Turquoise Monster

Yesterday I received through the post the little button badges of one of my illustrations – it is the Mummy Eating Cherry Pie. I am so pleased with them! I gave the girls their badges as soon as they came home from school.

There are a hundred of these and they are for the launch of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry 🙂 And to just add the icing to the cake yesterday – they themselves arrived! I thought I need to go and pick them up so was really chuffed to get them delivered to my door 🙂

I’ll be sending out the pre-orders at the weekend and shall be finishing off the book marks today!

To say I am excited is an understatement, the girls already have a copy in their room and insisted I read it too them last night 🙂 Mary is actually responding to the poems now which is lovely 🙂

This week has been hard work but amazing! Really amazing.

Firstly I performed at Well Versed in Cheltenham on Wednesday – then Thursday I headed off to college to learn science writing and discovered there are things I am good at (though that whole spelling thing still evades me!).

Then there was the Bristol Comic and Zine faire with pre parties and after parties and some amazing work – I was at college for most of it so only caught the very end of the actual faire but then stole my friends comics to read whilst at dinner with some of the illustrators and co. I really enjoyed the pre-party where people did power points of their books – including a rousing song about S&M and cystic fibrosis which they made the audience take part in. I also doodled badly on the sketch pad put in front of me.

Whilst I was in Bristol the proofs of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry arrive and so will hopefully be going to full print/press soonly 🙂

Incase you’ve missed what’s going on – I am having a book launch at the end of the month! With goody bags – one offs for the first 100 books. The stickers arrived this week too!

I am now only awaiting the badges and material for the bags. I am making the bookmarks myself 🙂

Anyway my mind feels suitably stretched and I survived college and really hope I can actually take part in the zine fest next year though am sort of glad I didn’t get a stall this year as Alaric would have had to man it whilst I was at college – also I now have more of an idea of which of my work would fit in there!

Plumes and Platforms
And little fluffy skirts
Yellow and Pink
But mainly Pink

Plaited hair
With golden ribbons
Pink patent boots
Higher than the knees

Pink boaters
With ostrich feathers
Tall stately
And faintly ridiculous

Corsets tight
Luminous
Glittering gilt
Ruffles on the plates

Dancing, swirling
Onlookers watch
Not knowing the boredom
Not seeing the people

Spectacle
Impersonal
Something to photograph
Do they mind?
Do you ever ask?

A glass pelvis
Loose at the seams
My own pain apocalypse
Drenched in crises
Drowning in agonies
Each step a razor blade
Cutting into the fabric of me
Miss alined, broken, bent
A pelvic shard
Shatters in muffled screams
Crying in the night
Fragile
Walking burns
Dwindling the memory
Sensation a shade
Of grey nothing
Dampening thought
Punctured, pierced
By electric blue
Fizzing of the tail bone
A primate with glass bones
Can no longer climb trees
Nor hold onto the top branches
To which they once clung
The fruits of life
Are within those branches
Instead
Sitting Pain
Standing PaiN
Sleeping PAiN
Sensation PAIN
Separated Pelvis
Pubis synthesises
Girdle stretched and broke
Aches and daggers
Dragging down
ME
Whining of the glass rim
I do not drink of this misery
Just listen
Pelvis sing
Glass siren lurring
Monsters of the Id
All nasty qualities
Are destorded within

The NHS is in distress
As politicians make it an even bigger mess
Sneaking in private sector competition
Erosion of the health service is their mission
Drs who say, ‘hang on a mo!’
Are told they will have to go
Such cost cutting measures
Will kill this most auspicous of national treasures
Lets hope the politicians stop
Before this nation is left to rot

Just a quick note to say that I am performing/reading at the Waterstones in Cheltenham on this Saturday (7th of September 2013) at around 1 o’clock in the afternoon – before me are a lovely bunch of poets reading. The even lasts from 11 till 2 and there is a Costa coffee in the shop too for the coffee fiends 🙂

Last night I went to Well Versed at the Muffin Man – I took some blurry pictures on my little touch pad but haven’t worked out how to get them onto here yet! It was a fantastic night – the cafe was jam packed with audience! And there was a rich variety of poetry types there, the diversity of works being read gave the event a strong vibrancy and I discovered some poets I hadn’t heard before.

The next one is in October which I shall be reading at 🙂

I’ve been a bit slack with my poetry recently having gotten the prose writing bug again but in the new year I should have a poetry collection coming out so watch this space (or my poetry and music blog). Also October will see the Launch Party of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry but more on that later!

Both of the poetry events are run by The Cheltenham Poetry Festival 🙂

This a poem I have written for my little girl Jean who is so enthusiastic she wants to take part on the next Olympics even though she will only be 10 then!

Her current plan is to work hard at Ju Jutsu which she has been doing for just over a year and to then cross train to Judo as there do not seem to be many martial arts in the Olympics.

She has just spent the morning watching the Judo and is now watching the swimming. She came up with a lot of the rhymes in this poem so it is really a joint effort.

Ju Jutsu Jean

Ju Jutsu Jean was ever so keen
To travel to London to impress the Queen
So she practiced and practiced and practiced some more
Till her muscles ached and her bottom was sore

She tried and tried
Till her mum cried
Not with sorrow but a bursting pride!

