Dear Alaric and Jean you asked for ideas for welding projects for presents for me - you know already that I would like a tank drum but I would also like what I call a Calypso Drum - these used to be used at the carnivals when I was a kid and also during the candle light parades and things. I prefer the ones without drilled holes but if they are easier to make then that is fine 🙂
This one looks like a lot of work - from having spent time round industrial workshops as a kid I kind of had it in my head you just bashed empty oil cans - the sort my bro/uncle David makes into BBQ's. And I'm sure there was a drum made from the bonnet of a car or maybe they just let me play with non-sharpe metal and stuff to keep me entertained as a kid!
Also there is this little beaut which is painted and stuff - I didn't know they came painted - it is lovely but about £80 and isn't as many notes I don't think.
p.s. you might need to enlist the help of musicians in Cheltenham Hackspace for tuning though Jean you are always moaning at my wrong notes so you should be able to do it yourself! Remember Alaric you do have oscillerscopes!
This weekend is the virtual launch party of my poetry, music and art album Within and Without. It went live at 10 am this morning 🙂
There will be give aways and postings of links, explanations of the recordings, videos and more. I am running a Facebook Event, a Google Plus Collection as well as blogging across various platforms 🙂
I will be going until 11 pm Sunday evening!
Within and Without is an on going art, poetry and music project that I started several years ago. This is the first part and contains the visual poem A Stranger Dream which is also a colouring in book I have produced. Some of the colouring in sheets or art visuals are included in the download along with art work from a sister book not yet released that goes with the track Winter's Heart.
The whole download costs £1 and comes free with any merch purchase you make. If you wish to just just purchase the merch you can go to my Etsy shop.
Sunday was the first ever Fun Palaces weekend in Gloucester with events all over the UK. The event in Gloucester was organised by the accessible theatre company Two Can run by Nickie Wildin.
I was pointed in the direction of Fun Palaces by a mutual friend as it's ethos is similar to the Cuddly Science (my puppets and sci-craft activities) mission statement - Science for All and the idea that everyone should and can be part of science, art, music, sport = culture.
As a grass root, community driven event it needed contributors so we took the Puppets and did Cuddly Science and junk modelling and I did a poetry set.
Alaric helped with bunting and the girls did a lot of colouring!
There was a wide range of people who came along and took part which is absolutely ace as part of the issue I have is our society is increasingly segmented meaning people find it hard to relate to others as they have never had interactions with people who are different to them.
This included Phillip who sleeps in shop doorway most nights and who was excited to help decorate his home as we stuck the artworks up in the window. Mary decided he was her new best friend and cried when he left.
The space itself ie the shop was donated and the furniture for workshops was loaned from the community enterprise The Furniture Recycling Project.
Ada Lovelace the puppet came out and even did a few little jigs on the street to let people know we were there! Also it is coming up to Ada Lovelace Day again so it was good to let people know about Ada!
The puppets and sci-craft help engage people who have a tendency to be scared of science and is part of how I break down barriers but my workshops are also flexible so I also did general junk modelling and spoke to people about junk art and upcycling - I even have a booklet on the stuff I've written now!
Some truly amazing pieces came out of the workshop from tweeting pop out birds...
To fire breathing dragons and thanks to Mary lots and lots of night vision goggles!
Running workshops is exhausting but fun and everyone seemed to really be enjoying themselves 🙂
We also got to promote the Cheltenham Hackspace as there was a skills exchange board, Jean also kept trying to put my on it to teach stuff like knitting! People were asking about the Hackspace and I found several people had initiatives that could do with junk modelling, comic book creating or cuddly science 🙂 So it was really kind of epic for us!
Then there was the bingo! With Beryl 😀
Turns out I suck at bingo but the lady who won one of my Love: A Stranger Dream candles loved it and Phillip won the cake and then insisted on sharing it with us all. It was an epic cake I am kind of sad I failed to get a photo of it!
Two ladies from Gloucester Cathedral came along to tell us about the projects that are and will be happening there including letting people know about their breakfast club and that they are getting solar panels!
I love the Cathedral space so it was great to hear about things especially how they are planning on turning the front bit into a community garden.
They had also bought with them pictures of stained glass windows and some of the green men carvings for colouring in which went down well with everybody but especially with Mary 🙂
Then it was Spoken Word time - I opened the set with my visual poem and narrative piece Reclaim the City which is part of my Found Poems of the Concrete series. People seemed to like it - I went for the Gloucester theme rather than Fun or Palaces.
I had made booklets for everybody to take away with them as it relies on the images and also I know I personally find it hard to recall stuff when you get bombarded with a lot of cool new things - so it is there for people to look at later if they wish.
Of course I then made the audience participate in Windy Gloucestershire which I was going to read but kind of transposed into singing without me actually noticing!
I also did Summer Sun another song-poem but this time I did do the spoken version. Jean took some photos the one above of Al and the one below of the poet from Food for Thought which is a poetry night that happens at Cafe Rene.
