If It's Thursday It Must Be Blog Day, Nostalgia, Groundhog Covid-ness, Distraction Working

 

Out of focus digital image taken at St George's Field on Sunday 5th December,

post processed to monochrome - it's been a while since I've been to St George's Field for fresh air and for picture taking and making. My plan wasn't to do a 'proper' photoshoot as really I just wanted to wander but I popped my favourite digital point and shoot in my pocket in case there was anything which caught my eye. 

Many things did catch my eye as I ended up taking 91 images (oh the clicking freedom of digital as opposed to the measured use of film) - some of which I'm really pleased with and others are much more meh.  It was balm for my soul though getting back in the picture taking zone as the last few days have and continue to be a time of great worry about seriously ill loved ones and here is hoping they'll make a full recovery.

As a space St George's Field remains one of my very favourite places to be and one of the best for recharging my mental batteries. I continue to research its history and that of its occupants and make work in and of it.

It can be hard to take an out of focus image with an automatic focus point and shoot digital camera and there's something serendipitous about this image - I meant to take and subsequently did an in focus image of that tombstone grouping too but there's something about this out of focus one that really speaks to me as I think it accurately reflects my current state of mind and the ongoing uncertainty and disconcerting nature of covid times.

Once I'd had my booster (again thank you NHS) I'd started to feel a little less frightened and a little more positive and open to the idea of going out a bit more and socialising in person rather than through a screen but the events of the past few days, the emergence of a new Covid variant and our ongoing shitshow of a government and their crass incompetence and corruption has made me feel less light at the end of the tunnel but more light of an oncoming train again.

So this image accurately reflects the way I feel about things which I had been able to take for certain in pre-covid times are now jolted and jumbled and no longer reliable. 

My beloved digital point and shoot Lumix - the camera I used to take the picture above and which remains my go to point and shoot digital if I want high resolution in focus images, a backing card for 'Fashionable' buttons which makes me smile as if there are 'fashionable' buttons then is somewhere selling buttons labelled as 'unfashionable'? , an old receipt for something I didn't buy from Binns Ltd for £1.90 on 21st August 1975 (that would be approximately £16.50 in todays money) that I found in a book I bought from a charity shop a while back and despite it having no personal meaning for me I can't bring myself to throw it away.

If only I had telemetric powers then I might be able to discern who it was that made the purchase and what it was. Binns was a department store that became part of House of Fraser and I'm wondering what kind of things would have cost £1.90 in the summer of 1975 and would have been sold in a department store.

There's also a photo of me meeting Father Xmas mostly likely at Lewis or Kendals in the early to mid 70's. I am wearing a kind of sailors outfit which my Mum loved and used to dress me up in all the time. I don't remember loving my sailor suit but I do remember loving my red boots and I also had a pair in white, there's also a ticket to Sometimes Always Never that I saw at the Hyde Park Picture House in the before times (Friday June 28th 2019) that fell out of a pocket of a handbag I hadn't used for a while and made me feel very nostalgic for carefree last minute trips to the cinema.

The Hyde Park Picture House have been posting photographs of the things they've found as the refurbishment continues - so far I've seen an old packet of Woodbine fags, a card from a box of Needlers chocolates and a wrapper for a Zoom lolly from the mid 70's.  You can see them if you look them up on their socials.

There's also this weeks post it note and a blue bic biro - one of the survivors from my sorting out my pen pots on my desk earlier this week - the imprints of the other survivors can be seen scribbled on my beloved green and white lined proper old school computer paper.

Still enjoying my renewed blogging mojo and it does now seen to be a bit more of a habit again - hence if it's Thursday it must be blog day and in the midst of ongoing uncertainty and distress having fixed points is something of a comfort as is Buffy the Vampire Slayer which I missed first time round but am now catching up with thanks to its showings on E4 at 6pm. I know I could download it but I find it easier to watch it on a live broadcast - in part because it's a full stop to the chores of the day and permission to wind down by collapsing on the sofa and watching some flawed undemanding brain fluff that takes very little effort to watch.

I am still watching Dark Shadows too but that does take a bit more of an effort at times as periods of what appear to be the writers treading water whilst deciding what to do next (it didn't begin with a grand overall story arc are then followed by rapid plot twists and turns which can be so lightning quick they're a bit  disorientating. Continuity and logic are not one of its strong points but no matter I remain completely in love with Barnabas Collins and who in episode 1112 is back to being a vampire with a near uncontrollable thirst for blood. 

