positive things

I've been trying to remember positive things about each day in the moments before falling asleep this week. You might find this a little pathetic, but it's been good. I feel it's helped me find things easier and happier.

Today I bumped into my lovely friend Ann. Ann and I worked at the Oxfam Bookshop together for over a year and we've kept in touch. I bump into her in town a lot. Sometimes she invites me back to her house and she feeds me lovely soup. Today we went to a coffee shop and had a lovely long chat. She told me about some ghost stories that had happened in the village in France where she has a house. I thought about haunted houses.

There are, of course, many things I will miss about my life here. At the art gallery where I volunteer, I was feeling quite emotional about leaving that place and the wonderful people. But moving on is so important.

There must be change and more and more. More art galleries and more people to meet and new trees to walk under and a new angle of the sun at certain times of the day. Isn't it glorious?

what it means

I think I need another cup of something before I start writing.

...


My throat is so croaky today. But I'm got a mug of Lady Grey (with one sugar). There are so many teas to have in so many ways in so many mugs, it's almost infinite and can match all moods and situations.

Perhaps I shall attempt to keep this short.

As far as life goes, I spent yesterday at a wonderful party in a rainstorm. With wonderful people. But it's funny, when you haven't seen people for a while and they ask you the normal 'what's going on in your life?' question, I always feel I'm a terrible disappointment. I still remember the uncanny moment a friend asked "how's your love-life going?" those words asked to me were so strange. What would "my love-life" be? I don't have a love-life. In no way out of choice, but through circumstance, I have become monkish. The lovely lady I used to work at Oxfam with bought my book the other day and asked me how much of it was true. And whether the man in the book, the lover, was real. And whether I really was part-Swedish. I told her that the whole thing was fiction, but sort of fictionalised real feelings, I suppose. She wasn't disappointed, but I felt like I had been disappointing. Why have I written these things instead of running out into the world and doing them? I write about love a lot and have been there for real so few times. And I wonder, if I were in love with someone right now, would I rather write about politics?

This has become a little silly and introspective, as ever. And also, the whole thing about having this book, I don't want to feel like I'm selling out by telling people about it. But if people would like a copy, it's here:

http://tinyurl.com/edduspoetry

But it's expensive. I can only apologise.
Okay, that it all, It's so humid and stuffy here right now.

I need some of Yaffle's shorts :D

THIS IS THE NEWS

now, I may just be crazy and procrastinating. Well, that's a given. But I think our local paper The Mercury has pretty much outdone itself in terms of confusing and terrible headlines this week. If you like news articles about women who have received incorrect post, you'd better calm yourself down now, I'm warning you, it gets wild.




I know there is a phrase "baptism of fire", which might be what they're straining towards, but that phrase is itself a tired cliché crappy metaphor. So saying "baptism of water" is tautologous. They're bending bad language back on itself to the point that it's close to snapping.


George is made of stronger stuff, apparently. Good for him.


this is three journalistic clichés strung together. And it's always inappropriate to describe anything that isn't a massacre as a massacre. Especially when it's football.


Do you have horse sense? I'm pretty sure I don't.


...what to put on page FOUR of the newspaper? RUMOURS!


...and what to put on page FIVE? Someone got a letter! Oh, what a world we live in!


this is the one that set me off. The actual story is really sad. But the headline is a classic. I think growing up watching The Day Today has profoundly influenced the way I perceive news coverage.

update

have been trying to watch Mad Men on iPlayer, but it kept on stopping to load every minute. I imagine lots of people who have gone out tonight are coming back to watch Eastenders. Ah, going out drinking on a Friday night. What's that all about?

This week has gone really quickly. I haven't done too much job seeking this week, I probably should be doing a lot more. It's just difficult. I have a few jobs I can apply for in the next few weeks. Ach. I'm just sick of the whole thing. I seriously thought I'd be able to get a job within the first month after uni. It's February now. It's okay, it's going to happen eventually, it's just incredibly frustrating.

I've met some interesting, eccentric people in the past few weeks.
A retired gay dentist with a bald head and big grey moustache came into courtyard and we had a chat about him leaving dentistry and exploring the paranormal world. He is apparently becoming a medium. I'm serious. He's a real person who I spoke with, who was lovely.
And on Tuesday when I was in London with Rana, we went to the Poetry Library and randomly met her lovely friend Anna, who I met a while back and is great. She was there meeting a colleague of hers, who was another older bald man, this time an ex-neurosurgeon who currently works in psychiatry. But he actually wants to be an illustrator. So all four of us sat in the poetry library painting watercolours.



here is my effort. I call it "pyscho-sexual knight-mare. Is it you, G-d? Or are we through, Elizabeth?"
I am of course kidding. I was just dicking around with a paintbrush.




these are what the guy painted of us. I'm the red figure. I love the second one the most.


I found doing watercolours surprisingly relaxing. I've been doing a few at home. I'm obviously not going to be doing watercolours of landscapes with canals and houseboats and jolly farmers in them, but it's nice to be painting again. And I also made some more art. Some actual art! It's not finished yet, but I'm doing it. It's obviously not amazing and I don't expect it to be taken seriously, but I like it and I'm pleased with it so far. Need to buy some big frames though and they're expensive. If anyone wants to buy my silly art, let me know. I may indeed post pictures when it's done. So glad I went to the Tate the other day, it really got me thinking again. Trips into London just always revivify me, it's crazy. I see more people in one day in London than on most weeks out here in Hertfordshire. That feeling of being in a crowd is something I crave sometimes.

Anyway, have a good weekend everyone, love to you all!

The Yellow House (part one)

BEWARE! THIS IS MY POETRY!
This is part one of the poetry sequence I've been working on. I thought it would be fun to film it. I think there will be three more parts, I haven't completely finished writing it all yet.

Great video

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

This is such a fantastic video.

Snow Day