Tapas Tree

For a new beginning at this turn of the year in the garden I have erected a so called bird feeding station! I call it a Tapas Tree! What with a fruit tray, sangria bowl, bread, seeds, fatty balls, peanuts ... just a couple of olives and garlic missing!
Already blue tits, a nuthatch who eats upside down, robins, black birds and chaffinches have visited! I just LOVE it! I sit and watch from indoors at the table while having hot caffeinated beverages and identify them as they stop by the TB!
Fun and food for everyone, come on by!

Cinders in boots

This piglet Cinders lives in Thirsk, North Yorkshire and dislikes mud! I love pigs!

Eartha Kitt

Eartha with daughter Kitt and grand-daughter Rachel.

Eartha Kitt died this Christmas Day in Connecticut also from cancer. This Christmas has been one of loss and also of a reckoning of what is important in our lives. I find I value more what I have when loss is there too.
Adrian Mitchell, Harold Pinter and Eartha Kitt passed away leaving huge voids and yet we can keep them alive by continuing their work and letting them inspire us to do more. Thank you for living your lives the way you did.

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter died on Christmas Eve after a long struggle with cancer. I admired him so much as a playwright and activist foremost and the way he lived his very creative life.
I am glad he got to win the Nobel Prize before his death at age 78 and in so doing wrote an extraordinary speech, a manifesto in some ways even.You can look it up on the web I am sure. I will miss his presence and his words of wisdom.

God Jul!

Happy Winter Solstice!

With much love and light to you all!

Adrian Mitchell 1932-2008

See www.bloodaxebooks.com and their fan site on Facebook for more information on this remarkable poet, performer and writer, often referred to as the Shadow Poet Laureate.

Cat nap literally!

Yesterday I was exhausted, totally and in that "can barely move" way let alone think way!
I decided to have a rest after doing what I had to in the am. So after lunch I retired
to the bedroom where Fergus was already napping happily at the foot of the bed on the cat blanky. He took one look at me and went back to napping as I crawled under the duvet.
A couple of hours later I awoke feeling so good. I dreamed of a tiger and this tiger had come up to me and hugged me and tried to say something. Its lips were trying to form human words! The tiger looked long, warmly and soulfully into my eyes and gave me a parting hug.
I felt wonderful after this cat nap. Recovered and restored, ready to turn on the lights in a darkening cottage and start cooking a delicious dinner. Broccoli, mushrooms, soybeans, and prawns stir fried mmm...yummy!

Congratulations Elizabeth!

Elizabeth Alexander has been chosen to be Barack Obama's Inaugural Poet in January 2009. Congratulations Elizabeth!
See Bloodaxe Books site for more information on this poet and see her read!

Catmas

What are you giving your cat for Catmas?
I say these are very spiffy.
Our cats seem so comfy wherever they plop down.

Katatonic

I am so excited about the facebook group Feline Follies!
This katt is the image for it and you can join if you are a cat lover of course!
I am so cat mad, feline fuzzy and purry furry it is almost embarrasing. But it is not.
Do check it out on Facebook. Miao or is it Meow?

Cat mania feline folly

While I am in this warm and fuzzy mood I may as well wax lyrical about our beloved feline friends!
Luna the mother of Sofie, black and toffee, Myles, grey and white, and Fergus, red and white. She came to live with me as a kitten the first year I lived here and we bonded immediately on the way home in the car. The kittens were born a day after my fiftieth birthday and what a gift they were! Are! They are a lovely family. Living here altogether sharing Sheep Cottage is a privilege.
Noah bonded very closely with Sofie and she lives with him now in Hexham.
We are a family all of us and love to be together cosy, reading, napping, eating, and cuddling. They also sleep with us! Can be challenging because I wake up when there is activity around the bed.
I have never been this connected before and I love this interspecies relationship experience. So does Noah. This is the first time we have been able to live with animals, before we lived in urban settings in apartments.

