Take the long way home...

Today (come hell or high water, fire or 'flu) I shall be taking this track...



To this city



And this space,



To see this woman and her legends...



Who began here in this city over 40 years ago:



...Surviving Eighties' Excesses, including that of 'Big Hair and Shoulder-Pads':



To be back here in London, to my immense delight...



Wish me luck - See you Monday, mes bloggy loves - I'm all excited...
Can't wait to hear those cicadas... Mwah!

Wailing and Gnashing...

When I'm still lying here in bed, neglecting your blogs and feeling as if I'm swallowing razor-blades, when even my bloody teeth hurt, I fall upon one of Grizwald's favourite sayings which we repeat often in this often-dysfunctional family:



"IT'S NOT FAIR!"

Nothing's gonna bring me down...

Okay, okay, it's been a humdinger of a weekend right? And I've spent most of it in bed, feeling sorry for myself with the 'flu! But it's Monday, and it's a workday, and Bloggus Nuttus is feeling even bluer than blue... Like most of us, I'll bet!

And we did try this once before, and I had no reports of any industrial - (viz Derrick in his bijou emporium of needful things!), or dance-related injuries, nor did I hear of any litigation, so...

Grab the cat, the Bichon, the broomstick, your partner(s), a wooden chair, an Elvis lookey-likey, a customer, a friend, a foe, a frenemy (wha'?), a clean shirt and your bestest shower-voice and,

Dance! To (...perhaps) Glasgow's finest, Paolo Nutini...

And sing along, I dare you - Go on, go on... Fhina's listening.

"I got a shelf full of books and most of my teeth
A few pairs of socks and a door with a lock;
I got food in my belly and a license for my telly
And nothing’s gonna bring me down..."

Be your Happy Monday, my dahlinks... Mwah! Gotcha! I've slathered myself in disinfectant gel, so you should not catch anything - I pwomise... Mwah!

But I am infecting other mothers over at The Manics! Ciao bellas!

Six Word Saturday...

Today is Saturday, I am poorly!



Cate, our Six Word Saturday Queen!

A Life Less Ordinary...

This weekend, by candle-light, mind you - No, no, the electricity hasn't been cut off in Crawford Towers, what do you take me for??!

The cheek, indeed!

Seriously... It was to offer a romantic ambience...

And who was it that said something about 'a woman of a certain age should only be seen by candlelight??!' - Anyhoo, my dearly beloved husband - Of 23 years - turned to me, while I was sitting quietly and all innocently on the sofa, and asked me how on earth I had managed to pull an expression that made me look like Captain Haddock from Tintin?



Sometimes I despair, mes bloggy Depeche Modes...


Bon weekend, non?! :)

Milla Jovovich - A girl after my own heart!

I've always liked Milla Jovovich... Once a super-model, she took to acting like a fish to water. And she's subsequently indulged passions in both music and fashion design. Oh, to be talented and beautiful... Sigh.

One of my (many?) secrets is my love of the Resident Evil series of films, the first of which was directed by Milla's husband, Paul W.S. Stevens - A fellow North countryman... They married earlier this summer, I guess somewhere in Hollywood, and have a tiny daughter, Ever Gabo...

Paul used to live in the North East of England... In Newcastle - Did you know that, mes bloggy Geographers?

Anyhoo, CLICKIE HERE...For more details of Milla's love of our native Greggs' cheese pasties... (Pronounced with a short 'a', not 'ay', just in case you were wondering...), apparently spawned while visiting Paul's family in the city - I know, hard to believe!

But they are wonderfully fragrant cheese and potato flaky pastries...

Imagine Homer J Simpson dribbling and drooling now, and you will have captured a fleeting glimpse of la Fhina and, if you believe it, our dahlink marvellous Milla too!

Moolah!

From The Guardian newspaper, "Economists were left confused tonight and unions critical about the plethora of public sector pay freezes and pension age announcements by the Conservatives and the government, but said neither party's proposals were close to what is needed to return public finances to health.

Government plans to freeze pay for 40,000 top civil servants and 700,000 other public sector workers were only seen to save £200m-300m a year – a drop in the ocean compared to the £175bn deficit the government expects to run in the current fiscal year.

George Osborne's promise to freeze the pay of 4 million public sector workers earning more than £18,000 a year would save an estimated £3.2bn a year from 2011.

