly buying a book twice.] I enjoy her crimes being set in Venice, although I have only spent a few days there, it is nice to wander the calles with her.
The last of my trio is What was Lost by Catherine Flynn, a Costa [which i should have been saying perhaps] first novel award. It looks like it may be depressing, so I will save Donna till last so she can cheer me up, crime solved - Venice still afloat.

Cut it out

Went to have my hair cut today as the impression of an elderly sheep dog was getting too realistic. Usually i just chop lumps off so I can see where I am going.
This village has, as I believe I have said before, [but I like the symmetry] 3 churches [of England, Methodist and a closed Baptist] 3 shops, [village stores, newspaper and cake shop and Chinese take away] and 3 pubs.
One profits from the river side location by turning out smartish, reassuringly expensive food via young persons probably on minimum wage, another, recently re-opened, promising local beers and bar food, and one, sadly closed.
The latter is a loss as the chef was great, especially with a rack of lamb, but he moved on to better things, and as the food there after was tasteless - people stopped coming. Even the rackety peeps banned from the other two gave it up, one needs a crowd to racket amongst i suppose.
We do have a post office, hidden at the back of a house these days, she hides the sign as she doesn't want to get robbed, and on my way back from sending my newsletters re ERTF [if you ask you will probably get told, so be warned] I saw the hairdressers in the village car park was open, and it transpired had an appointment for after lunch.
Most old ladies in this village either trek on the bus to town, or have the lady who comes round their houses and gives them a ghastly dry cut, so it is a miracle this emporium in an old missen hut survives.
My cutter was a large lady whose very dyed blond helmet did not augur well. She and the apprentice however were giggling fit to bust when I arrived so i guess they thought me worthy of comment also.
They made an odd couple, the apprentice was a Goth, hairpin thin, all dyed in black, bare midriff clasped by a sparkly belt which constantly needed hitching up, as obviously she had no hips yet, if ever.
Madam Cutter was large, my vision of a solid medieval Suffolk peasant - I have just finished the excellent 2nd book of Adriana Norman set in the twelfth century, so i am still seeing the world thru that prism.
M Cutter was armed to trim, strutting a black leather holster, bristling with tools of her trade. Unfortunately it was hung tightly round her hips which meant it cut deeply into her stomach. swelling defiantly above and below.
I went in tough, not wanting to come out with a bubble cut, [I said that - but I don't think they had any idea what I was referring to] and laid down my rules.
Goth gave me a perfunctory hair wash, perhaps trying to avoid getting her nails wet.
MC agreed to give me two cuts, the short one on top and the long one for the back. I guess I came out looking a bit like Gilly Cooper.
We parted amiably, I left a tip for Goth. There are no street lights round here, I didn't want to bump into her resentment on a dark night .

Snail City

Proper snow today, always a pleasure till you have to take the doggy for a walk. Turned round at the end of the Millenium hedge, much to Hattie's disgust, didn't even get to the gate, way short of the river edge and the walk back thru the trees.

The river is brown, yesterday it had real waves in the wind, ridden by white horses, but they couldn't gallop over the road as they sometimes do when the wind and high tide combine. Then the cars have to crawl by on the other side of the road which is somewhat higher.

Resident swans gather in the lay-by, it is my ambition to see them floating along the road, but not so far.
The Hedge was planted by the local worthies with millennium money, to replace the one destroyed by the farmer in less integrated days. Now he has extended it himself. I assume it is him as it is growing more strongly than the careful placement of the village ladies. There is mostly hawthorn, May and blackthorn [is that the same thing] and occasional holly sentries that grow well in this sandy soil
A few weeks back we discovered tree snails, loads of them nestled in the cleft of branches, is this usual?

