for what is today the day though?
Life seems to be going round and round in endless circles, I do not seem to be able to push myself into doing anything creative, intellectual, useful, domestic...anything. I don't understand this inertia. It isn;t that I feel that it is useless to do anything of these things - on the contrary. I want so much to achieve a lot of things. Maybe I want to achieve too many things and that is actually putting me off? Perhaps I should start a little more slowly this time and just aim to do a posting every other day, an hours writing ditto, and something artistic in between? Or perhaps its time to sit and stare at the summer sky, watch the clouds, and wait for what life will throw up next?
I feel that every time I have tried to get moving over the six years since Glyn died, I have ended up with egg on my face, further back than where I started. It is really dispiriting.
I will try and post something properly plus photos tomorrow.
Thursday, 24 June 2010
Friday, 14 May 2010
PainOnline Home Page
I haven't posted here for a while because although I have had a good few weeks, and have done some lovely things including seeing my daughter Abigail play in a concert, and also seeing King Lear at Stratford which was a really special occasion for me, I have been in a great deal of pain and somehow this has just meant that I have been incapable of just sitting and writing. Living in this level of pain is exhausting and just robs me of my joy in life sometimes. Mostly I do deal with it well - I think I do anyway - but lately I have been running out of steam and so I am including a link to a site which explains all the symptoms and what they mean etc. The pain and the cramps and the electrical shortcuts that fizz through my system are so hard to deal with, and I have managed to live creatively but now, as I get older and more worn out, the constant battle is slowly grinding me down.
Nevertheless I will get on top again. But for now - here is the link PainOnline Home Page.
Nevertheless I will get on top again. But for now - here is the link PainOnline Home Page.
Friday, 16 April 2010
Thursday night/Firday morning.
Oh dear. More dramas for my daughter.
Now I am reconciled with the idea of the wedding in Mauritius, it may be that Abigail and Eric won't get there as the whole of Europe has an airtravel restriction because of volcanic ash in the atmosphere causing danger to the aircraft. The airports are shut for now and they are due to travel on Saturday morning. I have suggested they contact their travel agents and try to get away from Germany tomorrow but I haven;t been able to get in touch with them tonight.
In the same vein, I bought Cris a rail ticket to get him back to Southampton tomorrow. He had a flight booked from Manchester but there is no way he would have got on that, so I am glad I insisted on buying a ticket this afternoon so he had a guaranteed seat to Birmingham at least. So that was money I wasn;t expecting to pay....!
I am at the flat in Leeds at the moment, where the electrician has just put some new plugs in, so no more trailing wires -at last. And I can have light where I need it rather than where its possible.
I need to upload my photos. I have over a thousand waiting to be processed! Silly me.
Then I can show my new beading skills. I have learnt how to do Ndebele or Herringbone stitch and am trying to do an Ndebele rope now - its a hollow tube. Once I can do that, I can go on to making a solid one. So now I can do - ladder stitch, brick stitch, square stitch, ndebele, I know how to make simple ropes, and I need to remind myself of how to do right angle weave. I can follow netting patterns. What I need to learn now is peyote stitch and I will do that when I have finished this rope. I will put a photo up of that asap.
I have been sorting a huge number of beads that a friend gave me. She bought necklaces years ago in charity shops and chopped them up and I have been given a big box of them, and she told me that this was a small sample of what she had in her loft! She does tend to get obsessed with things - but its my gain. I have a lot of wooden beads and I want to learn to make beaded beads with them. I also have a lot of pearls in various colours and spacers and beadcaps, as well as.......I will photograph some of this collection. Its a shame some of them were cut up - they might have been nice pieces.
I bought a tourmaline chip necklace in a charity shop last week for next to nothing. I am going to cut that up and make something special with it - I have a plan....I have also spotted some beautiful necklaces in the window of a local charity shop and might go and buy one of them tomorrow as it has gorgeous beads on it - and I will wear it as it is!
