Leaping!

Suddenly my writing seemed to leap forward this week. I have been writing every day and taking the writing exercises, given to us at uni, seriously and it is pushing my writing into new and uncharted territory. VERY exciting! The horizon has opened up and there is now a huge vista brim full of new stuff to work on.
Not a lot of time to work on it at the moment but I am stockpiling notes and ideas.
And as this happens I feel more and more myself. More and more solid, rooted feet and head in the sky.

Sam ran around the garden earlier, shouting: " Sunny morning! Sunny morning! Bounce! Bounce!"

Love xxx

Good Lovin'

I felt strangely untouched by Valentine's day this year. The second one I have experienced as a grown up single person. I can't even remember it last year but this year I have definitely thought about it a bit. Mainly because I haven't felt left out or hoped for an anonymous card or felt bitter or begrudged anyone else their celebration or quest for romance. And it does feel strange not to be touched by it. But I am glad to be on my own just now, without a significant other. I've got me and Sam and no energy to spare for a new love, although of course when the time comes and I am ready, I am trusting that the universe will provide me with someone ..heheh.
I've quite enjoyed watching the frantic card/bouquet/ingredients-for-special-meal/chocolates buying going on in Marks and Spencer etc. I've even had a bit of a reminisce about some of the lovely Valentines days of past years and loves that I have been lucky to have had.
I've been more interested in the history of Valentines day, most of which seems to stem from the Roman pagan festival of Lupercalia, celebrated on the 15th February. Thanks to http://www.witchology.com/contents/february/valentines_static.php which has some great information on this and to the National Geographic Web site as well. Originally a pagan festival of purification and fertility, and where the month of February gets its name. It is held at the very time of year when the earth is stirring, birds are starting to nest and the first buds are seen on the trees. A time of getting ready for what is to come and what is wanted. Abundance and Creativity.

And on Valentines day this year I thought I love my life.

Get Ready
Get Set
Go Go Go!

With love

Here Hair Here (Shooting from the hip)

Right, I looked at myself today and I am deeply pissed off with my hair. I've had enough. Time to GROW GROW GROW!

I had long, luxuriant locks during pregnancy and then about 3 months after Sam was born my hair started to fall out. Big Time. Tumbleweeds rolling across the carpet type stuff- a bit disturbing! Which resulted in me having a bob and then a crop this summer, when the bob started to look very weird because of the regrowth coming through. Because, thank goodness, it has grown back. Phew! Now, it is time to see if it will grow long again.

Heheh! Little did I know what was coming as I flicked my hair around like a Silvikrin girl ;-)

This postpartum hairloss is a not unknown phenomenum but like everything else in pregnancy doesn't affect everyone and also affects people to varying degrees. I would say it affected my hair significantly but not severely- some women look like they are suffering with alopecia. It's to do with the hormonal balance, which changes vastly whilst you are pregnant and then, more or less, returns to pre-pregnancy status once you have had your baby. Again, this is different for every woman and is also affected by things like breastfeeding.

I have really enjoyed having my hair short and it's been pretty funky but I looked at myself today and thought...Feck, I ain't no middle aged housewife. I might be approaching 40 with a nipper but this is not me. So I am sworn off the hairdresser until it's long enough to tie back. Eek! But I am ready. I want long hair by the time I finish my degree so I am prepared to go through all the various stages of dragged-through-a-hedge-backward-styling that's a-comin' my way.

I suppose at 38 people look at you and think you want to look feminine and elegant and well-groomed. Well, feminine and elegant and well-groomed is fine but not dowdy and boring. And I need some Dis added to my (Dis)gracefully growing older.

The hairdresser I have been going to has done a great job each time and I am under no illusion that I need to experiment any more with my hair. I've done just about everything I can do to it- purple dreadlocks, skinhead, wild-goth-crimping-backcombing, green/pink/purple/blue at the same time etc etc...but I do not need to hear anyone tell me again in a slightly urgent way that "You do want to keep it soft round your face though, don't you?" like I am some raddled old bag....not yet!

Now, Voyager

"The untold want by life and land ne'er granted, Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."

This is the bit of Walt Whitman quoted in the film Now, Voyager. I watched it again on Saturday night, finally, after ordering a boxed set of Better Davis films several months ago and not having a chance with starting uni and keeping up with everything else going on. This is one of my favourite films of all time. I just love every minute of it.

