Exploring the Everyday
I’ve recently signed up to Glass. Yes, it’s a paid subscription but it’s also just photos and in chronological order. It’s basically exactly what I want Instagram to be so it’s fair to say I’m happy! Unfortunately I don’t have a network of friends there yet, but that will come. In the meantime…
The concept of family is open to so many interpretations. Do you consider your friends as family rather than blood relatives? For me I love all of my Aunts, Uncles, 1st cousins, 1st cousins once removed, 2nd cousins, 2nd cousins once removed and all the other combinations. We have a good laugh when we meet up and these days facebook keeps us abreast of what we’re all up to – gone are the days when myself and my cousin Ian would write when he was studying over in the UK (actually it’s kind of sad that we don’t any more) Holidays were spent trouping from house to house, sleeping on floors, sharing beds, camping in gardens. The thing is – Family is no guarantee that you’ll get on so I’m glad that I can count my cousins as friends. However they are friends with that extra layer – I know that our families have been friends going back generations. Ok now I’m wittering!
On Friday we were at a family reunion for his family and it was the first one that himself has gone to. I was touched by a simple gesture from one of his aunts – a warm shake of the hand and the phrase “Welcome to the family” It’s one of these unnecessary sentences that you know the person means it. During the family photos I took a photo over my shoulder of his aunts and uncles – because of the way I was sitting I managed to leave an aunt out – I do apologise! There was one other uncle not there as he has sadly passed away. However I have to laugh- himself has more aunts and uncles on one side of the family than I do in total!! (8 versus 5)
I have to say it was a great night and lovely to meet all the cousins!
To be honest it’s the only explanation! For what you might ask – well, for me! that’s the short answer.
If you don’t know me and even if you do – what you might not know is that I have very little self-confidence & self-esteem (are these the same?) but an awful lot of anxiety. I may have mentioned it and at times I’m bubbly enough that you would think I’m basically bullshitting – but I’m not. Inside me there’s this person that is trying to find the deepest darkest corner to cower in ’cause I’m not really worth bothering about – but I’m good at pretending there isn’t.
So where does the fairy dust come in? Well on Thursday I had what I now think of as a great day so in chronological order:
*Firstly I’d lost a bit of weight (only a few lbs) for the first time in a long time!
*Secondly I’d asked somebody something and got some really positive feedback which I have chosen this time to believe rather than the usual they’re just being polite and don’t really mean it.
*Last but not least – I saw a picture of me that I didn’t hate on sight! – the reason I take photos is to hide behind the camera – as devastatingly beautiful as I am the camera simply doesn’t like me (at least I think so) So this was a big, big mile stone for me.
All of this positivity has been simmering away for the last day and today it’s simply exploding out of me. I’m feeling happy. I’m feeling invincible. I’m feeling like ME again. It makes me want to cry that I’ve been so lost – I still am to a degree so I have to hold this happy to me and build on it – make it a solid foundation.
Where’s the Photo you might ask? Well here it is – the other evening (Wednesday April 15th) we were at the launch for issue 3 of Gorse. Slight plug here but himself had an essay in it! – Rather proud of that I have to say!
The Three Amigos are:
Jarlath: https://jarlathgregory.wordpress.com
Me – You Are Here!
Pádraig: https://slovobooks.wordpress.com
The Photograph was taken by Paula Meds – found here & here
Right I must dash as I’ve put off the house work for long enough and I need another mug of coffee.
Finished it!!
119 beautiful pages from Persephone Books. As it says on the back this was a novella and for such a short piece of fiction it took me a while to read it. To be honest it took me a while to settle into it – a dramatis personae at the beginning would have been handy (for me anyway)
This story takes place on the day that Dolly is getting married. The family have already arrived and are waiting for the bride – I’m not sure why I failed to get to grips with who was who but once I did I finished it off in one sitting.
Sadly as this book was published 83 years ago there is little hope of the author expanding on the snipets of conversation – Like what really happened in Albania? And what’s with the socks?
So it was a novella of two readings – the first half a little bit difficult, the second half a joy. I think this will get a second reading (possibly before the end of the year) and I’m rather looking forward to it.
We are home from London. Our time there was mainly taken up by being at Loncon3/Worldcon and another day or two meeting up with people outside of fandom. If you want to stop reading now, just know that we had a great time and really enjoyed ourselves!
