My own favourite posts of 2014, a completely different list

This is a completely different list. Mine are personal, uncompromising and mean a lot to me. Probably don't say much to others, but that's ok.

Jan - beautiful-honesty...... digging-with-silver-spoon ....... walking-over-bridge

Feb -i-might-or-might-not-start-another ......... 3-work-placements

Mar -baby-worship-wriggling-and-shifting ..... doing-same-things-3-line-paragraphs .... m4

Apr - sofa-time ...... films-with-my-son-rows ....... government-of-nature-afaa-weaver ....... hilarious-old-post-from-2009

May - a-b-c-of-my-mother

Jun - aint-no-sunshine-when-youre-gone ....... london-2-my-parents-bed ......... if-you-had-to-learn-something-new-what ........ first-public-reading

Jul - who-brings-out-best-in-you ........ conversations-needed .......... i-see-autonomous-home-education .......... being-gentle

Aug - huh-it-seems-to-be-true-that-poetry .......... wow-what-weekend ......... everyday

Sep - change-shitty-stuff ......... just-for-fun-nuf-rof-tsuj ........... i-actually-dont-know-what-home

Oct - being-terrible-maths-teacher .... a-book-flat-lining-emotionally .... sitting-in-jr-car-park-writing-haiku

Nov - page-poems-vs-performance-poems ..... woodstock-poetry-festival-this-weekend .... oh-my-god-london-2-sunday .... 100-word-biography-endlessly-tearful

Dec - london-anselm-keifer-albion ..... 2nd-childhood ..... 2-sons-in-house-again-didcot-station .... full-moon

I have enjoyed choosing these. It has taken a long time. I prefer single topic posts, ones with photos, ones with information about my parents, ones about particularly personal thoughts and ones which remind me of eventful and unpredictable trips to London on my own, free to enjoy myself.

The layout is terrible, sorry about that. I can't think of a better way, yet.

This has been an amazing year. Thank you to the wonderful people I have spent time with and who have changed my life for me. I wish I could introduce you all to each other over a long weekend/life time.

Most Viewed Posts of 2014

I wanted to pick 10, but then fancied the ones just below them, so it is 13, because there were joint 12th places.

1 - i-couldnt-sleep

2 - assimilation

3 - growing-up-with-photo

4 - einstein-and-jesus

5 - determined-to-get-avatar-for-forum

6 - ravensbruck-and-my-new-form

7 - i-am-up-to-three-exchanges-in

8 - being-split-up

9 - i-knew-id-find-it-eventually-one-of-my

10 - london-people-places-decision

11 - we-have-started-fabulous-poetry-group

12 - one-of-my-favourite-posts

12 - i-want-arabichebrew-modpo

Winter visiting

This year it means visiting friends every day. 4 days in a row so far. Other years we have been much more home based or snowed in. My brother even drove up from London today. I'll be with a friend in her studio tomorrow night. This is great. I am handing out more Christmas cards as I go, I did a bit of forward planning. This year the juggernaut that is Christmas is simply rolling on over us all.

My insides don't know what to do with themselves when I hear this: Drift by Caroline Bergvall. I so, so want to get to watch and hear this whole piece. It's a combination of dreading the outcome of any trip in a motor boat and adoring the continuous tension of the humming music crossed by her seagull voice.

The Quiet Compere tour 2014 - Sarah Dixon runs this and is writing it up. Part 1 and Part 2 are published so far. Quite a few names are familiar to me from 52.

Amazingly, she has booked me for a 10 min slot at the Oxford one in May. It's lucky I have enough poems already as I have stopped writing. Why?? Maybe my fingers are too cold and we sit on the sofa watching black and white films until 2am. Too much facebook, or too little? Not enough trouble coming my way? Not in the mood at some level.

'What shall we do about stale cake?'

'Who were the protest group called 99%?'

'What does that all mean?'

Pascal Petit's blog: I think she is the one for me, poetry and the Tate Modern. Look down the list of previous blog posts on the right hand side of her page. She is coming to Oxford for a workshop on Sat 28th Feb.

Explaining an exchange

On my visit today I got talking to a teacher. Since I have spent some time home educating I find this interesting and personal. She told me of a brief part of a conversation she had with a home educated young woman of about 16. Somehow she asked why she wasn't taking GCSEs or what she would do without GCSEs. The reply was brief, well rehearsed, but didn't get either of them further forward.

I gave my analysis that this was not a casual question. It went straight for the young person's family's deepest fears, hopes and values. It was not safe for her either as a teacher, since she was in effect asking for her own lifetime of study and qualifications to be examined and threshed just like that. Which it had been, in an instant.

I suggested going back and trying to discuss the fact that this had not been a wise topic for conversation, they needed an awful lot more discussion and friendship first. They needed the tools for having such a discussion. They'd have to build those tools during many conversations about a shared love of dogs or the countryside for example.

...

Mmm - this song: Stay High by Tora Lo. H gave me a cd to enjoy in the car and I found this song I knew from somewhere. It's the 'Habits remix'.

Christmas Eve - Angels - Snow

Christmas Eve walk to deliver more cards. Ginger wine with friends in front of their log burner. Explaining 10 to the minus 9, bit by bit. Many different concepts to be explained with my hands in the air and simple words. An amazing still night, trees dark against the last light in the west. The moon partly lit and partly almost invisible. Wood smoke from someone's fire. Steamed up windows in the pub. Total silence.

Midnight Mass, I sat there thinking and wondering why wanting to be fair and kind gets tangled up with a thicket of words. The best bit was singing the carols and greeting all the people I know. Familiarity. Also the gaps, all the people who aren't there.

The photo display on the window sill above my angels is just visible. My parents plus my brother and me. I wonder why my grandfather came over that evening to take a formal photo of us all? My father would have set up the camera on a tripod for him to click.

My mother in law plus all her brothers and both parents, shortly before her mother died in 1939. The other one on the right is my father in law, whom I never met. T and H take turns looking a bit like him as they grow and change.

These little angels were made by my grandmother R ages ago. I assume when my mother and her brother were small. They have survived all this time in 2 boxes which originally held headed writing paper. There are little foil twists, an old version of tinsel, plus see-though plastic icicles and small baubles to hang from the now-vanished small silver tree.

The lacy covers over the coloured paper dresses are made from paper doilies from all those years ago. Very delicate. No one else touches them, only me.