But Jonathan Loynes at Capital Economics was unimpressed. "This is small fry compared to the government's existing forecast that borrowing will still be close to £100bn a year at that point, a figure which could prove too optimistic," he said.

"It is clear much deeper spending cuts, probably involving huge cuts in public sector employment, will be needed."

Oh, joy! Wading in as a Public Sector worker, I need to add that some of my colleagues are actually claiming Tax Credits to top up their wages, as our rates of pay have lagged a long, long way behind the private sector for many, many years, and for at least 20 years, we received eensy-weensy, meagre pay rises that didn't match inflationary hikes...

So, targeting those of us who receive less than the average salary, i.e. they're planning to target those earning from £18k, is appalling IMHO... I have no qualms about the rich being taxed more, or those that earn, say over £50k, but there are precious few public sector folk in those categories...

I think the general public is often very deluded as to how much the majority of Public Servants earn, and the reason many of us have stuck to it as a career, (she snorts hysterically at the prospect of her career slooshing, so it is, away down the plug-hole!), is as a result of living in certain less economically robust areas of the UK, and/or during an economic climate, (Eighties/Nineties, anyone??!), where there weren't other jobs to just stomp off into, and ultimately, our pension on retirement was reasonable, (and that isn't non-contributory either, we do pay towards it...and they've already started eroding that, and our terms and conditions! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!)

Sorry, bit of a rant there, but I have no doubt that there will be industrial action, given that my own office, (and, I am aware, many of our equivalents across the public sector), has shed two thirds of its staff over 3 years, and all the work those folk used to do is still on our desks. We're all just 'shouldering it' because many of us still believe in offering a decent public service, Goddess Wiki help me, I don't know why!), and I'll be on the picket line, placard in hand, rest assured...

Note: "The average advertised UK salary is £31,290 a year (2007)

The average salary for a job advertised in the UK in the last six months was £31,290 a year.

Outside London, Scotland is the region with the highest average salary at £29,036. And Gwynedd has the highest average salary for a county, at £35,071.

These figures are from the first Monthly Salary Index published by jobs website AllTheTopBananas.com, which carries one in three UK vacancies.

The full regional figures are:

London - £37,991
Scotland - £29,036
East Anglia - £28,673
West Midlands - £28,665
South East - £28,132
Wales - £27,447
South West - £27,035
North West - £26,613
Yorkshire - £26,060
North East - £25,699
East Midlands - £24,940"

Public Servants aren't faceless - They're the ones teaching your children, delivering your babies, caring for my sick uncle, paying pension to retired folk, finding your son a new job, dealing with threats of terrorism, fighting crime in the so-called homeland, planning your roads and helping to deliver promises of new social housing...

Er, does anyone need this soap-box now that Fhina has finished with it?! It's nearly new, pre-loved and hardly used... Mind you, the top is almost all worn out from me standing on it all this time in Blogland!

As ever, feel free to chuck in your two-penn'orth - My lace bonnet's just down there if you want to lob a copper coin into it!

Ta muchly, m'loves!

Six Word Saturday...

My Week:

Newcastle




Westminster



Leeds



Durham




Cate is the Word!

Let's Talk About...

Pinch me, dahlinks!

It is me, after all... I'm not ghost-posting, as such - You know, heating posts up in the microwave until they go ping, and appear of their own accord in Bloggerdom... Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt and the stains!

Ouch, no need to pinch so hard, French Fancy! I've promised you and myself that I will not go over-board, and post like a loon... I shall be restrained, post less, read more of your blogs, and be happier in my own skin, 'bien dans ma peau', as the French (and Saz) have it...

Well, you all know too well that Saz from never Fat, Frumpy and Fifty, and I share the same mind here over the Pond, much like my lovely American sisters under the skin, Bloggus Sanitus and the beautiful Diane of Addledom do? (Do go visit this panoply of lovelies if you long for sense, sensibility and straight-talking, my bloggy gooseberries - Do!)



Well, Saz has come up with a Wonderful Weekly Wizard Wheeze, which is called 'Let's Talk About...", except I can't copy over the picture, proper like, (So sorry - Mwah!), and I thought I would take part this week as the subject up for discussion is... 'Happiness'.