I increasingly carry out the chores of the day - be that cleaning, cooking, food shopping, christmas preparation, creative work, life admin to a soundtrack of either Radio 4 Extra or a podcast. The podcasts I'm especially enjoying include Peaches Christ Midnight Mass which examines various cult films by talking to performers from it or people who just absolutely love it. The enthusiasm of Peaches and Michael is infectious and it's by turns insightful and revealing, as is the Boulet Brothers Creatures of the Night podcast.

Just as enthusiastic and revealing is Danny Robins Uncanny but by far the most disturbing thing I've listened to this week is The Haunted Generation by Bob Fischer. It's an audio recreation of my 70's childhood with a mix of evocative tv theme tunes, folk songs from the time *shudder*, 70's adverts, and is mostly gentle and lovely (so most unlike the 70's then really - but hey that's the rosy tint of nostalgia for you)  but most terrifying of all in the midst of rosiness there is a clip of the soundtrack to the public information film narrated by Keith Baron detailing the perils of grain silos and how easy it is to drown in them. Til I heard that bit I had been merrily thinking about Fingerbobs, Wombles and the like - a lot of public information films were just short horror films weren't they? I like my horror cosy and as an asthmatic anything where it sounds people are struggling to breathe really unsettles me...hence my ongoing fear re Covid and its potential effect on breathing ability. 

I've often used creative work as a distraction rather than just as an end in itself  - either reading or watching someone else's creative work or making my own. This week I have mostly been distracting myself with the creative work of others but I have also done some photograph editing and workroom tidying and my plan is to start making some image transfers with some of those photographs tomorrow, as well as think about about another possible exhibition submission in January. 

But here's hoping for better news all round next week eh? Thank you for reading. 

Knickerbocker Glories, Time Uncertainty, Changing Consumer Habits, Podcasts and Haunting.

 

this weeks post it note, list of books on loan from Leeds City Council Libraries which I am slowly working my way through, my journal that I write in every few days or so with fountain pen with black ink, new (to me) purse which made me smile so I bought it although I was really supposed to be buying presents for others at the time which I did as well - I haven't included the things I've been working on as they are presents and so I don't want the people they're for to get a chance sneak preview... 

giant knickerbocker glory which lives on Cleethorpes front - pictured earlier this year - I wonder if it survived Storm Arwen? I hope it did and its owner took it inside for the duration...I am jonesing for a day at the seaside (even if I almost freeze to death in the process) and in particular for a knickerbocker glory made for me by someone wearing a tabard and looking a bit bored - the best I've had has been in Brucciani in Morecambe and Pacittos in Redcar.
My mouth is watering at the memory of them.

It's Thursday so that means it must be go to local shops for bread, fruit and vegetables, possibly the library too and then come home and do a blog post day. It's been another week in these ongoing unsettling and challenging times. I remain very grateful that the pandemic has not affected my finances and that I do not have the kind of job that means I have to leave the house, use public transport to get to it and interact with others in the flesh (especially those who no concept of keeping distance or wearing a mask ) but otherwise it continues to have a frightening and damaging and pervasive effect over everything else.

Almost two weeks on from my booster jab (thank you NHS) I was just starting to feel a little less anxious about going out and meeting up with folks and doing things from the 'before times' but I'm afraid the latest Covid variant Omicron emergence and uncertainty around it has ramped my anxiety levels right back up again. This coupled with loved ones currently being very poorly with it and with other loved ones that are having treatment plans delayed or derailed because of Covid is just making me feel rather despondent in a when will this ever end kind of way? Please join me in keeping everything crossed for their full recovery and that eventually this too will pass.

The when will it ever end feeling also chimes in with the general feeling I have of losing all track of time, things feeling like they happened years ago but in reality were only months ago or were years ago but feel very recent. I don't think I'm alone in the feeling but it is kind of disconcerting too. Like part of me just cannot believe that this is the second xmas season under the heavy, horrid long reaching shadow of Covid. Is it really almost two years since I've been on a bus - something I used to do regularly in the before times? and yes, it is.

I've made most of my xmas presents this year, something I often do anyway but my purchasing habits have changed considerably in Covid times, partly due to some of the shops being closed for some of the time (I do buy some things online but not many) but also because until recently I didn't feel comfortable going into shops unless it was for immediately necessities ie bread and milk type stuff.

I still don't feel entirely comfortable browsing and so I have mostly stopped making impromptu purchases. When I do go to the shops now it's just local ones and with specific purchases in mind or a list. I haven't had a wander round the city centre just nipping in wherever takes my fancy for almost two years. A sentence I cannot believe I am writing and yet it is true.