The star, just visible behind the gold bobbles, is cardboard covered in silver and gold foil. The pointy shaped bits are so delicate, but miraculously are still intact. Again, no one else is allowed to touch them for fear of tearing them. Actually, no one has even breathed a word about wanting to get close to them. I have defended them with my life.

And snow. We have the noise of wind tonight, but no snow whatsoever. There is some at uksnow.

Christmas Letter 2014

New Things I Love - 2014

 . The Quiet Compere

 . Woodstock Poetry Festival, reading at a pub on the last night

 . Albion Beatnik Bookstore

 . Trying Dean Kayam's 5R classes at Lake Street

 . Friends of the Hall Writers' Forum

 . Crewing for Catherine Llewellyn's 5R workshops

 . Oxfam Online Bookshop volunteering

 + The Saison Poetry Library on the South Bank

 + Back Room Poets, Thursday nights in Oxford

 + Our Arabic Film Club, such a long list of films to see

 + Reuters News Oratorio by Jude Montague

 + Gardening weekends at Lower Shaw Farm

 + Swindon Poetry Festival, staying at a festival is the best thing

 + Unexpected and compelling short films in various art galleries,(go to TateShots)

 + Being read to in Arabic, even though I don't understand much

 ; Volunteer gardening at the Sutton Courtenay Environmental Education Centre

 ; Having my mother to stay, taking her to be welcomed at the cafe

 ; The Royal Sun Pub, Begbroke, welcoming on days of terrible traffic
 ; The Stare's Nest, poetry blog-zine, edited by Judi Sutherland and Cathy Dreyer

 ; Volunteering at No Two Things in Didcot

 ; IOWA How Writers Write Poetry online course

 ; Department of Continuing Education Oxford, Arabic classes 

 : iamnotasilentpoet, new poetry blog-zine edited by Reuben Woolley

 : Obsessed With Pipework - poetry magazine, I'm in there next August

 : ModPoPlus, Al Filreis's extension of ModPo

 : 52 Facebook group, based on this weekly prompts and fantastic poems blog

 : Robert Pinsky's The Art of Poetry online course
 : My brother arriving to visit, sharing food, heading to the pub
 : Wantage Poetry Festival, reading upstairs at a pub on the Market Place
 : Al-Saqi and Arthur Probsthain/SOAS book shops in London

Best of all: 2 new babies in my family.

Invitation: Join Slant 2015 before membership reaches 400 and it is closed

...

H has been reading jokes out to me:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the möbius strip? 
A: To get to the same side.

and

Helium walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The bartender says, "Sorry, we don't serve noble gases here." Helium doesn't react.

London - Anselm Keifer - Albion

Leaving before dawn for London

I was a satisfying feeling to be up and off so early. Breakfast at home, plus greeting my mother in French. She jumped and squeaked, fearing I was a well-dressed French relative who'd just turned up out of the blue, knocking on their bedroom door. I never realised saying 'bonjour' could be so alarming.

Then I had an argument with my father about love and relationships before finishing breakfast, that's a first. We didn't argue after that.

While my parents had a normal Saturday morning I buzzed off to see an exhibition I'd read about in a blog. Striking and bold. There were 2 references to Celan poems, so I'll look at those one day. The best part was looking closely at the surfaces of the paintings, the golden layers were so rough and perfect at the same time.

One room just contained a heap of massive book things plus sunflower heads. Being so big and spread out we could walk under it and look right at it. I don't think in words, just enjoy it all uncritically, like feeling the wind or rain.

There was a tea in the afternoon, I helped with laundry and felt I hadn't done much to benefit the household. It is confusing to come, then go away again. I try to read between the lines, but get nowhere, just get used to the buttons on their washing machine and dryer.

I even managed to lose my mother. She said she was going to get some cash as we walked out of the cafe, she walked off, so I thought, towards the cash point by the market and I did something back at the house then tried to catch up with her. No luck at all, so walked all the way back wondering how she'd gone so far so fast. There is a machine at the corner of the street...

In a way I cause more trouble than help coming to visit. Maybe that is always the way, simply a way of passing the time together and doing more mixed up living. I get to see the workings of the household, not just the elegant surface.

Jo Bell/Will Burns/George Chopping

The drive back went straight to Oxford. It was a surprise to be so suddenly back in my familiar parking place and walking down Observatory Street to get to the Albion Bookstore. Very good to meet some familiar faces again. I suggested I'd do a short review of Life on Easy Street by George Roberts. So my reading is focused on that now.

2 new to me poets read out their work and we all had time to talk in the interval. Hearing Jo Bell is good. I know her stance and delivery so well now. If I read a poem of hers on the page/screen I can hear her consonants and accent.

I wonder whether at a certain point I don't listen to the words' meanings at all, just watch and listen to the voices. I watch sheep and cattle, observe, no more. I don't want to interpret any more, just see each person's ways. Since I don't have to reply or discuss, I can switch off and bathe in their music. So I was starting to learn Will Burns and George Chopping.

Once I am used to that I am able to sense a difference when another emotion kicks in. Watching David Morley change profoundly as he shifted from non-Romany to Romany poems. I could see him become more himself. I wondered why he bothered doing anything apart from the work on his Romany side. The rest seemed so at odds with his deep self. This was on stage at the Swindon Poetry Festival this October.

What's all this fuss about 52?

From the inside of the closed facebook group it has been like this: I see others post their poems, I like them if I like them. I comment, briefly and instantly. I read the other comments. I an not scared of commenting. I say if I don't understand a word or stumble somewhere. If the other wants to they post an edit, or they don't.

I enjoy specifying what I love in a poem. It isn't deeply thought out, but a sudden pointing to a word or phrase. I enjoy putting brief replies, no need for these long correct sentences.

When I write it is usually directly into the facebook box, but I sometimes write into my email drafts, or type out something I have come to after writing in longhand on paper. That is a different process.

There is a sod it moment when I press send. We have shared some intimate writing with each other.

Overall I now have massively high expectations from any poetry group I am part of, since I know what it is like to have such a flow of work and comments to be part of. I find it normal to work alongside people with different lengths of time in the poetry world and different levels of publushed-ness, I mean published-ness. Another wonderous typo: pub, lush, blushed, shed.

