Mods and Rockers (by sarah)

I love motobikes and mopeds and that sort of thing in general - yes I am one of those people that like vintage cars and funky sports cars.

So the other week we were in Morrisions in Cheltenham when I spotted these babies out side the window - apologies for the poor quality of the photographs they were taken through glass.

There was a four wheeler there too 🙂 The guys the belonged too were sitting not far from us wearing Mods and Rockers T-shirts much to my dad's amusement. I think one of them may have been his age but the others were all younger.

Mods and Rockers as popularised by the film Quadraphenia was a sixties phenomina where those that rode motobikes and those who rode mopeds dressed differently and listened to different types of music. They were seen as gangs and a series of riots were blamed on them.

My dad says it wasn't really like that at least not where he lived. He got teased for riding a moped dressed as a Rocker instead of mod but later on had a motorbike and him and his friends all rode about together with a mash up of vechiles not smashing the place up though they did apparently get chucked out of a pub family room for swearing or something.

This is my favourite track from Quadraphenia.

And this is my second favorite.

The album is deeper than the film in my opinion especially as the film never explains the title. Thought the film leaves me with a lingering sadness, the struggle of disconnected youth trying to find where they fit into society whilst not wanting to end up as nothing but a puppet, a clone and boring person and yet they crave stability.

And of course drugs sort of fluffs it all up but mainly it is a desperation and loneliness that bites the protagonist too the core.

I still prefer just the album.

Spring Creativi Tea (by sarah)

Sunday saw the first ever Creativi Tea - I had wanted to run them last year but never got around to it what with all that moving mand festivals and what not.

So I invited people, and got tea stuff ready and baked cakes.

Lemon and lime - lime sponge with lemon butter icing and lots of butterflies 🙂 Which Al's cousins gave me 🙂

I made sandwiches - ham, cheese and humous to cater for vegi and vegan and meat treats people. And I had crisps in butterfly bowls because I am me and the house is infested with the creatures 😉

And then it was time for people to appear - I wasn't sure what people would want to be doing as I'd said bring your own project or tell me what you want to learn. Most people turned up with writing so were clustered in the lounge.

There was a variety of writing going on from poetry to prose, to essays to novels to short stories to computer programming. Even Jeany got in on the act writing and illustrating a lovely story about a mutant girl and her dad.

People were being very British about not actually taking the cakes until Jeany broke the icing (literally).

In the kitchen sewing and knitting occured - mainly Alaric finishing off the bag he began making me at Centre Arts during a sewing course I sent him on as his valentines day present.

I was sad I had some people drop out due to weather and moto bikes breaking and fuel costs and writing events but it worked really well. Extra nibbles even arrived with people 🙂 Having noisy/messy stuff in the kitchen and the quieter stuff in the living room worked really well.

I am planning on running one of these a season 🙂 If you want to be invited to the next one let me know!

Here are more pictures of cakes as I know you all love them 😉

Recipe will be appearing on Salaric Cooking soonly.

Easter Snow (by sarah)

It's the Easter holidays and it is snowing so after dropping Mary off at the Nursery my dad helped me take some photos of the hills and things. This one is my favourite:

Followed by this one of cracking ice:

And then this one I took with the idea of portals or the Door to December:

I quiet like this one of a farm house as well - the sheep and colours say spring but then there is snow on the hills:

Then we have bleak landscapes mostly taken on extreme zoom!

Click through if you want to see bigger images or go to the here on my photo blog.

An Artsy Cheltenham (by sarah)

Yesterday I went into Cheltenham to meet with one of the directors of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival to sort out what I was doing for the festival. I was already doing the Slam but I'd suggested I could take some photos of the events with my new camera.

They loved the idea and I have scored my first ever press pass. Last year with the old camera I took photos of events I happened to be at and some of the artists then used the photos I had taken for their websites and profile pics and what have you so this seemed a logical step forward. I may also be performing at a couple of other events at the festival.

I am also working on a new novel project so spent the afternoon working on that resulting in only 10 pages being written - I think I am out of practice!

I then wondered around in the twilight looking for low light level type photos to take 🙂

I really like the way this one above came out 🙂 I sort of want to draw him now.

I love stone statues in strange lighting.

There is a sad manic-ness in these horses again they make me want to draw them.

Today is also the last day of the Science-Art Gallery at Centre Arts so I shall be in there from 12:30 till 5 pm so if you're kicking about do pop in. It is the arts cafe and there is tea and cake 🙂

We Love Sugru (by sarah)

We love Sugru which is a putty like stuff that you can form into shapes, sticks to just about everything and is flexible - it is basically a funky silicon rubber from my understanding. When we first heard about it we couldn't get hold of any and so had to wait as they had sold out but the wait was worth it!

Since then we have used it for tonnes of things from embedding electronics in hair pieces, making creatures for the visually impaired, fixing fridges, shoes, adding little feet and buffers to all things electronic, fixing broken mugs and making jewellery. I plan to fix my electric guitar with it though need to see how it reacts to having glitter added to it!

But it is more important to me than it's usefulness. To me Sugru represented something more, when it appeared I was struggling with both scientists and artists telling me that there was no cross over between the two areas. My tag line o twitter is that I am The Artist Scientist or Artistic Scientist and to see this product - the result of something an artist (ok design student) had produced, being so wonderful for science/tech and artistic endevours.

This was the sort of fusion of art and science that I was sure should exist but was being told didn't and my examples of how the modle builders of film dinosaurs had ended up solving the mystery of joints and movement that paleaontologists has been struggling with was falling on deaf ears.

So I turned up at The Cheltenham Science Festival debate on science verses art that year with my sugru bracelet and my ESA t-shirt I'd won for Celestial Montage and found that people didn't seem to really cae on either side of the divide, they have their opinions of the others and that is that. Stuck in the middle as all ways I gritted my teeth and looked for more science-art related things and found it under the title science communication.

Recently Sugru posted their life story so far and asked what inspired others, so I told them - they inspired me! They provided the evidence I needed that science and art can create wonderful productive and helpful things by learning from each other, they are an example of a dream that was followed and they provided the very material I had been trying to work out how to make myself - I was mucking around with resins casting, silicon mould making and fimo in order to get something like sugru and I was failing and could not make the projects I wanted. I hadn't even thought of applications beyond my own ends and there WOP! appeared sugru ready to go and so I went and so did Al and he has even written up one of his repairs/hacks for their website!