Tyroids and Singing (by sarah)

Back when covid hit I lost my voice - it was a whisper for about 18 months and the sore throat was horrendous. Of course we knew why this was as I was hospitalised with chest pains a few months after appearing to recover - my thyroid was inflamed, I did in fact have Grave's Disease or hyperthyroidism - it was over active and it had gone there from being slightly under active and the damage thyroids do isn't so much how high or low they are but the rapidity of that change - my eyes ached all the time but I was on medication relatively quickly and there was a lot of other stuff with mum etc going on. There wasn't really time to process it all.

Things improved and my voice came back and it wasn't quiet right, I always feel I have a lump in my throat and I find doing some of the sounds I used to hard... mainly I get coughing fits, and often I have a mild sore throat. Like my soft weirdly wide nails with ridges on them - they are kind of normal shape again - kind of but the ridgedness and softness remain - this is all just part of the corse with Grave's disease but the sore throat wasn't too bad and my voice was basically back so I started singing again - first at the monthly Folk Music Jam sessions, just whispers with the general melee, then I joined a Folk Choir that is lets you sing the part you want rather than being split into sopranos, altos etc... and then I joined a group called The Cryptid's and even wrote songs to make the general public sing!

I've got two project exploring voice coming up and I also got to be the Fairy Cryer and do announcements in my loud announcing voice including support from the actual Town Cryer - I even have my own bell for the role. And then a few weeks ago it happened...

The sensation of being strangled, the weird loud swallowing noise, wheezing and whistling when breathing which both kids hate and if I touch my neck I have like a flesh collar under the skin. The cough is worse, the sore throat worse - ear ache and my levels of tinnitus have shot up... and my voice is wavering, changing pitch and cracking randomly. And I have been blaming everything rather than facing the fact it's the thyroid again. I had been back under the GP's care for endocrine issues and I don't really want to trek back to the hospital but it is what it is. I have been mainly avoiding the Gloucester hospital since mum died and have been doing relatively well with that - I don't want to go to the hospital.

Its weird though because my main thing is that I really want to sing and that is the thing I have latched onto - if I have to have the thyroid removed what happens to my voice?

The Tangled Tale of My Career (by alaric)

I've been feeling a bunch of despair, boredom and ennui about my career lately; so I've decided to attack it in the way I know best - by writing about it.

When I was little, I wanted to be a scientist. Of course, that wasn't what I actually wanted - but popular media had created this vision of a mad scientist labouring in a lab making weird and wonderful things. I later learnt that what I wanted to be was called an "Inventor", which is a kind of engineer; the application of science to make things - the goal of building a fantastic machine is to get that fantastic machine, not to test some hypothesis. So it's definitely not science.

This was fed, in part, by the reading material I had around the house. My maternal grandparents had been an electrical engineer and a science teacher, respectively, so I had a mixture of O-level science textbooks and old cloth-bound tomes about electrical power distribution networks. Plus, my mother was a science fiction and fantasy fan, so I had stories like E. E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman books (epic space battles, written by an engineer so tending to linger on the technical details) inspiring me. I saw technology as a way of solving real problems, and I found learning about it fascinating, and the challenges were engaging - and what's even better, I found I had a knack for solving them. The future looked exciting!

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Finding My Voice (by sarah)

This weekend just gone I sang with The Folk Chior at The Folk of Gloucester for the Christmas Makers Market and then on Sunday I went and rehearsed Wintery type festive music shenanigans for the Steampunks Christmas Reveals event which will be this coming weekend. It was difficult as I had missed over a months worth of rehearsals and I don't know how to read music (yes still) so there were challenges for both endeavours but I really enjoyed it and everyone seems to want to include me in the music stuff. I have also been attending the Folk at The Folk jam sessions - normally I just watch but sometimes I bring one of my songs - this time sadly due to a funeral most of the people were missing and they were desperate not to just have the same few people doing songs and so I gave them camp fire songs which most of them seemed to like. I even got recognised by someone later on - an elderly lady who has designated me as The Lady with the Silly Songs - who turned up at the textiles group I have been attending on Tuesdays.