To me they are all the same, just a more or less anonymous name attached to a poem. I read the poem. Some names are neither male nor female so there's that haziness about the writer too.

I see others deal with their ebb and flow of production. I wait and see where I am going. I get used to the angst of others, let them get on with it.

At the South Bank in the summer I was in a hall full of potential. Had I known the compere I might have asked for an announcement for any 52 members to come to the front to meet each other. Without knowing what we look like, there is a mystery and potential for meeting each other anywhere.

2nd childhood

From what I have glimpsed of it,
it explains many things about being the mother with a small child.

The arrival of body functions at frequent intervals,
no delay, the sun suddenly comes out, or goes in.

The near complete absence of relationship to me,
it's a one way black hole. Protect myself. Also give.

The breakdown of my own life within a few days,
split into moments of this and that.

The ever present present, I stand there saying:
what was I doing, what am I doing?

My swift development of ruses to escape from a world where
requests pile on top of requests.

The pleasure of 5 minutes staring out of a windscreen at
steady hills in the distance.

The impossibility of putting any of it into words,
it all sounds vacuous, trite, plain wrong and misses the point.

The person changes from interaction to interaction,
no description is fair or true, just a bad attempt.

These are my reflections now on how it felt a few weeks ago,
not pretty, but real, intense, unavoidable.

When I had small children I was unaware of all this
and how it is the way things are, I see that now.

I bounced back quickly this time, but it was only a month,
not long years of night and day.

...

I have now given this a good edit. I am still uneasy with it. I'd written in single lines across the post window, but the published window is narrower, so I had to change it all into pairs of lines. Each long single line was meant to stand alone from the next. I could copy it onto a text edit file and print it off for myself as I want it to be.

...

From what I have glimpsed of it, it explains what being the mother is.

The arrival of body functions at intervals, no delay, the sun comes out.

The near absence of relationship to me, a one way black hole. Give.

The breakdown of my own life within a few days, split into moments. 

The ever present present, I stand there saying: what am I doing?

My swift deployment of ruses to escape from a world of requests.

The pleasure of 5 minutes staring out of a windscreen at steady hills.

The impossibility of putting any of it into words, I miss the point.

The person changes from interaction to interaction, no description is true.

These are my reflections now on how it felt a few weeks ago, unavoidable.

When I had small children I was living it, not seeing it.

I bounced back quickly this time, but it was only a month.

...

I like having to chop words out quickly, replacing them with shorter ones, making quick decisions. No version is final, all of them could be played with to make something else entirely.

Years ago, playing an electric guitar at Ovington Square - Brian Turner - My Life as a Foreign Country

Ovington Square

5 to 7

We used to live in the vast space of the studio behind 10 Ovington Square. This was just one part of my grandparents' big house. We moved to our own family house when I was 7. Not as much fun by a long way. The studio was then rented out to various musicians.

16 to 18

One of these musicians let me visit and chat once or twice. He was a guitarist and let me pluck the strings of one electric guitar, while he played another one. He was so good he could play classic songs based on the random notes I picked out. He made me feel like an equal partner in the whole process. A nice feeling.

Another, a pianist, let me visit roughly every two weeks for ages. What was my family thinking? We'd sit and drink coffee and chat for quite a while. I'd smoke or did I just have coffee? Anyway... I was 18. Now I am a mother I am shocked.

Brian Turner - My Life as a Foreign Country

There is a different feel to reading a book by someone I have been to a poetry workshop with. Not only that, but he is so easy to be in the room with. When he asked if we were all ok, did we need anything, I actually said I was cold. He gave me his own jacket to wear. That was kind.

Someone else arrived spectacularly late and he just said now is the perfect time to arrive, welcome. That was Jude Montague. We all went off for coffee afterwards and she gave e a copy of her book. Just like that. And told me she writes everything, no barriers or censorship. I'm not there yet.

He also warned us that the moment we found we'd got going on our writing he'd be stopping us to go on to the next topic. So it proved. I have lots of starts from that afternoon. Unlike other workshops, we were not asked to read out to each other or to everyone. Possibly because his big topic is trauma, so we might be focusing at that. I was anyway. Gingerly. Extremely nervously. Not wanting to at all, but trying it a bit anyway, because I needed to. I had only booked my place the day before and had told myself I needn't go along at all if I needed to back out at the last minute. Link.

I wasn't at all sure I'd be at the reading later that day, for the same reason. Instead I might have been lurking in a Japanese restaurant with someone else simply talking and processing the workshop, not being good and polite at a reading.

So, this book. I am not used to the open way the men discuss sex. That is an eye opener. We women just don't, or not yet.. Or maybe only on the 52 facebook group. Maybe I need to get out more.

The landscape shines through the military hardware and technical specifications. He loves his details, the accurate processes the US army uses to do its job. The water buffalo, rivers and birds break through all that, with a simplicity which he may be unaware of.

There is a little knowledge of Arabic literature, but it must be in translation. I had half hoped he would be a fluent speaker by now, maybe he is? At that point he wasn't. I have noted down the references from the notes at the back. More Amazon 2nd hand orders.

I wanted to know more about his wife Ilyse. She is a constant, beautiful, womanly presence. If I were her I'd be entranced.

Since I enjoy blogs, eg George Szirtes, Anthony Wilson, Baroque in Hackney and 365, I am half hoping there will be a blog somewhere of his thoughts and studies now. He teaches and loves it. He studies poetry, which is my thing, so I'd want to read about his life now.

I assume that My Life as a Foreign Country has started to get the shrapnel out of his mind, but maybe it simply allows different shrapnel to start emerging. An unavoidable process.

To what extent has he begun to interact with Iraqis or Iraq or the Middle East in general since leaving the Army? Or is his main relationship with the US itself, via its army and his male family members' involvement in it? Or, going beyond that, is his debate with himself and the world about being a man.

This is a problem with reading writings from several years ago, they don't say much about now. They tell me about then. I want to be up to date, know what happened next, what is happening now.

2 sons in the house again - Didcot station

I can't explain how wonderful it is to have them both here again. I see them chatting at the kitchen table. We roll around Sainsbury's choosing food. There is another cook in the house. The table now has a box of tool kit on it. H and I played a game called First Impressions last night. We are not ready to wrap it up for Christmas yet. T and I went off for an enjoyable trip to put petrol in his car because he couldn't be bothered to go by himself. I stood there watching him do all the actions. He drove me and I paid no attention to the traffic, just let him get on with it.