Then we had the brilliant Donna Williams who is a sign poet, in Donna's case she uses British Sign Language or BSL. Sign language is something I've struggled with since the head injury - according to my kids I used to sign nursery rhymes and things for them and my husband says I was quiet militant about this incase any of them ended up with hearing problems like I had as a child, I wanted them to be able to communicate - because not being able to communicate is the MOST frustrating thing. My mum says the main issue is that I knew the rudimentary of 3 different sign language systems, enough to help in classrooms and when I used help her at the day centre but I was not proficient as it were, and now I've got all three of them all muddled up in my head.
Interestingly I understood what was being signed but would not have been able to sign back at all. And also Donna did run through what some of the sings meant as well as vocalising some of the poems.
Mary's favourite was about cats 🙂 I did video it but have since found a better recording on Youtube.
I have written about sign poetry before including here, though interestingly I can't find the stuff about the American poet who started my interest. I am wondering if it was in an essay for my PGCert or something.
Donna was lovely and I think I've seen her/met her before but I am still really struggling with face recognition at the moment! To the point that I could not work out who Nickie (the lady who had organised the event!) was when I arrived.
Mary loved the event and Phillip so much that she had a melt down when it came time to pack up and leave. (And I mean melt down)
It was an amazing day and I hope we get to do it again next year. I met lots more creatives and found out about stuff in Gloucester - this is something I suck at - I will end up going off to Swindon, Bristol, Brum, London etc... and then finding out that there was a big culture spoken word, art etc... thing happening round the corner but only AFTER it has been and gone!
On the last day beach outing in South Africa we came across the rock pools with many and varied creatures, some bright and some not so bright.
There were anenomes, barnicals, fish, clams, many bright shells and so on. Though some where deeper than others and all had fresh (though sea salty) water washing over them as we stood there watching. Some were deeper than others.
Mary was most taken with the red anenome 🙂
I liked the fact that the ripples in the sea water cast little rainbows even over the more subtly coloured creatures like this clam.
And as promised here are the fish 🙂 or some of the fish anyway 🙂
I probably would not have found the rock pools if Lionel had not pointed them out as they are sunk into fractures in the rocks which are slippery with algea. They were worth the slipping risk!
The girls loved the rockpools
Alaric spent ages with them looking in their wibbly wobbly depths 🙂
I just loved how you could see a whole little ecosystem there contained in a cradle of rock 🙂 It made me miss Ewan Laurie lessons and paleobiology and being shown byssal threads on field trips 🙂 I may have board the kids with all this along with dentition and muscle scars on shells which apparently I tell them everytime we are at a beach (oops!).
We actually came home with a book on the oceanic life in South Africa and I will attempt to look up some of what we saw. It also made me determined to do more with the poems and stories I've written about rock pools in the past 🙂
I love rocks, stones, minerals, landscapes... South Africa was already under my skin for it is the home of the Cradle of Humankind and though we did not manage to go and visit it I know of it and about it and as a teen I read every book our library and the library network had to offer me on human origins and various homonid ancestors. My entire Punk In Pink novel series is based on an alternative history that comes from the fossil gap.
But more than any of that - South Africa has rocks!!! It has many and varied rocks and landscapes that show the origin of those rocks so vividly. Even the birds love the rocks!
The thing is that I am a geologist, yes I am not in industry or working for an institution but I was a geologist way before I ever set foot in Imperial College, and even before I did A'level geology. I was the child that collected stones and shells and leaves and stones and fossils because they were stone shells and leaves and tried to make her take a fossil home from the Welsh Mountains that was bigger than me at the age of 5.
So I took a lot of photos of rocks and how they fit in the landscape and sometimes you can see write small what is write large like contacts between rock types or the way fractures behave.
I feared that not being active in the field and not studying would mean I could no longer read the landscape, I feared the head injury may have robbed me of what vestage of that ability I had left. But the more we explored, the more I looked, the more I saw, the more the puzzle pieces fell into place.
And once I saw the shape of how it was I began to look for and read the geology of the area - out of books and a map Alaric's Dad and Lynn showed me. I can not tell you the joy of having read that landscape correctly - true I may not be able to tell at a glance what a rock is exactly anymore but I still know enough to tell the rough how it foamed and why it is structured the way it is.
And I might have really liked the feldspars on the beach boulders and the quartz and the mica... and I might have tried to get the girls to look at them and they may have been more interested in the fish (don't worry I took a photo of the fish but you'll have to wait for another post for that one!).
But Mary would scamper off and find me things and drag me to them and make me look and tell her and Jean would pretend to not be interested but then collected some stones for later...
And yes these photos are all from our beach adventure on that last day and believe me if the camera battery hadn't gone flat I would have taken more. I still recall the chinmey climb to the sea we walked past and on other days preserved ripples and fossils and so so much more which I did not get photos of or have come out blurry and which there was no time to sketch.
I love rocks but I know most people don't so I have tried to limit the rocky outcrops... I mean posts on them 😀
Alaric, Jean, Metalworking, Music | sarah | 
Mon 7th Nov 2016 4:46 pm | 
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