A rag rug to a bull

A rag rug: A squarish rough-textured rug with a four-petaled
flower pattern in blues, greens, purples and pinks.

Craft is one of the most universal and least manageable symptoms of chronic illness. Stephen and I have been quite unwell throughout much of January and thus have had enough time when we weren't able to do anything more useful, in which to produce a rag rug.

There were many scraps of nice fabric left over from my wedding dress and other sewing projects, plus I had a small collection of old clothes which were too worn out for selling or donating - jersey tops which were stretched, had holes in or splodges of paint on them. Naturally, we had to accept that any rug we made was coloured in the the same palette as my wardrobe. 

The back of the rug: hessian with
loops of fabric sticking through.

To make a rag rug, you need some hessian sacking (£2.50 a metre, including postage) and a load of waste fabric, cut into small strips. You force the strips through the weave of the hessian, then back up again, and secure with a knot. Granny says the knots are unnecessary, but I imagine she may have done a neater job in wartime than we could manage.  

Close up of the rug texture.

I bought a cheap wooden tool called a proddy from eBay but we gave it up pretty quickly for an ordinary pencil. A pencil does just fine and if you're sat in bed and lose it until the covers, you can always find another pencil. Our bed is generally full of pens and pencils.

Rag-rugging uses a lot of fabric; there are six jersey tops in this, as well as significant remnants of similar fabric. Jersey, or t-shirt fabric, is particularly good for rag-rugging because (a) most of us wear a lot of it and these garments do wear out and (b) there's stretch in the fabric, so while it can be a bugger to sew with, it's easy to pull about and tie knots in. There are all kinds of fabrics in this rug, including stretch velvet, flannel from some old pyjamas and silk from some of the ties, but most of it is cotton jersey. 

There's absolutely no skill to rag-rugging at all and the only point you need to concentrate is to avoid cutting off your fingers when using scissors. It is, however, a very compelling activity, so anyone has to be careful with doing too much of it in one stretch, especially while listening to a really good audiobook (mostly Under The Dome by Stephen King).

It's not really going to live in front of my folks'
woodburner, but it does look nice there...

Alpacas on my Mind

A very smiley white woman holding a pink baby who
probably looks a month or so older than she is.

I dreamt about my new niece a few weeks before she was born and in that dream, she was called Victory. When she finally got here, she was named Sophie Elizabeth Taylor and just for you mass fans, she weighed eight and a half pounds! She shares a birthday with Jeff Capes, so our hope is that, one day, she will be the strongest woman in the world!  I can't stop thinking of her as Victory, so that'll probably be her stage name.

This week, Stephen, Mike and I travelled like the three magi to meet the baby. She is very thoughtful and spends her time sleeping, thinking, looking around and sucking very hard on whatever passes close enough.

We were also able to deliver nephew Alex's birthday present (here he is six, years ago, looking a lot like his sister).  Inspired by the stage production of Warhorse, which Stephen got to see, we set about making a puppet that would be so life-like and subtle in movement that it would both embody the physical essence of an animal, as well as almost human depths of emotional range.  The animal we chose was an alpaca. Alex has called his new friend Woolly. Here it is in action.

A fairly simple hand-carve love spoon in
pale wood (lime, in fact).

Being in Wales towards the end of Rosie's pregnancy, Stephen carved Sophie a beautiful love spoon. She was mightily impressed and commented, "Aaiiiee!" which may in fact be Welsh. Sophie may have been the first baby Stephen got to hold and he was both anxious and smitten.

Alex was climbing about in the background, helped me to get up onto climbing frame (well, a high platform built around a tree) and pushed me off again. He has promoted me from being Auntie Bum Bum to Agent Bum Bum.  He even provided me with a theme tune, the lyric to which goes

"Agent Bum Bum, Agent Bum Bum
Agent Bum Bum, Agent Bum Bum
Agent Bum Bum, Agent Bum Bum
Agent Bum Bum Bum."

I am so proud.  I was put in mind of a song my sister wrote for me when we were children.  The piano accompaniment was something of a Chaz & Dave homage, and the lyric went:

A blond monkey boy hangs upside down
from a rope net. 

