ALF @ The Death Cafe

As a preliminary to attending a Death Cafe; I visited St Mary's Church and graveyard on Harrow on the Hill and also did some mindful doodling and colouring on the subject.

   

I have wanted to attend a Death Cafe since finding out about them in 2013. It has been difficult organising time out from my busy life to attend one. I have been making an effort to make my life less busy and committed to attend the one happening in the Playground Theatre, Latimer Road, on the 4th October 2019.

Unfortunately the Death Cafe scheduled for the 4th October had been cancelled at the last moment. I went along to the Playground Theatre anyway. The Cafe Bar looked really pretty. The kind of place where you could happily sit for a while and contemplate your own mortality. On the way were many remembrances of the Grenfell tragedy so it ended up being a very poignant afternoon out.

 

I didn't spend all afternoon on my own. Two other people turned up and we spent a couple of pleasant hours discussing death and poetry.

Autumn Term Therapy

September is traditionally the start of a new school year. Even when school is but a memory, September can be thought of as a chance for a new beginning, of developing ourselves, starting on new paths of self realisation. You can begin therapy at any time, use it to help you. You have one life, you didn't ask to be here, be kind to yourself and do what's best. Therapies for the Autumn Term involve writing, whether working on my blog or writing poetry, facing fear through horror, Edgar Allan Poe or Dr Who, or just contemplating higher realms through tea or spirituality.

London Therapy Part Five

I have been doing guided meditations with my daughter since March 2018. Our thought defusion meditations involve a lot of nature imagery; green spaces, clouds in the sky, leaves on a stream, the sea and a waterfall. I thought it would be good to contemplate a waterfall in real life. A quick google search revealed that our nearest waterfall was in the Japanese Garden in Holland Park. We visited it on a warm Indian summer afternoon. Holland Park and the Japanese Garden were both highly therapeutic.

  

  

  

Twelve years a piano teacher

I taught piano quite intensively from 2008 to 2019 and in my life I have taught piano to about 30 people. From 2009 to 2018 I helped myself and my pupils gain fifteen certificates from practical grades 1 to 5, theory grades 5 and 6 and my dipABRSM in piano teaching. I feel pleased that I did make quite a success of teaching the piano and also feel pleased to be having a break from it.

Amy Stuff

These art pieces by Amy were part of her GCSE school exhibition in 2016. We got them home and put them on Instagram in 2017. More of Amy's artwork is on my Pinterest pages under Amy Stuff which can be found here.

Piano Lesson One

I have taught many 'Piano Lesson Ones' over the years. The first thing I explain to people is Middle C, which is the C in the middle of the piano.

I encourage people to think about fingering, starting with 'One is Thumb', so they can use all five fingers of both hands when playing the piano. I talk about notes as in pitch and time. The letter names of the notes of the octave, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and back to A again. I talk about the stave; the treble clef played with the right hand and the bass clef played with the left hand. As for timing I talk about time signatures: common time 4/4, waltz time 3/4 and march time 2/4. I also talk about semibreves, minims and crotchets. I don't usually get to talk about the rests at the bottom of the page.

Terminal Therapy

2018 was such a difficult year I started creating a whole range of therapeutic approaches and coping strategies in order to live the best life I could given my situation and circumstances. My collection of therapies are split into the three traditional academic terms; Spring Term (January to April), Summer Term (May to August), Autumn Term (September to December). Within that I have created therapy ideas for each day of the week, I will be sharing them with my blog over the next three years.

ALF selfies

The first ALF selfie was drawn by Amy when she was about seven and has been used on various ALF cards and books including Pictures at an Exhibition, the Legend of the Dreambox and our 2012 book of poetry 'Something More'. The second ALF selfie was drawn by Amy after she had completed her GCSEs and was used for our 2016 book of poetry 'Still Life'. It has undergone some refinement by me since then.

Ghost Writing

 

Ghost Writing has been a work in progress for a number of years now. I wrote this summary at the beginning of the project.

Summary

An ordinary wife and mother is inspired to write ghost stories by the appearance of a mysterious man. Through various artefacts she gradually gets to know this mysterious man and starts to think of him as her creative daemon. As this supernatural relationship flourishes so does her writing success. The story culminates in her winning a prestigious award and being taken on holiday by her unimaginative husband. Only then is the true connection between her recent creative success, her daemon lover and her husband finally revealed.