We did not have such things in Ilford when I was a child, no trees on a new council estate. I didn't know corn started off green, I thought it grew yellow from the beginning, but i did know milk didn't grow in those special little milk bottles, a daily crate balanced on the heaters in the classroom, warmed and disgusting, complete with straw. Milk monitor was not really a position of power.

painting a picture

I am all of a glow as C & S, sister bloggers, claim they will write to me if I become a political prisoner.[see below] Very nice, but more importantly girls write to God or Gordon or somebody to get me out, failing that send the library van!
The Russians were amazing, and Matisse' Dancers were boggling. So bright, the dancers are almost fluorescent orange. The painting is as big as my dining room wall, any one of my walls. It is gorgeous, I wish I was a talented octopus so I could stitch, paint and write all at once.
The whole show was exciting to me and S as it had so many different ?styles of painting, loads of energy pulsating off the walls, which are themselves pulsating as they are painted either fuchsia pink or lapis lazuli blue. the paintings leap at you.
We rotated in a daze and came to rest in front of the Matisse at intervals.The huge shambling Picasso woman was beckoning from the periphery, but Matisse won.
Then we went into the Cranach exhibition across the hall, as I love his weird high breasted nudes, unlike old Matisse they are small and exquisite, and a little subtle naughtiness in their eyes, tho as a pal of Martin Luther I don't know if Cranach realised that. Probably. maybe he didn't mean it kindly as women were usually the route of all evil it seemed. S was entranced with the skill of the painting, tiny miracles.
An Art Gallery is a strange place. Given i do produce the odd piece which sells, I imagine it fondly under anothers happy gaze, perhaps gently lit from above on their dining room wall. Perhaps not.
But in a gallery all the work is piled on the walls like a supermarket, each clammering for attention, or lost behind something more noticeable. We march thru - attention caught or not. All that work and commitment and probably not looked at for more than 5seconds, before attention wanders on to thoughts of a cup of tea. Bit like blogging really. That's OK, the process is the thing.
I sometimes took kids to Galleries when I was a teacher [I won't claim I was "teaching" ]and usually we just marched cheerfully thru and then raced for the ice cream van. I hoped that at least they got the idea that such huge building existed [often the largest place they had ever been, except maybe Court?] and might want to go back when they matured.
One good effect of putting stuff in a Gallery is that then we know someone regards it as art. So much conceptual art might be thrown in a skip as rubbish if it was placed outside. Often in Tate Modern I will doubtfully regard a bench or a light switch, not sure if it is functional or valuable.
We did, amazingly, totter on the Tate M [such resilience in ones so old] and viewed the new Cornelia Parker [She of the exploded shed and squashed brass band, both of which I admire]. For Easter, or not, she has done Thirty Pieces of Silver.
Collected loads of old silver tea services and other silver bric a brac and steam rollered it into approximate flatness [some rebelled and maintained a profile] then had each individual piece suspended from the high ceiling on fishing line, into 30 circles , just inches above the floor. You really have to be there.
It was impressive as a construction, Big. Clever-ish, thoughts of squashed aristocracy, middle class parlours, also attractive - but not a patch on Matisse' Dancers ll

non personage

Sometimes my belief in machines just evaporates, which leaves me in an somewhat exposed position as a newly converted blogger.
When signing in - it tells me my email address doesn't exist or the password is wrong, but quite often it doesn't really mean what it says, apparently it is toying with me, or even having a laugh. In the main i suppose I prefer a machine with which i am communing to have a sense of humour, but supposing it gets cranky.
I am probably overwrought by the end of the serial on the gog last night, where the State, with the power of the IT machines, trounced all the socially aware angelic hosts ranged against it. No happy ending.
Eventually people were injected with a Tag, nothing could be done without leaving a trail, and the Tag could be electronically adjusted so that nothing could be done that wasn't approved of, like entering a public building; leaving the country etc. They could ban me from the library van, tho the laptop on the van has to be downloaded back at the main library so I could hide in the interim.
Then on the steam radio they were discussing companies selling the info gleaned from our computer use to one another so we could, in time, be advertised into submission. Actually i very rarely read adverts, so I am probably a non person already.
Of course a Blog is a literary way of revealing myself and my activities...............
So I will declare that tomorrow I am going to see the Russians, or at least the paintings in the Royal Academy exhibition. I will drive to the station and pay the extortionate fee to park, which at least relieves me of the guilt of not having taken the bus as I am suffering for my comfort and that must make it OK.
Buy a concessionary day return and bumble round London on a Travel card. Tag. Tag.
No problem as long as we have a benign government, but when is government ever that?
These days I tend to feel a non person anyway; obviously things are going on, and I should at least March against Them, but I increasingly feel impotent. I am an old lady, it will all happen no matter what i think, or after I am dead. Strangely relaxing in a way.
I do write my Amnesty letters and pay towards Greenpeace to junket around having a heroic time on my behalf: but then I wonder if I ever am a political prisoner whether anyone will write on my behalf.
I know it is possible to get excited about opinions. When I was at Greenham [only visiting] and the police rode their horses at moi, and others, I did surge forward very recklessly, livid with rebellion. Maybe living in the country where most opinions are somewhat reactionary has drained me of outrage, and ambition, and energy, and excitement.
Maybe going to London will recharge my batteries, or merely reassure me that there is life in the old bitch yet!