However here is a rough idea of how the hols went:
Thursday saw the pair of us wander around for most of the day with what felt like the morning stares*. The cause of our morning stares was the fact that we’d left Dublin at 8pm on Wednesday and traveled through the night via coach/boat/coach arriving in London at the wonderful hour of 07:30 (This form of travel isn’t overly conducive to sleep). However after a quick waking coffee, in Neros, we headed over to the convention site – reg. was to open at 09:30. The plan being register, loiter with luggage, then head over to the hotel and see if they would let us check in early. The hotel had a check in time of 3pm, but midday for an extra £10.00 if there was a room available. What did happen was we started to queue at 09:00, because there was a queue and they had started to process folk. After a quick wander up and down the boulevard we settled in the fan village for a cup of tea looked up and saw a really really long queue for the reg. desk – it would seem we had timed it perfectly. We hung about ’til 11am and our eyes could stay open no more – we decided to head over to the hotel and sit in reception ’til they gave us a bed, by 11:18 we were in bed. We headed back to the convention after about 2hrs and as we were now luggage free we hit the dealers room. I was somewhat surprised to see a photo of mine being used in the Iain Banks booth. Himself was wondering if I knew about it – I replied that I didn’t but as it was now printed out and stuck up it would seem to be a bit late now but as himself is rather keen on copyright I don’t think he was too happy about it (permissions wise). However as Iain was kind of a friend I would have been honoured to have the photo included, still am. Shortly after the photo discovery and in the middle of a chat with Ian McDonald we heard a noise. The heavens had opened! I should explain that there are two parts on the main boulevard that are tent like – but of type of plastic – letting in loads of light, but in a heavy rain storm it turns into a drum. The noise of the rain was incredible and to add to the delight we had thunder and lightning – a wonderful display of nature. Although I do believe that a some people may have gotten a little bit sodden 🙂 The other highlight of my day was dinner with Juliet E McKenna. Due to the nature of social media we seem to be in touch with everybody, if only vicariously, that it makes it difficult to remember when was the last time you actually met a person. This seems to be a theme for the weekend (5 day weekend!)
Friday was to be a day out. In between the DLR & the underground we went to the tower of London to see the Poppies, planted to the memory of those killed in WWI. After that we went off to The British Library as himself had applied for a readers card in order to do research – although I’m not sure looking at bound copies of the Radio Times counts as research while I’m sitting in the coffee shop waiting for him to return to the ground floor… In saying that I did have a wonderful wander around the shop and made up a shopping list for later in the week. Afterwards we headed off down to Kew, to The National Archives. Sadly we only had an hour there and with very little information to start with I’m entirely sure you could have called it a successful trip – I think I’ll go with the Mick Aston way of looking at it: we’ve learned what it isn’t. Mind you simply walking to and from the building was a glory to behold – the houses, the porches, tiles, Houses! I’m sure I’ve read books about streets like those! Having missed on programme I wanted to see on the previous day, we arrived back at Con central for item we were determined to see – the Worldcon Philharmonic Orchestra. We were a bit at odds with the programme at this point as we also wanted to see Universally Challenged and the musical piece we wanted to see was second last. They opened the concert with the theme music to Superman, followed by a chap on the theremin doing the theme to Dr. Who. The piece we wanted to hear was a piece written by a friend of ours, Gary Lloyd, as a tribute to Iain Banks – a beautiful piece. We left after that and ran up to the Universally Challenged – it was a bit of a shambles but fun none the less.
