Kissing the She Bear (by sarah)

Tonight the 22nd of October 2015 is the launch of Kissing The She Bear by the amazing poet Anna Saunders - Anna's poems are dark and deep and whimsical and pull you into the other whilst wrapping the very real world and experiences around you. This time she has teamed up with the excellent Will Humphreys as the books photographer - Will's images are always emotion stirring and thought driving, he is one of my favourite composers within this art form. I am very excited about the combination of these two artists and will also be getting the chance to perform some of my own mythos based poetry at the event in Cheltenham - it is free entry at Copa.

Ada Lovelace Day 2015 (by sarah)

Ada Lovelace was a victorian lady who loved maths, she was also the astranged daughter of Lord Byron the poet, she has a computer programming language named after her and a day... the day is to celebrate women in science and technology. A chance to tell their stories.

Me and Alaric have written quiet a few stories of women who have inspired us or we feel are essential to where our current modern tech and meds are.

We have covered innovation, science, engineering, computing, medicine and technology. We love reading the stories that pour onto twitter each year.

But... that is not what I want to talk about today - not the successes but the struggles. As one of the most dangerous thing is not being allowed to fail.

If you are the role model, or figure head, or just in an environment where some aspect of you like gender or race or disability is highlighted continually and you are fighting to maintain your position... there is no room to fail, no space to just step back and go "you know I could use a little help here" because as soon as you do that it becomes because of that difference that marker, that things that makes you not one of the boys. And all those who have helped you and believed in you will be let down.

But if you can't fail, can't ask for help without undermining your own position then you can not progress as smoothly or easily and when the stakes are high it adds to the stress.

Because failure becomes not a little set back but a full blown retreat - a being chucked out the door.

When you can be a lousy scientist and it's just because you are lousy (or need more training) and not because of your gender, orientation, disability... - then equality isn't reached - until then it is just another stress to add to catastrophic collapses and retreats from the world of science and tech feeding the "leaky pipeline" we hear so much about i.e. why there are less and less women as you go higher and higher in science and tech even though the numbers are up and have been up for a decade or more at the lower ends like A'levels and undergrad degrees.

This is one of the reasons I actually hate quotas (I am not saying they are not needed) - I've seen good arguments for them but my personal experience of them has been being told I am not actually good enough - "you're only here because you tick three different boxes, you fill three quotas" this is crushing and if you are not careful it makes you feel that perhaps you really do not belong. You try and hide what subjects you are struggling with rather than just getting help with them and if you didn't "tick the boxes" then it would be fine to ask for that help - ask for it whilst being one of these groups and get told "this isn't the place for someone like you" and you end up having to threaten legal stuff and that just makes it all extra stressful. And how do you know you if you were good enough to get in?

Cheer yourself up with some of my puppet comedy involving Ada (not for kids this one!).

Also I made pendants, and key fobs and badges using the pictures of Ada I had drawn and hot melt glue straight from the gun! They are not the best - they were the first attempt at this technique but the girls loved them 🙂

I was going to do cake but am saving that for the actual Bicentinnial in December.

There is also a colouring in sheet people are welcome too, which I produced last year.

And yes I am grumpy - I never felt as if I'd left science, I felt like it was taken away from me and worse that I had let down those who had invested in me. I actually dread trying to talk to those people again but life is crock full sometimes. Maybe one day....

Weston Super Mare and The Yellow Sky (by sarah)

We went to Dismaland thanks to my friend Becca who nabbed us the tickets - it was interesting and not as disturbing as I was expecting though Alaric reminded me not to look in the Cruel Bus - there are photos but you wont see them yet - possibly not before the end of September as I kind of think if you can you should go and if not then you can wait to see my pics 🙂 Also I've written a poem - part of my Found Poems of the Concrete which will accompany the images.

What you do get to see is the rest of our day at Weston which includes a strangely yellow sky!

It was not sunset - the sun is up in the white bobbly clouds!

