An Allotment At Last! (by sarah)

Today we went and signed for and paid for a plot of ground to grown things on - it is not an allotment as such but is on a farm - I would still like an allotment round the corner but have gotten hacked off with messages being ignored etc...

In the photo Jean is marking on corner and Al and Mary the other - I'm taking the photo from the apex.

Anyway - it is a large plot if an odd shape and comes with raspberry canes already in situ. They have of course died back now but there was shrivelled blackened fruit which I rubbed to get the smell and yep - raspberries.

Of course everything is water logged around here at the moment - Jean wasn't complaining though. She even got Daddy and Mary to join her 🙂

The Art House Bristol (by sarah)

Thursday I headed off to Bristol with the lovely Nick Short, the aim - to read poetry at the Art House. We had a little bit of trouble finding it, the Art House is a lovely little cafe with a cellar/entertainment area. There are arty pictures on the walls and yummy foods to be had.

There were some wonderful musicians playing, I especially liked the Vampire guy though I failed to get a photo of him 🙂

We bumped into an old friend from Cheltenham who had also come up and ended up in a conversation with a woman at the end who wondered why we'd come all the way to Bristol to perform. It is a weekly event at the Arts House and Bristol simply is bigger and has more to offer was the answer. Cheltenham has a great poetry scene but it is not weekly or even every night like it is in Bristol. We spoke of the poetry society and the Festival and then moved on to art in general.

I read an arch of poetry starting with a Fist Full of Nitro and ending with Star Stuff. From the individual and depressing to the optimistic future of all was the way I saw it.

It was a lovely night.

A Christmas Yorky (by sarah)

We headed up to see our Northern friends, going on a little tour on route to see our friend Andy which was far too brief but lots of fun. Though I don't think Alaric is going to forgive him for introducing us to the 'What does the Fox Say' song!

Jean loves this song as it is the style of music she likes but not about love or money or things she's not interested in - it's about foxes and she loves animals - her comments where high pitched and consisted of 'CUUUUUUTE!!!!' Also the old guy reading reminds her of Ferfer when he's reading her and Mary stories and doing the silly sounds. I personally think the guys are cute and I love silly songs 😉

Alaric lives in horror as I have started singing it but merging it with leek spin and the gummy bear songs etc al 😀

Anyway it was great seeing Andy again and the kids loved him 🙂 One of the things it has highlighted for me is how long it has been since I saw a lot of my friends - something I wish to rectify this year.

Then we went on to Yorkshire to see our friends Ulrike and Mike and their ginea pigs 🙂

Ulrike had decorated the house fantastically for Christmas! Jean and Mary are still talking about it 🙂 There were lots of pocket dragons and a golden dragon in a santa hat with bells on it for Jean. Mary is so happy with her 'babies' - survallian family rabbits - baby and toddler 🙂

The girls loved opening their presents and we played board games 🙂

We went to see some horses (photos on Alaric's phone still!) and watched the Grinch and Brave and played Mario Carts which I am even worse at than 2 years ago, when I played it at my Bro's house - Jean says this is because I was using a steering wheel last time and this time it was controllers. I was pretty bad with the steering wheel!

Ulrike is a Harry Potter nut just like us and has the MOST amazing potion bottle collection 🙂

We also had an amazing breakfast with bread rolls in a lovely wicker basket:)

It was lovely and we really enjoyed ourselves and wish we could have stayed longer with both Andry and Ulrike and Mike. Here are more photos of the girlies and piggies 🙂

As you can see Jeany still really loves the bundles of fluff 🙂

When it Rains It Pours (by sarah)

Yesterday I walked into town to take a photo of a burger - as you do, Jean loved it, my body not so much and a pain flare up had me crippled for the walk home, it didn't help that I got lost on route to where we were meeting Alaric meaning he had to pay and run back to work. I think I have labrynthitis again - I keep going slightly dizzy and my sense of direction has pretty much vanished.