I feel like I've been voyaging a bit this week. Last Sunday, half an hour after returning from a friend's wedding in Bristol, I looked out of the window to see over an inch of snow on the ground and woke up to about 10 inches of it covering everything the next morning. What fun! What beauty! I held Sam up to look out of the window at the white landscape below. He was a bit confused at first and then full of "Snow snow snow...wow" not really understanding it but excited at the change nonetheless, and probably a bit egged on by my enthusiasm.

I left Sam with Grandad and ventured out to get supplies and it was so fantastic. The best and lightest and cleanest and brightest powdery snow. Crunch crunch under my big old goth boots (survivors of many a muddy Glastonbury- wellies were in the boot of my car and needed digging out!) and that almost squeaky noise that comes with a proper amount of snow...ah, lovely.Cold and still snowing I made it up to the local shops and back again, laden down with eggs, sausages, black pudding, bread and hot cross buns. Perhaps I thought we needed to put on an extra layer of winter fat all of a sudden. I hadn't intended to buy such stodgy fare, the snow took over, honest 'guv. I listened to the silence and then I put my ipod on for the journey back and blasted Sigur Ros- perfect snow music. The best walk back from the local shops ever. Then out with Sam who could not and would not keep his mittens on but thought the snow was super dooper and was off stomping down the road, checking out the snowman already built. We made our own, which was not conventional but full of personality (and antlers).
The snow hung on for a couple more days, getting icier and slushier but now it is all but gone and it has been tipping rain all day today, so we have been having a rainy 'indoors' day, singing and dancing and playing "Where is Sam?" and finger painting, well, elbow and arm painting really.

I have been enjoying watching old episodes of Cheers this evening and chatting to friends and trying to get my head in gear for uni. Another term starts here. Well, it officially started last week but I wasn't ready for it. I hope I am now...time to get my big boots on and crunch crunch , squeak my way back into it. Now, Voyager...

Goodbye Astoria We Love You

I was lucky enough to get the Annie Liebovitz show on Thursday, at the National Portrait Gallery. It was very busy but that seemed to add to it, rather than being frustrating. It was a very 'full' show, encompassing all aspects of her work.

I was particularly interested in the family photos and photos of her lover Susan Sontag, which documented their life together, Sontag's illness and eventual death in 2004. Strong and emotional stuff. Liebovitz had her first child at the age of 51 (and I was thought I was old having Sam at 36!) and her photos of her little girl and subsequent twins, born to a surrogate mother in 2005, were beautiful and compelling.

The best bit of the show was at the end, where in a contructed side room were hundreds of photos and contact sheets, pinned up under glass, in an informal and intimate way. All life, its ups and downs, happy and sad times, blissful and tragic moments was reflected here. I particularly liked the photo of Patti Smith with her two children and the photos taken in Sarajevo.

I also went to Anthony's show (of Anthony and the Johnsons) at the delightful Isis gallery. A very small but pleasant space in Hanway Street. I was sorry to have missed David Tibet's show there but funnily enough he was there with his partner Andria Degens who is Pantaleimon, whose music I have written about on here before. I was too shy to say hello. I didn't want to be the 'gushing fan' but I do love the music they make.

I then went to look for the October Gallery to see the Bryon Gysin show but somehow I kept missing the street it is in and walked all round Bloomsbury for hours, coming across places I have never seen before but in the end feeling very tired and pissed off that I didn't get there. Never mind, there may still be time...

I shouldn't really have been out at all as I still have a chest infection but desperately needed to get out and do something before going back to uni. I walked past the Astoria, which has now closed and will be demolished soon. They have promised that another venue will eventually be built to replace it, but of course it will never be the same.

I really have lost count of the bands I have seen there but a few would be: Revolting Cocks, Nine Inch Nails, Loop, The Happy Mondays (an early gig where they were suppporting and got bottled off), On U Sound System, The Cramps... and loads of others that are lost in the mists of time.

London seems to be going through some big changes at the moment. I am sure the credit crunch and approaching recession will see it change in many more ways which cannot yet be predicted. The city is always changing but it does seem to have some sort of momentum and different energy about it at the moment. Like a purge...I don't know. I may write more about this... But it is still the most unfathomable, beautiful, and inspiring place.

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