I have loved the look of steampunk for ages without knowing its name, and lo and behold, now I know about it - there is so much online information and lots of photographs. I thought I could do something unusual...but as ever am too late.
What I would like to do is to set myself a challenge. I want to make a body of work that is nice enough to put in the display cabinet of our local library. I don;t want to sell it, just to make it and show people that I can do this. Then - I don't know what I would do with it. But thats then. First thing is to get good enough and get the stuff made.
I am starting to feel like writing again. I was writing a memoir and then life caught up with me in a strange way and I wondered whether I had a right to write about my childhood, or even to write fiction based around it. I have decided to go for it after all. Now I am beading and stitching, my creativity in other fields is beginning to shift and I realise that I really need space and time and quiet to let it develop. Its hard to find that sometimes, and when I do have the time, sometimes I have no quiet in my head!!
And to finish this post, a little tale to remind myself to put the lid securely on a tube of seed beads or it takes a long long time to pick them up again......and I managed to drop the tube twice, the second time just as I had finished picking the silly little things up from the first time. I put it into my left hand which is unreliable anway - it twitched, and ....oops.....green seed beads in the carpet and rug for weeks I think......
Now I am reconciled with the idea of the wedding in Mauritius, it may be that Abigail and Eric won't get there as the whole of Europe has an airtravel restriction because of volcanic ash in the atmosphere causing danger to the aircraft. The airports are shut for now and they are due to travel on Saturday morning. I have suggested they contact their travel agents and try to get away from Germany tomorrow but I haven;t been able to get in touch with them tonight.
In the same vein, I bought Cris a rail ticket to get him back to Southampton tomorrow. He had a flight booked from Manchester but there is no way he would have got on that, so I am glad I insisted on buying a ticket this afternoon so he had a guaranteed seat to Birmingham at least. So that was money I wasn;t expecting to pay....!
I am at the flat in Leeds at the moment, where the electrician has just put some new plugs in, so no more trailing wires -at last. And I can have light where I need it rather than where its possible.
I need to upload my photos. I have over a thousand waiting to be processed! Silly me.
Then I can show my new beading skills. I have learnt how to do Ndebele or Herringbone stitch and am trying to do an Ndebele rope now - its a hollow tube. Once I can do that, I can go on to making a solid one. So now I can do - ladder stitch, brick stitch, square stitch, ndebele, I know how to make simple ropes, and I need to remind myself of how to do right angle weave. I can follow netting patterns. What I need to learn now is peyote stitch and I will do that when I have finished this rope. I will put a photo up of that asap.
I have been sorting a huge number of beads that a friend gave me. She bought necklaces years ago in charity shops and chopped them up and I have been given a big box of them, and she told me that this was a small sample of what she had in her loft! She does tend to get obsessed with things - but its my gain. I have a lot of wooden beads and I want to learn to make beaded beads with them. I also have a lot of pearls in various colours and spacers and beadcaps, as well as.......I will photograph some of this collection. Its a shame some of them were cut up - they might have been nice pieces.
I bought a tourmaline chip necklace in a charity shop last week for next to nothing. I am going to cut that up and make something special with it - I have a plan....I have also spotted some beautiful necklaces in the window of a local charity shop and might go and buy one of them tomorrow as it has gorgeous beads on it - and I will wear it as it is!
I have loved the look of steampunk for ages without knowing its name, and lo and behold, now I know about it - there is so much online information and lots of photographs. I thought I could do something unusual...but as ever am too late.
What I would like to do is to set myself a challenge. I want to make a body of work that is nice enough to put in the display cabinet of our local library. I don;t want to sell it, just to make it and show people that I can do this. Then - I don't know what I would do with it. But thats then. First thing is to get good enough and get the stuff made.
I am starting to feel like writing again. I was writing a memoir and then life caught up with me in a strange way and I wondered whether I had a right to write about my childhood, or even to write fiction based around it. I have decided to go for it after all. Now I am beading and stitching, my creativity in other fields is beginning to shift and I realise that I really need space and time and quiet to let it develop. Its hard to find that sometimes, and when I do have the time, sometimes I have no quiet in my head!!