"Deborah is a zebra, Deborah is a zebra, Deborah is a zebra and she's my sister too-oo-oo!" 

I have decided to make a cartoon strip about Agent Bum Bum and her trusty sidekick, Tinker Taylor (Alex). His favourite toy at the moment is a Super Soaker (they're not nearly as powerful as they were when we were kids and they require batteries) so whatever happens, the villain has to get wet at the end.

But first we have to make a second Alpaca - as if anything could match the first - and I have a wedding dress to make. And we've got a wedding to plan. And I have a book to finish writing and another to keep pushing on agents and publishers (the latest rejection described it as a "near miss" which was far more encouraging than perhaps it sounds).  Plus it's that time of year when I work out what I'm going to make everyone for Christmas.

Life is busy, but very good and all the better for having little Victory in it. I mean Sophie.

Never Been Thirty-One Before

Today is my birthday and I can safely say this has been the happiest and most productive year of my life. This doesn't mean I've not had rubbish health, worries and a fair few minor disasters. Just that there's been so much good stuff packed around the bad. 

So my year in bullet points...

• I absolutely loved being thirty. I hope I will love thirty-one just as much. I have never wished to be another age, but I have particularly enjoyed my age. I do now. I feel like I earned thirty-one. I have a lot of stories to tell, but I've still got everything to look forward to. Oddly, entering my thirties has coincided with being met, for the first time ever, with the assumption that I am younger than I really am. Previously, people were always adding ten or fifteen years.

• This year, things seemed to get done. I'm amazed at what I have just got done this year. Art projects, craft projects, writing projects. This year, it seems, if I put my mind to something, it just happened. Not that I finished everything I started, achieved everything I wanted or didn't have set backs. My health is still pretty lousy and sometimes very lousy indeed. But during good periods, I painted more, wrote more, made more stuff, learnt more than I ever have before in any twelve month period.

• I've embarked on the first tentative steps towards getting my first novel published. This has been terrifying. It is the closest thing I have ever done to applying for a job.  Fortunately, when you try to sell yourself as a writer, qualifications and work experience aren't very important, or else I'd be in real trouble. It's still very scary. It's not even fear of rejection. I can't really explain it.  

• I've written between half and three-quarters of a non-fiction book, which will have to remain under wraps until it's done. And I've started on my second novel, which just now, I'm very excited about.  Just now, I'm thinking, "Well, this will be better than the first!" which I think is a very good thing, given that I had had so many set backs and finished the first against such tremendous odds, and that story wouldn't let me abandon it. 

• I have continued to be brave, in all kinds of ways, many of which remain unbloggable.  However, I am rather proud that when I needed fillings for the first time in my life, I had five of them, in one go, without annaesthetic. Conclusions? Two of them hurt a lot, but it was brief and perfectly bearable.

• I have worked through and overcome so much emotional nonsense that I carried after leaving my violent marriage last year. At the beginning of this year, I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Now, that's reduced to a bit of a scar which gets sore in damp weather. 

• I've seen three plays, which is fantastic. I love going to the theatre, I always have, but it takes some doing and it was seven years since I'd last seen a play. Admittedly, the productions I saw this year were too long and pain overwhelmed me towards the end. The best was King Lear, performed in an abbey ruin in Wales, complete with realistic storm conditions throughout the second half. It was August, I was very well wrapped-up but I can't imagine I will get as cold as I was then this winter. It was a superb production, but I came to the conclusion that the play itself is overrated - it's often said to be the ultimate Shakespeare, but I can't see it myself. The oddest was Clytenmestra (the Libation Bearers) by Aeschylus performed in Ancient Greek at the Oxford Playhouse (Stephen reviewed it here) and the other, Dangerous Corner by J. B. Priestley, was fairly odd in that neither the audience nor the players seemed to know whether we were dealing with a thriller or a farce – in any case, we laughed throughout.