I've even went along to a song writing cafe and attended a song writing workshop in Feburary all be it that I didn't get to stay for most of it due to Mary but such is the life of a parent and I still came out of it with one song, one poem and a spoken word/beatpoem/rap thingy. All this is not exactly new for me - I have been telling people about choirs and groups I have belonged to previously and even about song writing awards and things I received. But I have also been telling people people about all the times I've been told I am crap and not a musician and to take all my music down and so on. It is important I express these things because being neural divergent I still live with the music teacher's harsh words of primary school (I wasn't progressing in recorder because she had started sending sheet music home and not running through all the notes in class especially as there were now multiple types of recorders involved - she hadn't realised I couldn't read music but my mum sent her a letter asking for some extra lessons so I could either learn to read music or be taught the tunes individually - the teachers response was to chuck me out of the group and to act as a bar to me being in the school choir too). I hold all these comments within me - it goes for the triumphs too.

So there is a huge element of finding the confidence and freedom to actually go and do these things - ie if there is an audition I am probably stuffed, and choirs normally charge a membership fee which at points in the past has been too much. The irony of having sung in the Royal Albert Hall but to have been unable to join the village choir... and am dram clubs sinking so the show I actually got through the auditions for never actually happened and I had a good part!

The lists go on but it is not just the confidence - I have had issues with my hearing throughout my life more so since covid and the head injury left me with permanent tinnitus. I have a slight delay with things as I am feeling the music meaning that I may react slightly after everyone else... but I can guess where songs are going and when I say I feel the music I very much mean that on several levels and it can consume me from the core of my bones - vibrating all the way through me. I think I am more aware of sound than many people even with being partially deaf and at a couple of points in my life nearly completely death. I was too good in fact and people didn't realise how much of a problem there actually was with my hearing.

Voice is an interesting thing - I have spent much of my life being told it has to fit in, that I had to get rid of the extra noises or that I sound like a man or conversely am too high pitched. Well I am learning to point those bits back in my voice - I am learning my voice all over again thanks to covid and the graves disease I lost my voice even for speaking for over a year and have had repeated sore throats and of course the ever present choking lump that I just can't quiet swallow past. I no longer have Frightmare to use the stranger aspects of my voice at and actually I want to sing with them. clicks and whistles and purrs and growls and two voices, the undulations and braids of sound.

Also after dad died writing was hard - I would go to cafes and write with him and we would read each others stories and poems we'd written and without that there I have been bereft and when I was looking after mum there was no energy or capacity either mentally or physically - my hands didn't even work properly - all there was was cleaning and washing and phone calls to argue with everyone from hospitals to family about her care. But I have been trying to write, trying to create once more - but who am I on this flip side of everything? I feel I have been shattered so many times I do not know, I don't know what I like, what I want to do and I am now in my forties so all those dreams of carers seem foolish and lost to the tragedy of circumstance. None the less I am trying, I am putting words on paper even if they are just lists of stories I hope one day to write - I am keeping a diary again - or at least trying - it is a chaotic thing but it is beautiful (it cost too much) and I am even adding stickers because I like stickers and they are accents to my feelings and hopes and imagery has always been part of how I communicate - even if it is only with myself.

I went to a poetry writing workshop - I haven't done that for so long - and the woods whisper stories of the wild wood and industries and peoples vanished in time and I want to share that with the world. There is something of a song there trying to form and I feel like writing when I am there.

I am Finding my voice - again... it is both the same voice rediscovered and something wholey new.

I miss public transport! (by alaric)

When I lived in London, I used to commute on the London Underground and the busses. And in my bag, I always had my current reading book. And I'd sit and read for my journey, half an hour to an hour a day.

When I started working from home, I lost that; but I had to travel into London a few times a week to rotate offsite backups and things like that, so I still got a good hour and a half of reading time a week.

When I moved to Gloucestershire, I still had to go into London once a week, which provided a solid hour and a half of reading time each way plus some time on the Tube, which was excellent!

