Getting Out - 2 of 4

Cambridge Folk Festival 

That same evening (I had a busy day!) I took my sister up to Cambridge for the 2012 Folk Festival.  It’s quite a small festival and we were only there for the evening, but after months of rain the weather was stunningly hot – exactly the festival weather we would have wanted.  Drank fresh lemonade, which had a massive kick, tried on various hats, and were well entertained with some great music. 

First we saw Megson, a married couple with a cheerful lightness to their music.  Then we listened (because the tent was so full we couldn’t get in) to the very harmonious ahab.  We could probably have got a seat with a view but on our way there we were side-tracked, as so often happens at festivals.  Blackbeard’s Tea Party were sending up a might ruckus from one of the beer tents, which distracted us.  Imagine folk music crossed with rock music played by pirates, and you’re heading along the right lines.  (Apparently ‘Pirate Folk’ is a real genre.  Who knew?!)  They were a lot of fun, and we told them so. 

The other bands we saw... honestly I can't remember their names, but they were awfully good.  Even as night snuck on and the beer kept flowing, the atmosphere stayed happy and relaxed.  It was a great night, and after a quick stop at the merchandise tent we had our memories to drive home to.

Ok, this is getting silly now

Ok, a brief interlude here, because this is (I think) the third Brave related post I've put up on here, and the film's not even out yet.  I was just having a quiet doodle and suddenly found I'd drawn this:

Ok, I just have to hang on for two more weeks.  How is it right that the US premier is before the UK one, yet they held their premier in Scotland?  Makes no sense to me at all.

Getting Out - 1 of 4

So having self-diagnosed myself with massive case of Cabin Fever, I decided to turn a brief trip home to Norfolk into a four day stay in the hope that this would give me enough space and quiet to... recalibrate or... whatever it is I do when I get like this.  I grew up in Norfolk, specifically the Brecks, and decided to re-visit places I’d been to as a child, but perhaps didn’t fully remember or had been too young to appreciate.  

Grimes Graves and West Stow

This was definitely the case with Grimes Graves, a Neolithic flint mine, and quite the loveliest heritage site to visit because there is really nothing there.  You drive into the middle of nowhere, enter what appears to be a large field (there is one small cabin for the loo, another marginally larger one for the visitors booth), and the rest is open land.  At least that's what you think at first...

A birds-eye view of Grimes Graves, scanned from the English Heritage guidebook

Getting Out - Prelude

I needed a holiday.  I know people always say that but it’s still true.  Or not even a holiday, but a lack of …civilisation.  The previous weekend I found myself pacing in the office.  Literally pacing, like the big cats you see in the zoo, going quietly nuts.  Clocking out couldn’t cure it and I spent the rest of the evening in a lovely wee melancholy and had to take myself out of town and off to the top of Beacon Hill for a few hours to sort my head out.  It was a good decision in the end, because if I hadn’t gone I would have missed this phenomenal sunset.  

It helped.  At any rate it patched me up enough to get through the next week, until I could make my escape!

Er'abody lurve cake

Finally, FINALLY, I have made a sponge cake that has risen.  I've always had a problem with sponge cakes (bar lemon cakes, for some reason).  Anything larger than a fairy cake usually ends up like a dense brittle biscuit.

BUT NOT TODAY!!!  TODAY, I HAVE MADE THIS!!!

And before I forget how I did it, I'm going to write it down.  I got the recipe from a friend of mine, and clearly she knew something I didn't.

Ingredients for cake
3 eggs
Self raising flour
Caster sugar
Margarine
Cocoa

For icing
Icing sugar
Cocoa
Margarine
Dark chocolate

1)  Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/ Gas Mark 4
2)  Weigh your eggs, still in the shell.  Remember that weight, because that's how much you'll need of everything else (this was my mistake before.  I used to measure the other ingredients by rote instead of matching them to the eggs each time).
3)  Weigh and mix your 'wet' ingredients, the eggs and margarine, and the sugar.  It will look like mush.
4)  Weigh the flour, but replace about 3/4 oz of it with cocoa.  When you add it to the mixture, don't swirl it in with the spoon, fold it in, in stages.
5)  Fold in one teaspoon of boiled water.
6)  Bake for about 30 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.
7)  For the icing, mix together the icing sugar/cocoa and margarine in a 2:1 ration to make buttercream.  Then mix in a few lines of melted dark chocolate.  This will make the icing less tooth-rottingly sweet and more like rich fondant.  Once your cake is cool, cut it across the middle and spread your icing there, then put the rest on the top.