And to finish this post, a little tale to remind myself to put the lid securely on a tube of seed beads or it takes a long long time to pick them up again......and I managed to drop the tube twice, the second time just as I had finished picking the silly little things up from the first time. I put it into my left hand which is unreliable anway - it twitched, and ....oops.....green seed beads in the carpet and rug for weeks I think......
Monday, 12 April 2010
Moving On
Last night I was listening to Radio 4 and a lovely thoughtful programme came on, presented by Mark Tully entitled Moving On. He was talking about leaving a flat he had lived in for 30 years in India, and he presented poetry and music on the theme of moving home and what that might mean to each of us. I found it so moving. Memories of moving from Norton Road came flooding back, and what it had meant to me to leave what had been a home, a business premises, a place where dreams and hopes came to fruition or faded, and the space in which I brought up my two children and a generation of music students.
I remember going to see the property for the first time and being totally unimpressed with it - it was almost too much to take on, but fortunately Glyn saw the potential in the house from the first and with a little gentle persuasion I came on board and we bought the house. We moved in during September. The house had been empty all summer - and probably longer - and the lawns were thigh high, the hedge obscured the drive, and everywhere weeds were flourishing in the gardens. We hired a box van, moved our furniture in - now looking rather puny in the large rooms - and the first thing that Glyn and his Dad did was to cut the hedge. The clippings filled the box van and when we drove to the tip later that day the man on the gate thought we were professional gardeners and wanted to charge us a professional rate.
Abigail was only nine months old when we moved. She crawled on dirty carpets, on floors covered in plaster dust, on floors that I had only just swept free of the debris from a demolished fireplace. She lived in the mess of no kitchen, no hot water for a week as the central heating was put in, as we turned the house into a habitable home. The kitchen was horrendous and needed doing as soon as we moved in, cheaply but cheerfully.
Cris was born four years later. By that time the house had been decorated throughout, we had new carpets, and I was working as a piano teacher in one of the rooms downstairs. It was incredibly difficult trying to look after a baby, take care of Abigail who had just started school, all my students, as well as the housework and trying to improve my own playing. We eventually extended the house to build on a music studio, and up into the loft to put in a proper bedroom for Cris. Home felt like a palace - lots of space, two huge lawns which gave us a degree of privacy especially in the back where we spent long afternoons in the sun which shone there through long afternoons and evenings.
Leaving home after Glyn died was one of the most difficult things I have had to do. It took two tries - the first was impossible, and the second I managed, but it hurt me deeply for a long time. I don't know what I missed most. I can still walk around the house in my mind look out of its windows, see my children in their rooms, see Glyn sitting in his favourite place in the front room, smoking, reading, and watching tv. I do know that after he died in the house - I could not live there on my own. I felt as if I was treading on a grave when I walked through the hall and I could not manage those huge lawns on my own.
But so much has been lost. So much.
I threw away ("decluttered."....sigh) things I should have kept, and I know that even had I held onto them - they would have lost meaning by now, or would have had to be disposed of or put into long term storeage, but the memory of clearing the house, trying not to grieve over the loss of things when the loss of Glyn was so much more than that, the memory is not easy to live with.
Moving on is - as the song says - hard to do. Maybe when one has spent a quarter of a century in one place it is not really possible to get that place out of oneself, of ones truest being.
I remember going to see the property for the first time and being totally unimpressed with it - it was almost too much to take on, but fortunately Glyn saw the potential in the house from the first and with a little gentle persuasion I came on board and we bought the house. We moved in during September. The house had been empty all summer - and probably longer - and the lawns were thigh high, the hedge obscured the drive, and everywhere weeds were flourishing in the gardens. We hired a box van, moved our furniture in - now looking rather puny in the large rooms - and the first thing that Glyn and his Dad did was to cut the hedge. The clippings filled the box van and when we drove to the tip later that day the man on the gate thought we were professional gardeners and wanted to charge us a professional rate.
