A Loss of Face...

While signing myself into my/our other blog - THIS ONE PLEASE CLICK - I only managed to lock myself out of this one.   Gah!

I feel under the weather this week already, and it's only Tuesday.   I was in bed at half past five last night, although I didn't go to sleep until after nine and was still awake for some of the night that passed.

Anyhoo, until my blogging mojo has proper come back to me, I'm over at Mad Manic Mamas, feeling very much like the title, that is 'mad and manic' and pondering on the nature, comme d'habitude, of love, life and loss.

Thanks to therapy I'm coming to terms (I think and hope) with a lot of loss in my life in the past few years.

We don't always acknowledge it, non?!   We want to prove we can be big and strong; to show that we can cope; to show the world;   to give witness that life won't get us down.

What are we trying to prove?    What?   And to whom?

I'm not sad, I'm not down, I'm just being thoughtful is all.   I'm also busy with new clients, an assignment, the tail-end of Christmas shopping and rat-wrangling.

And I'm also over at Mad, Manic Mamas...   Probably all this week.   Please come see me.   Yerp, I'm needy.

Love and Life...

I am in love...

With my son's new laptop, that is.

A Sony Vaio something-or-another - Yeah, I'm not THAT technical!

But I love its shapely form, its silver-screen, matinee idol, good looks, its ability to draw me back into the demi-monde of tippy-tappy like a loon lost in the desert for weeks without water...

But I have to give it to him on Tuesday. It's his, not mine.

He only allowed me to use it because I had an assignment to hand in for my Psychotherapy course.

Yah boo, hiss!

Mine, meanwhile, has already shagged two disks and is apparently behaving "like a real bad Mo'Fo", whatever that means - I think it's a technical term?

Does anyone out there have a laptop I could review, perhaps?

Pretty-Please. With sugar on top?

Jerst saying!

Happy Holidays

This little musical interlude moved me to tears at the weekend. I love Flash Mobs. I love this. I hope you do too.

May I take this opportunity to wish you, mes amis, the happiness you long for this festive season and the peace of mind to enjoy it.

Love and light.

(p.s. Tomorrow I grow into 47 years. Be gentle with me. I might have a pink silk eye-shade on and my hair in curlers, dressing-goonie on, waiting to be whisked off to a secret location for a fabulous birthday tryst, peut-etre diner a deux...

Then again, I might just be at work as usual!)

Ciao bellas -- Je vous aime... Tant! Mwah! x

A Paean to Lizzie Rowe

The Unironed Frock

The Red Dress

So, my trip to The Biscuit Factory to see my cousin-brother had to be cancelled, as neither of us could make it without a sled and pack of huskies...

Something to look forward to another day, j'espere, I live my life in hope. As I hope also to get to the hair salon before I take on the role of the new Cousin Itt!

And, without planning it, as such, I seem to be featuring my love of contemporary art this week... Sometimes I surprise even myself!

Here is another artist whose work has been exhibited at The Biscuit Factory.

I first encountered Stephen Rowe's work standing, transfixed, upon the staircase at the sumptuous Theatre Royal, Newcastle. Stephen's works, Angel Study I and II, together with The Annunciation, haunted the twin stairs that ascend to the grand and upper circles of the Victorian theatre, whose architect was Frank Matcham. Clickie.

I swithered hither and thither, across the hallway, trying to take in all I could of the meaning of these paintings. I thought they must be by a Spanish artist, perhaps... I was stunned by their haunting, and haunted, beauty, evoking sunshine, blood and tilled soil, bright angels and deep despair, what is dark and what is hidden, what is revealed of us and what we bury, never again to see the light of day.

Born Portsmouth UK, 1955 as Stephen Rowe, "There isnt a painter anywhere around quite like Lizzie Rowe (she combines) the lush paintwork and moody atmospheric tonalities of Rembrandt with the sinuous graphic decadence of Beardsley".

Robert Clark, The Guardian, June 5th 2006.

"Hangups"
Lizzie Rowe is virtually unique in using her art as an actual means of gender transformation and documentation she has convincingly embodied this transformation in the genre of immaculately executed figurative painting (which) proves that painting is still a vital creative medium.