And, given as I have been full of wailings and gnashings upon the subject of happiness (or not) lately, it was time for me to come down from the pantile roof... 'Ta-da!', and pick up my quill pen again... Well, my HP laptop these days - You just know that Jane Austen would have been doing the manic 'tippy-tappy' into the Wee Small Hours were she alive today, non?!

So, just what is hap-hap-happiness?

We search for it all our lives, while it continues to scamper away from us, just out of reach, skittish and coquettish, vanishing like the Cheshire Cat... Scrabbly claws trying to gain purchase on the, polished to mirror-smoothness, wooden parquet in a far-away room that we long to live in forever. That's happiness.



I think I've already had cause to tell you about my own thoughts on that state... That it is fleeting; Bonheur is never a constant state. Being sad sometimes and having 'black dog days' is all part of Life's Rich Tapestry.

...I cannot wholly trust those who are ever-happy, gleaming through life, waving flags to semaphore their blissful good fortune. My belief that those who are endlessly happy with their partners, jobs, their families and friends, must really be hiding something. Deluding themselves. Putting a brave face on things...



Because, for most of us, life just isn't like that. Of course, there are happy moments, when the feeling of basking in a slanting shaft of bliss and warmth transcends an ever-present inner-voice of disquiet. But those moments don't come if you call them, purring at your feet, lapping contentedly at a beckoning saucer of milk...

Ooh, and now for some cookies, to go with that saucer of milk...

No Comment...

CLICKIE

Fruit tree, fruit tree
No-one knows you but the rain and the air.
Don't you worry
They'll stand and stare when you're gone...

Nick Drake

For I Have Sinned Mondays...

You know I love and adore Liz at A Mom On Spin, right?

And now she's come up with a fabulous idea...

In Liz's own words: "Monday will be State your Sins Day once again! I was able to cobble together a button for my sidebar (congratulations accepted. . .) and I'll have Mr. Linky up so you can account for your sins back on your own site (cause God knows I don't want to take the blame for them here. . . )"

Monday is a pretty good day to reflect on where you've been and what you've done in the past week, non?! Probably most of our sins concentrate themselves over the weekend - Eating what we oughtn't, sneaking in the odd glass of wine, or three, coveting our neighbour's donkey, or ass, that kind of thing?

So, where was I?!

I went with two friends to see the Ladyboys of Bangkok... I didn't tell my husband, (who by chance was away from home in the Big Smoke), for he whole-heartedly disapproves of what those boys put themselves through, drugs and torment-wise, to have a fleeting moth's life in the gleam of the stage lights...

I have been mean to my son, pricked by his awful and voluble (is that a word?) behaviours of late... I feel as if I am losing whatever flimsy plot I once had.

I have been harbouring strong feelings of hatred for somebody who is causing me such stress and anguish that a red-raw eczema rash has broken out on the soft skin of both arms... : (

I have been neglecting my bloggy buddies...

I make many promises I find difficult to keep.

I hold on to resentment of those that have treated me badly...

This is meant to be funny, and not so serious, and yet I am wearing my lightness lately like impermeable silver armour. I'm sorry.

Six Word Saturday...

I enjoyed myself shopping at Ikea!





Courtesy of Dahlink Cate!

Raison d'Etre...

Amour is such a light and femur thing... We hold love to our bosom, planting kisses on its forehead, gently inhaling its wonderous scents. and finally at the end of each warm evening, we tuck it into the waiting wooden cot in the corner over there, wrapping the warm woollen blankie around love's soft form, whispering hope to its slumbering breaths...

We whisht to our love sweet nothings, we covet love's beauty, its youth, brightness and warmth... We follow in its milk-tainted swathes, as it encircles us securely in love, light and lasting longing.

And later. In those Teenage Years, we find that self-same love can shatter like a slender teardrop of glass - Over-heated, stretched to capacity, blown out like a bauble to more than full-length and then all its favours, its character, are lost...

And so we tiptoe around love's crib, being careful not to tread on the razor-sharp slivers of glass that remain. And we feel pain, and a tender, twisting torment against our souls that hurts and wounds our paper-thin, parent-skin.

Yours,

Fhina-Fee x

P.S. Can you guess yet, what's kept me from you these past few days/weeks, mes bloggy Bloggeros y Bloggeristas?

I'll give you a clue...