Abigail was only nine months old when we moved. She crawled on dirty carpets, on floors covered in plaster dust, on floors that I had only just swept free of the debris from a demolished fireplace. She lived in the mess of no kitchen, no hot water for a week as the central heating was put in, as we turned the house into a habitable home. The kitchen was horrendous and needed doing as soon as we moved in, cheaply but cheerfully.
Cris was born four years later. By that time the house had been decorated throughout, we had new carpets, and I was working as a piano teacher in one of the rooms downstairs. It was incredibly difficult trying to look after a baby, take care of Abigail who had just started school, all my students, as well as the housework and trying to improve my own playing. We eventually extended the house to build on a music studio, and up into the loft to put in a proper bedroom for Cris. Home felt like a palace - lots of space, two huge lawns which gave us a degree of privacy especially in the back where we spent long afternoons in the sun which shone there through long afternoons and evenings.
Leaving home after Glyn died was one of the most difficult things I have had to do. It took two tries - the first was impossible, and the second I managed, but it hurt me deeply for a long time. I don't know what I missed most. I can still walk around the house in my mind look out of its windows, see my children in their rooms, see Glyn sitting in his favourite place in the front room, smoking, reading, and watching tv. I do know that after he died in the house - I could not live there on my own. I felt as if I was treading on a grave when I walked through the hall and I could not manage those huge lawns on my own.
But so much has been lost. So much.
I threw away ("decluttered."....sigh) things I should have kept, and I know that even had I held onto them - they would have lost meaning by now, or would have had to be disposed of or put into long term storeage, but the memory of clearing the house, trying not to grieve over the loss of things when the loss of Glyn was so much more than that, the memory is not easy to live with.
Moving on is - as the song says - hard to do. Maybe when one has spent a quarter of a century in one place it is not really possible to get that place out of oneself, of ones truest being.
Saturday, 27 March 2010
Abigail's visit to Leeds
Abigail came to stay for 3 short days - all I will have before she is married.
She arrived on Monday, and we went to Harrogate where we had coffee and cake in a most excellent shop. Then we went to Knaresborough and finally drove back to the flat. On Monday afternoon we walked up to Moortown, went into the charity shops where Abigail bought a coat and in the evening I treated her, Orysia and Ron and Sue along with Joseph and me to a meal at the Flying Pizza. It was a good evening and I enjoyed the company and occassion.
On Tuesday we went shopping for a wedding outfit. I wish I had had my camera - Abigail bought a truly 50s outfit, a deep pink dress (pleated) with a black shrug, fascinator and gorgeous high heels and bag plus necklace all from Monsoon. She also bought another outfit in green which was also beautiful. We bought beads at Yum Yum beads and then fabric and patterns from Samuel Taylor so that Abigail can start learning to use her sewing machine. I gave her a charm bracelet that I had made and I am really pleased that she loved it and that I could make it. In the evening, after we had eaten, we went to Orysia to get Cris' ipod back from Izzy's handbag - he would leave his head behind ....
On Wednesday we went to visit Jackie and her two boys in Otley before dropping Abigail off at Leeds Bradford Airport so that she could go back to Amsterdam. We cleared up the flat and came back across to Wallasey.
I could have gone to a crop to go scrapbooking this morning, but I didn't want the company. I need some time to myself at the moment. Time to think, to read, to just be and rest.
I think that there is still so much going on. Cris is coming back in April, we are going to Shropshire for the period of Abigail's wedding, and then we are going to hear her play in the UK - another few days away. Then there is a lot going on in May - Joseph is away a couple of times, it is our wedding anniversary and I might be seeing cousins, and in July we have the trip to France.
The year is clogged up with commitments and I hate being committed to things these days, even pleasurable things. I like clear space on the calendar. Clear space on the calendar means clear space in my head. I know people must think I am antisocial but I am not. I just need time to myself after a lifetime of teaching and being at other people's beck and call, always on the end of the phone at all hours of the day and night.
