alan rickman and the packmen

I've had a bit of a disaster in that my laptop has crashed, lots of little pack-man like creatures appeared on the screen followed by a lovely message saying 'beginning system dump'. I switched it off quick but alas tis no more and won't even boot up. A trip to the laptop hospital is scheduled for the morning but it means I am having to borrow my sons laptop. I was loading a video off You Tube of Alan Rickman, one of my favourite actors as my friend and I were having a Saturday evening Facebook conversation about the joys of watching Alan. The clip in question was of him in 'Die Hard' but as soon as I opened it boom, meltdown. I'm sorry Alan but I will never see you in the same light again!
Now I was sure I had my USB stick in the handbag I have brought to mums whilst I live here temporarily but its not in there so I don't have any photographs to put on here! I have a few on another stick that I did bring, which are actually quite lovely to look at as they were taken mid summer last year, a world away from the grey days were having at the moment. Mum has a long hedge running the length of her driveway which is a magnet for Bees. Legs full of pollen they were buzzing furiously from flower to flower oblivious to my camera lens beside them. ooh I can feel the warmth of the sun on me now!

Yesterday I began the task of packing up my belongings at my former home. If all goes well I should be in the new house in 3-4 weeks so I began with my studio room outside and the garage. It wasn't too bad actually, I would think the hard part will be the things inside the house but I am able to leave that until I have the new one so I'm hoping excitement will keep tears at bay. It was strange to pack away our Christmas decorations, dividing them up between us so that we each had a tree and baubles for next year. Each year previously I had wondered to myself if my partner and I would make it to another Christmas, such was the precarious situation I had lived in. There was always the dark cloud hanging over me, the insecurity of why he wouldn't marry, why he still wanted everything to be separate even after all those years and worryingly his history of failed relationships. Although I had hoped and tried to make something more of us than my partner had wanted to be and I felt I had made a family despite of that, I knew in my heart that I was still on trial and would probably never make the grade. So this Christmas it was time to stop trying, to pack up the decorations for the last time in the way I had feared I would have to one day. Yesterday was that day.

hope for a happy new year

The fog is beginning to lift and I am beginning to feel human again, I may venture out with my camera any day now!
Tomorrow night will be hard but its just one evening and I can get through it, I have a couple of invitations, one with our old couples friends so I will call in on them early in the evening before emotions run high and I get tired. And one invitation with my artist friends so I will see in the New Year with them as I wont have any reminders around me of the man I will miss so much when the clock strikes twelve. I am so lucky to have such good friends.

I have been looking at property to buy and renovate which is very exciting, I always thought I would do that in the last ten years and never have so I'm coming full circle, as that it what I did before and I loved it. I always knew this day would come, I hoped against hope it wouldn't but deep inside I knew that it would. Its a bit of a shock that the event I had been trying so hard to prevent has actually happened but now that it has I must be strong and move on into the New Year. So if I don't get time to write tomorrow, a very Happy New Year to all and give your loved ones an extra big cuddle as the clock strikes as you never know how much longer you will have with them.

new beginnings

Its a whole new start for me now in many ways, in a whole new year and its both sad and exciting at the same time. I don't yet feel the relief of it all but that will come when the strain of the last six months begin to lift. There will be new strains of course, finding somewhere to live, a new job on the horizon and the inevitable pressure of moving two teenage children's lives but along the way I have a constant now that I didn't have this time last year.
My blog means so much to me and has helped me so much during my losses of this last year and now that I have lost again, it will remain the constant daily ritual in my life that has become so important to my creativity.

I am immensely proud of myself this year for creating a portfolio of photographs and the direction in which photography has taken me, I have become the me I always should have been and have found the missing piece that I was looking for. Its strange how that little box and the images that it produces can do that and as I read others blogs I can see that it does that for them too, its quite magical. My mother bought my daughter a camera for Christmas. She is still living with my ex-partner for now, whilst I find a place for us to live and when I went to visit her yesterday, she asked if we could go 'photographing' together today. We have done it a couple of times before but I'm hoping now that she has her own camera it may become a passion for her too.

I wont push her of course but I will be keeping an eye out for the signs with bated breath!
I think next year will be quite a girly year, hence the girly photographs taken in the railway station cafe at 'Shakerstone Station' near Market Bosworth, Leicestershire.
My daughter and I will make a new life together and I will spend more time with my wonderful friends who have been so supportive and caring over the last fortnight, I'm very lucky.

Merry Christmas to all

Some Creative Lights:Exploring with a Camera

The pain of a relationship break up is indescribable and what timing to have it happen over Christmas.
Part of me wants to turn the clock back and have it never have happened and part of me wants to fast forward time to a place where it no longer hurts so much and all the uncertainty is over.