for this relief much thanks

I left a comment on Carol's Blog yesterday, I have never done that before, on any Blog. Have a new adventure every day that's me.
Today i finished a pot, well it is drying, I suspect it will crack, then went to sainsbury's and then visited another stitcher.
Only taken 12 years to get friendly, that's Suffolk for you.
We had a very enjoyable time,chatting of mutual interests, and she is booked to come here soon, things happen when they should I suppose, or when they damn well will. I was watching a gog prog about the galaxy and beyond last night, gives one a better sense of perspective, for a while.
S my stitcher friend is a magical patchworker, produces the most gorgeous art quilts full of subtle detail and beautiful colours.
I wish I was more like her, pile upon pile of gorgeous detail and she would like to hand stitch in the way I do, mostly bodging, but I have hit on a method at the mo which I find satisfying.
Note to self, add a pic of the Sun God.
OK.
The god is an ess, but like actor/tress she is not going to demean herself by adding the diminutive, or whatever it is. She is a Big Lady so no-one will give her an argument.
Last night i watched Raines on the gog. It is an American series with Jeff Goldblum, which is reason enough for me to be addicted, I think he is very fanciable. He plays a cop who in the process of investigating murders [homicides] conjures up the victim. and discusses the case with them until it is solved, takes about an hour, whereupon they leave satisfied.
Obviously it falls in the genre that includes the film where K Spacey sees dead people, but until the end one doesn't realise that is because he is dead too. What is it called.
Opportunity for a comment here!!
Jeff handles the whole affair at a lean of the most laid back, and has all the tics and quirks that make it seem that he is such a good actor. Did you see him in The Fly, so good. Jurassic Park, not so good, the film, not the blessed Jeffrey.
It all fits with this church yard over the hedge tho; not that i see dead people. so far. I am fascinated by their names, and the older carvings on the stones. Tho the newer ones are good too. Our local grave stone carver has 2 kids, one kid died of leukemia, and then the other died in a diving [swimming pool] accident so he got to do both his kids stones. That should not happen.
I would like to have done an apprenticeship with him, re carving, but i couldn't allow myself to enter that stone circle.
Some of the 18th century stones have winged skulls carved into them, these days they are more cheery. One has Champion batteries as part of the design, as he was sponsored by them as a speed boat champion.
The stone carver did a design of twisted film strips and lap tops for his son, as he was doing media at the time it happened and his sister got sprigs of rosemary.
Of course I should have crossed needles and thread.
Graveyards have figured for a long time. My first husband [unlike The Duchess doesn't hang on my wall, but should] was an archaeologist and we spent a lot of time reading gravestones for some reason. I guess he was studying Norman churches and I was left wandering. It is impossible to see a word, carved or not, without reading it. All those words skidding round all those minds/brains.
Now I am adding to them for no very good reason, maybe pouring some out like this relieves the pressure.