I recognise the enormous privilege I have in being able to decide not to purchase stuff as well as purchasing stuff as well as a comfortable space to call my own to be in. However I did treat myself to the little purse on last weeks shopping trip  tho I'm not sure if I'll actually use it for physical money as I so rarely use actual cash these days, I mostly just wave my contactless card at a card machine. On checking my bank statement it seems I've taken cash out of the cash machine twice in the last year. TWICE when it used to be a weekly event. I also recognise how lucky I am to have a bank account with the privileges that brings when not everyone does. I might just the purse to keep my earrings in or a lippy and little mirror when I next have a night out - tho as that hasn't happened since March 8th 2019 I won't be holding my breath til it happens again. 

Am awaiting the return of my 35mm film with some anticipation - I so hope there are some usuable images on it but it won't have any of the recent snowfall. I failed to take any pictures of the recent snowfall, not even quick digital snaps out of the window. Tho please accept my assertion that the back garden looked very pretty under it's snow coating. I'm glad it melted fairly quickly tho as like many others I do not want to slip and hurt myself or make ongoing existing niggles with my ankle worse.

I've been listening to the very marvellous Peaches Christ Midnight Mass podcast recently as she and her podcast partner filmmaker Michael Varrati talk about some of my very favourite films and filmmakers. Plus even if I'm not familiar with the film they're talking about their love, enthusiasm and insight is infectious and I am adding lots more films to my want to watch list.  I especially enjoyed their episodes on Ed Wood and The Bad Seed.  Creatures of the Night - the Boulet Brothers podcast is also one of my current favourites.

One which encapsulates some of the aspects of my seventies childhood and which I listened to this week is The Haunted Generation podcast by Bob Fischer which for me veers between enchantingly nostalgic, unsettling and downright terrifying. The snippet from a public information film warning of the dangers of drowning in grain silos is truly horrific and will continue to haunt me for quite some time. Be warned if you listen for that may happen to you too and things that you thought you had easily forgotten just may come back to haunt you too.

                                            Thank you for reading.

Promise Sticking, More Image Transferring, Colour Boosting, Boosters In General, Where Are Memories Held? Film-ness

 

Matte medium image transfer piece in progress - still need to remove last few bits of paper, trim and sew excess fabric, wrap outside of embroidery hoop in bias binding (possibly purple) and decide on a title - I usually draw on chapter titles from novels by my favourite nineteenth century authors - Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins...this one is in monochrome as monochrome is my preferred colour-scheme to work in.
Examples of other matte medium transfers I have done can be seen here and here

this weeks notes, the nail varnish I'm going to paint my nails with later whilst watching Drag Race - I much prefer Dragula as its inclusivity and menu of drag, filth, horror and glamour are some of my very favourite things...so whilst my heart and soul now belong to the Boulet Brothers there's still a bit of it that has space for RuPaul...also pictured is a bag of a shower cap I bought in a beautifully old fashioned chemist in Buxton in the 'before times' because its sombre old fashioned-ness really makes me smile. 

It's still early days but as this is the third blog post I've written in the last three weeks I'm feeling cautiously hopeful that I am getting my blogging mojo back. I'm certainly finding it a good way of marshalling my thoughts again in these ongoing uncertain and frightening times, and aside from it helping me I've also had positive feedback on it which is also a boost.

Boosts of whatever kind are still very welcome as anxiety is still kicking my arse. I've not got back my going out to indoor places with lots of other people mojo as yet but am hoping getting my anti covid booster jab is going to help with that along with still taking things slowly but surely - baby steps, baby steps.  

Speaking of boosters - my current mood boosters are: watching or listening to the Boulet Brothers, the rather wonderful selection of ghost and uncanny stories on BBC Sounds and I-Player, going for a walk, reading a book that completely distracts and transports me - currently enjoying A Single Thread by Tracey Chevalier very much and painting my nails. I love nail varnish and tho I'm not especially skillful about applying it but there is something very mood lifting looking down to see shiny colourful unchipped nails.

Due to being a dyed in the wool old school goth almost all my clothes are black and often the only pop of colour about me is my fringe which is blue or my nails (if I've painted them) or my lips if I've got make up on. I don't find black a miserable colour to wear or look at or be surrounded by but I'm reminded of reading something Brix Smith Start wrote about bright colours being a form of prozac for her but annoyingly I cannot find the quote. I don't have to surround my self with colour to cheer myself but a bright pop of it somewhere along the line is nice.