8)  EAT IT!!!  OM NOM NOM!!!

Blank canvas

Been doing a bit of painting.  I've not sat down and tackled something big for a while.  It was really fun!

Here we are about three-quarters done.  I'm not much of a planner when it comes to drawing.  I find it I draw the same thing too many times it tends to take the spark out of it.  If you're lucky I might doodle you a scruffy thumbnail.  I'd rather have a rough idea in my head, and then tackle the whole painting as it it was a massive problem-solving exercise...

One or two more evenings should do it and then I hand it over to go up in the lovely Lizzy's office.

Hidden Loughborough

You think you know a town just because you have your day to day routines, your favourite haunts, and your regular aquaintances.  You think you know a town that is ordinary, but you don't.  Right below the surface, tucked away in back rooms and modified sheds, is a vast well of incredible people with hard-won and well-nurtured talents and interests you never saw before in your life.

This is what's going on outside my office right NOW...

I know this is a terrible drawing, but it's done in MS Paint with a mouse because that's literally all I have on this computer (I'm at work.  Shhh, don't tell anybody)

MS Paint and dodgy mouse

It's been humid and muggy for three days and finally the weather breaks and I get my thunderstorm.  Right outside my window.  YES!!!

Also that that tower block on the left is new.  It's such a eyesore, we all hate it.

Why the Bible is awesome

I've had more speed-doodling challenges (so much fun to do but with technically abysmal results so I don't know why I'm sharing them with you! ;D ) which is where someone reads a story aloud and I have about 5 seconds to draw it as it happens, standing sideways, on an A-frame.  It's not easy, but it has proven one thing: the Bible is awesome fun!  Just one chapter, in this case Acts ch12, covers all your major TV soap genres...

Murder...

June Update: Arts, Parks and High Hills

As usual I've been bombing it round like a mad thing, mainly trying to get my drawing deadlines done before I move house this Friday.  I like to be occupied which is good as this June there are boxes to be packed and cleaning to be done, and life going on in the meantime.  Things to do, people to see, opportunities not to be missed.  I just want to take a post to stop and get my ducks in a row.

End of Year Show

So, another academic year is over, and I may be a two-year graduate but in a town like Loughborough and with so many student friends thanks to church it's hard not to notice.  I almost feel sorry for next year's students - they've missed out on some great people.

The main milestone here is of course for the students, but one of the ways the town gets involved is through the annual Art and Design show, where each graduating class must orchestrate a display of their best work.  They're great for the upcoming students, the leavers and their friends and family, and potential employers and stakeholders in the university to get an overview of the kind of work the course produces.  My particular interest is for Visual Communication (Illustration, my old course, and Graphic Design), Printed and Woven Textiles, and Fine Art so my friend and I did the rounds.  All art students are encouraged to leave business cards so if I see something I particularly like and there are some lying around I'll scoop one up.

Zoe Marshall - www.zoemarshall.co.uk    Emily Creative - www.emilycreative.tumblr.com    Anya Raczka - www.anyaraczka.com    Sarah Lynn - www.sarahelizabethlynn.tumblr.com    Josephine Munsey    Sophie Hargrave - www.hargrave.blogspot.com    Heather Lee Durrant    Tamara Webster - www.tamarawebster.co.uk    Anniestration - www.annabrown.moonfruit.com    Abigail M. Cooper    Jessica Griffith - http://www.jessicagriffith.co.uk/

Movie roundup - June 2012

The Woman in Black, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Snow White and the Huntsman.  Warning: Here be Spoilers

The Birds! The Birds!

I feel like I've not posted any drawings up here for ages... mainly because I've been too busy doing drawings.  So while I finish those other drawings, here are some other other drawings just to prove I have been.  Drawing, that is.

I did these at work when I got bored.  Two magpies, one thrush, a gull and what I think was originally a raven but now appears to be some gigantic species of grey duck!  I love the slightly dense expression on the magpies' faces, but my favourite is that seagull.  Just look at him - pure evil.  He's clearly eyeing up some poor innocent's hotdog.

Warning: contains dead thing

Hmm, a very dramatic title.  I don't know if I'm just a bit weird (no, actually I do know that) but I've never had a squeamish nature for dead things.  Which is handy, considering what I'm about to show you...