I give T a huge hug in our kitchen doorway because I am so pleased. We arrange to drive past the car park so he can pick up his car tomorrow morning after a pub trip out this evening. I sit by Didcot Station late at night with yet another book, half reading, half gazing into space thinking my own thoughts as I wait yet again for him to arrive.

Best of all, I can go and have mulled wine at the cafe if I want because T said he'll be my driver! Luxury. We can sit there with our books and while away some time together.

Dravo Jelena/Jelenka/Natasha/Voja and anyone else who knows me

Yes, I have learnt my first word of Serbian. You have to almost shout and be very lively and bouncy. That's how this family language is. It has always gone over my head before, but after 50 years it is time to belt it out. Surely I will have a wonderful accent, since I know it in my bones already.

Dravo means hallo/good health to you

I don't yet know what the reply is. My next trip to London will get me that treasure.

Listen to the French

This is a 3 hour set of tributes to Abdelwahab Meddeb. Pierre Joris' blog linked to it, and I have listened to bits of it. Simply listening to the sound. Each person has a slightly different delivery, but it is all French. It is being spoken more slowly and more reflectively than usual.

He moved from Tunisia to France in 1967 and has a wiki page.

This is like being a beach, every tide brings new people, dead or alive, to get to know a little before the next tide moves in.

The photo is from last November. A friend built a vast bonfire structure up in the air on wooden struts. This is the grass where the embers fell as it started to burn.

Brave souls in Iraq - nuun - ن - نون

I am touched by their determination to support the Christian communities in Iraq this December. See this article, in English, in Al-Shorfar.

The significance of the letter ن : it is pronounced nuun or noon and was marked on the doors of the houses IS were going to get next for having Christian families inside. Even the Financial Times had a leader column article explaining this a few months ago. So the families had to go, fast. 'n' stands for one of the words for Christian, originally from the word 'an-nasira', which means Nazareth.

There is at least one article a day on the Middle East in the Financial Times, so I am cutting them out. They are written in a cool-headed and de-escalatory style. Also compassionate, or I am I merely seeing what I want to see?

Found it at last: Dia'a Al-Abdullah

On one of my trips to my parents' house in London I found a short poem in Arabic and spent a bit of time comparing it with the translation. Then I came back here and left the poem behind totally. I searched and searched online with no luck.

But then.. my mother arrived with that same iPad in her luggage. Lo and behold, there it was. Not even deep in the history, just on the first page I opened.

Dia'a Al-Abdullah - The Crypt
translated by Ghias Aljundi and Mitch Albert
www.penusa.org

It looks as if there is no news since March 2012 when he was taken into a Syrian jail.

David Beispiel's Poetry Wire blog has an article which gives the whole poem, just in translation in English, plus other information. Worth following.

I broke the A34 rule

It is against our rules to hoot, but I did just that at a fast driver who rushed up on the slow lane and dived in front of me in a section of road which is not meant to be fast. H and I were chatting to each other using our German phrases, so I had no idea where my sudden rage came from.

Earlier I'd noticed a lorry in my blind spot, just in time before I put us both under its wheels. Maybe surviving that one meant I was in no mood to be cut up by somebody in a mere car. It's the junction where I get onto the A34 north of Oxford. I have had numerous near misses there, in the rain, in the dark, in the light. Always lorries.

I peer carefully in my mirror each time I join the road, get up to a fast speed, look through the window as well, then that's the moment of truth -- huh - wheels, many many wheels, so very close.

A couple of days ago another Oxford driver did something exceptional at the lights. Moved from the slow lane into the fast lane then in right in front of the car in the slow lane. Then, seeing as the lights still hadn't turned to green, just drove through the red light round the corner to the left. Nothing surprises us any more. No one hooted or flashed their lights. Total calm.

Drat, missed a chance

I was wandering round the Blake exhibition, sort of involved, but feeling ignorant, yet again.

Then I was gripped by turning the pages of a screen which had one of his poetry notebooks in it. Without expecting it in the slightest, I read some words I knew: Rose thou art sick... the original draft plus changes was right there for me to read for myself.

Further back I found Tyger Tyger, right there, in 2 versions, one all messed about with and one all neat.

A woman came along, so I showed her what I'd found and we read them out loud together. I should have asked her for a coffee. Not that I had any time at all, but I should have risked having my car clamped for the chance of a conversation with a like minded soul.

I might well find her again. I'd recognise the way she peered, from a few inches away, at the pictures.

The pictures were good, the reds and the blues were equally warm. I like warmth. The fingers and feet have a particular way about them. He also really likes the vertical. I wouldn't get very far with writing an essay on art would I? Some things don't need to be written about.

The General's Son - Miko Peled

Second half-read book is now finished. The General's Son by Miko Peled

www.justworldbooks.com publish fast, so they can produce political books. Their focus is on the Middle East and the founder, Helena Cobban, was a journalist with the American newspaper Christian Science Monitor. A surprisingly open minded institution.

Christmas present for all - number 1

The Atomic Shrimp

Before you give up on being British and decide to do something terrible with UKIP and start shooting the clouds for being so grey: enjoy this blog, he's funny, off the wall, and writes concisely. With pictures. That's why we don't all drown ourselves in the North Sea.

One down, loads to go

I have finished my first book of the holidays: Journal of an Ordinary Grief (1973) - Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Ibrahim Muhawi.

The chapter on Gaza explains a lot. I hadn't perceived its importance at all, until now. How blind can one be?

You could open the book at random and pick any sentence to write from. I took 2 a while ago and gave them as a writing challenge on a forum I am on. I like starting from somewhere and going somewhere else entirely. The starting point acts as a door or a permission to make a start. It is not meant to hold you to remaining on a topic at all. The words are just that, and can be used freely.

There are 2 further books in the trilogy of memoirs, written later and much later: Memory for Forgetfulness (1985) and In the Presence of Absence (2006). For another time.

There is a concept I hadn't come across before - the Arabic Sentence. By that I think he means the impossibility of expressing the truth in language, yet it is the safest arena for trying to do so. So using Arabic gives him an unchallenged space, which is denied geographically and politically. The language is under his control and is his in an undeniable and permanent way, whatever might happen. The words are the most powerful and permanent weapon. Putting them in sentences wraps them up in an endless series of statements which can't be refused permission or denied existence or status. No one apart from an Arabic speaker can use the language, so it is a plastic, living, unlimitable force.