• The only thing I really haven't done enough of is reading. But I did re-read the His Dark Materials trilogy with Stephen, which was an absolute joy. When we set out to take turns to read it to one another, I thought it would take a few years – especially as neither of us can read out loud for long and both of us are prone to falling asleep when we are read to. But we got through the whole thing in about six weeks. Unfortunately, my Texan accent was so bad that Stephen almost cheered when Lee Scoresby died. We also made a CD of poetry for my nephew Alexander, who is an avid reader but doesn't get exposed to much poetry.  At first he wasn't much interested, but now he listens to it so incessantly that his parents must be thoroughly fed up with Roald Dahl's Red Riding Hood, despite Stephen's critically-acclaimed performance as Grandma.

• I'm so proud of Stephen and everything he has achieved this year. It's been the most wonderful thing to share in his life, and to share my life with him. In the spring, we both spent months totally immersed in Greek Drama as Stephen wrote essays about Aristophanian obscenity in the work of Snoop Doggy Dogg and  prepared for his final exams. He now has a 2:1 BA (Hons) in Classical Studies (Please watch his vlog if you didn't at the time). He then had to deal with both DLA and ESA forms, both of which we managed without too much trouble. He's also whizzing through learning Latin and has learnt how to play the ukulele, very well, in the space of four months. And together we've mastered the art of making Turkish Delight, pain au chocolat, chicken and black bean sauce and the world's best vegetable casserole.

• We're making a success of the whole having to live with parents for the forseeable scenario. Making this work is an ongoing project and there have been times when we've found my parents particularly difficult.  But we're taking responsibility for things, even if we occasionally behave like the desperate parents of children who can't play nice together - like when fed up of their bickering, we sent my folks for a Segway lesson. What can I say?  It bought as a period of peace and harmony.

One of this year's negatives has been that the political situation for disabled people in the UK has deteriorated during a time when I wasn't up to doing much about it. Now, as various bills which threaten our independence and even our lives reach the end of their process in the House of Lords, Lisa has compiled a list of mostly very simple things you can do to help.

But for now, I thank you for hanging around and cheering me on these last twelve months and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year! 

Dog Rest Ye, Terrier Gentleman

So this was by far the oddest craft project of 2011. It wasn't my idea, but when people I care for were contemplating paying up to £100 on a fimo Bull Terrier Nativity Set on eBay, I had to step in and volunteer to make one myself. I used Sculpey, which is cheaper than Fimo, and probably used about £15 worth of polymer clay.

Stephen used a lathe to make wooden cones for me to build the figures around, to stop them keeling over mid-production. Originally, I'd intended to remove the cones once the clay was cooked, but then decided they made the models more stable. Also, they got stuck.

I haven't played with polymer clay for years - perhaps seven or eight years at least - so when I volunteered I was kind of thinking the project would eat up half of December and maybe I wouldn't be able to pull it off. So, whilst it wasn't my idea and part of me keeps thinking this thing I've made could win prizes for poor taste, I'm really rather chuffed about how it turned out.

Stephen made the manger in about half an hour and his Dad made the stable backdrop in a little longer than that.

I hadn't met any bull terriers until this spring, when I made friends with two miniature bull terriers, who are rather akin to albino pig-shark hybrids. They're not nearly as bright as my border collie or poodle compadres and they move around as if there are no obstacles of any kind, anywhere – if your legs are in the way of where they want to go, they're going to go through them. But they are extremely friendly.

The nativity set is a present for someone, who at the time of writing has no idea what's in store for them. They're coming round on Saturday. I hope it makes sense to them.

More pictures on Flickr.

Image Description: Possibly defies description. Models of English Bull Terriers made out of coloured polymer clay, representing characters from the nativity (Mary, Joseph, Jesus, a Shepherd, an Angel and three Wise Men/ Dogs). In the second picture, the wise dogs are bearing gifts; sausages, a bone and a teddy. In the third picture, we see Puppy Jesus, a puppy wrapped in swaddling clothes, in a pale wooden manger with wood shavings for straw.

I am Woman, Hear me Rawr!

Kate Middleton's dress is only the second most important fashion revelation this week - and probably won't be quite so funky. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you, the gigantic pink dinosaur look - or the dinosaur rose colossal as they're calling it on the catwalks of Paris.

A month or so ago, Elizabeth made this dino hoody for her young lad and as I increasingly take my style cues from four year old boys, I knew I had to have one.