Robert Clark, The Guardian 2005

"Dysphoria"
In the late 1980s the Newcastle-based artist formally known as Stephen Rowe underwent gender-reassignment to become Lizzie, a personal transformation publicly documented through her paintings and drawings. Her work explores the private turmoil and confusion of the artist coming to terms with her newly recognized gender. The cluttered, but ambiguously defined spaces reflect the thoughts and dreams of the artist and the isolating fear of the unknown.

This piece is entitled, "Is Never Done" As in, "A Woman's Work Is..."

Lizzie continues to draw inspiration from her own experiences and the world of domestic feminine minutiae and is also a sought-after portrait artist.

"Rowe doesn't make easy political references to sexual and gender role playing; this is an artist who has painted first his, now her way out of social stereotypes and achieved, through immense creative and personal struggle, the liberation of being a self created individual. So here Rowe's long-time fascination with dresses and lace, her domestic reveries of ritualised laundering and ironing, are transformed with an aura of otherworldly melancholy and yearning.
So here Rowe's long-time fascination with dresses and lace, her domestic reveries of ritualised laundering and ironing, are transformed with an aura of otherworldly melancholy and yearning".

Robert Clark

The Guardian

Lizzie's Website is HERE I find her work both enigmatic and wondrous.

I particularly like her paintings evoking angels, or the feathers of angels' wings tumbling around dresses, as in this painting, Numinous, (in the presence of the divine).

Lizzie's art seems to feature in collections such as that of the Saatchis. I hope to own a piece of Lizzie's one day.

I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into Lizzie's art and life. Stay safe in this treacherous weather, mes amis! Mwah! Gotcha!

Here lies one whose name was writ in water...

Our memories are fleeting things, are they not?

I find myself dredging up older memories, wallowing in them like one possessed;

Losing, like melted butter slipping between my clumsy fingers, those that might only have happened in, say, the last five years...

Ageing is like that. It's all uphill from here!

So, I promised to give you the summary of the brief time spent recently in my dad's home, sorting the wheat from the chaff, locating some treasures as it turned out, and learning to give up others for good...

I sat on the abandoned bed, now bereft of any covers, and settled down to sift through yet one more mystery box.

Stretching my body to reach it, secreted as it was under a very heavy box, I found a large clear plastic bag, bright white envelopes franked 'Aden', bearing the image of the Queen in her Coronation Year, and addressed in a small rounded hand to my mother, Joan Crawford, at her parents' home in a seaside village, not forty miles from where I live today.

Their love letters.

Letters which made their appearances over the years, in the house we lived in from when I was born, which was filled with mass-market eastern treasures they brought back with them from overseas. There were black painted tables and jewellery boxes, fragile shelves separated with spindles of glass, all decorated with scenes of blue mountain and silvery lake, tinged with the red light of the sun.

...I remember the letters, hidden away from prying eyes and from me, towards the deep bottom of a white wicker blanket chest, an ottoman... Letters held together with white ribbon, hugger-mugger with their Wedding Day favours and baby pink cards that celebrated their Little Girl's Birth -- Me.

The cards always appeared mysterious to me. Exotic. Private. Romantic.

Reminiscent of that other era. A time of shared films and Eldorado ices at the Wallaw Cinema, sometimes for both the first and the second sitting...

A hand outstretched in seaside photos, my mother, lovely with her dark hair and brows, when I only ever knew her as a Platinum, and then naturally silver Blonde. Red lips sketched in black and white, pale capri pants and a white seersucker blouse. Her Grace Kelly headscarf pinned firmly in place. She's asking my father to give her his hand so she can climb up from the sandy beach. He's standing above her on the prom, laughing, one hand outstretched to tempt her, with the other he's taking the photograph, teasing her playfully. He remained playful to the end of his days.

Beautiful.

And now I have their memories and their voices, and I'm going to keep them safe and sound too... I might not read them. I don't think I was supposed to, do you?

Perhaps I shall find a fine cedar-lined box to hold them tight, scented with love and filled with the gratitude I have for my reclaimed memories of the love that they shared...