But I am so aware that much worse things are happening in the world and we all have so many things to still be grateful for. In that spirit I wish you all A very Merry Christmas and heres hoping for a happy and artistic New Year

for everyone!

peace please

mortal muses musing-PEACE

I haven't written a personal post for quite a while, which is how my blog started out really, all emotions and pain. Two days ago was the first anniversary of my Fathers death and today my Brother and Mother went to fetch his ashes and bring them home for Christmas. Four days ago my ten year relationship ended and I am now back in my Fathers house, I've come home for Christmas too.
It hurts, it all hurts so so much and there is no need for me to try and make light of it or to make it funny, I'm afraid this is a post of utter sadness. I promised myself I would always be real on here and four days before Christmas this is as much reality as I can give. Sometimes events unfold in such a way that you cannot believe that the universe can be so cruel. It was my daughters 16th birthday on dads anniversary too. She had agonised over how we would combine the two and she decided we would go on a shopping trip to meet up with family from afar during the day and come home in time for dinner in the evening. We would mark the moment dad died at 7pm with a Chinese lantern. On the day, I pulled all my motherly strength together and despite my enormous break up pain and pushing grief to the back of my mind, I determined to give her the best 16th Birthday I possibly could under the circumstances.But it wasn't to be. The shopping trip was a disaster, a totally out of the blue argument developed between some family members which ended the trip and distressed my daughter. We decided the best thing to do would be to come home so we began the long drive home, on which we witnessed two serious car accidents and were involved in calling the emergency vehicles for a third horrific one. My poor poor baby. I honestly began to wonder what evil was causing all this! I dropped her back at the house that was my home less than a week ago and went back to my Fathers house to sleep in the room where he spent his last tortured years before he was forced to leave. Its unbelievable how life can turn on a heartbeat, for my children and I, for those poor people in the crashes and of course for my poor old dad.
Last year his death was a relief from the month of half life, half death that he endured after an operation, in which his body slowly gave up, exhausted from years of Parkinson's Disease. I doubt anyone would wish that on a soul and we said goodbye in a trance of acceptance that for him it was a release and in some ways for us too. But this year it is just death, death that happened to someone we loved and we could do nothing to stop it. This year there is no relief only sorrow and a huge hole where he used to be. I don't know what will happen in my life now but the universe has swirled around again over the last couple of days and I have been receiving job offers.Re-offers for jobs I interviewed for a few weeks ago, jobs that I really desperately needed and didn't get. Then a friend called to say that a photographer she knows is looking for an assistant and an Art Gallery in New York has sent me an e-mail that they are interested in showing my work. Its unreal how life can be and for me it always happens at Christmas. Next year I'm hibernating right through it. Next year my wish is for Peace of Mind, this year I have lived in a financial and emotional mess and I'm exhausted. I'm hiding out over Christmas and doing a lot of deep thinking , I hope to find Peace and a way forward in 2012 what ever that will be. I wish everyone Peace and happiness.

feeling the strain

Reading through the blogs I follow and spending a very hectic weekend with a whole lot of different people I’ve noticed a common theme – the women are tired, worn out tired. A lot are poorly, many blogs are lonely and post less and many friends are wilting. The customers at my art fair this weekend were a subdued lot, hard to engage and listless compared to the bouncy sparkly people that came through the door at the same venue in the spring.

This is always a busy time of year for women, we trudge along full of the worry of a million and one things to do before the big day, while children buzz with excitement and men pretend that nothings happening. But is it just that this year seems different, women seem more strained, more desperate for a rest and actually more un-happy.

Maybe the men are feeling it too but just don’t show it the way we do. The debate at our dinner party on Friday evening about public sector workers and their pension cuts got very heated between the men. This has never happened in the ten years our group have all known each other. Firstly I’ve never known a political conversation to take place, talk is normally of a jolly, superficially great fun nature and secondly I’ve never know the group to turn on each other.

Don’t get me wrong there were no fisticuffs and everyone left as friends but I was squirming in my seat at the rising voices and increasingly aggressive tones. This is the group that’s jollied along through endless airport delays over the years, endured with British stiff upper lip and a lot of giggles bone shaking coach trips, terrible ski chalets and once, three nights without sleep while our children ran us ragged. I guess the men are feeling the strain too. Theres a strange atmosphere in the air.