It decided to tip it down on us on route too. It was a nice meal though and I got the photograph I needed and sat and knitted whilst Jeany read an entire book about a kitten which she kept filling me in on. The walk back was hard with hard sleety type rain, Jean described it as having tiny icy fists that it was punching us with.

Once home I discovered my email was broken once more meaning that it was a bit of a nightmare sending the images off for the group work 🙁 But I got round it and thanks to Alaric got it all sent before midnight - just.

But then it turns out the fridge freezer really does seem to be on the blink so I am going to have to do a baking day today which I really didn't want to do - I wanted to try and tidy - the space where the decorations go is where the tiles have blown off the roof and we still have no dinning room as the water is coming etc...

And then the tumble dryer breaks again this morning and it turns out she got hold of the play dough in the library again - ho hum.

Having said all this I've been looking at pictures friends are posting of the places they live and I feel a sense of relief that we only have a little leak etc... but again like the floods in 2007 I find myself wondering what the knock on effect of all these storms and the flooding are going to be on our economy. I strongly feel that they are linked.

Anyway - the day holds for me one toddler to entertain, washing to be done and hopefully dried, baking and some order making of the chaos that is the house - oh and hopefully some writing and college work (not holding my breath).

Writing 2014 (by sarah)

I really missed doing NaNoWriMo and the other writing challenges in 2013 due to my course - I still did well and wrote the equivalent of a small paper back but I want to really plough through the writing this year. With the five years of Monster Blogs there to help it shouldn't be too difficult but will not really get going until after my course finishes.

But there is a lot of work already up for people to read - several people have been asking me for the links recently so I thought I'd just pop them here.

Magenta Monster is flash fiction, short stories and serials and there are a lot of stories on there now and The Cavern is steadily going out - as a story it now exceeds the novelette range and is almost too long to ben a novella now! And I am still going strong with it.

A lot of the world building for my Punk story line is there in short stories under the category The Punks World. There are also plenty of story starters and writing inspiration I have shared for other writers to use.

My Poetry and Music goes out on Turquoise Monster, I tend to do a lot of poetry writing challenges etc... and if you want to keep up with what I am doing then there might be a good place to check 🙂

I'm aiming to release the Turquoise Monsters first poetry collection this year as well as Ballads of the Scientifica in double album mode. Along with the Muse Monster Poetry card game.

WoPoWriMo of course is still going strong - it had it's 5 yr anniversary last year so it is back to normal again this year. It's a writing challenge and community I help run so the blog needs sorting for that and I need to actually do the writing challenge myself. The site is full of exercises and ideas plus guest posts from various poets.

Orange Monster is my kidlit and illustrations blog etc... and this year it will mainly be about finishing stories off and illustration. I released The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry this year in physical form and hope to move forward with the Little Books in general and maybe collect together some of the other work I have been doing.

Jeany is also writing her book reviews on Orange Monster.

Red Monster is just a summary of what I've been upto on the other blogs and Blue Monster has writing exercises on for other writers. Yellow is my dad and Green is reviews of books and films.

Lime Monster is my gaming blog (mostly Minecraft at the moment), where I say what I think of games, progress I've made in some of the on going games and things I do inspired by the games like crafts with the kids etc... and also some fanfic too.

I have note books full of stuff for the gardening, DIY, Fashion blogs etc... but not really sure when I will have time to update them 🙁 Mainly I want to focus on projects that I can finish easily and get up and running.

I also want to make sure that Alaric gets a chance to do his writing this year.

And of course I am hoping to be doing some more science writing!

I think writing wise there maybe actually more editing than writing involved as I try and bring my novels into the world. I shall be prodding Al repeatedly about retrieving Dragon Hunter for me of the old laptop and I shall once again be attempting to type up The Drs Wife. I really really want to push ahead with the Punk series but realistically know it will always end up as my NaNoWriMo and GothNoWriMo projects!

The plan currently stands that we would like to have a week away together just to write for a 10 yr wedding anniversary but not sure if it will get to happen.