Day in Hexham

The Frith Chair


Greg Bureau owner of Bouchon

Thanks to Noah I spent a lovely day and eve in Hexham our closest market town. There was a Christmas Fayre on all around the Abbey with two reindeer in a small paddock with hay on the Abbey green, lots of stalls; food stalls, craft stalls, organic meat stalls, game and wild fowl, local cheeses, chutneys galore, organic vegetables, smoked fish, olives and feta, handwoven baskets, leather goods,local pottery, you name it...
We did some shopping and got very excited about our upcoming supper of pheasant and oak smoked Scottish salmon,mmm... yummy.
Although it was pouring rain throughout people were milling about and we even saw some people we knew. That is a great thing here in the UK that weather does not really come into the picture as much of a deterrent. People still ramble the country side go out to markets and spend time in their gardens working.
I bought a green wreath for the cottage door, and I will tie a red ribbon around it to hang it up with, some tissue wrapping paper and a couple of gifts.
We went into the Abbey which was also full of stalls and a cafe! We also shared some of our favourite things there with eachother. The Frith chair for one.
Then we went home down the hill of Gilesgate, where Noah's favourite restaurant Bouchon lies, and had a lovely hot cuppa tea with Sofie back home at Noah's.
I was knitting while we watched the last episodes of Little Dorritt that I had recorded and we had such a cosy fun afternoon although we cried our eyes out
over some very sad events in the story. I felt like a real granny with Sofie on my lap and knitting away!
Then we had a most delicious supper together. Noah is a great cook he really is.
Pheasant cooked with vegetables in a Schlemmertopf, roast potatoes and I drank soy milk of all things! The salmon was out of this world! Afterwards we drank jasmine tea and talked for ages about topics like making films. He has this idea for a film he has wanted to make for a while now and is going ahead with! Power to him! We had a truely wonderful time together it was too bad I had to go back home early but the weather was getting worse with the rain turning to sleet and even snow by the time I got home.

Sancta Lucia

Every year on December 13th Sancta Lucia is celebrated in Sweden. When I was a child every girl wanted to be Lucia or at least I think they did. It was usually the tallest and the one with long hair.
I was Lucia once in the laundry room of our apartment block! A big deal for me!
They sing songs in their heavenly voices and it is all about bringing light into the darkness and to fill us with hope again.
My sister sang beautifully and she was usually in the school choir and they would be the other girls dressed in white as well walking behind the Lucia and then surrounding her when they arrived.
After we would get saffron buns, ginger snaps and hot beverages.
It brings tears to my eyes. Lucia IS Christmas to me.

More nostalgia

Scandinavians have an emotional connection to snow and the fact that it keeps on returning year after year to blanket everything in white fluffy white.
The world transforms and for a while one sees it all differently. Tree silhouettes dark against white, homes with caps and coats, and it is all soft and may be wet too and cold but soft. The edges are softened.
It is that which we connect with, the soft and the light. During the darkest months of the year the snow falls and the world becomes a lighter place.
I get excited whenever it snows and my mood lightens and I feel a child stirring within.

Advent

This time of every year I get this longing inside. With Advent, Lucia and the Solstice
I get a serious case of nostalgia.
I remember the Swedish winters of my childhood.
Making snow angels especially with the first big snowfall. Snowball lanterns with candles to light up the dark. Having hot cocoa with whipped cream and saffron buns.
Lighting the Advent candles. Opening the Advent calendar, one window each day.
Stars shining in the windows of people's homes. Candles lit in every home.
Then Lucia the big event of Dec! It is so beautiful the songs and the young women dressed in white with candles.
They really make the most of Christmas/Jul in Scandinavia. The whole month of Dec is practically filled with celebration. It is all about LIGHT and bringing it back.

Volatile times

The calm before the storm, Mumbai

Listening or looking at the news on a daily basis leaves me in a state of flux.
These are volatile times. Cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe and riots in Greece for instance.
The chaos in the world reflects the state of the planet in terms of its over all health. On pretty much every front we need to respond and change our way of life.
Change is a common denominator in the solution area. We have problems to deal with and we need to soon or it could be too late.
Change and evolution is the axiom of our existence.
I personally am confused and overwhelmed. I feel bombarded with information and not enough sense of appropriate action to take.
"Stop talking, start doing" is a motto banded about however how do we make intelligent and informed decisions in our own lives where change ultimately starts.
Trust is an important issue in this situation. Trusting the source, trusting the research, trusting the solutions offered...
The news is something that really gets me down. It is almost exclusively "bad" news.
Murder, disasters, war news, illness,...it leaves me feeling so sad.
There is "good" news out there too I know. I wish we could have time spent on the positive events that take place also. People helping each other, all the voluntary work done in the world, simple random acts of kindness, love of animals, major discoveries that can help with eco problems...
This kind of news can make us feel inspired and hopeful!
I wish for a dose of good news every day!

The colour Red

School children in Taiwan.

This is John Agard

For his next book, Alternative Anthem, being published in 2009 by Bloodaxe Books I am editing a DVD to be included with it. Two performance concerts one followed by the other will be added as a DVD to the book since John Agard is very much a performance poet as well as a writer of children's books and poetry. This will give a more well-rounded idea of him and his work.
Check it out this winter Alternative Anthem by John Agard at www.bloodaxebooks.com.

From red to grainy

This is for Paul on his day of need!

