~ Memories ~

Mam and Dad, my brother and me @ 1961

She was so beautiful.

My chickens used to come in for  a visit. 1991

Mama cat ~ Peaches, being cwtched into by her two daughters,

Puddy Cat and Smartie Pants

Three beautiful cats and a Kitten. My lovely Reliant Kitten car. 

I wish I had kept it.

My gorgeous Bohemian Man. Christmas Day 1992

Our Wedding Day 1st July 1993...as I wrote elsewhere:

What a fantastic day that was. Rode to Cardigan on the motorbike, carrying our trilby hats in a bag on my back. I was hugely pregnant and we giggled all the way through the ceremony....scandalising the registrar and his assistants :~) Our 'reception' was, seven of us descending onto Cardigan Arms chippy for whatever and chips. More giggles and lots of laughter, and we haven't stopped laughing together since. Best thing I've ever done. Most years, we manage to go back to the chip shop on our wedding anniversary.

I loved being pregnant....every moment and new development was a wonder~full experience.

and I really did get huge!

We compromised when it came to the birth, as the hospital was so far away. I had a fantastic labour....five hours from waters breaking to birth. Two hours to get to the hospital, and three hours in a birthing pool with midwives and nurses that were willing for me to have essential oils vaporizing in the room, and for My Man to be in the pool with me. I spent the whole time on all fours, draped across his knees, and having my back massaged at intervals. After the birth though, I got into trouble and had to be whisked to theatre, so, I was very glad that we had chosen to be in the hospital.

 

One of the very best feelings as a mother

Our first home together was my large static caravan. Immediately 

after Our Boy was born,I returned to studying massage. I had a college certificate from a couple of years before and had tried to 

study for my recognised International Certificate, (ITEC), while I was pregnant, but my brain turned to mush! The couch you see here, (below), is the vintage doctor's couch I used while training. I used to practice on six people a week in that tiny space....not including extra sessions for My Man, and baby massage for Our Boy :~) We'd installed a Rayburn stove and it was always toasty warm.

Our Boy being introduced to his first typewriter. 

We have lived in many places where a sink 

was used for a bath

This one, (below), was in a single room we lived in for one and a half years.

It was large and had a Rayburn stove, (how we love those), which gave us our source of heat, hot water, and cooking. We had been

living in our camper van,(Betty Ford),

for the previous eighteen months, so were used to an even smaller space. 

The second hand bookshop we used to have as a business in

Cardigan,and where I had a therapy room for giving treatments. We had a bookstall in the market too, where we had an honesty box. 

He has inherited our great love of books.

 

Motorbike love....

If you visit here Jude, look at how my jacket pocket looks like an eye :~)

~ Blwyddyn Newydd Dda ~ Happy New Year ~ and some Magic ~

Moon Rings

photo by Mark Lee

I have been wanting to ~ and tried to ~ start writing here again for some time. I even have a few draft posts but they just do not feel right.


There is the courteous, well~mannered part of me that wants to explain my absence and lack of communication with people who have asked about me....and then there is the part that feels private and protective about what has gone on with me for the last nearly six months.


I will just say that I had a scare, I became even more reclusive than usual, I am taking Essiac herbs daily, and leave it at that.


Thank you so much to you lovely people who did ask...and I am sorry I did not get back to you. For a while there I became depressed and did not act as I would usually.


Tilly, our gorgeous little dog, has had a rough ride too, but, she is now on four tablets a day, and the seizures are much less frequent thankfully.


And now on to brighter and happier things ~ ~ ~


I have a new word for this year....magic....I want it back in my life; that wonder, excitement and joy for the little things....like going out to the garden yesterday and seeing the daffodil leaves well above the ground, the snowdrops just peeping out their silvery greenness, the hazy, very nearly full moon out there tonight...the things that put a smile in my heart, so big that I don't feel I'll be able to contain it...THAT kind of magic.


My Man and I have a motorbike again :~))))))))))))) Now Our Boy is driving himself in his own car, we have gratefully gone back to two wheels. It is such FUN, and I have the widest grin on my face from the time I get on the back and hold on tight to my love, until we stop and I get off. 