Saturday was spent entirely at the convention. Mind you there were two panel items on in the morning – I say morning – it was in the AM 11 & 12 but we only managed to surface at 12 ish so panelling wasn’t going to happen – this seemed to be a trend for the weekend by the way. On the other hand we did get to one panel item – What is I? the room was full and yet 30mins – 45mins after it started there were people still arriving (don’t get me started on that one!) The topic went more towards the psychological rather than the philosophical but in saying that myself and himself had a good old chat about it later. We did bump into Fran & Ang – thank you to Fran for the special Yorkshire Water – very nice indeed! (I can’t get the website to open!! – coffee flavoured Vodka if you are curious) This may have also stimulated the What is I? debate myself & himself had later. Mind you a highlight of the day was that those taking part, we all dressed up for the masquerade – a wonderful collection of all sorts parading up and down excel. I don’t mind telling you some of the outfits were fabulous and the amount of effort gone into them must be phenomenal. In saying that some folk were wandering around in various different costumes throughout the whole con – absolutely fabulous. So now that I’m at home can somebody please tell me why didn’t I take photos? Happily somebody did: Giles G Photography, Flickr #Loncon3
Sunday was an out and about day again although first we had to go to a panel – Pádraig somehow ended up on a panel with Gary Lloyd and a Mr Tim Perkins – he really was thrilled to meet Tim Perkins as he loves the music he makes with Alan Moore (The MASTER – as he’s known in this house). After that we had to speedily make our way back to The British Library to meet up with a friend Tim Pilcher – it was a brief hello as he had just finished being on a panel and we were running into a panel at the Comics Unmasked/ Comica event – it was lovely to say hello and meet his son. We went on to our panel – Draw Misty For Me – now this was a panel item for me! Originally Shirley Bellwood was to be there – she was the artist that drew the lady herself – but she wasn’t well so couldn’t make it. One of her pictures was used in the back drop – the image was of the only surviving piece of original artwork – it had been used as a cutting board! What we got was an interview with Pat Mills & Julia Round – I thought it was fascinating – talking about circulation figures, artist accreditations, thoughts behind story policy. It really was the kind of talk you could have kept going for hours in the pub but alas as we were meeting somebody we had to leave at the end. However Paul Gravett, organiser, got us all to sign a get well soon card – which I thought was a nice touch. Mind you it was a very low turn out – about two dozen and of that about 6 maybe 7 of them were female. After this we went out to tea with a friend of himself (F). F really is his friend and they have lots in common – so sometimes I do tend to lag behind – but that doesn’t stop the conversation from being entertaining and enjoyable. Now I must say – I’d been carrying around my camera with me all weekend but I have a much traveled and little used camera so I only took it out on the Sunday. Note to self – upload photos to Flickr! After waving bye to F we went to dinner with another friend of himself – I was rather touched to get an FB friend request from him the next day – very nice of him. The chat over pizza was again interesting and although I would have said I’ve no interest in the graphic medium it seems I might be wrong – but then again it’s amazing what you’d pick up through osmosis. With all of this socialising we missed out on the Hugos – If I’d thought about it a bit more – the Five(ish) Doctors was nominated – so Peter Davison was in attendance and his plus one was his son-in-law. So seeing a status update that announces they were standing beside David Tennant in the bar obviously filled me with a little bit of envy. Oh well! We didn’t hang around long as it had been a busy day.
Monday was about as busy as Thursday but without the buzz of the adventure to come – we were winding down. People had checked out of hotels and heading home so we spent most of the day having tea and chat with people we won’t see for another year or two. At the closing ceremony Ken McLeod accepted the gift for Iain – there was a tear or two shed. Once the convention was declared closed it really did empty out. I have to admit I was glad we had decided to stay on that extra day. Mind you the one thing we weren’t doing was hugs goodbye ’cause I think con-crude had started to grip attendees by Friday and it had spread its evil reach far and wide. I’m putting my resilience to it down to Yorkshire water & Yorkshire tea – drinking that stuff straight would kill anything off!
Tuesday saw us sitting on cases trying to fit in everything we’d brought with us and everything else we’d decided to buy. I didn’t mention the two books I’d bought in the British Library did I? We dropped our cases at St Pancras Station and went off to the Wellcome Collection. In their shop I found even more books I wanted to buy but I don’t think the cases would be able to hold anything else – in saying that I’d one or two other things to get before we headed…
After the Wellcome Collection we headed off to Fortnum & Masons to get Jam. I’d wanted Christmas Jam but they won’t have them in ’til the end of next month so we got other jam. However we decided against getting any of the ones with gold in them ’cause that’s just a bit too much really! Then we hightailed it to Hamleys to get an etch-a-sketch for my niece – although my sister was thrilled with it…
Amazingly time flew and we headed back to the station picked up the cases, and went to Victoria coach station. It was bedlam if I’m being honest – but we were back on the bus and going home.
*For those of you that don’t know the morning stares let me present Garfield!
I know I have been a bit rubbish at posting more than one photo a week, so here is photo no2!!
We’re at a sci-if convention and it’s really busy! So quiet moments are few and far between.
(This is has been done via the phone and it was a bit of a nightmare!!)
Rather annoyed at myself as I did have one or two more photos that I wanted to post!
You know how some people have a theme that they photograph? Like the chap I spotted somewhere that takes photos of foreign cities with his girlfriend just after turning her back to the camera, I follow one lady on Instagram and she does hands on public transport. Previously I had been taking photos of graffiti, but before that I had toyed with the notion of feet! If you look down you see your feet, pointing the right direction, the way they are supposed to do – however if you are on the bus or train and look at the feet of the person – you see toes from a different angle – feet pointing in the wrong way makes them look totally different. This had two things going against it – 1) It would really only have been possible in the summer months & 2) I was too much of a coward to take the photos
So here are my feet!