But that came to an end. When I leave the house, it's rare that I don't drive; and I detest having to manually steer a vehicle around, consuming all that energy and taking up space on the road! Whenever I can I take my bike or use public transport - but times when I'm not transporting passengers or cargo or am in a hurry are so rare. It was a rare treat when I went into town to visit the optician and I worked out it would be just as fast to go on my bike (slower moving than the car - but able to go through the centre of town rather than around, and can be chained up right by the optician rather than having to be parked further out and walking in!

As a society, we're in a vicious cycle: because most people have cars, businesses face little penalty for setting up a few large premises on cheap land outside of city centres, rather than lots of smaller ones nearer to where people live. And because businesses do that, people are pressured to have cars in order to be able to access services.

Even aside from the environmental costs of all those individual cars driving all over the place - and the direct financial costs of a significant fraction of the average person's income being spent on a vehicle, and maintaining it, and fuelling it - we have the all-too-common problem with a lot of things the ignorant call "progress": it leaves behind the people who can't take part. The young, the poor, and the sufficiently elderly can't drive cars, and so are locked out of accessing important services. And because they're the main customers for what local public transport (eg, busses) there is, that public transport is underfunded and poor.

This vicious cycle is somewhat avoided in large city centres, where road layouts laid down before the invention of the car are too hard to change now, and so public transport is the only practical option for most journeys. And it can be undone everywhere else, too, with the right incentives - the fifteen minute city concept, for instance. I'm sad people are opposing it, spreading misinformation to turn others against them - I'm not sure if that just comes from ignorant misunderstanding couple with a knee-jerk fear of change, or deliberate manipulation in order to prop up the fossil fuel industry.

I want a world where I can get to most places I need on my bike, and places further away by bus, tram, and train. Sure, there will be delivery vans, and emergency vehicles, and work vans for tradespeople who need to turn up on-site with a load of equipment; but the roads should be dominated by bikes and mobility scooters and busses (that the mobility scooters can drive onto!). I don't understand why governments want to spend so much on roads (have you ever looked at a motorway junction and thought about what it cost to build?) for people to spend so much to buy and maintain cars to drive on them, and spend so much time driving, and finding and paying for parking in parking lots that take up so much space. Public transport is cheaper and more accessible!

I want this solarpunk transport utopia not just because it's more efficient - less waste is better for the environment, and frees up resources we can use for fun things - but because it's also safer, and frees up our time to read and think and talk while on busses, trams and trains.

(Since writing the above, I had a particularly bad day visiting our eldest at University - delayed by missing a turn because I had ingrained muscle-memory telling me to drive to somewhere else, then delayed by a road closure, then delayed even more by being rear-ended when the car in front stopped suddenly to try and not miss a turning; I stopped in time by the car behind didn't... I'm now even more sick of driving than I was!)

Gloucester Story Telling Cafe 5 – The Summer Time Special (by sarah)

It's that time again already! July was hectic with end of term and beginning of summer holidays events including The Gloucester Festival of Archaeology!

Now its Augusts turn and we shall be starting off with The Gloucester Story Telling Cafe tomorrow evening at The Folk of Gloucester - this is our monthly story telling night and is open to many and varied different types of story telling from flash fiction, to biopic, to traditional tails, to Crankies and probably a whole lot more!

What you need to know to come and see the show!

When:

Thursday 2nd of August 2023

(It is the 1sr Thursday of every month except January)

Doors open 7 pm for a 7:30 start

It is a pay what you want system - we have no funding currently so could do with some shackles to keep the night running but equally if you have nothing or little to give just come along and enjoy the night for free

End time is around 10 pm (we are aware that one site says 9 pm it is an external site to us so we can't change it!)

We have an interval where you can buy drinks and cakes at the Cafe and Bar, it is also open before the show

Where:

The Folk of Gloucester, 99-103 Westgate Street, Gloucester (just down from the Cathedral)

It is the old Tudor style wooden framed building!

Who:

This months guest story teller is Nick Brunger - check them out even if it is just to see the awesome photos on their website!

And music from Ed B

You:

We also have open mic slots capped at one story, three poems or 10 minutes maximum. Please come and share your stories with us or just kick back with a beverage of choice and enjoy the night.