At our local garden centre yesterday, where we have every year the most amazing Christmas display you will ever see, the place was heaving but the tills were empty. You could walk straight through to pay for your item rather than the usual endless queuing but no-one was. It was surreal. The decorated halls and small shops were full to bursting of people who had come along for the feel of Christmas but the credit crunch has really hit now and no-one could afford to buy. I noticed on Remembrance Day, the amount of people who took the time this year to attend services, wear poppies, far more than usual and I’m wondering if now that we are all under more strain finically, have we developed a greater capacity for ‘feeling’, for sympathy and understanding. Or maybe it was a chance to pull together, the huddling together for support that the nation does at occasions like that. Maybe both. I’m reading a book at the moment that talks about the way everyone rallied around in the war, when times were hard, communities pulled together and theres certainly been some of that, more people than ever before at local events with everyone looking for the chance of a bit of frivolity amongst all the doom and gloom.
Theres is an air of tension though, how quickly the riots irrupted in this country a few months ago was frightening, so the worry is it could swing either way. I have no conclusion to these ponderings yet, I’m afraid they are just a collection of thoughts but I will have to sit down quietly with myself and figure out why I’m on edge, genuinly worrying about my fellow man.

Shades of Autumn Photography Challenge

Lots of Brown images today to link in with the Shades of Autumn Photography Challenge's colour of the week, but the images tell a story of how I'm feeling right now.

I just had a Birthday and you know that feeling - 'times a ticking' ......

Feels a very long time since my heels were a'clickin

I'd like to pack a case....

and make an escape......

but alas its just wishing.

So I'll stay home and see

all the joys England gives to me

when harvests are done

and winter does come

but oh how I'd love

to break bread with my love in some sunnier climes........

a letter by candlelight

Firstly some 'spooky' pictures for Halloween.......

I came across a site that has a pen pal exchange and it reminded me of how much I want to write letters again. Actual letters on writing paper with envelopes and stamps - remember those?

Oh the absolute thrill of receiving a letter from a friend in the post, I wonder how many people still do that. Facebook is wonderful, being able to interact with friends at any time of the day (or night) and of course reconnect with lost school friends. I am going to meet up with some in three weeks, people I haven't seen for twenty years, only talked to on Facebook.
I have letters in my Garage, bundled up in pink ribbon from those friends that we sent to each other when we were all 14 or 15, endless ramblings of how dull our lives were and what they were going to be in the future but we took the time, even though we saw each other everyday, to write, draw little pictures, stick on decorations and spray with perfume. It went on for a very long time, until we left school actually and then we stopped which is such a shame as we were entering a very changing time of our lives and probably the most interesting to write about.
how does all this relate to photography? well it started with the trip to Scotland. Its only when you drive through our little country that you realise that actually its a blooming long way up to the top and we started from the middle. As I said in a previous post I loved our trip to Scotland, the scenery and the colours were magical and although we literally drove to our work appointment and back again over two days, I went along for the few five minute photo stops on the way and during this 'photoshoot' there was a lot of time to think and discuss. It coincided with the anniversary of the Internet (well almost) so, seeing the remote villages in the highlands that are cut off in the winter combined with thoughts of how much the Internet has changed the way we communicate, I began pondering the lost days of letter writing, as those highland villagers would have had to do in the past as their only form of contact with the outside world in those long winter months. This weeks photo shoot with my photography group was at Calke Abbey in Derbyshire, a forty minute drive from my house but I had never been to visit.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-calkeabbey/
So I toddled off thinking we were visiting a grand stately home and I had such a thrilling surprise and one of the most inspiring, moving, magical photography days of my life. Calke Abbey had been taken over by the National Trust in the 1980's when with soaring debts the Harpur Family could no longer see any other way out to save the house which had fallen into a bad state of disrepair.

But instead of restoring the whole house the National Trust have restored the entrance hall and initial rooms only. This is where you begin your tour, ikea like, shepherded around the house on an amazing journey from opulence to decay of the most inspiring kind and this is where the photography opportunities and photograph related musings explode.
The rest of the house has been spring cleaned but in essence left exactly as it was when the Family moved out, peeling paintwork, 18th century wallpaper falling off the walls, the families possessions piled in corners as though Julian Fellowes himself had constructed the set.
And as you walked from the restored rooms to the 'real thing' the lights are dimmed and become less, then turned off altogether, the gorgeous blistered window shutters closed ever so slightly more and more in each room to transport you back into the past.

You feel like your Cora herself hurrying along the cold, dark crumbling corridors, your skirts swishing on the dusty floor and when entering one of the many grand drawing rooms, now stooped under the weight of time passed it makes you want to sit down at one of the dusty wood wormed desks and ......... write a letter by candlelight.