The action takes place over the time period of a year and a day, where the haunted objects grow in size and influence. This is how the ghost story progresses.

January - The locket
February - The clock
March - The photograph
April - The letter
May - The book
June - The mask
July - The painting
August - The mirror
September - The door
October - The room
November - The garden
December - The house
January 1st - The village

And this is the beginning of Chapter One.

January - The Locket

'It's so sad Cushing's Curiousity shop is closing,' said Maggie. She was sitting in Comfy Coffee, drinking a cappucino with her best friend Lizzie.

'Yes, it is,' Lizzie agreed, 'Let's go and have look round while we still have the chance. We might unearth something intriguing.'

They quickly drank up, crossed the road and entered the shop. Maggie looked at the larger objects; chairs, tables, bookases, while Lizzie's attention was drawn to a cabinet full of knick knacks; old jewellery, photographs. In particular her gaze was drawn to an ornate golden locket.

It glistened enticingly at her until she gave in and bought it.

At home, wtih the help of Photo Shop and Publisher, she created two tiny photogaphs to fit in the locket. A picture of her husband on one side and her children on the other.

She put the locket round her neck, it felt comforting and over the next few days she looked at it often.

As the days wore on Lizzie could have sworn the images inside the locket were sublty changing...

     

Illustrated London

      

I have lived in London for over fifty years and have visited many interesting places in my London life. From 2015 to 2019 I have been visiting the more hidden delights of London and writing about them in my blog. I have also been reminiscing about what places I have really liked from my past and included them in various blog posts. I have chosen 52 places to include in a special memorabilia booklet called 'London Interrupted - A London Notebook' and included them in a leftover 2017 diary from my 50th birthday celebrations. You can read all about my London adventures by clicking on the London Link on  amilofinn.blogspot.co.uk .

London Therapy Part Four

Kew Gardens has to be one of the most therapeutic places in London. The last time we went was on a lovely sunny summers day in June. Our outing was enhanced by the presence of a range of Dale Chihuly glass sculptures.

City Visions

I travelled all over Europe in my late teens and early twenties from Glasgow, Dublin and Amsterdam across to Stockholm, Helsinki and Moscow, down to Belgrade, Athens and Istanbul and West to Florence, Madrid and Lisbon. My play 'Another day, another place' takes in many of the countries I visited. Below are descriptions of five of my favourite European cities excluding London.

When I last visited Berlin I had to go through Checkpoint Charley to get from the West to the East of the city. I remember the shiny new buildings in the west, surrounding the bombed out cathedral, the subway station, the Recistag, Potsdamer Platz and the Berlin Wall and the grand old buildings in East Berlin. It must have changed so much since I visited in 1988, it would be fascinating to return and see how it is as a unified city once more.

One memorable highlight of my visit to Copenhagen was Christiania, the liberal hippie camp, which had many crafty market stalls, I remember buying a very rude t-shirt I had previously seen being worn by the dancer Michael Clark. I also enjoyed the Danish beer on offer and a walk by the sea to view the small statue of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, indeed, it must be the Hygge.

Moscow was very different from any place I had been before, possibly more so in the late 1980s when I got to visit it. The subway was the most beautiful I've seen, shining underground halls and plush trains, I don't know if this is any different now. I also walked around red square which boasts the Kremlin and the multicoloured onion domes of St Basil's church. When I was there there was a queue to visit Lenin's tomb. The shops were also sophisticated and quite Westernised.

I have very fond memories of Prague which I visited in the mid-1990s with my husband. I remember sitting in a grand square full of tall pastel coloured buildings watching the ornate astronomical clock chime. It was a bit like being in a Miyasaki film. We enjoyed walking across the King Charles bridge to the castle. We also watched a small production of Faust, bought wooden toys for a future child and enjoyed a dish of Czech goulash.

I first visited Paris when I was twenty and have now visited it five times. The Eurostar has made the connection between London and Paris quick and easy. I have visited many touristy sites in Paris; Montmatre, Sacre Coer, Notre Dame, The Louvre, Champs Elysie, Arc de Triomphe, Eifel Tower; as well as the more unusual Museem D'Orsay, a transformed railway station, and Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where Jim Morrison is buried. On my last visit, in 2015, I enjoyed a walk along the Sane and a first hand view of the Euro Disney fireworks. On a future visit to the city I might venture into the catacombs.