ALF Christmas cards

After designing my own grown-up Christmas Cards in 2015 I went through Amy's old drawings and found six that I thought could be developed into lovely child-like Christmas card designs. Together with mine they form the basis of a ten card collection.

ALF @ Landmark

I watched this church in Teddington deteriorate, over the years, from the top of a double decker bus on the way to Kingston. A few years ago it was taken over by the Landmark art centre. Now you can visit various arts and crafts exhibitions, held there on occasions throughout the year. In 2016 Amy and I visited twice.

 

The first visit was to the art show which Amy found very inspiring. The artists came from all over Britain and beyond, we especially enjoyed the natural landscapes and floral designs. The second visit was more crafty and Christmassy. There was food and drink on offer as well as glass fusion pieces, pottery, candles, porcelain lampshades, handmade soap and various needle-crafts. There were a few painters but not so many as previously. I bought Amy another needle-felt slide for her hair.

Pulsar

 Pulsar has been a work in progress for some time now. I wanted the illustration to look something like a 1950s sci-fi film poster, but I think my picture above looks more like 'Scooby Doo' than 'When Worlds Collide.' I have recently completed a more successful science fiction picture called 'Out of this world', I have used it as background for my poem 'Pulsar Observation'.

The most successful 1950s Sci-Fi inspired poster I did, previously, was for 'Destination Deep Space'. 

The Watering Hole

This essay / piece of flash fiction helped me get my A in my English Language O'level, so I will always be grateful to it. It can also be found on my WattPad page.

The Watering Hole by Lorna Wadge

Candy sat in the pub with a double whisky, as recommended by ‘Kerrang’, and her boyfriend, Syd. She looked deeply troubled; since waking earlier that afternoon she found she was profoundly concerned for the future of Rock’n’Roll.

Syd was irritated. He stood up.

‘Where are you going?’ Candy asked.

‘You’re so depressing,’ he growled and left.

Candy was on the verge of arguing that she had not said anything all evening, but she thought better of it.

‘He’ll see the light,’ Candy thought, obviously not on the same wavelength as Syd, who had a mind like a cess-pit.

Syd was in fact the cleverest boy Candy had gone out with, he was ‘brave’ enough to drive a car and was the fastest ‘Rizzla roller-upper’ in the Black Dog. Candy had said of this latter accomplishment ‘you’ve got to have something in this life.’

Supplying the music this Thursday night was a pretentious wimp, who played the synthesizer and sang of love lost, love found and love in similar predictable situations, all of which left Candy seething and in a good mind to select ‘rip it up’ on the juke-box, but now found she was too legless to move.

‘This Evan Williams is strong stuff,’ she concluded, while setting fire to the wrong end of a Marlboro cigarette and struggling with an awkward packet of cheese and onion flavoured crisps.

The time was nine o’clock and the bar was filling up fast. The sound of the synthesiser player became weedier as people chatted about mundane matters such as ‘the washing machine's been playing up again’ and ‘I must see the chiropodist.’

Candy reminisced about the old days.

‘I remember the great guitarists,’ she told herself, ‘Shame about Hendrix.’

She also remembered Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison and a joke about necrophiliacs paying death duties.

‘Huh,’ Candy stood up and smoothed down her bourbon stained ‘Pop Art’ dress. She blinked, tried to focus her eyes on the wall and her mind on her usual worries and hang-ups and she staggered over to the ‘Way Out’.

When she had reached the door, she turned.

‘Save Rock’n’Roll,’ she screamed and spent ten minutes trying to make a dramatic exit by slamming the saloon bar door.

Goodbye to All That (5B450)

2017 has ended up being quite a goal orientated year, mostly because of my idea for a 5B450 project which I had at the beginning of the year. The idea was to do five achievable things that I'd always wanted to do, but never got around to doing, before I reached my 50th birthday in November. These are the five things I achieved.

1. See a Shakespeare play at the Globe Theatre
One of our favourite London walks is between the Royal Festival Hall and Southwark Cathedral. Near the end of it is the Globe Theatre. Every time we passed it I thought 'we must go and see a play there'. We saw 'Romeo and Juliet' in May 2017.

2. Attend a School of Life event
I have been a fan of the School of Life since it was set up in the late noughties. The 'How to be serene' seminar I attended in June fitted in with my newly developed Stoical philosophy of life.

3. Get the house redecorated
Some of the house hadn't seen a lick of paint since we moved in over twenty years ago. I'd been dreaming of a pale orange landing (mango melody shade 3) for over ten years. Now I see it every time I exit my bedroom.

