Music and Friends (by sarah)

Just at the point where Jean started to take to playing and learning songs for the keyboard/piano, our hammond organ decides to die. We are hoping we can still fix it but it is going to be a major job 🙁

So a friend of ours said we could have an old keyboard of his, it used to be his grandmothers. We picked it up at the weekend with a little musical distraction!

For Jean spotted his epic set up with phone and mic stand and coloured buttons all set up to the computer 🙂

He also has a tank drum from Bali, I love these instruments so he let me have a play and of course that meant Mary had to have a play!

It was great seeing friends at the weekend - some of whom we've not seen for 3 or 4 years!

Of course after school yesterday my poor old struggling laptop was kidnapped for music recording / song making to happen - this mainly seemed to consist of Jean shouting at Mary for talking over the recording!

Once again I've been amazed by our wonderful friends 🙂

Extra-Ordinary (by sarah)

Today I feel like a failure, today I feel fat and not ugly so much as plain with frizzy hair and glasses. Today I looked at the things I make and think... they are all a bit naff. Today I am the failed scientist and the untrained artist, today I am FAILURE.

Today I am the stuck at home, non housework doing, burnt cooking mum, I am the can't spell, can't concentrate hack filling in forms to apply for events/jobs that I know wont want me, not daring to apply for the acting roles as I'm too fat, too old, too short, the wrong physical gender, I am the failed to get my kids to the things they want and need to go to, I am the fail parent with a trail of failed careers.

Today I finished knitting DNA, and worked on a mermaids tail, cut out and folded a micro-zine I drew and scanned and made, I helped Mary write a story and she made a cover for it to be a book, Jean helped me find my unfinished knitting projects and I finished the basis for some little easter rabbits. I typed up a poem and ordered polymer clay to make little creatures with. I put away a giant papier mache sculpture I made for the visually impaired and checked that the brain I am making is drying ok, there were piles of paintings I had to move, piles of my paintings - I can't see them as good, I can't compare to the other artists that I see locally, my stuff just... does not quiet cut it and yet... it is the headline picture for the group.

Today I feel like a fraud, I feel like I am pretending to be good, to be amazing, when I am not. I am just me, a lost, lonely little me. A few days ago I performed at a launch event, people came to tell me how animated and full of energy I was, they said they liked my work, the world was full of chances to grab and take and I did... but... I stood outside the venue looking at the door, wondering if I was truly supposed to be there, weather I was an interloper, I had to battle mind doubt dragons to go in and whilst I talk, whilst I feel alive at the creativity around me, I look at the crowd of amazing people and think how wonderful they are and how drab I am. And I feel the press of eyes and the expectation and I want to run, I want to hide, I am the extroverted introvert or introverted extrovert and sometimes I think I have wasted my life.

Today I sit writing this drowning in craft supplies I need to put away, this week I have designed many new workshops covering science, art, writing, specific themes and the environment. My old injuries ache with the clammy cold weather and I long for summer but know I have much to do but I can not stir, my head still rings from the head injury I had coming up to two years ago now and I feel thick, stupid, clogged, my c-section scar is hurting, skin burning and sinus pain is king. It is nothing to the physical pain and discomfort I have suffered in the past, I'm a little inflamed and virally that is all. I fail at not moaning, at not feeling used up and rung out.

Today I think of all the people who have helped me and I know I have failed them and worse I have not always passed the buck, I have been too busy or distracted or lazy. I walk past the homeless and realise that it more than two years ago that I did any proper charity work, even though an event I acted at this month has just raised over £400 for charity, I had to claim my expenses - I have a loan to repay and things I need to get to - I failed at money management - I struggle with numbers now, I did not used to. I had to take the money but not because I would starve because I wouldn't and that makes me wither inside. Am I greedy?

Today I told my husband - I told him how when I write down the things I have done they sound fantastic and great, or brave and selfless - when I know it wasn't like that, it was clutching at straws, it was trying stuff, it was itself often failure. My life has twisted and turned and looped da looped and I am giddy.

Today he told me I am extraordinary and that most people - are not. He told me that people are in awe of my work but these words hurt and puzzle. He gave examples and I am like "no that is just because they have had to survive differently, they want to do stuff, creative stuff, science stuff." And then I was angry about how their potential is being lost, how my potential was lost, about how my husband would be the better home maker and can't be, how society traps people in rolls and classes and demographs.

Today I survived, I live and so does my family, and for that I am truly in awe and fearful of a harsh and unrelenting world. But sometimes... sometimes survival is not enough and that is only because I am lucky, I have capacity, I have safety nets, I have family and friends and love and food and shelter. I am higher up the triangle of needs - but that should not be the case. Potential maximium should be achievable for all, with no judging as to what that is, no expectations of what a successful life is, no squinting and muttering when a sideways corse is taken. Failure should not be seen as well... failure. It is the experimenting, the living of life, it is were the discoveries are made, if you don't try you can't fail, but if you don't fail have you ever really tried?

Today is not today anymore, today is now tomorrow and I feel the ideas scritching in my brain, they have been gone a long time, I have to rest lots to let my brain heal - it healed enough to give me ideas again. Proper new fresh ideas, but my health has always been shoddy and I have lost so much time, and I can't go fast, I can just be. So I pool and collect the ideas, and hope they will get their day. Somedays they erupt into the world and the world laps them up, other days... not so much and I gather them back in for another try, on another day.

Today is new, I still feel hollow, but that will pass, it always does, and the void will be filled with colour and patterns and thoughts and then I'll accidently create a thing or things or a thing of things. Until then there is hugs and coffee, and admin.

