The Planets

Like 'On the Ice', 'The Planets' video is now available on both YouTube and Vimeo. Amy has drawn many pictures of the planets, we wrote Planet Renga together and I wrote the song Stargazing about a sleepless night spent staring at the stars.

Seven Stages of Teenage Angst

When I was going through my adolescent poetry I found seven very short poems that I thought worked well as a poetry cycle which I have called 'The seven stages of teenage angst'. You can find more of my adolescence poetry in Teenage Troubles on my WattPad pages.

 

The philosophy of redecorating (5B450)

I have been reading a lot of philosophical books lately and these have helped me to bite the bullet and get the painters in. Below are seven major philosophical points I considered before getting the house redecorated.

1. I accepted the things I couldn't change and got on and changed the things I could more easily change. The kitchen is old but I quite like it, it was the peeling paint I couldn't' stand. The kitchen looks great now, still old but nicely, freshly painted.

2. The nice new painted look won't last, it will grow old, fade, get knocked. Yes, but it will look nicer longer. Just because life isn't perfect, it's no excuse for not doing good stuff; 'Feel the disappointment and do it anyway,' if it's a good thing, it's worth doing, just for the sake of doing it.

3. Somethings don't need changing. The bedrooms, bathroom and downstairs loo didn't need redecorating so I left them out. I just concentrated on what needed doing.

4. I had to accept my limitations. some of the rooms hadn't been painted in twenty possibly thirty years. I am obviously not a person who will paint them herself. I did attempt to redecorate the kitchen ten years ago (hence the peeling paint). We could afford to redecorate. We got other people in to paint the house. It got done.

5. I have limitations in moving stuff around. We have been in the house for over twenty years. We have a lot of stuff, but not too much, it all needed to be moved to get the house painted. In some physical aspects, I am quite a slow, weak person, I always have to work around this fact. It took me two days to move things out of the house and into the garage, but I did it.

6. We all had to be very patient and put up with a lot of disruption when the house was being redecorated. To keep the house running smoothly amongst all the upheaval took some effort.

7. I had to accept that my co-habit-tees would be less patient and useful than even I am, when all this was going on, I'm the one who really wanted it done. We were all disorientated, I did most of the moving stuff myself and made the decisions about the painters and the colours. I had to keep it all together.

It took ten days to get the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the hall, the landing and the porch repainted. I'm really glad I did, it was one of my 5B450 goals. I'm surprised I had to be so philosophical about it, but maybe it's not surprising at all.

St Mary's Summer Fete and Art Exhibition

We managed to get to the church fete this year, unlike last year when we enjoyed an early holiday in Llandudno instead. Due to a preoccupation with getting the house repainted, thoughts about our artwork were a little overlooked. I am going to revamp our collection of prints and paintings in preparation for the next exhibition opportunity.

Four Seasons Poetry

A BBC documentary I really enjoyed was 'Orbit'. In it you could really see how our seasons are created by the earth's tilt accompanied by its journey around the sun. When I was little I didn't feel connected to the seasons, I didn't seem to notice the leaves changing colour or the daffodils coming out, I just noticed if it was a bit too cold or a bit too warm. I noticed them more when my partner moved to the Kent coast. Now the hardest part of winter is how dark the days get and I really look forward to the arrival of Spring. These poems represent my changing attitudes to the seasons over the years.