I have gone back to rebounding.....bouncing and dancing to music wildly first thing in the morning gets good energy moving a treat.


It is time my camera became my constant companion again....since August I have taken only a handful of photos...unheard of!!!

My Man has just come to tell me that he has looked up ferry crossings to France in March....and we are going to go...on the bike....wheeeeeee.....ROAD~TRIP and BOAT~TRIP


Hope you are having a good and magic first week of 2012


Cariad Mawr


H

~ Y Lleuad Gwair ~

My Man took this last night

~ sigh ~

~ Leap for joy ~

Tilly says it for all of us.

~ Our Boy passed his driving test today ~

tra~la~laaaa

~ I HAVE A STUDIO ~

For the past two years I have created only three small art works. The one on the upper left is still a work in progress.

A small assemblage 8"x8" (my first) inspired by the work of Kurt Schwitters

All the 'stuff' I have collected over the years ~ so much of it! ~ was scattered here and there throughout the house. There was nowhere for me to keep it all in one place and so, whenever I had a spark of creativity, the time taken to search out the things I wanted, sometimes hours, would end with me feeling upset, frustrated and with spark gone completely.

I love working with fabrics, feathers, leather, leaves, buttons, shells, driftwood, stones, tags, findings of all kinds. I collect ticket stubs from bus and train journeys, cinema and theatre visits, old book pages, old envelopes, old letters. I get so excited when I see old, washed-out materials in cotton and linen. I pick up thrift clothes and cut them up to use in my pictures and fabric art.

My Man....that dear, darling husband of mine....

saw how down I was getting about this, so did something for me that I would never have done for myself....he bought me a wooden garden studio. Even writing those words brings a huge smile which starts in my heart and flows upwards and outwards until it lands, glowing, on my face :~)))

It took the two of us ten hours to put it up on Friday last week, but we had to wait for windows, so it wasn't fully completed until Tuesday - the last day of August. What an end~to~the~summer gift.

Buttons and feathers and findings galore

A lovely long desk to work at, with great natural light 

A crock~full of leather and a basket of wool fibres

I have created a piece in there already and it was bliss - bliss I tell you. Oh I am a happy puppy...tra~la~la~la~la.

Now I can go and play every day ~ happy ~ happy ~ joy ~ joy ~

Following in Virginia Woolf's Footsteps

On a hot day in June this year, My Man and I went to visit a local beauty spot, a seaside village - Manorbier.

I have long been interested in the Bloomsbury Group and

gleefully picked up Virginia Woolf A Biography for 50p at a car boot sale a few months ago. I was delighted to discover that she was a regular summer visitor to Manorbier from 1904.

The image above is of one of two houses in which she is purported to have stayed. At the time it was called Sea View. It was known as Blue Dolphins when Lesley Kenton lived there a few years ago and now it is named Vigilant House after the present owners' boat. Taking a deep breath and grasping my courage in both hands, I knocked on their door to ask permission to photograph the outside of their house.  They very kindly said yes and were incredibly welcoming and helpful...inviting us inside for a brief tour, even though they were preparing a supper for visitors who would be arriving later on that afternoon.

We walked where she may have gently strolled, leaving the faintest of echoes for me to feel her essence, wondering, did she visit the old 12th Century Norman Church.....

fall in love with the simple designs of the brilliantly coloured windows inside.....

gaze in a dream at this view from a wooden bench in the graveyard......

feel how sacred this quiet, peaceful ancient site is......

find paths of enlightenment along the way.....

where her husband may have made her laugh by flirting playfully with her.....

and would she have gasped in delighted awe at the Neolithic 'earth fast' chambered tomb appropriately called King's Quoit, for where better place for a King to set his bones so his spirit may fly free

From this vantage point, I wonder if gazing down, she saw a wave such as this and was inspired, as has been mentioned in her biography, to write The Waves.

I found 'The Waves' in another car boot sale last weekend and the first paragraph makes me swoon!

'The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually.'

We so enjoyed this day and will visit again soon as we did not get to see the castle or the thirteenth century dovecote and I really fancy visiting the little coffee shop for another sparkling Elderflower cordial, and lemon cheesecake.