This is a badger.  This badger is dead.
Still with me?  Good.
You can see he's (she's?) next to a road, so I'm going to assume it got hit while crossing.  No blood in this instance.  There was a couple of weeks in April where I kept seeing roadkill badgers - probably they had just come out of hibernation and were a bit groggy and sleepy so not properly obeying the green cross code.  It wasn't gross or disgusting, just dead.  I suppose that besides my Christian perspective of death, I take the view of Hogarth in The Iron Giant; "It's bad to kill, but it's not bad to die" so I don't have the aversion some people might have.  A couple of days later I passed the spot again and it was gone, removed by the council and thrown away.  Obviously I didn't touch it, but it was still pretty cool to be able to inspect such a reclusive and rarely-seen animal up close.  They really are beautiful creatures.

Here's something else beautiful (and not dead).

Foxgloves.  These ones are growing in our drive,  So lovely, so iconic... and so very very poisonous.  Don't eat them, they are quite capable of killing you.  I'm not sure why you would try to eat them, but don't.  Nevertheless, I'm not going to pull them up, I like them.  I think it's good to have something to keep a weather eye on.  Gives you a healthy sense of respect and perspective.

Death is always something sad, something we know in our inner beings isn't quite right, isn't supposed to happen, but at the same time it's very much a part of the world we're in.  Death is a part of everyone's journey, and whether or not you choose to worry about it, try to delay it, or attempt to dodge it altogether, there it is still.  Part of the paradox, part of the dichotomy, part of life.

June Jubilee

Ah Britain.  Any excuse for a party.  I suppose I am a royalist, though not a die-hard one, but who could complain about a four day weekend to celebrate our queen's 60th year on the throne?  Surely the holiday alone is enough reason to support the monarchy!  As well as a much needed break and time to get some personal work done, the Jubilee has awakened in Loughborough that community spirit I enjoy so much.

My Jubilee biscuit

Why I don't want to be a Princess

Princess culture is everywhere.  There's this strange notion, and I'm not quite sure where it came from, that every little girl and every grown up lady has a princess inside of her, just waiting to emerge.  Been to a Disney Shop lately?  (Disney, I love you and you are my childhood but seriously, do you have any female characters over the age of 5 who are not, or do not become, princesses by the end of the story?). 

That's what we all want, right ladies?  To be told we are beautiful and to be treated like a princess.  Adverts tells us this, film tells us this, I've even seen 'self-help' books and books about being a Christian woman built around the idea that every woman just wants to be a princess (please note, I have never opened this book and after reading the blurb I'm not going to).  Now admittedly this is partially true - we are all fearfully and wonderfully made, and if God is King then as His daughters we are all princesses by definition - but in western culture the word princess comes with a pretty specific job description.

It's the job description I have a problem with.

Now maybe it's just my tomboyish childhood (oldest of four kids, co-opted for helping Dad with the DIY, tree-climbing, archery lessons, hours spent reading books which statistically have a higher proportion of male protagonists - the very fact that they are protagonists makes them more likely to be male) but the idea of a being a princess never really appealed to me.

This is first image that appeared when I googled 'Princess'. 
It makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a spork.

Small magic

My housemate tells me that this blog makes it sound like I live in a magical fairyland.  Of course this isn't true...  except sometimes it kind of is.  I'm getting adept at finding it now.  Magic doesn't come to you if you sit indoors and hope wistfully, you have to go hunt it down.  Be prepared to look more closely at ordinary things than perhaps you normally would.  Take this weekend for example, when I went back to Norfolk for the day.  It's not often I get to go back to my home county (although my parents aren't originally from the area I consider myself a Norfolk girl by adoption).  I went home for a birthday party, but that wasn't until the evening so I spent the rest of the day at Weird and Wonderful Wood, a small festival in Haughley, Suffolk, that celebrates all things wood, and the folk that make them. 

A Tribute: Mike Booty

Mike Booty taught me clarinet while I was in high school.  He was the peripatetic music teacher, which meant that once a week I got to skip whatever class I was in and go play music with him instead.  Usually it was on a Friday.  My main memories of his lessons were of constant good-natured bickering, where he would demand whisky from me on his birthdays (refused because I was a minor) and me demanding to play Disney music on mine (refused because it was rubbish).  He would call me a woman and a bad driver, and I would retort that at at least I still had hair.  Mike was, and still is, the consummate grumpy old man, and I say that with a great deal of fondness. The kind of person you could have a proper fight with, yet both come out of it grinning. 

