Daily Blog - Day 1 - Wicked Wicked Woman

My first day of writing a daily blog and something interesting happened, go figure.  I am a wicked wicked woman, but it's ok, i'm not incredibly bothered.  

My boyfriends divorce came through yesterday!  Yes he was married when I met him and there aren't really any buts or excuses for what happened, I am the other woman, a home wrecker, that's me.  I have no shame, no-one is without flaw.  There were no kids involved if that makes it any better.  Admittidly a week or so after I met him I moved 400 miles away so all we did was talk really, but neither the fact that he was married or the fact that I was so far away stopped the relationship growing, it simply gave us the chance to get to know each other better for 6 month.
So, 2years after meeting, his divorce came through.  It was more meaningful to me than him as he said the relationship was over anyway and getting a piece of paper to prove it didn't really mean much.  Even though I was the home wrecking other woman, I still thought it was a bit crap that a relationship can die after 18years.  They are both happy now, so it's all good, everything came out in the wash.

If you've never been divorced, a divorce is just a crap piece of unimpressive paper that symbolises nothing.  I expected a drum roll, fireworks or something significant to happen when I read it, but it was just a few words written on a piece of headed paper.  It may as well have just said their names and been stamped "done and dusted".  It was such a pathetic symbol of the end of an 18 year relationship.

We decided to go out to celebrate.  

Below: Interesting wall art in the pub...

and a silver buddha sat on a mirror tiled piano.

I have no idea what possessed someone to do this

We actually managed to go out and get all the way home before an alcohol fuelled argument broke out.  We had way too much champagne and cocktails really, and when I drunkenly made my love some stodgy chicken and pesto mayonaise lingunini he wasn't incredibly impressed, I believe he called it 'slop'.

With hindsight the slop was the best decision I made that night as I spent the rest of the night in the bathroom hugging the toilet and throwing my guts up whilst making anagrams out of the words Armitage Shanks.  That should have been a bad experience, but it was fine as everything tasted like pesto and I really like pesto!  It was probably the best 'being sick' experience i've ever had.  

I decided to drink some apple and mango juice after I had been sick, to wash my mouth clean, and I was surprised to see how well it went together with the pesto puke when it came back up later, the orange juice pesto puke mix wasn't that bad either, I wont go so far as to say it was great, but it was much better than what happened even later when I decided to drink some milk and threw up some pesto flavoured curdled milk out my nose, not good.  It's very unusual for me to throw up when I have been drinking, it was the vodka in the cocktails, I should have known better, vodka always makes me sick.

Everything is now sorted out, I don't feel sick, the divorce is through, the argument is sorted, my boyfriend finishes work tomorrow, we are packing over the weekend and off on our travels early next week...

A daily blog...perhaps, perhaps, perhaps

Since realising nobody reads my blog on blogger it's opened up a whole new world of open honesty for me, so I thought I may do a daily blog.  That may all go out the window when my boyfriend finishes work next week, but until then it's definately an option.  I think i've been trying too hard, in a lazy kind of way.

A new sense of freedom...

This is brilliant, I looked at my blog demographics (how boring) and nobody reads this, so that means I can write anything I like!  How incredibly cool is that.  A blog on blogger is like an unknown flea on an incredibly hairy Great Dane, there is an ocean of people expressing themselves with the written word and absolutely nobody reading it!  It's complete freedom of speech!

I was posting my blogs on blogger in the hope that someone may read it and go "Wow!  That's the most interesting and incredible thing I have ever read, lets give her a big bag of cash and publish all of her books, she's amazing!" so I was trying to be interesting, which takes effort, but now I know nobody reads this I don't need to make any effort whatsoever.  That works for me as I am incredibly lazy.  It's like buying a lottery ticket.  You buy a lottery ticket hoping that you can spend £1 and get a £1,000,000 in return with absolutely no effort or hard work, the lottery is the epitome of being lazy.

It's 9.10am and I am sat here in my dressing gown thinking I should have had a shower by now, but instead all I have done is feed my goose and ducks and now i'm watching the news out of the corner of my eye with a cuppa.  There's nothing going on in the world today except the Royal Wedding and a remake of Arthur.  I probably would have watched the royal wedding, but i'm going to a little folk festival instead and the likelihood of me watching the new Arthur film is incredibly low so none of it is news to me.