Ju Jutsu Jean the string bean
Was tall enough to be on a basket ball team
But she was kind and never mean
She washed her ghi
And made herself clean
Braiding her hair into a plated pair
And took the train to get her there

At the palace gates the guards said no
They informed Jean she would have to go
Ju Jutsu Jean turned said SO!
And with hands on hips did some back flips
And gave the guards some tips
On fighting a keen string bean called Jean

After a while
With the guards in a pile
Jean remembered her letter written in the style Roy-al
The guards groaned and opened the door
And Jean was amazed at the marble floor

In she went to see the Queen
Ju Jutsu Jean represented her team
And was awarded a medal with gleam

And so Ju Jutsu Jean the keen string bean
Beamed at the Queen
Showing off her gleam

Then she headed home once more
Were her mum had put bunting round the door
And smiled knowing there was a party in store
With food and singing and fun galore!

That moment when you’ve gone off to take one photograph and realise it is dusk, you are in a tumble down industrial area amongst broken glass and iron rods half exposed from crumbling concrete. You have £100 odd worth of camera around your neck, you’ve left your phone in the car along with you husband and kids, and worse you have no idea anymore which direction said car is in. Then just to add the icing to the cake a group of three ‘youths’ wonders into sight and you realise it was their shouting and the ring of a beer can football that pulled you out of the contemplative glaze of photo snapping bliss you had been in moments before.

You do not run as that is provocation, beside satistically you know that the middle aged man on his own that passed you at the beginning of this adventure is more likely to be a danger than three young men. Apart from some cat calls they are fine – you take another photo of graffiti and as you know they’ve seen the camera anyway and just keep walking, with confidence hoping it will come out to somewhere more populated by people. Maybe even somewhere you know.

And the monologue that is spinning in you brain is one of half remembered self defense techniques though you do not dwell on them as being afraid in the half light of urban decay is a sure way to draw attention to yourself in unwanted ways. Same goes for the crowded city streets and the apparently safe board room. You keep walking aware of your surroundings and potential escape routes, you do not avert your gaze nor do you linger.

You think, ‘This is how stupid people die,’ and then you snort with the realisation that you have nicked the quote from a TED talk you watched the night before. And that shunts your brain into thinking that it is thinking and what it is thinking about and the words Third Thoughts sneaks in and you’re like damn! Now I am quoting Terry Pratchette in the almost fear – that fear you are not feeling, that fear you are keeping at bay.

The kids are gone, they went into a side alley and now you are in territory you recognise and daydreams of pirate days with real tall ships and Christmas Fayres with real snow filter in your brain and you think – I’m actually quiet a away from the car and the quickest way is back through those buildings that now seem to loom out of the dusk.

So you again consider how stupid people die, but now you have your bearings and know the way and this way is much shorter and there is an old couple out for a walk and they might be lost but they are walking into the corroded corridor of split wood and ripped metal.

You follow and storm your way home, reasoning that you are wearing big boots and a flappy coat and yes it’s all purple and your over weight but it is probably dramatic or something.

And you still stop to take photos because things look different from this angle and hey wow that was a fantastic one of the birds flying away and it shall be called The Escape.

There is a world within worlds in this place you walk unwittingly, there are jungles and homes and hope.

And really it is only a few derilict buildings with seagulls roosting, slowly the industrial endevours of a previous centre are being consumed by the small of nature and you feel previlaged to see it all before it is ripped asunder and the new of this centery is put in it’s place. Clicking the button on the camera you try and capture just a little bit of the awe.

I found this post and pictures on my personal blog it was the 3rd Tech Adventure in Bristol at the Trinity Centre. I think back in 2009.

I thought I’d share it here as there is poetry and robots!:)

This one I got up at 6 am for and me and Al were wending our way to Bath by 7 am – why Bath I here you cry when it is in Bristol? The answer lays in the fact we have a van and that we had volunteered to help the organisers this time.

So we arrived after only a minor getting lost incident and begain loading the sound equipment and assortments of other tech gear.

We drove to Bristol with our navigator and then after a quick unload headed off to pick up John Honniball who has an amazing collection of old computers which I somehow failed to take a photo of 🙁 He also had a cool bubble car outside his house!

Oh and I had had to try and repair my glasses and had managed to cover about 30% of my hands with superglue – I was not a happy bunny.

The exhibits themselves where fun and I think I’ll need to do some seperate posts for some of them plus I have vidoes I need to sort out of them.

There was a motion sensitive BB gun, with a targeting laser.

Guys with hand controlers that meant they could produce sound from motion resulting in me wanting to play with the concept and come up with a theatre production :/

Me reading Geek poetry and giving away Wiggly Pets to those who counted the correct number of programming languages in my poem.

The cutest robot ever which behaved like an animal, the camera looking like a little hamster nose and which maybe good research for a book me and dad are writing 🙂 Just a little fun fiction.

There was a random pirate duck but then what sort of event is complete without a mascot?

A 3D printer which had me @ndy who we dragged up from London, and Alaric all got very excited about.

Here are some of the things it made! It can make parts of itself too which is kinda cool 🙂 I really really want one for various craft applications.

There was a Wii set up, more old computers with ancient games on, a logic puzzels and game table, a swap shop which seemed to mainly consist of things we had brought with us – of which fortunatly all but one thing went from, DJ dudes, people with guitars and filming equipment.

Of course Andy got roped into cabling without even being asked if he was a tekki!

Plus there was a talk on high performance from computers – by a guy who was there last year – I ended up actually asking questions and talked to him afterwards – I feel this definatly deserves its own post however!

Alaric’s Chicken Scheme T-shirt arrived just in time for him to wear it for tech adventure which he was really chuffed with – again somehow I failed to take a photo – sigh!

Gone from me
And from us
Gone from your family
From the girl you loved
Just gone

A tear shaped whole
Is at my core
My heart beats irregular
A tear, a hole
Where part of me
Went with you