The preface by the translator doesn't look at it quite like that, but we can see what we like in a work..

Full moon

Even though I had 2 tickets I went on my own
My friend who likes events was already going to see a band

On the way I stopped mid-pavement for ages
To look at a b/w portrait on the front of a book in Oxfam's window

I braced myself for a horrible evening, just in case
Actually the place was packed and noisy :)

The walls were completely covered with Morris coverings
Reminded me of the House of Lords reception rooms

Combined with dramatic pictures
Fantastic backdrop to all the visitors in their finery

After a bit I was glad I was on my own
I could gaze at the gold Warhols

(When I bobbed down I could get the light right on them
The gold went from dull to brilliant, thrilling, no one else did that)

And take in the 2 Electric Chairs
No one else wanted to look at them

A tender photo of Warhol
His head thinking and his wrist reaching out

That was the best element of the whole show
The unexpected and undramatic

One of the photographers nearly got one of me
He said, 'Oops, that didn't work', but didn't try again

2 self portraits, 1 by each artist
A neat pencilled jar in front of a tray behind Morris' head

I gave lots of time to the unblinking gazes
Of the Screen Test films, and ate my apple

I feel as if it is my own house now
Upstairs and down into the basement

The band was so good down stairs
I'd love 5R to have live music, it might work well

(The YouTube video doesn't do the band justice at all
Live was mesmerising, there I was, all happy

Julia Meijer)

End of term capers - Reward for 10 weeks' work

There is Christmas planning and there is holiday reading planning.

My massive stack of poetry and Arabic is calling to me. Where do I start? Do I lay them all out on my rug and take a photo and sit there wondering? Do I start 5 at once and just get 10 pages into each one?

Or write out a neat plan and tell my brother so I can be accountable to him for any stray reading? We are an accountability group of 2, we meet by phone and share what we plan to do. No punishments though.

I could be systematic and pick a male then a female poet, same with the Arabic stuff, go alternately. It's been a very long 10 weeks since I could just read without any homework needing to be done. Wanting a good mark meant doing all of it as carefully as possible.

My vocab was well hidden in the boot of my son's car, so now I can play with that too.

Storytelling Republic - Palestine - Chris Smith

On Monday evening I got out to Oxford and bumped into 2 people I know. We were at the first Story Telling evening for adults at the Albion Beatnik Bookstore.

There are photos already up to show what it was like. They can't show that there was a still silence every so often as we listened extra attentively.

I wondered what Chris Smith had been doing for the 15 years he spent out there. Does he know Jackie Lubeck of Theatre Day Productions who I met online on ModPo?

I am not a silent poet - Reuben Woolley

A friend of mine has just set up a blog-zine for protest poetry. I predict he will be swamped by submissions. But that is a good thing in the long run, so I am mentioning his project here.

I know him via 52, the Facebook poetry group we are both part of. He is also the first 52-er I met in real life, quite by chance, after a poetry reading.

A hidden sonnet - Richard Hayden - Those Winter Sundays

Playing around with form.

Hidden sonnets

Have a look at this sonnet. Richard Hayden - Those Winter Sundays. It has 3 stanzas, a 5 line, then a 4 line, then a 5 line. The last 2 lines are different, a summing up and development. I love the way sonnets are wrangled about to look entirely different, yet when I count lines, as I always like to do, there they are. So often they are not labelled as such. Hidden sonnets.

Indentation

On a forum I am on, I suggested that someone try putting in breaks to emphasise the stanzas of a sonnet. The writer decided to indent the second 4 lines, then revert back to left justification for the next 4 lines. In fact the last 2 lines got the chop too, but it was 14 lines long before this new version. I have never seen, or noticed, that before. Very neat.

Crisis night and day

Not so fun. My mother was ill. Not very. I checked on her each hour for a while, then judged she was sleeping pretty soundly. I did not sleep soundly at all.

No clear thoughts, just an anxious jumble. Decided I would not drive anywhere on Friday. Fixed a taxi for H and cancelled my 2 appointments in Oxford. Slept and sweated and dozed for 6 hours in the day. Didn't help my mother at all.

Better evening. Dressed, went to Sainsbury's, called in at shop where I used to volunteer, felt more human again. Listened to some poetry videos, clicked to let someone to be a member of a Facebook group I am on, submitted 2 poems.

...

That was Thursday night and Friday daytime.

Sigh, not that sort of sigh, this sort..emotional, expressive, thankful, appreciative

This is why I spend so much time reading poetry blogs, going to festivals and more:

The woman at the workshop

Why does the word 'sigh' imply entirely the wrong thing? With all its words, English just fails,  and needs phrases instead, lengthy explanations. It has to be created freshly each time in order to actually say anything. How can anyone learn English?

page poems vs performance poems

I have just come across an interview with Carrie Etter. At the end of the article this topic comes up.

When I am at a reading I know I will never hear the poem again or read it, unless it gets published some time in the future. Often I don't know the name of the poet either, it whizzes past. Followed by many more.

Now I know I need to go up to the person I liked the most and get their name. Then I may see them again at another reading or workshop. Gradually I am getting to know the writers whose work I love the most.

Choosing a set is interesting. Do I make sure nothing is ever read out twice? Or do I read out my favourites? Do I test things out on live audiences, risking the not quite rightness of a piece? Do I dare to read out a piece I wouldn't want published, knowing it won't be recorded, risking that exposure, deciding it won't go any further, letting others enjoy it there and then, live but not in type?

The other thing is that I have to speak loudly, so a soft gentle poem can't be spoken in that way and also be heard. That means only direct, uncompromising poems can be read out across a big room.

Now I know that a writer produces many things which never get performed or printed. The more experimental and personal pieces. The ones which are more from themselves and which mean more to them than to anyone else. So the performance or the print version is just part of it.

Having my mother to stay: it feels like Christmas

The cat from next door has started to go straight to her bed in the mornings. I go in and see them both in the bed. Having a memory foam top layer was a good decision.

I move the tv cable from downstairs to upstairs and back again each night and morning. It is important to my mother to be able to see the woolly mammoth dissection programme. So I'm crawling around under my son's desk more than I ever have before to do the plugging in and unplugging.