4. Join a book club
Always having my young daughter around meant not joining groups where I could socialise in the evenings. I finally joined an evening book club in early October 2017.

5. Visit New York City
The biggest of my 5B450s was my visit to New York City in late October 2017. I'd been wanting to go there since I was about 15. It felt like a dream when I rode in a yellow taxi from JFK to my hotel and sat at my hotel window looking out at Upper West Side Manhattan. I now have my photos and diary to look back on and I'm really pleased with myself for making that trip.

As well as these five things, I wanted 2017 to be memorable in other ways too. I made sure I had something special to do each month; whether it was a Bowie book signing in Kensington, a London walk, visiting Brighton and the Lake District, doing a craft fair or just enjoying a celebratory meal. I also had a few virtual goals too, like producing over 50 blog posts, making more use of Wattpad and writing more book reviews. I don't know what 2018 will bring, whether I'll attempt some goal free living, more in depth work or just help other people more. In the words of someone suffering from severe short term memory loss, I think I'll do 'whatever is beneficial'.

London Walks: a ghost walk

One of the highlights of my 2012 visit to Edinburgh was the ghost walk. Edinburgh is a great place for a ghost walk, an old Scottish-Gothic city with a murky past of fake witchcraft, over drinking and English nastiness. Cardiff in 2013 was too new for a ghost walk, but there is still enough of the old city of London to make for a substantial ghost walking experience. My ghost walk was a birthday treat on a misty chilly evening in November.

We started at Bank Station. I know from experience that Bank-Monument tube station is a tangled maze, so I was quite careful to get the exact exit to meet up with our guide and fellow ghost-walkers; the guide was an articulate English lady in a flowery hat. After the rules of the walk were explained to us we ventured out into the modern city. Most people on the walk were tourists and there was a little explanation of traffic protocol, in particular zebra crossings, before we proceeded into the shadowy alleyways of the City of London.

   

There are many old churches in the city, our guide pointed out one which had been bombed out during the blitz leaving it a particularly eerie looking sight on a moonlit, late autumnal night. We often found ourselves walking in the footsteps of Ebenezer Scrooge, down the alleyways of old London and within the earshot of the church bells that heralded the arrival of Scrooge's three redemptive spirits. The whole atmosphere and lighting of our walk did invite ghostly imaginings of half seen reflections and illusions, of odd shapes and figures.

There was talk of supernatural dramas and Harry Potter films around Leadenhall Market and our walk ended in the shadow of the Guild Hall. The London ghost walk was not as creepy as the Edinburgh ghost walk, but I'm glad we did it, maybe the Jack the Ripper walk would have proved more chilling.

Poppies in November

I buy a remembrance day poppy every year and think I will continue to do so, however I do find the regular poppies rather difficult to wear. After seeing Amy's godmother wearing a very pleasing crocheted poppy, one evening at our church concert, I decided to have a go at making one myself. I went on to make several poppies one of which now belongs to my niece.

New York Top Twelve (5B450)

My much anticipated trip to New York did not disappoint. The city was every bit as surprising, diverse and fascinating as I thought it would be. I was on my own and had a packed itinerary for myself, visiting about four interesting places each day over the six days I was there. Although I enjoyed everywhere I visited, these are my top twelve NYC highlights.

1. Central Park
Beautiful in autumn, vast, so I only saw bits of it. I enjoyed Strawberry Fields, Alice in Wonderland, the boating lake and a pumpkin muffin and earl grey tea in Le Pain Quotidien.

2. Brooklyn Bridge
A most unexpected bridge with the walk way in the middle of its famous intricate structure. Quite a walk with breathtaking views all round.

3. Lincoln Center
It was nearly sunset when I visited and the center was at its most glittering. All the theatres in the center looked lovely and inviting. The most spectacular was the Metropolitan Opera House. Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to see an opera, but I did visit the gift shop and bought a postcard.

4. Grand Central Terminal
The most beautiful railway station I've ever seen. The zodiac ceiling is exquisite and the polished surfaces, grand staircases and sparkling main hall are all quite mesmerising. I lingered a while and drank iced tea in the downstairs food hall.

5. Metropolitan Museum of Art
I thought it would be good, but it turned out to be even better. The building itself was spectacular and beautiful and likewise the exhibits within. My favourite of all was the recreation of a Frank Lloyd Wright drawing room, but there was so much more, the recreation of rooms from French palaces and an Egyptian tomb were also further highlights.