I may yet start taking those photos but for now it will have to remain an idea in a notebook!
Ok here we go – selfie time.
I don’t have the knack for them so bear with me – these were taken at 7am this morning just before going to work.
I’m appalled at how dark my hair has gone – I’ve gone from blonde to brown but here it’s really, really dark. I’m going to say there is an element of darkened room but still!
As you can also see – lobsided eye. It doesn’t matter when I’m looking through them but looking through a lense back at them – no I don’t like it. I suppose it’s because I’m blissfully un-aware of it and don’t really see it in the mirror either due to constant movement but freeze frame tends to bring you up short – blah!
My Hair – I love my hair!!! I’ve had this hair style for the past 8yrs or so – but have had similar for most of my life. You know when you hit a style that just suits you? Well this is it! If anything ever happens to my hairdresser – well let’s not go there!
I’m also wearing a little bit of make-up. I don’t normally (I’m very hit and miss with all of that). However, I’m getting spots at the moment so just to give me that little bit of a uniform colour, I broke out the face paint.
Face paint – that should tell you all you need to know about my relationship with make-up…
Throughout the week I’ll post other photos of bits of me (that could be rude but that’s not what I mean!)
I’m not sure if I mentioned that although this is a 52wk photo challenge, I’ll be using it as a 52wk theme challenge – whilst being predominantly through photos (hopefully not just the one a week) I might try to write a bit about the topic too – hence todays wittering about a selfie!
Tomorrow I’ll post about todays Facebook experiment – well if they can do it, so can I!
Right now I have just finished having a lovely cup of tea and a slice of toast with marmalade. When I say it hit the spot, it did – it put me in that nice, happy, satisfied, calm place where the spot is.
This is where the temptation is, to have a few more slices while I finish the pot. Now I am being good – as Oscar Wilde said “I can resist everything but temptation” and as my colleague has been known to ask – have you ever refused a biscuit, but as I said I am being good! Ok it is a slight touch of the diet but it’s mainly due to the fact that when more tea & toast is consumed it lessens the impact of that first portion. That spot is melted into OMG I’m stuffed, why did I eat all of that? It’s not a case of with one leap she was free but with several mouthfuls she went from happy and content to ill and guilty.
Self-restraint isn’t something we like to do too often but every once in a while it can be rewarding in an odd contradicting kind of way.
Sadly I must now leave and go back to work or as I like to call it NOT “that nice, happy, satisfied, calm place” – such is life – at least I had my moments of happiness 🙂
This afternoon I saw an article on The Guardian website about which books that make you feel stupid? this was a title that really hit a cord with me ’cause although I love to read I rarely talk about the books ’cause it seems (to me) that most people get more out of books than I do – so it’s not so much the books that make me feel stupid but the other readers that make me feel stupid. Now the fact that the article mentions China Miéville, meant that I had to click on the source blog: On the Perils of Feeling Dumb While Reading: Book Riot. I have to say due to human nature being what it is, there will always be somebody out there to tell you “yes it is you” essentially if you’re not part of the crowd then you’re a freak! Well I don’t buy it – I don’t put myself out there to give these petties the opportunity to make me feel bad about myself ’cause to be honest I don’t need help with that thank you very much.
As I said earlier it’s listening to others talk about something that I feel I should know about and it seems I must have gotten hold of a completely different book that makes me feel stupid. Now, they’re not doing it on purpose but it seems that my confidence might be. To narrow down the co-incidence of the article ->blog -> China Miéville -> The Book I’m Reading! The author of the blog post Swapna Krishna didn’t get Kraken, that’s ok, if it was me I’d put it down and go back to it when I was in form for it. However, I am reading it and I am loving it. With this in mind I looked up a blog of a friend of mine – he is a prolific reader so I knew that Kraken would be there. He wasn’t overly impressed – I think it’s fair to summarise his review as – not great, not bad – there are other books out there doing the same thing only better. This is where my confidence decides to take a hike – if he’s not impressed, am I wrong for liking it? Sanity of course kicked in – I’m not him, I’m me and I’m allowed to like and dislike what I want.
I still don’t really talk about the books I read, as I don’t like the competition that brings out in people. Well I have to go as I’m really dying to find out how this book is going.
Question: If I did talk about the books more would it help me to review them?
The Things I See 