It involves Teenage Tantrums and Torments, Misunderstood Youth, and Women On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown... Oui, c'est moi! I did publish this in a fledgeling form at Mad, Manic Mamas earlier this week, but I've picked at it like a scab since then... Doesn't misery love company?

P.P.S Things are a little better now, so I'm not fishing for sympathy here, but I've been in a dark, dark place where only Trolls seem to dwell of late... Toodle-pip mes bloggy beauties! A toute a l'heure as the in Seine say...

There's a light, burning in the fireplace...

A clip from one of my favourite movies - The Rocky Horror Picture Show - I sooo wanted to be dark and sexy Magenta, because I could never be as wonderful and sexy as Tim Curry...

Lord knows, how they ever got Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon, even Little Nell, to appear in this movie - Incroyable, non?! But if you've never seen it, and you like mock-schlock-rock-horror musicals and parody, then check it out, mes bloggy cineastes...

Meatloaf also makes a scheduled, and memorable appearance... As I did last night, visiting the Ladyboys of Bangkok, of all things, in Newcastle in a plastic pavilion next to the famed Centre for Life (academic research into genetics and also a fun place for kids to visit if you're ever in town).

More laters, mes bloggy corset-wearers! Yikes!

Fhina exits stage left singing, 'I am what I am...' a la Priscilla Queen of the Desert...

Rent one of these movies this weekend, mai dahlinks, if you've never seen them, and you're liberally inclined... Merci mille!

Can you see the wood for the trees?

I was at Sam Taylor-Wood's show at The Baltic in Gateshead around when this film footage was taken...

Sam's work revealed to me traces and elements of mediaeval still-lives captured in oil; Candid portraits of musicians and jongleurs... Desperate Hollywood Men spun in celluoid, shedding tears and feigning tantrums... And there was Sam, ethereal and lovely, floating like a ghostly enigma above chairs and props, a propos of nothing, real and surreal...

My sister, La Wiki, had this to say when I dropped in to see her the other day at her Temple of Delights to pay penance and homage to the Great and the Good: "Sam Taylor-Wood was born in London, England. She is a graduate of Goldsmiths College.

Before breaking out as an artist, Taylor-Wood worked at the Royal Opera House and managed the Camden Palace nightclub. In 1991, her work began to appear in a number of group exhibitions alongside that of contemporaries from Goldsmiths. Her breakthrough came in 1994 with the work Killing Time in which four people mimed an opera score. From that point multi-screen video works became the main focus of Taylor-Wood's work. Beginning with the video works Travesty of a Mockery and Pent-Up in 1996, Taylor-Wood began to use professional actors. Her work since 1996 has often featured celebrity friends.

Elton John was included in a large photo-work, and commissioned Taylor-Wood to make a promotional video starring Robert Downey Jr. for one of his records.

In 2002, Taylor-Wood was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to make a video portrait of David Beckham sleeping.

Taylor-Wood is also a long-time collaborator with the Pet Shop Boys having produced films for their Somewhere concerts at the Savoy Theatre, London. She has also been guest vocalist on two Pet Shop Boys produced songs - their rendition of Serge Gainsbourg's "Je t'aime... Moi non plus" and Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby". For the latter of these two releases, she used the pseudonym Kiki Kokova.

Taylor-Wood was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997 (that's due again soon, mes bloggy loves - I get all excited about the Turner Prize. Sad puppess that I am!), and won the Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Young Artist at the 47th Venice Biennale.

In 2008, Taylor-Wood directed a short film Love You More, written by Patrick Marber and produced by Anthony Minghella (....j'adore), which was screened in Main Competition for the Palm D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

On 19 September 2008, Taylor-Wood and her art dealer husband, Jay Jopling, announced that they would be divorcing amicably for personal reasons.

In February 2009, Sam Taylor-Wood collaborating with Sky Arts chose Vesti la Giubba from Pagliacci to interpret. She commented: "I’m really happy to be involved in such a great project. I think by capturing one of opera's most moving moments in a film short, we have put a modern spin on the aria.""

Here are some linkies, should you wish to find out more:

Here

Here

Here and

Here

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

I live in a vaguely (although not very characterful, it was a shoddily built Mineral Seam Miner's 'two up two down' cottage after all!) Arts and Crafts house...

And I've always loved the work, architectural and creative, of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, as well as his wife, Margaret MacDonald and that of her sister, who's name is lost to me for today, I'm afraid...