Soon we will open up the old stationary boxes her mother kept the Christmas decorations in. They have been passed on to me. I think we can use an unused fireplace as the spot to install the crib. Maybe this year I can put logs and dry leaves from the garden around it. Every year it looks different.

I have not been able to spend Christmas with my parents for various excellent reasons for many years. We can have a mini one here instead. I even have a pudding with cherries in the middle.

She is on the sofa sleeping, with a duvet and the cat on top of her. A real version of family stuff going on in our own stable/house.

The American Sentence, try it out

Explanation of the American Sentence, an 11 syllable sentence, written across the page, no line breaks.

Interestingly, this is simply part of a Sapphic Stanza, 3 lines of 11 syllables, followed by a 5 syllable line.

Reading out someone else's poem

First time around I made a stanza break, not realising I should read on into the second stanza. Then I noticed that I made 2 grammatical changes, unable to stop myself.

The second time, I read over the stanza break and I read out the exact words. I was proud of myself for attending to my errors.

Pronounciation, never explained clearly in the books, I am having a moan

I have had to work this all out for myself. It was ages ago, but it is still something I find myself doing automatically part of the time and stumbling over at other times. Books! Why don't they just carefully explain these tricky things. The waw is sometimes an 'u' and sometimes a 'w'. Just because of the unwritten vowel immediately before it.

sura and suwar, صور ,صورة.

Also, the emphasis is on a particular vowel in each word. I have picked this up instinctively, but it would have been really helpful to find it maybe once or twice in the book. Ok, I have got it all by myself.

sUra and suwAr

How do I know? I just do. Probably from hearing it, but also from hearing other singular/plural combinations.

I need a drop-in: "Learning Arabic? So you will be needing coffee and a rant every week? I knew it. Well, here it is."

pic of modern stairs vs being swamped vs losing vocab

Being swamped

Everywhere I look I see things I should do
Things not in their right place

Books from years ago
Two black holes in the wall

Knitting I don't want to have time for
Collages I do want, but somewhere else

A radio which has terrible reception
Necklaces which are not my style

I want to shove it all out
like a determined little hamster
making her nest

...

To top it all I have lost piles of Arabic vocab. Where are they, all my adjectives on yellow cards? I have even looked in the boot of my car. They are having a little private party with the verbs on their red cards. I give up :)

Form - Sara Peters

"it's noodling and experimenting until you find a form that helps you generate what you want to say."

and

"something that helps you do it as well as you can."

Robert Pinsky on form, in a discussion which centred on a poem, not available online, called Abortion, by Sara Peters.

It is written in 6 stanzas, starting with just a one line stanza, increasing so that the last one has six lines.

I think this is the problem with the first poem I read on Sunday. I am too attached to the form I chose. I need to let that go and do a total rewriting session, which would mean arriving somewhere else entirely.

Book stack - Songs on the A34

This is my Arabic book stack which I cart around in the car. Too much. After the photo I split it into work I need to do for the lesson and 'other'. The book at the bottom will keep me busy for months. The children's book Al Diktatur will take a while, there are so many pages. I am only on the second page of the actual story. There is a film in the stack I can share around.

The second photo is of my notes on the poem I am trying to translate. It's a start. I need to look carefully at another poem written by the poet and at its translation into English. I also need to look carefully at the inspiration text in Arabic, but at least I know the English version extremely well. The Arabic will have slightly different connotations and shift my world around a bit. Then I will be more ready to decide on the meanings I will pick on for the translation. I have been peering at my dictionary with my glasses off so I can see every letter exactly, and at the printed poem. All so tiny, these little letters.

...

On my way back from the Woodstock Poetry Festival on the A34 I heard 2 lovely late night songs:

George Ezra

Snow Patrol

Then I switched off the radio so I could remember the titles and find them back at home. Not as easy as I expected.

Those 2 love poems which silenced us on Sunday afternoon

I'm half thinking that it is better to just hear these poems read out to you when you are least expecting them. So I won't give the poets' names or the poems' titles, in case you want to save yourself for those moments sometime in the future.

First one

Second one

Not knowing where a poem is going: 'Out, Out - ' Robert Frost

I am rattling through the Pinsky poetry class before it all disappears on around the 3rd December.

Many poems are linked to as examples of this and that.

This video from favoritepoem.org, an American project, shows a teacher talking about her work, then reading out this particular poem.

I needed the ocean at the end.

Woodstock Poetry Festival - This weekend in London

Woodstock Poetry Festival

Feel the entire room go still, holding their breath to a stunning love poem.
Enjoy the mystery of not knowing what each reading will contain.

Don't read out a poem which needs sharpening, people need my best.
Do read out a tight poem, even if it is almost too risky, for that murmur.

Clap extra loudly for the first time reader, welcome her in.
Look and listen to the reader being filmed, take in her voice.

...

My mother has just got out of the car to go back home, but we waved at her to come across to the Serbian cafe. I could see her do a bit of thinking, then turn the zimmer frame to make her way over here. We all took photos of each other and talked too loudly. My brother took this one and my father is just to my brother's right, next to my mother. I had lost my cards and wallet, so was down to a £1.15 small espresso. I tipped every bit of sugar into it since it was included in the price. Wolfed down the biscuit too.

The necklace was one I'd found on the tarmac in the rain. No one took it from the top of my car, where I put it to be found by the owner, so I decided to keep it. Wearing it in public near where I had found it was not a very clever thing to do though. I imagined someone walking past and thinking it was just like the one they'd lost... All I would have had to do was hand it over and say sorry.

...


This weekend in London

Carry the breakfast tray my father has made for my mother, put it on the bed.
Wait for the next request, don't rush the morning, let her sleep.

Stand outside the shower room, waiting for my mother to finish.
Make an improvised tube of toothpaste for her from a corner of a plastic bag.

Sit on the bed with her sharing a hot chocolate and a danish from the cafe.
Never mind about past dramas, just live in each half hour.

Sitting in my father's study - Putting a collection of poetry together

Up to the right there is a clock he has had for years. I can almost read the formal Arabic now: al bank yamani al isha' wa al taqmiir...The Yemen Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Hmm, I am not certain enough. I will have to put the English through Google translate, then look more closely at the calligraphy with the extra decorative dots and such.