6. New York Public Library
I have never before encountered such a beautiful public library as the one on 42nd Street New York. The entrance reminded me of the Paris Opera House. The reading rooms were grand, gorgeous and open to anyone. A very inspiring space.

7. Staten Island Ferry
I didn't want to do anything too touristy on my holiday and someone suggested that viewing the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry was a good alternative to an organised tour of Liberty Island. They were right, it was good enough for me and Staten Island is also an interesting place to visit if you have time to linger a little while.

8. Poe Cottage
Being a big Edgar Allan Poe fan I felt I couldn't leave New York without visiting Poe's Cottage and visitors' centre located in Poe Park, the Bronx. It was an unexpected pleasure to enjoy the personal talk, brief tour and film about the last three years of Poe's life, looking after his dieing wife and finally making that last fateful trip to Baltimore, all from this tiny home. It was all very sad, sobering and poignant, not to mention thought provoking.

9. The Highline
A disused railway line turned into a beautiful park; the idea itself is wonderful. I walked all along the High Line back and forth and enjoyed all of it. Amongst the autumnal leaves and flowers were weird, modern art sculptures every so often and some of the most comfortable street furniture I've had the pleasure to sit on.

10. Coney Island
I could not have gone to New York and not visited Coney Island. I did not know what to expect, October is most definitely out of season. What I received was unexpected and intriguing. The strong Atlantic winds blew across the promenade, which was eerie and nearly deserted except for a few stragglers. All was shut, including Nathans, except for one lone retro beach shop. I'm glad I got there.

11. 9/11 memorial
Like all great cities New York has had its fair share of rough and smooth, good and bad. I found the 9/11 memorial a particularly touching commemoration of this, most possibly, darkest episode in the life of this beautiful city.

12. Top of the rock
I felt I couldn't leave New York without getting high up and looking down at the city from a great height. I chose the 70th floor of the Rockefeller Center for this particular experience. It cost a bit of time and money to do it, but I think the views speak for themselves.

These are merely my highlights, the list could go on but for now I will stop there.

The Abandoned Baby

Amy came up with this sweet, but sad picture story a few years ago now. I have since put it together into a nine picture cartoon strip.

Book club adventures (5B450)

When I was running my SubVerse Poetry Group in the early noughties, two other tempting ideas were popular which I didn't have the opportunity to explore at the time. One was reading groups and the other was blogging. I finally started blogging in 2013 and joining a book club became my fourth 5B450 goal for 2017.

My first foray into reading groups was a complete disaster. There was a breakdown in communication, there was no room in the group, I left the library dejected. I ended up in the local pub, drowning my sorrows over half a pint of Guinness.

My second attempt to join a book club was even more of a disaster. The time listed on the meeting page was in total conflict with reality. The book club was meant to meet at 7 pm, when the library was in fact closed.

For my third attempt at joining a book club I turned away from the library avenue towards the modern Meetup internet avenue. Here I found Ruislip Readers who meet monthly in an unassuming pub in Ruislip.



It was October when I joined and they were in a Halloween mood. In this month we were reviewing Stephen King's 'The Shining', a book I had already read, although had not reviewed on Good Reads.

   

The Ruislip Book-to-Film Club did not disappoint. The company, chat and accompanying craft beer were all quite wonderful. I had to rake through my memory for choice nuggets about The Shining, both the book and the film were mild obsessions of mine about twenty years ago. While the first hour was full of Stephen King chat, the second was mostly preoccupied with what we were going to read and watch next. I put in a bid for Daphne Du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rebecca'. I left satisfied with the proceedings and the upcoming prospect of reading and watching Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express' ready for the next meetup in November.

The Shining - Review by LJ Finnigan (read at Christmas, 1995)

I don't read many Stephen King books as I find them so scary. This one I found to be particularly so. There is a bit of background story about the father's job situation and his son's specially sensitive nature, 'the shining', before we arrive in the main setting of the story. The Overlook Hotel is a huge, hollow place in the middle of nowhere and is a fully blown character in itself. In this desolate building, the father, Jack, his vulnerable wife, Wendy, and special little boy, Danny, arrive as guardians for the off-season. Winter deepens, the hotel gets snowed in, the family gets more isolated and the nightmares become more real, in particular the father becomes even more scary than the ghosts, that inhabit the hotel. The father was very vividly brought to life, in Stanley Kubrick's film, by Jack Nicholson, for me the most stand out performance of his career. The endings of the book and the film are quite different, I preferred the book's ending. That said, I think the book and the film are both great.