Houseplants also brighten up the space around me and my mood - a chinese money plant I bought during lockdown has produced many offspring which along with spider pants (also very bountiful offspring from one plant) a few prayer plants and a very exuberant boston fern make me smile lots as do the constants of Spongebob cartoons at the weekend and daily glimpses of Hacker T Dog and his handler's other characters. As ever being able to walk in the woods and go to the gym also helps massively.

I'm also really enjoying podcasts - be it the Boulet Brothers Creatures Of The Night or Peaches Christ's Midnight Mass or No Heathen Lands eerie stories of Yorkshire. 

But back to nail varnish - my Nana always said that nail varnish was the sign of a woman who didn't do any housework and chipped nail varnish was the sign of 'a slattern' and painted toenails were a sign in her opinion of very dubious morals and the person with painted toenails was likely to be a sex worker tho she would not have used that term. I doubt she could have countenanced the idea let alone the reality of men wearing nail varnish like a few of my friends do - I think she'd have connuptions like the time she went to see Hinge and Bracket and was appalled that the man sat next to her had a handbag. I don't think she realised Dame Hilda and Evadne were actually characters played by men. 

So whilst I don't miss her sheltered and restrictive views I do miss her and frankly would give anything to be able to talk to her again and I'd get her to teach me how to crochet whilst making sure that my nails were as impeccable as I could make them and I'm not sure whether or not I'd paint them bright red - which was according to her the sign of 'a harlot'. 

Knitting is more of a mood stabiliser for me tho really as I find it quite meditative after a while and sometimes I pick projects because they involve quite a bit of just plain knitting. Though at the moment it's less meditative as I am currently working my through various projects that are destined to be xmas presents for family members. I've got 5 that I want to finish before the start of December so that there's plenty of time to get them posted off in time to arrive for Xmas. So far I've finished 3, made a start on one (a nice simple one thankfully) and then the last one is a little bit more complicated and so will require a lot more concentration. Am being deliberately vague on the offchance that one of the recipients might come across thisblogpost.

One of the things I've been thinking about recently is memories, both reliving them or what we think they were, where they are held - are they in the object, diary entry, a space somehow embedded into physical structures and my/the fear of losing them if I lose the objects that are associated with and evoke those memories and how photographs are (their lack of smell and noise aside) such excellent memory holders/provokers. 

It also makes me think and wonder about matte medium as a medium (every meaning and association of the word intended) for transferring and holding images and how I want to work on refining the physical process of working with it but also reading more about the philosophical implications of it.

I'm hoping that some of the pictures I took on film with the very lomo camera will be good enough to make into transferred pieces. I finished the roll on Monday whilst walking through the woods, I also had the usual 'ooh will I get more than 36 pictures out of it' as you often get 37 or or rare occasions 38. The camera I was using is very lomo but it does have an anti double exposure feature and so as I continued to frame, click and wind on past 36 I was at first 'yay more pics' and then 'oh no, maybe I didn't wind it on properly in the first place - all those potential photographs lost' when I clicked without really framing and it really was the last on the roll and then of course as is always the way I saw what would have been a beautiful image opportunity. Oh well.

                                            Thank you for reading.

Beginning At The Other End, Dark Shadows, Collage, Walking, Grieving

This was a light refraction image taken on my trusty go to lomo camera phone earlier in the summer when there was still quite a lot of daylight. It makes me think of Covid virus images but in this case it's sunlight refracted through the patterned surface of a drinks tumbler onto my grey marbled kitchen worktop. My lomo phone camera (I do not have a smartphone) has become my camera of choice over the last few months despite its lomo limitations. Its very poor zoom, limited focus and lack of flash are outweighed by the fact that it fits easily in my pocket, plus it's very light in weight and it only relies on electrickery to take and transfer the images to the computer rather than chemical developing the film in our cold, slightly damp and not very nice garage before scanning it into the computer.

This is a close up of the doll I got from my Nana when I left home just over 30 years ago. The doll usually has a hat on as well as a peach dress and she guards a toilet roll under her faded crocheted peach dress.  This year she had a respite from toilet roll guarding duties and became a film star when I took her out of the toilet roll and put her in my mini studio and took photos of her.  She along with other images I'd taken became part of an experimental short film I made earlier this summer, when I took part in the Facing The Mind project. I got so much out of the project - it was both beautiful and welcome distraction from grieving and lockdown fears plus I learnt some basic video-editing skills and learnt a little about the Kuleshov Effect - you can read more about the project here and see some of the other participants work too.  