 I did my grades with him as well, all two of them.  Mike's theory is that if music should be fun above all things so there was no point my paying to do extra grades just for the sake of having the full set.  Growing up in a musical family and dabbling in a few instruments when I was younger meant that I could already read sheet music by the time I got to high school, and understood intuitively the basic principles of music that most beginners have to be taught from scratch, so grades 1 and 2 were somewhat redundant.  I did my Grade 3 Practical and then, a year or two later, Grade 5, but then couldn't do any more because we both suddenly remembered  that you need a Grade 5 Theory before you can do the higher Practicals and I didn't formally know any.  I still don't.  I'm currently an untested Grade 7/8 clarinetist with an untested Grade 3 in Theory.  I share Mike's opinion of music - that it should be fun first and foremost, so I've never felt the need to go any further, and I get along very well as I am

As well as teaching the private lessons, Mike ran and conducted the Old Buckenhan High School Band and the South Norfolk Youth Symphonic Band (SNYSB), which he formed originally as a marching band of "half a dozen crap brass players".  That was in 1974.  He also spent some time as a Marine, so while his band rehearsals always adhered to the 'Music is Fun' principle, they also contained an amount of good old-fashioned military discipline.  This was much better in practise than it sounds.  I actually don't think we knew it was happening when he did it, but even in my current band, six years after moving away, I still do things the way we were taught in SNYSB.  Things like 'Concert Etiquette', which is how you behave on stage - the way I hold my instrument at rest, when I raise it, how I take applause, keeping quiet between songs (as Mike used to grouch at us "I see no speaking parts in this! We'll take it from letter O. O for 'Orrible!"), and my attitude towards the conductor.  In a band that could have an hundred kids playing in it at once, he demanded professionalism from us. 

Once a year we'd have a weekend away where, thanks to his old contacts, we had the privilege of playing with the band of the Royal Marines.  You'd learn more in that one weekend by just sitting next to one of them than you would in three months playing by yourself.  And because Mike took us so seriously, we did the same to him.  Mike is one of those teachers that manages to balance his job as a teacher with his character as a person, and his sense of fun with a real professionalism.  Our reputation as a band was built on his dedication.  Our progress as individuals was due to his curmudgeonly kindness and the genuine investment he gave to each of us.

I continued to take lessons with Mike through sixth form, but when I moved away to university there wasn't a band I could join that fitted in with my lectures, and I stopped playing for three years.  However, when I graduated and was looking for ways to fill my unemployed time, a local band was the first thing I looked for.  I ended up finding the Loughborough Concert Band and now I play as a 1st clarinet with them, just for the pleasure of it.  Because what Mike said is true.  Music is still fun.  There's something about the dynamics of playing alongside others that you just can't get practising by yourself.  I learned that from Mike.

This year he has turned 70 years old.

On Saturday gone I made the trek down the A14 from Loughborough and wound my way through the tiny country lanes of rural Norfolk to the village hall where Mike Booty's surprise party was being held.  (He was indeed surprised!)  I owe him a lot, so it was wonderful to be there to show my thanks and support, congratulate him on everything he's achieved, and celebrate his birthday with him.  We spent the evening talking and laughing, remembering and being remembered by the other old friends that came to do the same.

Here's to the next decade, Mike.  I wish you all the best.

Bank Holiday Funday

God bless the British and their pig-headed insistance on clinging to holidays they aren't really entitled to!  It's been a funny spring really; a very warm March, a very cold and rainy April, but with May (fingers crossed) the weather appears to be sorting itself out.  Hopefully just in time for my birthday, which is in a few weeks.

This Bank Holiday weekend has been a very full one for me; despite being ill for the best part of the week and not up to planning much for myself, several little adventures have just fallen into my lap so I've been riding piggy-back on those until I'm back to firing on all cylinders.  So in no particular order...

Jubilee Wood

Gouache, 15 mins

The bluebells are out!  I've been keeping an eye open and this week I saw a few so I decided to chance the wet weather and go check out my old walks.  Just as I got here the skies cleared for an hour or so, and returned just as I was ready to leave.

Adventure time!

It was my friend Hannah's birthday this week, so when her brother won some free tickets to Bristol Folk Festival she very kindly asked me and our friend Jamie to go with them!  HOORAY!!!  The first thing that was needed was a birthday card.  I really like making cards that are relevant to the person or what they'e doing to celebrate.  Providing I keep having the time to do these things I don't think I'll be able to go back to buying cards from shops.  These are just so much more interesting.

