Pancakes! (by sarah)

I ment to start cooking them at like 5 but I went for what was supposed to be a short nap and nobody wanted to wake me up so I got up at 7:30 :/

I was grumpy but it was decided that the girls could stay up late and at 9 o'clock we finally had pancakes!

We had savoury and sweet and so on and the girls really enjoyed it!

Ruskin’s Mill Writer’s Retreat (by sarah)

Today I went to my second one day writer's retreat - this time at Ruskin Mill near Nailsworth. It was organised by the same people Writing Space Stroud and was once again lovely.

It was raining and I currently do not have a camera which is why there are not a hundred photos of chickens with feather flares and light sculptures on the water.

This time it was £30 instead of £20 but included a yummy lunch in the cafe.

I met more writers and had great conversations over tea and cake and lunch between mad sprees of writing. I got 9000 words of The Awakening written today which is amazing even if it does mean the novel is going to be much longer than I was expecting :/

I will finish off the last 1000 words before bed to round it up to 10K.

Once home Alaric made a lovely dinner whilst I made some visual poetry booklets out of card, pen, and old writing magazines. This lead to a fun discovery of using someone I know's story title as part of it 🙂

Christmas 2010 (I think) (by sarah)

I think this is 2010 and that for actual Christmas we went down to Essex for dinner at my parents house but these are photos of our Solcist meal and general festiveness.

Jean and Al playing with the marble run.

King Alaric at the washing up again

Garlic Bread - as in bread with garlic gloves in it 🙂

Jeany sort of setting the table

Jean decorating the MK 2 of The Little Book of Festive Poetry - I spent ages printing out out the sheets and glueing the words onto the pictures as the laptop I had couldn't cope with me trying to do things with large files!

It snowed and I remember playing with Jean outside and me and Al taking it in turns!

Tom and Jean 🙂

Jean really could not get enough of being outside in the snow!

It was the first year we found a yard of Jaffa Cakes!

Jean ran off with them 🙂

Sleepy Jean after all the fun 🙂

Mary Leaky’s 100th Birthday (by sarah)

Today is Mary Leaky's 100th Birthday - later today I shall bake a cake like I did for Alan Turin and draw a picture.

For now here is a google doodle!

Mary Leaky's works are extremely important to us as a species and to me as an individual. To us as a species knowing where we came from helps us in so many ways including why we get sick etc... What happened in the evolution of hominids in general can tell us so much.

For me as an individual she was important as it was her writings that helped inspire me through my A'levels and onto a degree in geolog. Even in my final year I wasn't sure weather I wanted to work in her field or the origin of life.

During my GCSE's and A'levels I read all the books in our local library system to do with the Leaky's and paleo and geology things. It became a bit of an obsession - enough that my in-laws who live in South Africa send me books on the Leaky's.

Poets Work (by sarah)

Saturday I went into Cheltenham to meet friends and write and what have you. It was great to see my friend Andy again who I orginally met at a writing group in Cheltenham back before the floods!

The postcards and stickers of my art work arrived for moo so I gave him some one of each which he seemed really happy about 🙂 He also told me I should be selling them.

Somehow three hours disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Then I went on to Centre Arts who are running an Arts Cafe on Saturday afternoons. I managed to fall off my chair - a prelude to passing out and stuff later in the day which was unfortunate but I recovered and they were very helpful and understanding as always!

I felt stupid but a cup of coffee and several poems inspired by the artwork later, I was having a fine chat with an artist/nurse who was in there drawing away.

I also managed to talk to my friend who runs the place about the Science-Art Exhibition we will be running in March which is very exciting and lots of organising needs to be done!

Alaric was concerned about me so bought me a four pack of irish stout which did seem to really help - he then made me lots of green veg for dinner and we discussed the bleeding problem :/

I've also had a neck spasm for the last week or so which is making typing and drawing and reading hard but I am steadily working my way through it. On the plus side the continual headache I've had for the past year seems to have disappeared with the coil 🙂

I finished the day off by sorted out my poetry mug - I love this cupcake tea cupe 🙂

It may not sound like work but with the aememia acting up it was very exhausting for me but it was definately worth it. I'd been in on Tuesday as well to watch a talk about The European History of Warewolves which was interesting by (Deborah Hyde)[http://www.jourdemayne.com/about-jourdemayne].

It was a narrowed down talk so covered a later bit of history than what I have been researching lately. However it did tie in with the time period of the first Punk storyline and I'd very much want to add in the warewolf, witch and vampire myths on top but within the context of actual history, science and the storyline itself. Well that was really the point of going!

From a writing point of view Tuesday was a very productive day - I spent it trying to get an overview of Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Tudor period but completely side tracked myself in disease history (as you do!).

This was all whilst cuddling Mary who was in one of her slightly grumpy I am teething moods so wouldn't be put down.

After the warewolf talk, I wrote a horror story based on real accounts of the Black Death - I should have been sleeping but had brain over load!

I freaked myself out slightly and ended up having to wake Alaric up - this is a good sign though - I feel my best horror stuff is written in this way - though poor Al was not amused!

I have a story idea that came out of the talk too but it is very disturbing so can't face writing it yet. It maybe shelved until GothNoWriMo or something.

The talk was good in another way though - I realised as I miss people who think and know stuff. I was sitting there and some makes a comment about us and chimpanzees and I know it's wrong and before I can say anything someone else corrects the guy! It just sort of felt like uni again and I have always really missed that atmosphere.

Writing wise this month is being hectic with me running WoPoWriMo too and I really want to donate some more poems to charity cause - one for the disabled and their fight at the moment and some for Freedom - a book shop that was fire bombed in London on Friday.

So I am chugging along with the work thing - never as fast as I want but little bits will build-up.