On eBay, I found a dip-dyed pink hoody and a very loud but very small pink tartan skirt from which I harvested the fabric for the spikes. I cut triangles with one side rounded to make cones. The tartan is polyester and whilst not especially thick, is rigid enough to stick out without stuffing, so it's perfectly comfortable to sit and lie down in - an advantage considering that that's what I do.

One of the cones I flattened and attached to pink ribbon for a tail, but that wasn't hanging at its best angle for the photo.

I began to write a little treatise here on the colour pink, which I see as a very politically-loaded colour, but to be honest I didn't think about anything political when buying the materials. I guess my thoughts were, this is going to look extraordinary silly anyway - pink may well take it to another level. Anyway, I've written about pink before.

Did I mention I was thirty? I love being thirty.

You can see more examples of dinosaur hoodies here.

If you haven't already, please sign up to Blogging Against Disablism Day and help spread the word. Everything seems to be going really well so far.

[Image descriptions: Three pictures of me, a tallish white woman with brown hair, modeling a pink hooded sweatshirt with dinosaur-style tartan spikes sticking out in a link up my spine and over the centre of the hood.]

Things that go bump in the day

This week I have fainted often, fallen down even more often, but nevertheless managed to get all my Christmas cards in the post (well, [...] put them in the post, but I did my thing). I have not been suffering terribly; I was far more miserable last week when I was going down hill. At the bottom of the hill, strategy is always much clearer. Even if not much else is. Like how long you've been lying on the kitchen floor and what were you doing before you got there.

Now I am picking up, although I am still wandering about with the strong sense that I'm about to pass out and/or fall down at any moment. Bathing is still a little scary, as you might imagine. And my heart is falling out of rhythm rather too often. I think my rock'n'roll lifestyle may be catching up with me.

We finished the one Christmas present we have managed to make this year (I had planned to make others, they all fell off the list). It is a puzzle for Alex. It was [...]'s idea; the snake's stripes come out and you have to put them back in the right order. [...] did most of the cutting and I did most of the painting. I realise there's no indication of scale here, it is enormous - about 16" wide.

Having come to terms with what I'm not going to achieve before Christmas, I am now looking forward to it.

I wish I had a river, I could skate away on

It's coming on Christmas and I've done almost nothing. For some reason, this is making me terribly and stupidly anxious. At least something is making me anxious. And this anxiety is getting on my nerves, since I really have nothing to worry about.

It has been a bad brain week though. And I've had the usual niggle as to whether I can't write or paint because I'm just knackered or because I am lacking motivation, or at least in the wrong frame of mind. This is the great problem with fatigue and anything creative; if it was just sums, I could either make myself do them or I couldn't, whether I wanted to or not. Whereas people in perfect physical and mental health have creative blocks.

I suppose there are clues. Fatigue causes muddles and mistakes. Fatigue begins lots of sentences which, you know. um...

Trouble is, as soon as I ask myself whether my frame of mind is part of the problem, I begin to feel guilty and miserable. And being rather miserable, I have even more reason to suspect that it isn't just fatigue. Which makes me feel more guilty and miserable. And anxious. That and the Christmas thing. I was going to make cards and I realise that my cards are going to be crap, consisting of a great deal of glitter and not much else. If I actually finish them. Oh who cares? Do you care?

It took me all of today to write this. And that pisses me off.

Also, I realise that I was doing great last week, but feel like I haven't done one productive thing in months. And that pisses me off. My ingratitude! I am by far the most irritating person I have ever met.

Cake, some action's what I need

Granny and I decorated this year's Christmas cake last week - well, we started last week, but I fell asleep and had to finish it off at home this week. It's quite pretty, only it's not everso Christmassy (not nearly so Christmassy as last year's effort), and those white flowers are supposed to be hellebores (Christmas Roses). Unfortunately, they look rather more like lillies. Perhaps they are Christmas Lillies.

Still, I think we did pretty well considering the lack of time. And the bit I sawed off in order to make the top flat was scrumdiddly. There's enough brandy in that there innocent-looking cake to make an elephant dance the Macarena.

Extermicake!