The family tree goes from 1227 to 1965 when my younger brother was born. We are both little handwritten footnotes squeezed in at the bottom. We used to look at our names when this chart was on the wall of the landing at Ovington Square and we were free to just wander about in the house.

There's a sheep's skull up between some books near the ceiling. We found it on holiday in Scotland in the 70's. It used to be on the drawing room mantle piece for years. Now it has been here for years.

If I crane my neck to the left there is an old jam jar of what can only be potassium permanganate. Bright blue crystals. I am no longer surprised by anything in here.

This desk is a sea of papers, glasses, old calculator, cup with coins in it, nice fountain pens and...surprise: more Arabic on some sort of luggage labels hanging from the angle-poise lamp.

al afdaliya - something about pleasing?

'anatiya khasa - ? ?
darja awf - class ?
as-s'awdiya - the Saudi created thing, untranslatable.

ad-darajat alawla - first class

This is very hard. I can't read plane labels yet.

---

Jeffrey Levine on the thinking and reflecting work needed over a long period of time. Measured and clear, read this first.

Katrina Vandenberg on the passionate reasons for a collection, from the innuendo of the space between stanzas to the necessity of revealing your obsessions. This is a fantastic read.

There is no reason why I shouldn't play around with what I have written in 2014 and see what I can make of it all, for my own pleasure.

Tossing nearly everything overboard

Having abandoned nearly all the regular activities I used to have, I just focus on the key things:

Facebook
Blog
Email
Hall Writers' Forum, plus feedback I have promised to give
52 group on Facebook
plus a translation I have promised to do
and .... my Arabic classes with the home work

It is actually easier, because everything else goes into the bin or onto the big heap for another time.

A few years ago I told a friend that there was a great freedom in being at rock bottom. That was related to school, home education and autism/aspergers - or rather the uncomfortable clash between mainstream culture and what we actually needed.

This time it is a response to relatives in hospital, on top of the changes due to H going to school.

.....

If I look around this dining room, I can see 4 Madonnas.

I can also see the picture of my father which I must have taken 25 years ago because he looks about my age now. Also a recent one of my mother in a big hat, plus my favourite sculpture in the house, makes it sound as if I grew up in an art gallery, a Medici looking woman with a calm, steady demeanour. She used to be on the landing at Ovington Square, my grandparents' house.

I have booked my father's big screen for later, so I can relax by reading other people's poetry and making some comments.

Fire hazards

There are more levels of discomfort than I had imagined.

Just one smoke alarm, but I open the windows of the guest room at the top of the house.

Just one smoke alarm, the windows have been screwed shut, but the room next door has easily lifted sash window.

All of the above, but I will have my nearly immobile mother in the guest bed with me, how would I make that safe? I have asked my father to help, he says he will unscrew the window, so that will reassure me.

Anyway, it is just for her first night back at home. We might be telling each other ghost stories, or I might teach her some Arabic.

...

In fact she was just mobile enough to sit laughing watching tv with my father, so I left them to it and she was with him instead.

Oh my God! London - 1 Saturday

This is me being over the top, but London is just amazing.

---

I have lost the little notebook with my info about Saturday, which means that some poems of mine have gone awol too. Oh no. And good grief. That's one way of getting published.

---

 Lunch visit with my mother at the hospital.
So very lovely to be pushing her in the wheel chair and generally hanging around.

I buy an Arabic newspaper, I buy one a year at the moment!
My mother suggests I circle the words I do know on the front page.

Off to do some work, peering at this translation I am doing.
Cafe packed out, so I sat in the bookshop, Arthur Probsthain (again).

Chatted to woman near me, turns out she knows Jenny Lewis,
What a very small world, she has done the Praise workshop I am going to.

Back to see my mother, we all meet up there,
Because we are very noisy when we all get together we all go to cafe.

Debate plans and current situation, bit of a war cabinet at the cafe,
Then I decide we must have a family photo, someone kind takes a few for us.

Off to my evening event, Reuters News Oratorio
Drenched thoroughly due to making some bad decisions.

Roam around the church before it starts, can't settle down.
Try the upstairs balcony, but I am not one of the cast.

The church is huge and gracious, peeling walls, cracks, darkness above.
Warm crypt with cryptic route to loos, unusual.

Finally sit down with a group of people, we chat and chat.
The improvised - and - structured performance is how it is.

I sit and lean forwards, look here, look there.
People do their thing with guitars, cellos, other musical instruments.

Jude stands at the piano and does her thing.
What I adore is the seriousness and stance of people in the middle of their own worlds.

I just have to give my whole attention to what is happening,
Let it be and let it continue, witness it, be part of the essential audience.

Imagine a poetry reading with no listeners?
That is how important being the pew-bound crowd is.

There was burning afterwards, scrolls from a dream project in Olympic Year,
A version of the Wailing Wall for Bethnal Green.

The private and unread scrolls were tipped into the fire, a brazier in the rain.
We held and relit our candles while this all went on.

We wondered whether by now some of the wishes had come to pass:
The wishes for a baby, for a partner, health.

By the end our little group had refound itself on the steps of the church,
But we had to break it up and go home. Twitter/email details...all given.

What a wonderful day and evening.

Oh my God! London - 0 Friday

The tree trunks and branches are covered with white lights in front of the Natural History Museum.
Skating has started beneath it.

There are 2 shisha cafes in Beauchamp Place now. I will take my brother there as soon as I can.
Tomorrow I might be able to go to the World News Oratorio, Jude Montague is putting this on.

Time at my father's desktop, finished my first draft of comments on a sequence of poems.
A big responsibility, I need to make it concise and helpful for the rewriting phase.

Oh my God! London - 2 - Sunday

Eating my way through my father's sour dough loaf, this time with his own plum and ginger jam.
Tube to Warren Street, more comfortable working on my poem translation on a seat.

Find my mother on her bed, so cut her finger nails and do other beauty tasks.
Dr arrives, a Glaswegian :), full update, so many tests, grabbing this opportunity.

Adventure with a wheelchair, backwards, forwards, lifts, doors, even the shop.
My mother's idea of heaven: cafe facing buses, tube station, PEOPLE, LIFE, LONDON.....

She manages to eat a hard boiled egg without an eggcup.
I go back and forth like a yoyo; plates, coffee cup and a human in a wheelchair,
Eventually we are all at the same table.