Parental Party Failure (by sarah)

So Sunday we were doing house work and admin and we wanted to pop to the shops for some candles, we were going to go to Homebase but we sailed past and ended up at The Range instead.... Once we had finished all the admin and popped the kids in bed Al spotted a text from that morning asking for comfirmation that Mary couldn't have cheese for the party.

We hadn't seen an invite though Mary had mentioned a party but not a when or where, so replied saying she'd love to come (it's one of the kids she really likes), but when was it?

Turns out it was when we were faffing with candle buying 🙁 Meaning that we dragged a crying child who did not want to go to the shops past her friends party and worse if we'd gone to Homebase we'd have bumped into people and she could have just gone to it!

The little girl was convinced that Mary was going to it as well so I feel really, really bad :'(

I've often wondered how many invites and things we miss, and of course conversely I'd said to Al that I was worried a couple of key people might not have gotten Mary's birthday invites as they didn't even say they couldn't come which is very unusual for the families involved.

Issue is that we drop the kids at breakfast club early so see hardly any of the other parents and w don't do pick up as we have a car share thing going and often they are in the after school club so same issue as with breakfast club.

Jean also has missed two parties this academic year - one because we lit. forgot and another because complicated logistics meant there was just no time to get her there on the day 🙁

This sort of thing make us feel like really bad parents.

Parentfail

edit: so Mary proudly presented us with the invite yesterday (Tuesday) after school 🙁 I assume it ended up in her draw at school.

Ada Out and About (by sarah)

This week is British Science Week so Ada and the other puppets are out and about, Mary was so exstatic to find out that she could take them in to her school for show and tell 🙂

Of course she now has her own wish list of puppets she wants making!

The puppets are for our Science Outreach, Communication, Education stuff which goes by the name of Cuddly Science and will be appearing at the end of the week at Cheltenham Hackspace for a Science Cafe!

Ripples… (by sarah)

It's the anniversary of the author Sir Terry Pratchett's death, I have been working my way through the Discworld books, it is taking time as I still struggle with reading since the head injury. I've started with what I think of as the Rincewind Books.

The Colour of Magic The Light Fantastic Sourcery Eric Interesting Times The Last Continent Science of the Discworld The Globe

I've probably missed some out - I'm currently reading The Last Continet 🙂

Rincewind is one of my favourite characters, he reminds me a lot of my dad, being an accidental hero - thinking he's a coward etc... being a nice person, having issues with inanimate household objects that refuse to actually be inanimate (in dad's case it's coathangers).

Then I plan on reading the Death Books as I think of them. Death and Susan are again characters I love, especially when Susan has wild hair she can not control!

Reaper Man Mort Soul Music The Hogfather The Thief of Time

Again I am probably missing titles! If you see a glaring omission please comment!

Then The Witches Books (including the Tiffany Books as a subset - this is slightly unfair as Rincewind should count as one of the Wizards but the character sets are all so over lapped that there are many different ways you could divid it all up ie Hogswatch could be seen as a Wizard book as well as Death), followed by Vimes, The Services Books (De Word and Moist), Maurice and then Pyramids, Small Gods and another other miscellany I have missed!

Alaric bought me the graphic novel of Small Gods and I want to work my way through the graphic novels as well, I know there was a copy of The Last Hero that I gave to my brother but I'm not really sure where it ended up!

After that it is time for non-Discworld Terry Pratchett including the Long Wars books.

As you can see from the photo, Ada Lovelace the Puppet is relaxing with one of her favourite book - Equal Rites. This is most apt for the Victorian Maths genius who made the fist computer programme (or would have been if there'd been a computer to actually run it on!). She was educated but that was unusual for a women in her era, especially with maths and science but she excelled at it and this bought (and still does amazingly) a lot of hate.

She had to fight to be accepted academically, Equal Rites is about a young girl who ends up being a Wizard but is initially denied entry to the Unseen University. It seemed apt.

I actually took the photo for International Women's Day but I have included it in this post because apart from the issue of gender equality etc... it represents something else...

Ripples - "No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away" - this is a quote from the Discworld series.

And Ada in many respects represents a ripple and the on going legacy of Terry Pratchett. Of course it is only one element of how she came to be but it is none the less still an element.

The story begins with me at school - my Chemistry Teacher Miss Scudder tries to explain the Discworld books to me and writes it down in my leavers book. It was given as an example of Sci-Fantasy that I would love - she was right.

So my science teacher introduced me to Terry Pratchett's work, again she was not the only one but she was the most authoritive? If that's the right word.

The books sustained me through my A'levels and stupid amounts of stress that we poor on our young adults in education. Then to university where again the mirrors and parrelles with various books helped me.

And finally the point at which I really felt like jacking the whole science thing in... Science of the Discworld appeared where they look at the geology/formation of our planet (our universe is accidently created by the Wizards). This book reminded me why I was damn well studying rocks!

Then of course things went catastrophic health wise but JK, Pullman and Pratchett where there as my comfort reads (along with the three Annes and "coughs" the point horrors). Reading them took on a slightly more abstract purpose, they showed twisty corkscrews of lives, not the nice neat progressions that is expected.

In short they helped me reform to new paths and to climb around, under and sometimes into the obsticals that got in my way. They showed me that other routes are not wrong routs just different.

In many ways the books helped me think outside the box as it were - Cuddly Science, the art, the craft, the writing etc... all of that and how I use it and fuse it... is a little bit off centre as it were. Terry Pratchett showed me with his mirror worlds that that was great, that was how the world gets changed for the better... little by little by little.

So my science teacher introduced me to the Discworld, the Discworld, sustained my and kept me interested in science, taught me to think squiggly, squiggly thinking lead to me making puppets to teach kids science.

These are RIPPLES.

GNUTerryPratchett.