Linocuts

Saturday 30 January 2010

How quickly habits form!

And how quickly they fade. Several times I've thought - I'll blog that and then changed my mind because I didn't have a picture.
When did an illustration become obligatory?
I've just been looking at the blogs I follow though and maybe it's because they have pics that I feel I should.
Recent activities include


  • going for lympho-therapy. Here is my leg, backed by the tapestry cushion kit that is currently keeping my hands from holding things to eat:

  • Last week, Angel and I were in Whitby - she is not sure about the sea because she doesn't like the taste but she is surely a pack animal. At one point 2 springer spaniels, 1 aging hippy, 1similarly aging greyhound, 1 ancient border collie, 1 eager-to-belong lhasa apso (Angel) and I were strung out on the way to Sandsend.We stayed in what I guess is really a shed, but it was well equiped (though tellyless) cosy (though I wouldn't like to have to do the dusting) ane dab in the center.

  • Trying to buy a pedometer while keeping the spending down so that I can add walking-myself-fit to my list but spending 4 hours a day toing and froing St James' means a lot is in my head.
  • REALLY trying to do something about my mandarin pronunciation cos Miki is starting to sound a little desperate about it.
  • remembering the 50s for my 'mapping my childhood project'. I'm currently thinking about sweets and finding that loads of other people are too. I can't find old packaging pics of sweet cigs or Black Jacks (probably non-pc).

Wednesday 13 January 2010

Hibernation

This explains my winter habits and Angel asleep made me look for it - it's from 1992:

My poems are the dreams of some hibernating creature

Who's large enough to live long enough

To cheat death on his off days.

She curls,

Paws folded over,

Snout tucked in,

Like a comma,

Round her inner world.


In the stillness

When her life is slowed,

The memory of her shambling

Through the outer world of summer

Keeps her safe in its hold

It is her anaesthetic

Against the killing pain

Of cold.

Saturday 2 January 2010

Street markets

This month’s camera club assignment is ‘street market’. What does that mean? Where, in this country (outside London) do you find street markets? Proper English towns and villages have a market place. Don’t they?

Leeds has an indoor market and on outdoor market and they’re part of everyday life – just cheap shops.

I remember Sheffield market when I was in my early teens. It was an outing - crowds watching the men juggling plates and throwing them to each other: “I’m not asking for... I’m not asking for... I’m not even asking for...”

I remember Mad Ken down Mucky Alley and the sound of leather soles slapping together as he argued with himself knocking down the price and tissue wrapping boxing up and passing out shoes as fast as his patter and hands would let him as the the ten bob notes were passed the other way.

Chesterfield was more sedate more the country market town with its cobbled square in the town centre. Blue jeans for ten bob ( a month’s clothing allowance) to try on down the underground public lavs and sit in the bath to shrink into shape.

But now?




Perhaps it's just the mood I'm in.


Friday 1 January 2010

Happy new year!

Last night was a blue moon (wikipedia has the explanation - I dip into that site like I do the dictionary).

Angel and I did Miggy woods yesterday because the slush had gone and the sky was blue. I used the time to make up a sonnet - my first ever - on the theme of aftermath, set by Smiffy. That was why I dipped into the Concise Oxford Dictionary and found out it meant after mowing.

It is so dark on the morning dogwalk that I can't make out faces but someone wished me a happy new year from the darkness.