I should also be packing, probably, but I know I can do it all in a day so i'm not fretting.  I'm moving all my stuff into storage next week and going off in a motorhome around cornwall with my boyfriend.  I think I may spend the day thinking about packing rather than actually packing, as i'm lazy, and I will do something else instead.

I've started writing a new novel, but i've just thought of something amazing and new to put in it, it's a make believe hippo who likes wearing stripey jumpers.  He's called Henry and he's going to pop up all during the novel, there may also be a turtle.  I'm going to write it as we go around Cornwall, it's summer so I can sit outside.

I'm going to put my paint brushes down for 6 months whilst I work on my new business www.easelchallenge.co.uk so that should be interesting.  The website isn't finished yet, but it wont take too long if I pull my finger out, i've only got to do one page.

I dont' play the lottery so i'm not going to win, I suppose I will just have to work very hard, which is a daunting prospect for a lazy person.

Whats good for the goose…(clever inventor required)

isn’t always good for the gander especially where british waterways are concerned…

At night when you try to go to sleep things that have happened during the day come to the front of your mind, which is why dreams are so weird at times, they are just fragments of your day, single words and whole images, cut into pieces, put in a bag, shook up and arranged by your subconscious to make some kind of bizarre story. It’s usually best to write things down so you can sleep, otherwise you may dream of them or they can keep you up all night, so here is my animal magic midnight rant.

It’s strange what people get used to.

When I was little I used to count the dead hedgehogs along the main road on the way to school, there was always 4 or 5 of them. Then as I got older I started to notice dead animals out of the car window as my parents drove down the motorway. I’ve noticed more recently. It’s mainly the remains of dead foxes on the roads down south, but as you go higher up the country the animals change.

In the north wales and manchester area you don’t really see mangled foxes with their entrails pounded into the road, it’s mostly flattened badgers, like minty humbugs mashed into tarmac; and squidged pheasants, I can’t get over the amount of pheasants, they are such stupid birds, but they don’t deserve to be plastered all over the road. Then as you get higher up the country, in the Lake District area, there are hundreds of rabbits throwing themselves in the road and getting splattered by rich peoples 4×4′s.

I think it’s quite strange for people to get used to seeing dead animals everywhere, but we do. In the lake district it’s not unknown for people to pick the dead animals off of the road and to cook them up in a road kill stirfry.

I had never heard of that before I went to the Lake District so I was a little shocked when someone saw a dead flattened decaying badger at the side of the road and suggested picking it up to put in a stew.

They were really happy with themselves, “Waste not want not” they said, to which I subtly replied “i’m not eating f’cking road kill!” then they muttered something about me being a southern snob, but it’s better to be southern snob than inbred northerner. I’m not being rude, they really were inbred and they really were northern. Anyway I digress…

In some places they have special animal walkways built under the road for frogs, badgers and rabbits, so the animals can cross the roads safely, which is brilliant, but I reckon they should be everywhere really. If we can do it then we should do it. That’s one of the things I shall be doing when I get my £205,000,000, that’s two hundred and five million pounds. The donkey sanctuary are getting a cool million as they do lots of great work and I love donkeys http://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/ and i’m going to buy all of the tigers and the land they live on to save them from extinction http://www.wwf-adopt-a-animal.co.uk/charities/wwf-animal-adoptions/adopt-a-tiger/

I would probably have to buy loads of horses too as loads are being neglected and killed because of the resecession and people can’t afford to look after them, which is completely disgraceful. And I would get the Grand National banned too. Two horses died at this years Grand National and any race where horses can die really shouldn’t be run, I don’t care how nice people’s hats are.

I could save the children and house the homeless, but i’m going to save the animals first. It’s the year 2011, humans really should have learnt by now, we are an intelligent race, but people still choose to shoot each other, invade other people’s countries, do nasty things to children, pollute the planet, and we are so very wasteful that I can’t really be arsed to save humans and most of the time I think the planet would get along a lot better without us. Anyway, I digress…again

So we get used to things, but even though I am used to seeing dead animals all of the time on the roads I was really shocked to see a dead goose floating belly up past my bedroom window. Especially as I had been feeding her and her gander everyday for the last 6 months. I wanted to get her out of the water, but the british waterways had to do it.

My geese woke me up every morning shouting, honking, calling, or whatever you call the racket they make, as they wanted to be fed, so as I am soft I would go and get them some bread. You can see them in the video below loitering outside my window waiting for food

http://youtu.be/cRqv21EU8YI

Geese mate for life and the gander never left her side, even when she had died. The british waterways took two days to take her dead body away and he swam next to her the whole time calling for her, it was heartbreaking. What was more heartbreaking was she had just laid 3 eggs so they were cold and dead in their nest and they had to be thrown into the canal so the gander would stop protecting them and go and find a new mate. The poor gander had lost his whole family in one day.