Sometimes, blogging can influence the very traditions of our families, customs and rituals to be passed down from generation to generation. Following the success of my sister's Dalek cake which she made for my mother's birthday last year - inspired by a post by Lady Bracknell where Jess commented, linking to the Dalek Cake pool on Flickr - may I present my own attempt for her birthday this year.

Two years on the trot, we'll be doing this forever now. Probably long after my mother is gone, long after I am gone and maybe even after people have forgotten what the heck a Dalek was, the family Goldfish will be making Dalek Cakes at this time of year.

I seem to be cursed with technology just now and although I took some lovely pictures of my mother with her birthday cake, this was the only one that came off the camera. But you get the general impression. My Mum said it looked like a cat. Charming.

Picture This

Alexander correctly identified the subject of the latest addition to the Family Portrait Gallery (my Mum's upstairs corridor) as his Mummy and Daddy. That having been said, he has recently pointed to a picture of Sean Bean and declared it to be his Daddy. Rosie, however, responded with a complaint that I had given her grey hairs. It's supposed to be light.

Cake horror!

Today is my Dad's birthday and when I was making him a cake, I decided to try and adapt my creation to a horse theme.

Unfortunately, the result puts one in mind of that scene with the horse's head from The Godfather (it's not like in the movie of course, but this is more or less the exact image I had when reading the book).

Has anyone ever seen such a horrifying cake? Or a more disturbing representation of the equine family? I'm guessing not...

Granddad

This was by far the hardest portrait I've done so far. It is my maternal Granddad, who died ten years ago in February. On top of his shocking failure to visit me as a ghost, I only had very small photos to work from. And well, let's just say that Granddad had a compulsion to pull faces whenever he saw a camera, leaving very few photographs of anything like an ordinary smile.

Added to this, I really miss my Granddad and became rather emotional about the whole thing, afraid that I had forgotten what he looked like. Even now I don't think this is a brilliant likeness, but I hope I've finally got the gist of him.

Granddad W. was a very special person, who I always hoped I took after to some extent. He was an avid reader, the only blood relative who could beat me at Scrabble and the writer of the most appalling that you ever read. And he was always making things, building houses out of brick (which was his job) or making furniture or little curiosities out of wood. Our garden alone boasted a hutch and a run for our guinea-pigs, a bird-table and a bench that he'd made. He always smelt of sawdust and pipe tobacco. I don't, but I feel I share his inability to sit still. Metaphorically at least; I actually sit still a great deal of the time, but perhaps you know what I mean.

But then when I was talking to my sister about this portrait, she sent me a photograph of Granddad when he was in the Navy, aged about seventeen or eighteen. And to my complete amazement, well, he looks like me. If I were ten years younger and less chubby. Oh and much more butch. I hadn't previously seen myself so vividly in anyone before and it came as quite a shock.

One the one hand, Granddad taught me that it was possible to love and respect a person without taking them altogether seriously. People are daft, and they can make you daft if you take every word to heart. Family feuds raged around him, but he managed to appear not to notice (our particular family feuds are especially petty).

On the other hand, Granddad always seemed to take me as seriously as he took anyone else; he always knew what was going on in my life, not just in a general way. He encouraged all my interests, and whilst I was a naïve and opinionated teenager, he would chastise my parents for interrupting me or telling me to shut up. He also took the p*ss out of my parents, which was an absolute joy for my teenaged self. And yes, this was the Grandad who insisted that I would be the next female prime-minister. I presume he took a similar interest in all ten of his grandchildren.

And I really do miss him. I'm sure he would have adored little Alexander (as well as all the other great-children that have come along since he died). If everyone lived forever, the world would be a terribly crowded place, life and love would be less precious, but a time-machine would be handy from time to time.

A Posthumous Cosmetic Dilemma

I am rather pleased of my picture of Grandad Kelly. I had to abandon my first attempt entirely and briefly worried that, because he has been dead for five years and I have no large or digital photographs, I may have forgotten what he looked like. As it is, this is what he looked like. Roughly

I had and still have a bit of a dilemma about this painting. Grandad has something which I understand to have been a type of skin cancer which had to be regularly treated but never caused any harm besides a permanent red make. on the bridge of his nose. I wasn't sure whether to pretend it wasn't there. In the end I decided to put it in, and to be honest it does look somewhat less prominent on the actual picture than it does on the screen - at least on my screen.