Joseph has hurt HIS back. He was doing some gardening in Leeds and over-reached and has hurt himself. I hope he heals quickly. We don;t have a good back between us at the moment!!
She arrived on Monday, and we went to Harrogate where we had coffee and cake in a most excellent shop. Then we went to Knaresborough and finally drove back to the flat. On Monday afternoon we walked up to Moortown, went into the charity shops where Abigail bought a coat and in the evening I treated her, Orysia and Ron and Sue along with Joseph and me to a meal at the Flying Pizza. It was a good evening and I enjoyed the company and occassion.
On Tuesday we went shopping for a wedding outfit. I wish I had had my camera - Abigail bought a truly 50s outfit, a deep pink dress (pleated) with a black shrug, fascinator and gorgeous high heels and bag plus necklace all from Monsoon. She also bought another outfit in green which was also beautiful. We bought beads at Yum Yum beads and then fabric and patterns from Samuel Taylor so that Abigail can start learning to use her sewing machine. I gave her a charm bracelet that I had made and I am really pleased that she loved it and that I could make it. In the evening, after we had eaten, we went to Orysia to get Cris' ipod back from Izzy's handbag - he would leave his head behind ....
On Wednesday we went to visit Jackie and her two boys in Otley before dropping Abigail off at Leeds Bradford Airport so that she could go back to Amsterdam. We cleared up the flat and came back across to Wallasey.
I could have gone to a crop to go scrapbooking this morning, but I didn't want the company. I need some time to myself at the moment. Time to think, to read, to just be and rest.
I think that there is still so much going on. Cris is coming back in April, we are going to Shropshire for the period of Abigail's wedding, and then we are going to hear her play in the UK - another few days away. Then there is a lot going on in May - Joseph is away a couple of times, it is our wedding anniversary and I might be seeing cousins, and in July we have the trip to France.
The year is clogged up with commitments and I hate being committed to things these days, even pleasurable things. I like clear space on the calendar. Clear space on the calendar means clear space in my head. I know people must think I am antisocial but I am not. I just need time to myself after a lifetime of teaching and being at other people's beck and call, always on the end of the phone at all hours of the day and night.
Joseph has hurt HIS back. He was doing some gardening in Leeds and over-reached and has hurt himself. I hope he heals quickly. We don;t have a good back between us at the moment!!
"Howards End is on the Landing"
I love the title of this book - although the actual book, by Susan Hill, is a bit of a let down. The idea behind the book was that the author, looking for a particular book, went searching through her bookshelves for it and discovered multitudes of books that she had not read, and decided not to go and buy a book for a year, but rather, read what she already had in her possession. A noble notion! The book is a memoir built around Hill's reading and writing life, and peppered with names casually dropped into the text - she met E M Forster in a library, TS Elliot on a doorstep and so on and so forth. She lives in a farmhouse in Gloucester. I don;t know whether the writing irritates me - or whether I am just plain old jealous of her literary life!!
I wish I could write as easily and fluently as Hill. She has given back as well, and publishes books as well. I have just been listening to a book of hers on the radio called Beacon Farm which was well nigh perfectly adapted. So why don;t I write? I am held in the grip of a huge procastrination, making me depressed, or is it the other way round? That I am depressed and therefore am procrastinating. I do not know. I can't always understand myself.
I wish I could write as easily and fluently as Hill. She has given back as well, and publishes books as well. I have just been listening to a book of hers on the radio called Beacon Farm which was well nigh perfectly adapted. So why don;t I write? I am held in the grip of a huge procastrination, making me depressed, or is it the other way round? That I am depressed and therefore am procrastinating. I do not know. I can't always understand myself.
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Wed 17th March 2004
Six years since Glyn died of a heart attack so suddenly. The memories of that raw time, that almost unbearable grief, when to remember to breathe for another minute, was almost impossible.