So, three tiny pencil drawings which Mr Mackintosh captured swiftly while he was on a sojourn on my beloved Holy Island adorn the chimney breast of my cottage...

Two sketches detail types of small worts and spindly flowers that flourish by the coast there today... The central drawing shows the back of Lindisfarne Castle, where it faces the North Sea, with a dodgy hand-rail picked out in the green that still colours it today, and a small clump of rock-clinging flowers tinted rose-pink...

I also have a few glass lampshades scattered about the place with rose-hued Mackintosh-esque roses thereupon...



I bought these images while on an idyllic stay on Holy Island with all my family, that is my parents, husband and infant son in 1995... They are very dear to me, and I've not seen these pictures really anywhere else...

I consider myself very lucky to have them in my life, depicting a time when we were all together, enjoying the island without so many tourists, once it is cut off by the rising tide from the mainland, and my wild small son roamed free in the little yellow and black go-kart we carted all the way up there with us, squished in the trunk of the family car!

Danger, Danger...

Potassium hydroxide is extremely dangerous to breathe and fatal to eat. It causes deep ulcers if it touches the skin and irreversible damage if it gets in the eyes. It is widely used to wash fruit and vegetables; in the manufacture of chocolate, ice cream, caramel, soft drinks, paper and textiles; to form a skin on pretzels before baking; and as a wart-remover. It is also used by vets for disbudding calves horns and for dissolving scales and hair and is a common ingredient of washing powder, denture cleaner, detergent, drain cleaners and soap.





Never was anything great achieved without danger.

NICCOLO MACCHIAVELLI

Six Word Saturday...

I can say only six words!

50 Ways To Leave Your Lover...

Six Word Saturday... Where I enjoy interpolating some of my favourite music!

But it's not Saturday. ...And some that I love and read here in the Blogworld are thinking about leaving their lovers, and husbands...

And, I heard someplace that there must be 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover...

Or are there? It can't be so easy. Love should not be so effortlessly thrown away. Should it?

GJ and I have been at daggers drawn de temps en temps. Suitcases packed full to brimming, lids slammed shut on their contents, doors banging noisefully against their frames... Hard words, some spoken; Some remaining unspoken.

And yet we have stuck. With one another. Don't ask me how, why? For I know not.

Perhaps we 'settle for less', as Arthur Miller once opined... (in 'A View from the Bridge'). Perhaps we have found in Each Other our Other Half. For Better For Worse. For Richer For Poorer. In Sickness And In Rude, Rude, Sometimes Horrible, Health... Perhaps we're more easily pleased than some folk?

I can berate none for fleeing violence or abuse, acts of faithlessness and betrayal, but leaving someone for just not being happy enough?

I don't know...

I don't believe that we can find happiness through our partners. That our lovers can somehow complete us... I think we have to grapple with our own demons by ourselves... Sometimes, when we find fault in others, we really need to be looking more closely at ourselves... At what's going on inside our own heads...

That's just my opinion, bien sur, mes Bloggy Therapeuts...

And so Stevie sings:

"I don't want to know the reasons why
Love keeps right on walking down the line
I don't want to stand between you and love, honey,
I just want you to feel fine

Finally baby
The truth has come down now
Take a listen to your spirit
It's crying out loud.
Try to believe
You say you love me, but you don't know
You got me rocking and a-reeling
Oh..."

Who's a Dufy?

What is it that appeals to me about the art of Raoul Dufy on my walls - Or waiting to go on my walls, I daren't say which?

I honestly couldn't tell you... Isn't that terrible?

The pictures I have, destined one day for my downstairs loo, are a triptych of A4 landscapes by Dufy of the river Seine as it runs from Paris down to Rouen in Normandie, where GJ and I spent a precious 3 days to celebrate his 40th Birthday, seven years ago... My father looked after Le Grizz for us, and we would be very grateful to him for his love and generosity, (for all of our lives, in fact).

I probably love Dufy's obvious love of la belle France, and the apparently swift, and energetically captured, azure blue of the seas and the skies... La mer et le ciel... The translation of images is delicate and light in touch, humorous (to me), and the tender palette is surely evocative of another Belle Epoque...

Another time, another place, non?!

And, at the same time, still so wonderfully contemporary. At least it feels so to me...



But then, what does la Fhina know? Will that do, mes bloggy art critiques?

What do you think?