On the inside I wrote her a Scavenger Hunt, full of all the things (based on my limitied experience!) I thought we might see.  She loved the card, and really took the hunt seriously!  It turns out the whole festival is held in one building in the city centre (a very sensible idea considering the weather we've been having lately) so things like wellies and a waxed mac weren't around but she got almost everything else, including three successively more fantastic beards and a couple of extra items we added to the back.

It was a great day, with loads of interesting things to see and do, and some great acts to hear.  One of our highlights of the day, and a new discovery for me was Luke Jackson, a 17-year old singer/songwriter with a wonderfully controlled singing voice that would trick you into thinking he's older.  Hannah very badly wanted to see him perform but we got held up on the way to the hall and just caught the last two songs.  However we serendipitously bumped into him in the corridor later on and Hannah, being the sociable girl she is, immediately struck up a conversation.  

Hannah meets Luke

Later on, when one of the acts filled out their hall, he agreed to do a second performance for the stragglers, which we happened to arrive for just at the perfect time!  We wandered into a near-empty hall and made a beeline for the very front seats.  His set was great, including a really slick version of Wayfaring Stranger, a selection of his own songs, and the haunting traditional tune Oakham Poachers.  I think I'm now a fan!

Our other highlight was ahab, a three-part band (normally four but one was off having his appendix taken out, which seems a reasonable excuse.  Not that the other lads agreed - they kept fondly mocking him for slacking off) with an American folk feel to their music and some fantastic close harmonies.  They came on after a slightly depressing act and really changed the mood by having great laugh on stage.  Favourite songs were 'Wagon Wheel', 'Run Me Down', and 'Lightning Bug' and ... well actually the whole set was awesome.

Who needs a PA system? Not us; we have manly man voices and a bobble hat!

In between all that there was Morris Dancing to watch, stalls to investigate, and dulcimer playing to learn.  This was my call - I saw the word Dulcimer on a sign and abandoned the others to toddle off and explore.  A dulcimer is a member of the zither family (stringed instruments where the strings are no longer than the sounding box) and they had both types there for us to see and try: the 'mountain' or 'lap' dulcimer and the considerably more complicated 'hammer' dulcimer.  Within seconds of introducing myself I was sat on a chair with an instrument across my knees.  The mountain dulcimer I was shown had two pairs of 'drone' strings that provide the chord, and then one top pair that provides the tune which you play as you would the fretboard on a guitar.  You strum all three together as though they were one string, and the result is a deliciously tangy, buzzy sound which is very distinctive.  Most of the ones on display were made by dedicated hobbyists and each had it's own personality reflecting that of it's maker. 

Dulcimer demonstration by Nonsuch Dulcimer Club

We have a try

Jamie finds a cape!

There was also, as you would expect, a ceilidh to take take part in.  It wasn't even a question as to whether or not we would go.  Both Hannah and I love ceildh dancing, and with at least fifty people doing every dance there was a great sense of energy in the room.  The great thing about ceilidhs is that you don't need any experience to get started because there is a caller yelling out the moves to you, but as you get a bit more advanced you can start adding in your own quirks and tricks.  One couple next to us; a small energetic young woman and a tall man in a kilt (who Hannah immediately decided she wanted to dance with!) had clearly done this many times before, but a lot of enthusiasm and a willingness to look a bit silly from the rest of us goes a long way.  We did well at some dances and failed dramatically and hilariously at others, I taught Jamie to polka, and Hannah's brother Dave does an excellent do-si-do.

We were sitting down to catch our breath before the last song when the man in a kilt came over to our table and asked me if I'd have the next dance with him.  This has never happened to me in my life before:
1) Asked to dance
2) By a man in full Scottish regalia.  I believe a lot of Jane Austen books begin that way :)
Obviously I said yes, not sparing a though for the birthday girl.  The dance was Strip the Willow, which can be a bit... perilous so it was good to have a partner who knew what they were doing. He even thanked me for the dance afterwards, even though I briefly forgot my left from my right at the beginning.  Possibly I was a bit flustered by the kilt-i-ness!

We spontaneously decided to stay late for Karine Polwart and Show of Hands, who were headlining, and Hannah's brother generously put us up for the night.  It was such a great day, and lovely to spend so much time with Hannah.  My life is very busy, and hers is even moreso, so to have a whole 24 hours just hanging out with her was a real treat.  She's one of the coolest, most caring people I know.  Although I'll remember all the acts we saw and the big events of the day, some of the best moments were the little inbetween bits.  The throwaway comments, the jokes, the discussing, the telling of stories, tiny things we'll probably never recall exactly but which make spending time with the people you like best really worth it.

Birthdays are very tiring!