The Hall Forum has asked for us to do our list of 8, plus a book and luxury.
1. Falile se castilanke - Living with my family and grandparents, in Ovington Square, 1969-1971
2. Glenn Campbell - By the time I get to Phoenix - Living with my family in Tachbrook Street, 1970's
3. The Corries - O Flower of Scotland - Driving North to Scotland for summer holidays with my family, 1970's
4. Durufle's Requiem - Pie Jesu - Living in Durham, 1983
5. Britten and Pears - O Rose, thou art sick - Living in Edinburgh, 1987
7. Klangkarussell - Sonnentanz - Living in Oxfordshire, 2014
8. Eric Satie - Gnossiennes - Living in Oxfordshire, 2014
9. Cairokee - Ya Al Midan - Living in Oxfordshire, 2014
10. The Shipping Forecast - hugely emotional music from my teens onwards, particularly since it is played last thing at night on Radio 4, it reminds me of the home ed years of upside down days and nights, also of people at sea, I so feel for their suffering. It comes on before the actual forecast so you can go down below and get ready to write down all the details. My father is a skipper and navigator. I used to watch him practice at home, he'd explain exactly what it all meant, a born teacher.
Book - A copy of my blog so I could look at the photos of my family and read about the situations we got into. A never ending series of little Arabic readers created by friends with photos and sentences I can understand. It would be a one way communication from the other world, so I keep on learning. My favourite book of black and white photos of artists in their studios because I love people's faces and the personal chaos of a work space.
Luxury - A dark red or deep dark blue velvet ball dress. The Rothko room. Grounded helicopter to use as an armchair with a view out to sea, I could press the buttons and switches for fun.
Looking at this list: where are the many psalms, responses and anthems I used to sing in my church choir days? Or music from the wedding?
Even more to the point, what about a book of poetry? I am reading new poetry and stories, so don't want to go backwards. That's it.
Showing posts with label life history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life history. Show all posts
Saturday, 28 March 2015
Wednesday, 30 July 2014
15 - 20 = 1979 - 1984 ... Little Arabic Torture Trick
1979 - 1984
That was a big set of years to pick pictures for. Pretty much all the actual events of those years slipped between the gaps, just like last time.
So many exams, awful results, retaking them all, fine in the end
Bicycling round London day and night
Ballet and skating
Dancing here and there
Sailing across the Channel, deciding never to do that again
Travelling on my own, with another, Paris, Germany, Austria, Venice, Belgrade, Athens, Mycenae, Corinth, South of France, Scotland
Parties, going to them, giving them..!
Reading anything I wanted to
First funeral, first invitation to a wedding
First many things
Working, how could I forget?, all those temporary jobs, I never worked for free
Durham, the beautiful abstract paintings on the walls of the dining room, hung on huge white walls
Meeting people's parents
Living in my grandparents' house while they were abroad and I was working in the summer
An amazing tutor who never smiled, but was utterly serious and respectful, Louis Allen. His room was full of everything including a small stuffed alligator on his desk, but I never plucked up the courage to ask to take a photo of him.
I have just found a paragraph he wrote on fiction, which explains :
Here’s some further inspiration from the great Japan scholar and translator, Louis Allen:
That was a big set of years to pick pictures for. Pretty much all the actual events of those years slipped between the gaps, just like last time.
So many exams, awful results, retaking them all, fine in the end
Bicycling round London day and night
Ballet and skating
Dancing here and there
Sailing across the Channel, deciding never to do that again
Travelling on my own, with another, Paris, Germany, Austria, Venice, Belgrade, Athens, Mycenae, Corinth, South of France, Scotland
Parties, going to them, giving them..!
Reading anything I wanted to
First funeral, first invitation to a wedding
First many things
Working, how could I forget?, all those temporary jobs, I never worked for free
Durham, the beautiful abstract paintings on the walls of the dining room, hung on huge white walls
Meeting people's parents
Living in my grandparents' house while they were abroad and I was working in the summer
An amazing tutor who never smiled, but was utterly serious and respectful, Louis Allen. His room was full of everything including a small stuffed alligator on his desk, but I never plucked up the courage to ask to take a photo of him.
I have just found a paragraph he wrote on fiction, which explains :
Here’s some further inspiration from the great Japan scholar and translator, Louis Allen:
‘In order to know a nation fully you have to go beyond knowing the way it expresses itself in its laws, its military behaviour, and its political systems. You have to know the way it talks about itself unconciously and through its fiction. In other words, the fiction of a nation is as important as the facts of a nation if we want to know it properly.’