But what do you think? I had a similar issue with the mole of my friend Vic who I'm painting, but I spoke to Vic about it and we decided it was best left in. Grandad's cancer or ulcer or whatever you call it is another issue; it's not nearly so becoming as Vic's mole, but it was part of what he looked like. Does it stand out a mile? Does it look like an accident?

It is an emotional business painting dead people. I also wonder what my Granny Kelly will make of the picture when she sees it. They had an excellent marriage for just short of sixty years; in the original photo I used to paint him, he had his arm around her.

Unfortunately, my pain has crept up a lot in the last few weeks and I have been temporarily banned from sitting the chair that I use for painting. I'm not sure that'll make any difference but the pain is beginning to become a real problem again and I'm prepared to try a few things before resorting to harder drugs.

Painted ladies

I'm still struggling to write at the moment. If only I'd have a three day stretch where my energy levels were similar - or even three separate days, at regular intervals, which were roughly the same. Anyway, whilst I've not been writing, I have been continuing with this portrait-painting.

I have painted my two grandmothers and don't really know how to feel about these paintings. Here is my maternal grandmother. The thing is, this is the most cheerful expression I could coax her into (she does smile sometimes, but this was her photoface, as it were). Also, this is someone who laments the ravages of time on her looks and is of a generally sensitive disposition, so I guess I also approached the subject more nervously. It does look like my Gran, but it isn't a particularly nice picture.

This is the famous Granny Kelly. I'm much happier with this painting, but don't really know what it was that I did which makes this so much better than the other one. Or perhaps that's entirely my perception? I don't know.

Shortly, I'm hoping to get fed up of painting portraits at the same time as having the mental capacity to go back to my book. If not then I will probably have painted every living blood relative by Christmas.

I have also been sorting out shopping bags. Plastic-bags are an enormous red-herring in discussions of waste and recycling. For every plastic bag you use at the supermarket, you are probably purchasing two or three times as much waste plastic wrapped around your food and household products. Of course excessive packaging provides advertising space, so the financially interested parties concentrate on plastic bags, and this of course places the ultimate onus on the consumer.

However, these is an alternative you can design yourself; the cotton bags cost 90p each from Fred Aldous and the fabric paint was free on account of my friend Vic giving me all of hers (but you can also get fabric paint from Aldous). Really, I should not use fabric paint at all because I spill every fluid that comes within three feet of me and, well, it dyes stuff. So there are always drops and smudges where there weren't supposed to be. But they fold up real small and fit into a pocket. Not a jeans pocket, but a decent sized pocket you might have on your coat.

Sleepless in Southampton

This one is of my Dad and Alex. I didn't paint the entire thing since last Thursday, but I hadn't quite finished it then. This was a bit of a challenge. I was working from a black and white photograph so I had to guess the colours to some extent. Also, the photograph cut off the top of my Dad's head, so I had to make that bit up as well.

I managed to get to Southampton to spend Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning with Alexander. He was very affectionate; either he now knows who I am or he is very easy with his hugs and kisses. It is also now far easier to comfort him when he's grizzly; previously, this was not something I could do myself, but now a cuddle seems to do the trick.

He has a few more words, but doesn't seem terribly interested in using them; occasionally he will point to something and name it, but he can't be persuaded to do it again and if you point to something and ask him what it is, he looks at you as if you have asked a very foolish question (which I guess you have).

Alexander is, however, increasingly expressive. He uses the baby-signing pretty well, he points and waves and hands things to you. He put his milk-bottle in Roosevelt, the bear-puppet's mouth. And his favourite gesture involves him holding his hands palms up, fingers spread wide and an expression somewhere between exasperation and resignation as if to say "What the hell?"

I managed the whole thing pretty well, especially considering the two flights of stairs in my sister's house, and a pretty bad night, complete with some of the most profound hallucinations I've had in ages. Nothing scary though, only disconcerting. I am in no great shape now, but I'm basically okay.

I don't care too much for money

So the other day, Lawrence Fishburne (or somone who looked very much like him) came to my door selling investment policies. He spoke very slowly but without hesitation so that before I could get a word in, he had explained all about his policies to help people put their kids through university and other policies to provide security in retirement. Which of the two, he asked, might I be most interested in?