Suggestions have so far been pollution and sand storm - I think the sand storm is most likely it was quiet a windy day and this part of the country actually has proper sand on it's beaches and that is more land over there in the distance!

We also found Yoda!

And a tea room with only cow milk and no gluten free stuff who basically ignored us and doted on the old people who were spending £40 a pop. I was not impressed and they are not going on list of recommends especially as they do not have a sign saying high teas need to be booked in advance and informed us it's all frozen and needs defrosting. I think this may make me now an officially old person.

On a brighter note we also found some epic sand sculptures which are part of an annual festival. 🙂

We got to watch this guy working on a space invaders section of what appeared to be a giant gamers birthday cake!

This underwater seascape was my favourite!

For a start it's underwater, then it is archeology and it was EPIC!

Then there were these 3D portraits from around the world which were stunning!

These were really beautiful.

There was an oooooook written on the walls of Dismaland and a walk around the sculptures down the road revealed the culprit 😉

He was sitting by a big book of jungle creatures.

It appeared to be coming to life!

I posted it in one of the Discworld groups I'm in and several people pointed out that the Liberian does not have cheek pouches - I pointed out it was actually just the remnants of Horace's hair 😉

I also took some amazing 3D pictures which I need to work out how to get printed as I still can't afford the 3D screen idea I had when I first got the camera!

With all the photo taken, everybody else wondered off but it was ok because they found a tea party for Alaric to join in with 😉

Though he did seem a bit confused!

Anyway - here is a butt load more pics 🙂

I think Alaric liked this Virtual Reality guy.

He seemed to be trying to strike up a convo!

Games, and fairy tales and fiction seemed to be the theme. And the angle on this chess board is amazing.

And last but certainly not least - the Sand Dragon! On a horde of sand gold!

Mary’s First Day at School (by sarah)

There has been truma - Mary is petrified of school. Jean couldn't wait but Mary...

She has always been clingy. She cried, Alaric was relieved that they didn't have to pry her physically off of him in the end - something that was on the cards. Fortunately I found hello kitty school shoes.

She is very excited about these and agreed to go to school if it meant she could wear them. They have little ears 🙂

She doesn't want to sit still and she want to go climbing, part of her panic was she thought she'd never get to go climbing again. But hello kitty shoes and matching scrunchy and heart buttons on her dress... and a promise that will do dancing when she gets home resulted in reluctant grin.

Of course she does have big sis who was lovely with helping Mary to get ready even with screaming and kicking. It's also Jean's last year of primary school - something that she is not that happy about though she does seem resigned.

Reading Jean (by sarah)

I took Jean to a midnight book launch - I debated weather it was appropriate as she is still 9 though will be ten by the weekend.

But it was the last discworld novel and I phoned Waterstones to check and she was desperate to be a feegle - Tiffany Aching was introduced to her last year by me. She was desperate for people like herself in books - she fell in love with the discworld.

Terry Pratchett got given a place next to Neil Gaiman and RL Stien as favourite authors. Then he died.

Jean went as Tiffany to World Book Day. Jean loves books, Jean often stays up far later than she should reading and gets twitchy if she doesn't have a book to hand.

She announced the Waterstones smelt of new books and though tired did say today she wished we'd stayed longer at the launch, last night we left when she said she wanted to go - she thought they should have read more of the book out.

As we queued she read the last book of Tiffany, The Shepherds Crown, it is also the last book of Terry. She would like it known that she is not reading the book in the above photo but was just looking through it at this point.

The beehives made bee noises - she was impressed and someone gave her a crotchet feegle - she loves it and fell asleep with it last night. We were in the newspaper and there will be more write ups on this 🙂

We don't have the sparkly book as Mummy was a cheap skate and got the £10 tickets. I made the right decision in taking her.

Her feegle outfit was cobbled together from a spock outfit and Rincewind had a tricorder. Don't cross the fandoms!

When asked why she was there she replied with "I like books", she is supposed to be asleep now but is reading.