Torture trick
Try this to warp your mind: put a white board behind you, take the marker in your left hand if you are right handed and write out the whole alphabet on it as beautifully as you can. I only managed 4 letters, on a horrible downward slant! I'm sure I could write it upside down and with my left hand, but only if it were in front of me.
Try this to warp your mind: put a white board behind you, take the marker in your left hand if you are right handed and write out the whole alphabet on it as beautifully as you can. I only managed 4 letters, on a horrible downward slant! I'm sure I could write it upside down and with my left hand, but only if it were in front of me.
Monday, 7 July 2014
10 - 15 = 1974 - 1979
We are doing collages of images which represent aspects of each 5 year period of our lives. Today was the third session, hence we looked at the years from 10 to 15.
I didn't aim to be comprehensive. There is only so much I can do with back copies of the National Geographic and the weekend magazines.
The bits which got missed out were:
An amazing four poster bed I made for myself using huge blue curtains and some red ones for the interior, plus furniture stacked up dangerously. That was a high point of my childhood!
Various scrapes I got into at school, I can't imagine why I didn't get caught and soundly punished. Maybe they see everything and just sigh, waiting to see if it is a phase which passes.
The beggar I asked to photograph who sat looking glamorous on a brick wall for the price of a cup of tea. I liked negotiating with total strangers even then. I insisted on taking two photos to make sure one was good.
My wanderings through the old Tate. The mercury, the mirrored cubes, the bricks, the snail, the badminton game, Hockney, Warhol blah blah blah....lots of famous stuff just littered about for free any time it was the holidays because mother was at work and we were on a very loose rein.
The garages and basements of my grandmother's block of flats, Dolphin Square, plus the pool and all the gardens.
This has distracted me from being a good mother. T had to call me from the station to get picked up. This is not the first time I have forgotten to go down there for him.
The attic of our house, where my brother and I split up the territory easily and used to sit happily chatting next to the water tank!
The other little place we made for ourselves beside the washing machine in the kitchen, with empty film cannisters for collecting money and upturned buckets to sit on. Mine was smaller because I was older and taller, so needed more headroom.
My radio went in there too so I could listen to Nixon's resignation speech live. Goodness knows what time it was, but I was into politics at some level even then. I bet he didn't imagine a 10 year old in London listening to every word! How did I even know it was going to be broadcast?
The tents and dens we made from the poor old sun loungers. I liked my comforts so rigged up power supplies and had the radio and a light in there.
That's enough for now. I will go on for ever if I don't stop, obviously.
I didn't aim to be comprehensive. There is only so much I can do with back copies of the National Geographic and the weekend magazines.
The bits which got missed out were:
An amazing four poster bed I made for myself using huge blue curtains and some red ones for the interior, plus furniture stacked up dangerously. That was a high point of my childhood!
Various scrapes I got into at school, I can't imagine why I didn't get caught and soundly punished. Maybe they see everything and just sigh, waiting to see if it is a phase which passes.
The beggar I asked to photograph who sat looking glamorous on a brick wall for the price of a cup of tea. I liked negotiating with total strangers even then. I insisted on taking two photos to make sure one was good.
My wanderings through the old Tate. The mercury, the mirrored cubes, the bricks, the snail, the badminton game, Hockney, Warhol blah blah blah....lots of famous stuff just littered about for free any time it was the holidays because mother was at work and we were on a very loose rein.
The garages and basements of my grandmother's block of flats, Dolphin Square, plus the pool and all the gardens.
This has distracted me from being a good mother. T had to call me from the station to get picked up. This is not the first time I have forgotten to go down there for him.
The attic of our house, where my brother and I split up the territory easily and used to sit happily chatting next to the water tank!
The other little place we made for ourselves beside the washing machine in the kitchen, with empty film cannisters for collecting money and upturned buckets to sit on. Mine was smaller because I was older and taller, so needed more headroom.
My radio went in there too so I could listen to Nixon's resignation speech live. Goodness knows what time it was, but I was into politics at some level even then. I bet he didn't imagine a 10 year old in London listening to every word! How did I even know it was going to be broadcast?
The tents and dens we made from the poor old sun loungers. I liked my comforts so rigged up power supplies and had the radio and a light in there.
That's enough for now. I will go on for ever if I don't stop, obviously.
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