 

This is a still of Barnabas Collins as played so beautifully by Jonathon Frid in Dark Shadows - a daytime gothic horror soap opera which ran on american television from 1966-1971. In this image he is staring out from the Old House wishing harm upon his young relative David Collins. There were over 1200 episodes made and I've seen almost 700 of them so far. I started watching it this time last year and was instantly hooked on its dark grim storytelling, for all its shonky-ness in places (line flubs, scenery malfunctions, boom mic shadows) it is also completely compelling and often telling versions of stories inspired by the gothic classics - Dracula, Frankenstein, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, The Pit and the Pendulum, Jane Eyre to name but a few - I've now reached the Lovecraft inspired Leviathan storyline and I am loving every moment of it. 

I have fallen completely in love with Barnabas Collins - the reluctant and sympathetic gentleman vampire with the most excellent eyeliner and eyeshadow and almost all of the residents of Collinwood, the old house and Collins Port. I've joined online fan clubs, got audio versions of the books featuring the same characters but not quite the same story arcs and one of the soundtrack albums. The haunting theme tune by Robert Cobert perfectly fits the weird world dreamt up  (literally - the idea came to him in a dream) by Dan Curtis and fleshed out by writers like Sam Hall. The theme tune has become a kind of ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) in our house as hearing it takes us instantly to a calmer contemplative state in these otherwise fraught and frightening times. 

The other thing that has been helping to keep me calm and keep me relatively sane in these otherwise gruelling and distressing times is being able to go a for a walk as thank goodness the plantar fasciitis issues that were so crippling and disabling me are in abeyance. This is a picture taken on my lomo non smart camera phone and post processed using the basic free photo editing software that comes with Microsoft Windows. Being able to go for a walk around the nearby woods and bridlepaths continues to be an absolute lifesaver for me. Especially as my usual outlet for distraction and relaxation the Hyde Park Picture House has been closed for refurbishment and would have been closed because of Covid. 
 

I have tried to keep up with exercising at home and have gone to the gym when I could but I am hoping now that I can get a clear run or rather clear chest press and shoulder press towards my current goal of being able to deadlift 100kg. I've really learnt the value of exercise and a place to be able to do it over the last few months. 

Until somewhat ironically the start of the first lockdown earlier this year I was only able to manage about 10 minutes from home by foot, every trip out on my own had to be planned so that I could easily call a taxi to come and get me or get on a bus if need be. Needless to say the mix of pain, physical discomfort, lack of mobility and frustration that nothing seemed to be working in terms of making it better were really getting me down.  

Plantar issues severely limited my mobility and choices of places to go to and things to do whereas now thankfully I am mostly pain-free and it is either Covid related restrictions or my own choices to minimise my risks of catching Covid that put limits on where I want to go. It's almost a year since I have been on any kind of public transport, nine months since I went in a supermarket though I have been to the local shops a few times for things like milk, bread, wine and cake. For the rest we've been relying on companies who have diversified from supplying restaurants to supplying individuals. It's quite hard to eat a kilogram of hummous though but we went halves  on the kilo tubs of hummous with friends who live nearby and thankfully it now comes in pots of a much more manageable size. 

I can't tell you how much I am missing going to the cinema, looking/listening/absorbing in art galleries, sitting somewhere other than my desk to write my journal or read a book, treating myself easily to the occasional fancy decaff coffee as opposed to planning exactly where to go and queue and remembering to take hand sanitiser as well as well as wearing a mask. Carefree or rather comparatively carefree spontaneity is one of the things I miss most of all.

This is a close up of a detail of the piece I made in memory of my father who died earlier this year and which is part of the Arts and Minds Annual Exhibition - you can see it and the other pieces here. I have started making collages and including it as part of my practice after a prompt from the Facing The Mind project. I find it rather soothing to cut things out, arrange them on the paper and then glue them down.

Having something to do with my hands has been very important in stopping my mind from racing or dwelling on things. Along with making collages I have been doing a lot of knitting too. I took this pieces title from a chapter in Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon as it seemed appropriate for a time post death and the beginning of grieving for a loved one.

I'm not going to call it a grieving process as process implies something orderly that can be managed and I don't think it's like that at all. As ever Victorian sensation fiction has proved to be excellent distraction and that along with the support of my husband, family and friends, Dark Shadows, exercise and snuggling up with the cat is helping me get along.

I'm hoping to get back into a more regular blog habit again. I let one particular unsupportive and destructive naysayer get in the way of my writing it and I shouldn't have let their nasty negativity get in the way. Blogging is more important for me as a way to marshal my thoughts than who is reading it and whether or not it's 'good writing'. 

Thank you for reading.