happy endings

We have just got back from a 3 day break up in Southwold.
Before I went I was very bad tempered, miserable, impotent, ratty - any negative phrase would stick to me like a burr, and get under my saddle - and itch like mad.
Now I am serene, we had a few good blowy walks, fairly nice food and hotel[including me being rude to the maitre d'] and I read most of 2 books. Otherwise the world is the same, except a few fallen trees, but I have changed.
The books were/are good. First I finished This Foul Night's Work, by the marvellous Fred Vargas. She is a somewhat fey French archaeologist,with a wonderful translator Sian Reynolds; she must be good because one of the things I like about the writing is the poetical prose.
This is by far the best book of the five she has written, and I adored it. Young Fred claims she takes a 3 week holiday from archaeologing and writes a book. Would that it worked that way for moi.
I am now reading The Other Boleyn girl by Philippa Gregory, which I imagine is better than the film, judging by the reviews. I have never had a sister, or a brother so most people's emotional development is on another planet. I wonder what proportion of people are only children, this alien race, except in China of course.
I give my books away to friends and Charity shops, as there would be no room to walk otherwise. It seems lately that in my desire to make room for the next I am shedding lots of my recent history, while on the shelves sits books I am fond of, bring back parts of my story. I want to keep both Fred and Philippa, who will have to go to make room?
We once had a neighbour whom I called Toad, He was quite a nice young man really, nothing much to complain of, except for once when we walked past Notre Dame he popped up, making a special time suddenly feel ordinary, or strange, colliding worlds, universes. the example of string theory. Anyway he was amazed I had book shelves, at home, not in France, he always throws away his books once he has read them.
He waited years for his girl to return to him tho.
Well with another woman for company, but he never gave her the key, she would sit outside in her cheap red car looking furious till he came home.
Anyway his lady love returned from abroad, they married, had kids and now I hear they are divorced. So sad, wrong book, wrong shelf, who knows.

blogs and turds

There is a Blogdom being established.
Carol has mentioned my blog in dispatches. She has put pictures on her blog, some lovely book covers and illustrations, she owns a book shop.
Sue started me blogging with her Sue Space, we are each quite different in our blogging, Carol restarted me when my NYR ran out before the end of January.
Bloggers Unite you have nothing to lose but your inhibitions. Carol doesn't like the word Blog, it does have the weight of dog turd about it.
My neighbour collects our dog's turds and throws them behind my parked car, presumably thinking I will step into them with lasting result. We take doggy for a walk twice a day, so he doesn't find them often, maybe he searches everyday, in hopes.
Dog turds really do get a reaction, cat turds not so much, crafty cats hide them till you plant bulbs;big horses' turds mount in the field through which I walk doggy. The stable woman collects them with a special gadget and piles them in a turd mountain in a corner. When she sees me with doggy she demands I pick up the doggy turds as the horses roll in them. I refuse. Never a dull moment in the country.

dream life

Kathleen and Kenneth were sent from this world in 1910, before the War and the slump, it was just the narrative in my head that saw their father in despair after the trenches. Harry left in 1917 so he and they were possibly born about the same time. Strange the way these things turn out.
I have no belief in an after life, so why do I keep their graves clear and nick a poppy for Harry each November. Because they are part of my story I suppose.
Dunno why Harry is even in our church yard, he should be with all the other adolescent skeletons in the Army and Navy churchyard down the road. Church yards everywhere, full stops in our landscape. Sudden stops. Centre of our own story then no more words.
Kathleen and Kenneth were drowned in a barrel, a friend googled them. She is a solicitor and likes to know the detail. She does a lot of Family case work, so must have a lot of details in her head.
My mother does Family Tree, she likes to know - not just the names, but where they lived, each and every address, what they did for a living, the tree stretches wider and wider, a manic oak shading many graveyards.
They are all dead, she will be, we will all be.
One day someone may read my gravestone just the other side of the hedge and muse on my story. Doesn't know she [would be a she] could read my Blog. or maybe she will, it won't tell her much except I can be a miserable cow.
How can the rest of you not be, that is my question. Even as a child I found it terrifying that I had not always been here,
Where was I when I was not. Where will I be when I am not.
There was a play on television, a man was injured and lost his identity, he had no idea who he was, I had nightmares for years. That and crossing the burning bridges and running away down the dark tunnels of course.I did get over the bridge in the end when I was in my 40s maybe, and stopped dreaming that one, must mean something.
I dream every night, big extravaganzas, Sometimes in my dream i think this would make a great film; a great comedy once, believe it or believe it not. I must write the plot down I think in my dream, giggling, no I won't forget it, it is just too perfect and hilarious. Obviously I can never remember.
Usually I resent my dreams, all that effort and tension, every night, Leave me alone, let me rest. Then just as I fall asleep next night I can almost touch the previous dream,then it waves rudely and I am off on a new roller coaster.
My son says he doesn't dream, doesn't have headaches either. is this fair!!!?
I have worked out which is the real life, as I can remember yesterday, but i can't remember my dreams.
Are Kathleen, Kenneth and Harry dreaming? Of course not, that is horrible writerly whimsy.