A time when they were separated by thousands of miles of air, redolent of warm spices, and parted by the wild wide ocean, his socks full of desert sands, her heart full of excitement and love...

Once more I have found a little space where some part of peace has been returned to me.

For a while...

The long and the short of it...

I haven't been blogging for a year yet. But I have been reading your blogs for around a year now...

Bless you for sharing your lives and your love and wisdom with me. You mean so much to me.

"There is nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends."
-- Hillaire Belloc

HAPPY SHORTEST DAY...

The Dog's Breakfast at Twilight!

Merci, mes bloggy chums for sticking with me through what has been almost a week of dog's breakfast postings...



I had found some lovely nature photos for today's little bleat of a posting; To accompany an account of a walk I took yesterday, up to the abandoned quarry near to my home. Spring was very definitely in the air, I felt like a million and a half of Bernie Madoff's dollars, (...so about three shillings and sixpence in old money!) The air was fresh and rarefied, the sheep were contemplatively grazing, the birds were songful and the grass was dry and springy underfoot.

I honestly felt as if the world were on the mend!



And then, la Wiki must have stolen in during the night and stuffed some dry sticks in my cake-hole, stoppering my ears with cobwebs as is her wont, for it has taken me an aeon to rise and shine this afternoon - It's supposed to be 'rise and shine this morning', Fhina, I hear you say. I know, I know...



Ca alors, mes lovely bloggeurs et bloggeristas, one and all... For there is only one of you out there, really, right - And you just keep coming back a good few times a day, to make me think there are more of you? Honestly, if it weren't for you wonderful peeps who leave sparkling comments, de temps en temps, like enchanting faerie baby changelings on my doorstep, I would think I were going (even more barking) mad...

So, please forgive another half-mast posting today, I shouldn't bother really... and watch please as Fhina retreats back up the stairs to her byre with a book, rather than her usual electronic companion du jour...

What is Fhina reading, you ask? Well, you know I haven't been out very much of late, of course. And I had heard much about the Twilight Series of novels, (there are those reviewers who would refute calling them even that, I know!), so I succumbed to purchasing the first of this series of books via my local supermarket self:



I can hear the groans now... Honestly, dahlinks, I have a very catholic taste in books... I can devour anything from the classics to chick-lit. I try to read widely and wildly, and felt a bit of a buzz about this series of books, so thought I would give the first book a try.

What we must accept is that this saga is very much a Marmite one... Meaning, you either love it, or you hate it, just in fact as people do with Marmite! There are no grey kitties, er, areas!



I must add that I'm not a follower of horror-type stories, in particular...

Who could ever expect to beat Mary Shelley's fabled Frankenstein? And I hate Marmite!

But there is something about the Vampire/Human love-story this novelist has woven, and I'm not going to say that it is original, nor that it is high-brow, and yet it has captured the attention of a middle-aged mumsie, (and there are more of us out there, I can tell from t'Internet!). And I am as far removed from the screaming teenaged fans of the novels and the ensuing movie, as you could imagine!

I am hooked by the soupcon of being reminded of that all-consuming first love we might all have experienced... You remember, its soaring swoops and its devastating sorrows. When you felt as if your life depended on that Significant Other, and none else would do... Do you recall, I wonder?



I mean, what is it about Romeo and Juliet's story that still appeals to us aujourd'hui?

In my very humble opinion, an authentic teenage point of view is captured in the words, and there is the promise of being on the edge of something wonderful, and something terrible, as Bella is...


And so, Fhina is off to be tucked up with the unfolding adventure of Edward and Bella, in the shape of the second novel in the series... Like, you were interested!

Excusez moi, s'il vous plait?!

New Light Through Old Windows...

Salut mes bloggy chums... Today, finds me feeling as if the Goddess Wiki has taken one of her long, pointy temple tools - perchance for lighting lanterns - and has bashed me about the head with it! I suspect that I may be 'coming down with something' wonderful!

So, please forgive the slapdash nature of today's posting, and if confusion creeps in, or if I drift off on a boat of oaken splendours, into the seas of the land of nod... Or if, just like yesterday's piece, I end up copying and re-pasting the same image again and again, because the new changes to Photobucket mean I scarcely know when I am copying an image, or not...

