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.