About Me

Friday 31 December 2010

Another Year




In the bedroom, my wine purple velvet dress hangs from the wardrobe door, draped with a sparkly scarf that glitters in the lamplight and my long black cardigan, scattered with hundreds of tiny silver threads is drying across the radiator. A little make up and I'll soon be ready to help make the party shine, like they did in the war and the depression that preceded it.

What would I like in 2011? The ability to stay calm and keep a sense of perspective; a good sense of humour and enough money to keep the wolf from the door and maybe, in some small way, to make a positive difference. I'd like my friends and family to keep well and for reading ages to improve across the world and for everyone to have access to clean water. Oh yeah and for this blinkin' government to abandon their plan to sell off the forests. It's not that much to ask is it?

Thursday 30 December 2010

Research

I am tired now. I've just spent hours researching and preparing background information for the poetry unit options to post on Moodle. I wrote a handout on romantic love (one option) and spent quite a while putting up links on some of the references in Carol Ann Duffy's The Kray Sisters for another option. And what a brilliant poem it is.

You don't have to be gay or even a feminist - though I was and possibly still am the latter - to appreciate it. It's as feisty as feck. Mixing references to suffragettes and Violet Trefusis and Vita (Orlando) Sackville West with Lulu, Barbara Windsor, Bridgette Bardot, Shirley Bassey and Germaine Greer takes some leaps of the imagination but with its final quote from These boots are Made for Walking, its evocative presentation of London and its in ya face wit it all makes perfect sense.

Friday 10 December 2010

November

November started wet and got sunnier and colder and featured perfect, endless winter skies. Skies to die for: big, fat, massive, huge, magnificent skies in pale winter blue splashed with orange, red, pink and turquoise and puddles of gold for the sky gods to bathe in. Skies to keep one sane on the way to work in the morning. Hyperbolistic.