I was ready to go on a rampage around manchester as I thought the w*nkers, who live around here and think it’s fun to shoot a pellet gun into the canal, had killed her. I wanted to find them and shove their pellet gun up their arse and pull the trigger a few times. I also thought she may have died from the pollution in the canal and the w*nkers who walk by and throw their used needles and empty beer cans in the canal had posioned her, which made me want to buy my own pellet gun so I could shoot them as they walked past. But the waterways said she got egg bound and died of natural causes, which made me feel slightly better and not want to maime everyone.

Here is my gander, he’s ok now, He’s stopped protecting his nest and calling for her at night. Beautiful isn’t he.

My lovely gander

Today I decided to go down and feed him to see if he recognised me from my window, he came over when he saw me and he doesn’t usually do that to people, but he was probably more interested in the bread than me. I have no idea, I don’t know how clever geese are or how far they can see.

I also decided to go and feed the other geese along the canal as it was sunny and guess what I found…ANOTHER dead goose decaying and floating belly up down the canal. That’s two dead geese in two weeks along a stretch of canal thats only about 300yrds long, if that. That’s not a coincedence, that’s a bloody problem. There were only 8 geese living along that stretch of canal and 2 of them have died in 2 weeks, 25% of the geese have died. That’s atrocious!

As I am sure you can imagine I came home and put all my anger and upset in an email to the british waterways, both the local waterways and the head office. I expect to see dead animals on the road, that’s a sad part of life we get used to, but I don’t expect to see two dead geese, in as many weeks, floating outside my window. I included a photo of the decaying dead goose floating belly up down the canal in the email so they have to carry the image in their heads too. They need to sort the canals out, the geese may be dying of natural causes, but natural causes happen a lot more regularly when the canals are full of rubbish, pollution and decaying dead animals and that needs to be sorted out.

There must be some way to clean canal water without hurting the fish and wildlife and if there is, which I strongly suspect to be true, they need to do it way more often. The canals were built in victorian times, so the people who built them were clever enough to put something in place to keep the water moving so it doesn’t become stagnant, but that just means pollution goes up and down the canal until it’s cleaned.

Someone, somewhere, needs to invent something that can be used on a regular basis to get rid of the rubbish and pollution in the canals. Canals aren’t naturally occuring, we built the canals, therefore it’s our responsiblity to look after them and make sure they are safe for the wildlife who live there.

I probably sound like a vegetarian, but i’m not. I like steak and I like it bloody. I don’t eat duck, rabbit or goose and I went off of meat all together for 6 months when I saw a cow being shot in the head, but I eat it now. You’ve got to support the farmers, britain was built by farmers.

Now I have got that off of my chest, maybe I can get to sleep

Self. Don McLean - Vincent (time-lapse painting)

You loved this last time...

This lovely planet is over 4.5billion years old, which is very old. I am unsure if this means that this is the age of the universe too or if the earth is quite young compared to the rest of the universe, but it doesn’t really matter. What I want you to think about is the age of the universe. For arguments sake let’s say that the universe is 10billion years old.

So, what was around 10billion years and 1 millisecond ago?

Nothing?

Ignoring the fact that time is a man-made concept and no other creature on the planet feels the need to wear a watch, except humans, I believe that the concept of time doesn’t exist in space and the only place the idea of time exists is earth, so anything that happens outside the earth and away from humans (who constantly clock watch and count every precious minute of every precious day) can’t be counted in time; seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades etc.

As far as we know everything that exists does so within the universe, we also know that the universe is forever expanding and one day it will collapse on itself and then once again begin to expand, like a never-ending loop. That’s what we know. With this in mind, I would say that as soon as the universe ended it immediately began again as time cannot be counted between its ending and beginning, as there is no concept of time in space – time can only be counted between its beginning and end.

So that’s what we know.

Therefore, if we return to the question “If the universe is 10billion years old, what was around 10billion years and 1 millisecond ago?” the answer should be “the universe.”

The reason this should be the answer is because there is no time between the universe ending and the universe beginning again.

So the universe is continuous, it’s only everything that is within the universe which starts and ends; planets, animals, vegetation etc.