We spent the day in Llandudno - a favourite place for both Joseph and me, and Glyn as well, which makes it appropriate to visit on this day. We walked Martha on the Great Orme and from the top could see the remains of the last of the snow (I hope!) on the top of Snowdonia. Joseph and Martha went to investigate some sheep....I had to remind Joseph that sheep don;t have curly horns and beards. They were scaring the herd of goats that live on the Orme, which is a magical place to me, a place of mystery and magic, and where the light is incredible every time we go. As happened last year - almost to the moment of Glyn's death, the sun suddenly came out and bathed the coutryside in light. I hope it IS his way of saying that everything is ok.
I have had a strong feeling of his presence since Mum passed away. After Jonathon had created the unpleasant scene just after the funeral, I went to bed very upset. I suddenly saw him in the corner of the bedroom - I might of course just have been falling asleep. He was wearing a suit and looked very tall all of a sudden and much slimmer and younger. He said, and this was the first time I can remember recalling his voice - "Don;t bother with them - tell them to F*** off!!" - which is just what he would have said, and then - he disappeared. I have had the strongest sense of him that I have had for a long time, have actually called Cris and Joseph by his name on occassion, and maybe he is here, also affronted at the insult of being shouted at by my brother in law just after Mum died.
Later in the evening we went to Chester and to a talk given by Matthew Hyde, an architectural history lecturer about the new edition of Pevsner that he is involved in working on. I didn;t expect to enjoy the evening as much as I did - but I do love old buildings, and even the new ones that he showed us were interesting in that he explained something of their construction and how planning permission could sometimes be obtained. I love brick buildings - yes, timber frame are lovely and I love to see black and white houses in this country, but I love brick as a material - it is honest and can be used so creatively. It also makes a change from the stone of Yorkshire as we drive through Cheshire.
I haven;t done anything creative this week. But - I have bought some picture frames for some little pictures for the flat in Leeds, and I have found a stash of beads to play with - including lots of findings - so I am going to have fun.
We spent the day in Llandudno - a favourite place for both Joseph and me, and Glyn as well, which makes it appropriate to visit on this day. We walked Martha on the Great Orme and from the top could see the remains of the last of the snow (I hope!) on the top of Snowdonia. Joseph and Martha went to investigate some sheep....I had to remind Joseph that sheep don;t have curly horns and beards. They were scaring the herd of goats that live on the Orme, which is a magical place to me, a place of mystery and magic, and where the light is incredible every time we go. As happened last year - almost to the moment of Glyn's death, the sun suddenly came out and bathed the coutryside in light. I hope it IS his way of saying that everything is ok.
I have had a strong feeling of his presence since Mum passed away. After Jonathon had created the unpleasant scene just after the funeral, I went to bed very upset. I suddenly saw him in the corner of the bedroom - I might of course just have been falling asleep. He was wearing a suit and looked very tall all of a sudden and much slimmer and younger. He said, and this was the first time I can remember recalling his voice - "Don;t bother with them - tell them to F*** off!!" - which is just what he would have said, and then - he disappeared. I have had the strongest sense of him that I have had for a long time, have actually called Cris and Joseph by his name on occassion, and maybe he is here, also affronted at the insult of being shouted at by my brother in law just after Mum died.
Later in the evening we went to Chester and to a talk given by Matthew Hyde, an architectural history lecturer about the new edition of Pevsner that he is involved in working on. I didn;t expect to enjoy the evening as much as I did - but I do love old buildings, and even the new ones that he showed us were interesting in that he explained something of their construction and how planning permission could sometimes be obtained. I love brick buildings - yes, timber frame are lovely and I love to see black and white houses in this country, but I love brick as a material - it is honest and can be used so creatively. It also makes a change from the stone of Yorkshire as we drive through Cheshire.
I haven;t done anything creative this week. But - I have bought some picture frames for some little pictures for the flat in Leeds, and I have found a stash of beads to play with - including lots of findings - so I am going to have fun.
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