The Antique Junk Shop

        

I wrote this poem as a teenager, it was somewhat inspired by 'From beyond the grave' an old Amicus portmanteau horror movie starring Peter Cushing. I drew the old man who runs the shop and owns the cat based on Peter Cushing. You can find the poem on my WattPad adolescent poetry page and as a small montage movie on YouTube.

52nd Book Review on GoodReads

I recently finished reading the book Room by Emma Donoghue and enjoyed it so much it has now become my 52nd Book Review on GoodReads. Below are images of the book's cover and my review which is now on my GoodReads page.

Room by Emma Donoghue

I was a bit wary of watching the film, let alone reading the book, considering its distressing subject matter. Having now read the book and watched the film I would say they are both strangely heart-warming, life-affirming and quite inspirational. To five year old Jack, Room and Ma are the whole world. There are dark secrets lurking and an escape is planned, but because of Ma's great mothering skills Jack finds the outside world a much scarier prospect than life with Ma in their cell-like room. I won't give too much away, but I would reccommend both the book and the film, they are thought provoking and could provide some strength and encouragement to those in difficult situations, trying to find a way to both cope, with how life is, and to escape, to something better.

A choir of sleeping angels

The sleeping angels have gone through a variety of changes since I first thought of them in 2010. The first ones wore dressing gowns, then they grew more angular and their hair grew longer. I'm very happy with my latest design for them which is softer and more flowing.

Sunday School Ideas

From September 2010 to June 2011 I was a Sunday School teacher at my local church. I was helped a lot by the website Sermons4Kids and built ten main lessons from it, which I have listed below.

1. What to wear. This lesson revolved around a dress up doll and the words compassion, kindness, humility, forgiveness, patience, gentleness 'and above all love'. These words have since formed the basis of my virtuous flower brooch.

2. Don't bury your talent. In this lesson we did a lot of origami.

3. All you need is love. In this lesson we discussed the things in life we love and drew hearts.

4. Don't be afraid. In this lesson we concentrated on things we were afraid of and drew lots of candles to cheer ourselves up.

5. The tater family. This lesson was about the fruits of the spirit: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We spent our time drawing a big tree, cutting out paper fruit with spirit words on them and sticking them onto our tree.

6. Look on the inside. In this lesson we discussed what makes someone look great on the outside and also what qualities make someone great on the inside.

7. Things that go together. In this lesson we discussed things that go together in the material world like fish and chips and also things that go together spiritually like faith and good deeds.

8. A topsy-turvy world. This lesson was more ambitious as we tried to write upside down poems, 

9. Riddle me this. In the lesson we answered various riddles and tried to make up our own.

10. The greatest gift of all. In this lesson we made origami gift boxes and made special note cards featuring the spiritual gifts of grace and love to put in them.

I was pleased with my ten months of Sunday School teaching, although quite overwhelmed with other stuff in my life at the time, so I was also pleased when I gave it up. Below is a collection of some of the resources I built up in my time as a Sunday School Teacher and the virtue card matching game I created is at the top of this post.

Last Bus Home on Wattpad

I decided to publish Last Bus Home on Wattpad before I visit NYC. The six parts of the story cover six weeks in the protaganist's life, so I shall publish one a week, between now and the end of October. Below is a summary of the story.

Last Bus Home

Wednesday nights were dark and lonely, waiting for the last bus home from college and then Miranda entered my life. She was a free spirit, mysterious and unearthly. With her came change, I could see more clearly, experiences became deeper, more meaningful, I could see the truth and the way to move forward. After Miranda I never felt alone again.

Load of Hay Market

I wanted to do my twelfth craft stall before my long anticipated trip to New York in late October and so took part in the Load of Hay Market in South Ruislip on the first Sunday in September. I was hoping to have some time to arrange my craft stall with a little more flair than usual. We were a bit late, but I think the stall still looked slightly more artistic, I even changed it around a bit, about half way through.

After a slow start business picked up. An enthusiastic lady bought a number of items from me, a lavender owl and a lavender cat, a poppy brooch and several cards. A little girl was very interested in my lightest, brightest doll and a little boy bought a knitted purse.

  

The highlight for me was talking to the other crafters, especially the eclectic ladies next door to me (craftsbytopazmoon) and a Polish lady who crocheted exquisitely (mwojciechowska).