"Neither," I said with a smile, "Thanks all the same."

"So you've got all your finances sorted out for the rest of your life already?" he asked, clearly dubious.

Now that was pushing it. There could be lots of explanations for my disinterest which might be highly personal, whether I was surprising rich or surprisingly poor. And indeed, I didn't want to tell him my actual situation, partly because it was none of his business, but partly because he might be embarassed. He might even feel guilty for having asked had he known. He might have even offered me money, but probably not.

So I weighed up my options.

"No, but I'm relying on tax-payers like yourself to see me through."
or "No, but I don't want me kids' heads to warp with too much learnin'."
or "No, but I'm planning on dying young."
or indeed "No, but I've only got three weeks to live - do you do life insurance?"

or more positively,

"If I were to become just four pounds and thirty-six pence richer, I would have more money than sense."
or "They say there's gold in that there compost heap."
or "The Lord will provide."

or perhaps, if I really wanted to frighten him and if I could get the tone just right,

"Money is the root of all evil."

As it was, I shrugged and said, "Kind of." He nevertheless gave me his card and departed with a wink. A wink, I tell you. From Lawrence Fishburne (or somone who looked very much like him).

It is a difficulty though. Like when you're offered those Payment Protection Plans on credit cards and the like and you're thinking, "In what way could my financial situation get worse?" (Of course it could be worse, but nothing anyone would offer insurance against).

I was once accosted by particularly persistent charity-collector, one of these who is paid on commission for the number of people who sign up for a direct debit donations and who really couldn't imagine why I might not be able to afford monthly donations to a charity supporting people of my own age in circumstances not at all dissimilar to my own. And yet, I did not wish to explain all that, to say I lived on benefits and to detail my exact position; even the richest person should not have to make excuses. So eventually I declared, "I'm afraid I'm a charity case myself!" and the young man was, at long last, speechless.

Anyway, I'm off to visit Alexander, Rosie and Adrian this weekend. They have lived in Southampton for over a year, and this is the first time that I've had the opportunity to visit when I've actually felt up to going. It's just a flying visit with my folks to babysit Alex whilst R & A go to a concert and I shall be back on Sunday.

This is a picture I painted of Rosie and Alexander - my second portrait. I've almost finished one of Alex with my Dad and I must say that, despite his cuteness, the lad does have a rather boring face - no lines or wrinkles or anything!

The Goldfish Guide to Painting a Portrait from a Photograph in the Absence of Talent or Experience.

Now this I am chuffed with. I've never painted a portrait before and this is roughly what my mother looks like.

Of course, I did cheat and I thought I should confess all here in case it might be useful to anyone else. I know there are a few proper artists who read here, but there might be someone who has a similar absence of either talent or experience as me.

First off, I used a photograph. Obviously. I used a digital photograph which I printed off as big as I could, which happened to be A4. I found a painting board at the back of my craft cupboard which was about half way between A4 and A3 and of the same proportions.

Using these proportions, I then drew a grid of approximate squares on both my photo and the board. You don't need to measure along the edge - you'd have to use fractions of milimetres. Instead you use that old trick from school maths where you lay the ruler diagnonally across at a multiple of the number of lines you want to draw. So for example, if I wanted my grid ten across on a board 334mm wide, I would lay the ruler such that one edge of the paper was on 0mm and one was on 400mm, then draw a mark at every 40mm. I'd then repeat this so I've got my two dots I need to draw a straight line. Does that make sense?

I then turned the photo upside down and began to copy the picture across, using the lines as a guide. Copying upside down is a very good idea if ever you're copying an existing picture, because it forces you to draw what you see as opposed to what you know to be there - I imagine this is particularly important with faces, which we instinctively want to be symmetrical and orderly, when of course they're not - especially not in my family.

Anyway, I then splodged all the paint onto the board in a random fashion, returning to it for a few minutes at a time a few times a day for several days. Okay, so that's not fair; I suppose I do have some experience with using paint, but as you may have gathered, I tend to decorate things in a cartoonish manner as opposed to proper painting.