How to survive winter in Tarset

Imagine a remote area in the Scottish borders with fells/moors, stone walls, forests, burns/rivers, small hamlets, sheep farms and small winding roads. Not many people to speak of, minimal traffic, mostly logging lorries and sheep grazing when they can through the snow.
This is where I live in the National Park in a small shepherds cottage or bothy.
So how to survive here in the dark winter months:
The cottage is filled with books, books and books, music in the form of cd's and records, a wood burning stove-must get some wood!-, four lovely cats, and work, work and work. So between work which can be anything from editing films on a computer, designing book covers, reading, writing and filming, this can keep me busy.
To relax: well there are walks, sitting by the fire and thinking, cooking and eating, writing letters, and knitting! I have started knitting, cannot cast on or off yet but I can knit straight and simple. My first project is a scarf of course!
It is isolated yes, not much social or cultural life apart from an occasional concert or ceilidh, a pub night!, however it is a time for reflection and getting work done.
Making trips helps a great deal, going to London regularly for instance.
Rural life is a lot about self-reliance and finding resources within and being comfortable with alone-time.

For the Ultimate VU fan, and he knows who he is!

Mistryfied

Since finishing Rodinsky's Room I have been reading books set in Bombay/Mumbai.
Rohinton Mistry for one. His first book of short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag, set in a Parsi inhabited apartment block in Bombay is really good. I was mistryfied.
I have read A Fine Balance which is also a very fine novel. He is a superb writer.
I felt I had to read books set in Bombay in order to get closer to the community which has suffered so much recently.
My heart goes out to you.

Classic Charmaine

"I was 16."
Great to be back in touch again Charmaine!
In this portrait you look like the Quintessential Teen.
I love it. Lolita.

The Savages

Just saw the film The Savages 2007, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins.
The main roles are played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney who are siblings in the film. They are dealing with their demented and estranged father who all of sudden crashes into both of their lives lived in the North East of America.
They are brilliant! Philip Bosco plays the father and he is a tour de force also.
The script is extremely moving and honest. The photography sensitive and subtle. A very beautiful and touching film. I recommend it highly.

Nick Drake

This is my favourite photo of Nick Drake.
He is holding out a hand full of mushrooms!
Taken by Julian Lloyd.

Kathryn Tickell

Went to see Kathryn Tickell and her brother Peter last night in Bellingham Townhall.
She plays the fiddle and the Northumbrian pipes. Magical! She is a true virtuoso on the pipes! We had a wonderful evening with friends and saw many others in the full hall. Kathryn and Peter even managed to get their father Mike up on stage to sing at the end of the concert. What a family!

This is for Paul, another Velvets lover

Lou for Thurston and Noah

David, Iggy and Lou



Lou the Hoodie

Noah and Thurston both love Lou Reed and the Velvets too. So for Thanksgiving I give them thanks by posting some good old Lou! Watch this space for more in the future.

1979

In 1979 I went to the USA for the first time. I flew Laker for £50 or something cheap like that from London to L.A. Talk about low fares! I brought my own food and drink like other passengers on the no frills nor basics airline.
I had been waitressing in Covent Garden at a restaurant called Penny's and saved up enough money to go to the States and stay for a while.
It was February and I arrived in sunny warm LAX with palm trees and wearing a sheep skin fur from Brick Lane Market. I had chronic bronchitis from living in London's East End in Acme housing for artists. Luckily I got a ride from some guys with a pick-up truck at 5 am. I sat in the back with the warm wind in my hair. They left me in a Dunkin' Donuts somewhere in OC! At 7am I called my host and they had trouble finding me I daresay!
" Hi I am here! Where are you? At Dunkin' Donuts! Which one? Oh, is there more than one? Yes. Oh. Let me ask the waitress..... She says it is in Orange County."
In any case after LA I went to NYC and instantly fell in love. Fell in love with the city. It was spring and it was lovely.It was 1979.
I got a job waitressing at the Ear Inn on Spring St. They had music and poetry events on the weekends and the owner was a really nice guy,Richard Hayman, another redhead.The Ear Inn is still there and quite the same, which is remarkable. I got a tour of the basement which we had to go to to get supplies and they still do now, and it smelled exactly as I remembered 25 years ago. A Proustian Madeleine experience!
Here are photos of the Ear Inn today and it does look the same. The art work is an assemblage by Sari Dienes made in 1979 a Mandala for James Brown the original owner of this very old house.
The Ear Inn is well worth a visit.
PS I shall confess that I was not a very talented waitress but I felt very sunny at the time and got good tips. The kind owner gave me quarters for the juke box and I would play favourite records and dance to them as I worked!

A colourful neighbourhood in many ways

Rodinky's Room in colour. A documentary photo of the room where David R. lived for a good part of his life. This was in 19 Princelet St.

Fournier Street where Gilbert and George live.

Princelet Street

I want to post some more photos of Huguenot Whitechapel. These relate directly to Rodinky's Room by being of 19 Princelet St where the synagogue was.