Stay with me…

So the universe is continuous; it continuously expands and then collapses in on itself time and time again. The universe starts from a big bang of nothing, therefore nothing can possibly affect the big bang, as there is nothing there to affect it, so it must be the exact same big bang each and every time the universe starts again.

Now bear in mind the ripple effect, this is the thought that each and every action you do has a reaction e.g. if you smile at a stranger in the street they will feel happier and they may go on to be nice to someone, who in turn is nice to someone, who in turn is nice to someone etc – this also works on the negative too. All of our actions affect each other and the people we affect go on to affect others, who go on to affect others and so on.

So, if the big bang is always exactly the same as it has no outside influences as nothing yet exists to influence it, then the ripple effect comes into play where everything effects everything else, action and reaction, on and on and on. Well, if that happens, then I would say that we have all done this before 10 billion years ago and 10 billion years before that and 10 billion years before that. I would say that because the initial reaction which caused the big bang must have been exactly the same each time it happened, therefore all the reactions which happened after that would also be exactly the same.

So, even though life often seems chaotic and sometimes it doesn’t seem to make sense, I would say that everything is as it should be and we have done everything exactly the same in this lifetime as we have in many lifetimes before, as many times as the universe has had lifetimes. The universe may be a billion lifetimes old, 10billion lifetimes old or just 10 lifetimes old, or as there is no time in space the universe could just ‘be’. No matter what it is, it means you sat exactly where you are sat right now and wore exactly what you are wearing now and you have read this before, many many times, and you loved it just as much as you did last time you read it and it will affect your life as much as it did – or didn’t – last time.

***

Now, 6million scientists disagree with me, like they always have, but they all agree with me in the end, like they always do, it just takes them a little time to catch up.

There is no way to prove or disprove what I think, as there is no way to do two exact experiments to test my belief as there will always be differing outside influences which will affect the test, except where the big bang is concerned as there is no outside influences which will effect it as the universe is everything and there is nothing outside of it, so really I can think what I like.

Anyway, see you in 10billion years when you ‘like’ my paintings all over again.

Time-lapse paintings

It's very difficult to get noticed in the art world and really get someones attention with a painting as people only really look at a painting between a few seconds to a minute, so I decided to put some time-lapse videos together to really 'show' people my artwork in the hope of keeping my viewers attention for longer.

My first time-lapse painting is of crows flying over Glastonbury Tor. Crows are very intelligent birds and the rhyme "one for sorrow, two for joy..." was originally about crows, therefore I decided that I would include two crows in the painting. Glastonbury Tor is a very spiritual place, linked with the King of Fairies, Avalon, King Arthur and the Holy Grail. If you ever have chance to visit it and look over the surrounding countryside I would strongly suggest that you do and take some time to sit at the top and breathe in the fresh air.

In mythology crows are linked to reincarnation and the souls passing, therefore due to Glastonbury Tors spirtual links I thought it would a great place for them to fly over. The white ribbon symbolises our delicate soul.

Crows over Glasonbury Tor

Music by Dj Food - The Crow: I believe the music goes really well with the video and I am very pleased with the outcome.

After my first time-lapse video I wished to paint something much bigger to really show what I was capable of. I felt the song was very important to the paiting and shouldn't simply be background music, therefore I chose an emotional song which moved me and really meant something to me.

Running up that Hill is about men and women wishing to change places so they understand each other better in their relationship, but I didn't think that wish would stop at simply men and women in relationships. I strongly believe that everyone yearns to be understood and lots of people wish to understand each other better, so I included many different people running up the hill. In the front of the picture there is a woman and a man talking to an angel. The man is ready to run up the hill, but the woman is more reluctant as she doesn't know if a complete understanding of each other is always a good thing and maybe some things should be left unknown.

Running up that Hill

Music by Placebo

With my next time-lapse painting I searched through 100's of songs to find the right piece. I was torn between using music that was significant to me and chosing music that I thought people would like. After some thought I decided not to try to please people with my music selection and I also decided not to use a piece of music that was significant to me in in some way. I have already painted my feelings of the past, so I decided that I wanted to create something new and I came across this piece of music and completely fell in love with it.

The painting came from listening to the music.

The Barn

Music by Yann Tiersen - Comptine d'un autree ete

I was incredibly flattered by the responce and support I recieved from people who watched these videos and I will no doubt make another in the future, but there are so many thoughts and images in my mind that I could paint, which would work with music, that it is hard to pin-point where to start.