And I have to say, that whilst the painting is a good likeness to my mother, it doesn't compare brilliantly to the photograph. So a further cheat should probably be, destroy the photograph and nobody need be disillusioned.

It speaks!

Alexander has started talking. Kind of. He's started pointing at things and uttering monosyllabic nouns (not just any nouns though; roughly appropriate ones). That he thinks all birds are ducks and all vehicles are cars is demonstrative of his impressive pattern-recognition skills. After all, imagine how well developed you'd have to be before you could explain the qualities that cars and other vehicles have in common. I mean all road vehicles have wheels, but not all wheeled things are road vehicles. And they all travel on the road but so do bicycles. It is really very clever to recognise the connection, I think.

He has also taken to declaring "Done!" after each meal. Being so well brung-up, this horrified me. "You mean, he can't manage a thank you?"

In the picture he is wearing a jacket I made him in the autumn. This was an incredible feat on account of the fact that I had no pattern, no experience of making such a garment, but most crucially, I hadn't taken a single measurement of the child and just had to guess how big he was. This was a very foolish way to go about things, but I was fiddling with it when I was rather ill and by some miracle it worked.

Unfortunately, he is sporting a somewhat "Auntie made me wear it" expression in the photo...

Obligatory End of the Year Post

2007 might be summarised as moved house, then I was sick.

It's not been a bad year, nothing terrible has happened and even my health hasn't been disastrous. But very little has gone according to plan; it has been a year of great frustrations and a lot of those have been around the shortfall between what I wanted to do and what my health would let me do. Right now, I must admit, I feel decidedly negative about this. The nights may be drawing out but we're about to enter the darkest days for the immune system and mine is already decidedly ropey. Not that I am likely to catch anything that would carry me off or anything like that, but I really don't want to feel any worse than I do just now.

I think I will put down 2007 as a learning experience. I'm sure I have learnt a lot, but I haven't entirely ironed out my perspective on things and I'm likely to be rather dull and vague if I go there right now.

Christmas was mostly very good, thank you. My cake was a great success, so far as I can tell. Rather, uh, moist, but that was to be expected. Some of it has travelled as far as Snowdonia, would you believe? I saw Alexander on Boxing Day and it seemed that he was having a lovely time, even if he did get enough toys to furnish a large kindergarten. His favourite present had been a baby-baby-grand, so to speak, which he played all Christmas Day and then returned to, stark naked, after his evening bath.

I gave him a stool which I had decorated and painted and a doll I made. He responded well to the stool in so far as he immediately understood that it was something to sit on. The doll is called Petal the Pirate (to be friends with Kettle - Petal doesn't look much like a pirate, I know but she is one because I said so). I wrapped Petal up such that she could still see out of the wrapping paper and as soon as Alexander spotted her eyes, he tore off the paper, pulled her out and gave her a big hug. He then ran off with her and came back empty handed. I later found her sat in a pair of slippers; I'm not quite sure what that means.

So that was Christmas and now we're about to enter 2008. Despite my significant fears about January and February, I do feel positive about the new year. I've spent the last several months waiting for my health to improve after a dip. Now is the time to stop waiting around and investigate whether there are different ways of going about the things I want to do. I'm sure I haven't exhausted all the possibilities just yet.

Happy New Year Everybody!

A piece of cake

Things got worse before they got better, but they did get better and I am feeling rather more sentient than I was. Plus I did achieve something this week so I'm going to tell you about that. It would be kind of a long story to explain why I was compelled to do so, but despite having been very unwell last weekend, I pushed myself very hard to keep this Wednesday's appointment with my Granny Kelly who had agreed to help me ice my Christmas cake. I haven't attempted anything like that since I was a child under her supervision and I didn't have the faintest idea where to start.

And look what we did! I have no idea how impressive this cake may look to others, but I am very pleased with it. I suppose I am particularly chuffed because before hand, even after the marzipanning (which my Mum helped me with some weeks ago), it was extremely lumpy and misshapen. Now it looks quite orderly.

In other news, there is no other news as I really haven't been doing anything else.

Do you think anyone would notice when I bring it out at Christmas if I'd pinched a slice in the meantime?