Why do people feel the need to do that? To mess around with what works, in the pursuit of the new, the fresh, la nouveaute?



Answers on a postcard, please, to:

Fhina
The Rundown Cottage
Home Of The Brave
Neurotica
England, My Lionheart

(and even he were French - Richard I, Richard Coeur de Lion, in fact. Did you know that, mes bloggy chums?!)

These days I live in a house that was built by sugar mice just after the turn of the century, probably just after Queen Victoria relinquished her vice-like grip on the throne... We have wonderful, uninterrupted views across hill and dale, sheep and cows, tractor and tiller...

Quarry Miners used to live in our simple, two-up, two-down, terrace of cottages. They had hard working lives in the local quarry mines, hewing for minerals and in some instances coal. They had the pleasure of living in the countryside, which we so enjoy today, but they would have been dragged up perhaps, rather than brought up...



Modern extensions to my home offer us additional living and 'being' space and accommodation downstairs, while upstairs the 'footprint' of my cottage stands much as it has ever been. Two bedrooms and what is now our bathroom...

When we first viewed the cottage, almost seven years ago, I had to bite my lip when GJ and I were sitting in the car mulling over the visit, afterwards. I burst into tears, my desperation for a home, after years of living what might be termed a half-life because of conflicts with a minority of embittered, craptastic neighbours, meant that I had connected on some deeper level with this potential future home for me and my family.



I know not who lived here before us, other than the sweet old lady we had to convince to sell us the house. We were in a 'bidding war', with lots of people keen to acquire their own little slice of Paradise. Some of the houses have been used as second homes, as holiday properties, and let out to one and all...

It was clear to us that Nancy wanted to pass on her home to a family, happy as hers once had been... To folk who would love the place just as she had done. So, we waited, and time passed, and then I felt as if we had won the lottery, when finally we were told that the house was ours.

One of the many quirks of the property, which has few really original features, for these homes were not built for Victorian Merchants, or Georgian Gentry, or the Landed Classes, is a small original, six-paned window in my kitchen. This window looks into my ramshackle Laundry Room and onto the back door of the house, but it would once have been the little parlour window beside the back door, witnessing all the comings and goings of one hundred years; Barefoot children pattering out, chattering, to tend the chickens, the strong woman of the house now wringing out, and then hanging out sheets and aprons to dry on the line... The miner and his teenaged son, departing at dark o'clock for the day's long shift in the quarry, not half a mile up the hill...



This little window means a lot to GJ and I. It is one of the things that endeared this house to us, that sustains us as we look aghast at the next set of works we need to start on... Its charm weaves a little spell over us, and we dream of our painted pine kitchen, and a comfortable seating arrangement in the lee of this window on the past.

So why is it then, that whenever workmen trample through the house, airily mapping out changes and waving their arms to detail their visions, they all ask incredulously, "Is the window staying?", or they proffer, uninvited, of course, "If you bricked up this window, it would give you more scope in the Laundry Room, to put in appliances, etc..."

Even our friend, who helped develop our plans for the bathroom directly above the galley kitchen, whistled through the space saying, "I'd brick this window in for a start... This'll have to go!"

Of course, all of these offers are met with GJ and I exclaiming wildly,

"Over my dead body... That window is not going before I do!"

At least on this, we concur.

Perhaps the window's hold on us is irrational. What exactly are we trying to hang onto, when to see its panes crudely broken up in a skip in the back lane, would mean freeing up additional space to work with, and the opportunity for more cupboards, which we do need...

Of course, you will know, our forebears have studied light and its many life-giving qualities.

They have linked light and its refraction to our wellbeing and energy. We all know that one cannot live happily in a place where access to light is denied us.

I sign cards and letters to friends, "Love and light", and they laugh and make fun of me... Often.

Don't you wish sometimes people would just leave well alone... Particularly when it feels like, "Change for change's sake"...

'If it ain't broke, don't fix it', I say, and all that rigmarole.

The window is staying, my darlings.




Come in out of the darkness...