Kisses, goodbyes, odd to know I won't be back until next Saturday. Why don't I live near my parents?

On my walk along South Bank I go the the end of a little pier. Smile at a toddler who is trying standing on a metal tying up point for ropes. Then she decides to sit on it. Whole series of discoveries for her and her patient mother in the sunshine.

Disgusting colour of Thames. Will it one day be something healthier? At least the froth that used to be there is gone.

Lean against the wall and sit on the floor of the Turbine Hall, watch the babies and toddlers with their kind parents.
Bit of writing, then pick out nouns from what I have done and write with those, then pick out verbs from that new set of lines.

I get distracted by the women's hairstyles, always hoping for inspiration.
Decide to get some half-processed merino wool to make primary colour hair wraps out of, based on simple, bold colours of the Richard Tuttle installation above my head.

Films, a set of 3, set in a light bulb factory in China, so many flames.
Other one is just grey on black with occasional people, even I give up on that one.

Find 'Zaytoun', a DVD, for my Arabic film club, plus board books for the babies in my life.

Millennium Bridge: I always think of the stranger who once walked at my pace, level with me, whether I sped up or slowed down. It is a long bridge, so after a while I just walked at my own pace while this mysterious man walked along too near me. I deliberately didn't look round, but I saw that he was all in black and perhaps 30ish as he went off down some steps.

Back to the house to see my father, kisses, goodbyes.
See the owner of the Serbian cafe opposite, rush over to share the news about my mother, more kisses, goodbyes.

As I drive along the Embankment in the dark towards the A4/M4 I enjoy the sparkling lights of the new flats on the other bank and the bright tree decorations. Really I just love all the lights at night. It's my city and I love seeing it again each time.

I listen to my music and find myself imagining having a huge row in the middle of Oxford with a complete stranger on the pavement because I have decided to open my car window and share my music with the world. Don't know why this arises. By the time my mind is back in a state of calm I have got to the Hogarth Roundabout. Strange.

Other people drive oddly tonight. Twice I find myself stuck behind a smart car being driven very slowly at 50mph by a male driver on his own. It is 8pm on a Sunday, perhaps they are both drunk and can't decide to stop to clear their heads. This is a new danger.

Find a set of photos of the event I was at yesterday, brings it all back. I am the one holding a candle while holding a bag of books with Arthur Probsthain on the front! And chatting. The photos don't show the fact that I am still damp from being drenched before the performance even started. Many of the performers had worn coats.

Home ed, being on the other side

I now see that, as with breastfeeding, once an era is over I simply move to the next era. That post-era era lasts the rest of my life. It will include offering perceptive comments on the process.

Quite soon my comments will be from more of a distance. Without care they could be unhelpful. So the most important thing is to be alert to what the person I am speaking to needs right now from all the things I could say.

The people who are in the midst of it can offer the practical comments and wry smiles. My view is from afterwards.

Those things which were 100% of my life are not so any more. That is unsettling to someone who is right in it. How could I not keep up with the latest research and legal confrontations? This is a generation gap of a non-family sort.

Urgent Poetry - Kim Hyesoon - Cathy Dreyer

Hi Cathy, you are in my blog post.

We met up for lunch and I came away with the name Kim Hyesoon. I have just had a google and hit an article with the stunning title of 'What is urgent poetry?' I then found a gory kitchen poem.

What is urgent poetry? I like this phrase because I used it myself in a poem I wrote a few weeks ago after a poetry experiment out in our garden during a massive thunder and lightning storm with no rain. See how different the comments are.

Gory kitchen poem by Kim Hyesoon The cries of the spoons....a glass of tangy star...a flock of birds crawled out of the hole...

Cathy edits The Stare's Nest with Judi Sutherland. Do submit work to them.

أحبك - Poem for my mother

والدتي في المستشفى

كنت في لندن

اسمك آن

أنا بعيد عنك

أنا أحبك جدا

غدا في لندن

I need to switch these lines around so they have some sort of pattern. The vowel markings don't show in type, so you have to know that there are lots of kasras, the 'i' sound.

أحبك

هو الليل

والدتي في المستشفى

غدا في لندن

اسمك آن

أنا بعيد عنك

أنا أحبك جدا

Ok, so now there are 2 stanzas, first lines have 2 words each, second and third lines both have 3. Title is addessed to my mother, first stanza is stating facts and second is addressing her again. Neatly, it has her name at the end of the first line of that second stanza. On another laptop I could add a word which looks exactly the same as her name, but which means 'now'. That could go in the same place but on the first stanza. But then it would ruin the 2,3,3 pattern. 

There, all done, for now = aan/ann, oh dear, an arabic/english pun. Now to call and see if she is on the table, under the knife.

100 word biography - Endlessly tearful - Hospital/Paramedics again

Biography

Ten lines of my handwriting. I have made several versions. All not right at all. I thought it would be easy. Writing in the 3rd person about myself is very odd. I wind up name dropping wildly and surely that's not the point. A blunt statement that I was into extended breastfeeding and then home education won't entice anyone, nor a comment that a house that is too big can be overwhelming. Hence the escape into poetry and online anything. I don't suppose anyone at a poetry reading wants to know about my struggles with Arabic either. Or autism and the school system here. My hinterland will have to stay where it is. I can put it here instead.

Tearful

What is up with me, age, youth? The songs at the assembly at H's school set me off, the little child fiddling with my hair from behind and kicking my chair in a meditative sort of way, all these songs I listen to, the voice of a Big Issue seller in Oxford looking up at me and saying 'pliz' a voice from a home land and a family totally zapped, a grandfather in Observatory Street just standing there while the younger ones did things with push chairs and car doors, the hair and hands of the artist in his films at the unattended basement showing of various incomprehensible and necessary films at Moma...

My grandmother cried a lot, I was told, when she was in her last nursing home in 2000.  I was at home here with H and T and was not talking about my miscarriage. I didn't tell her, maybe I should have, she would have been kind and would have been sad with me. What a total fool I was. Maybe she knew somehow?

I just watched a piece of film by someone I follow on Twitter, Eyad El-Baghdadi. He talked to another activist who said she never cried about all the horrors she saw in Syria, but finally cracked when he asked her something when they were both in a cafe in exile in KL, Malaysia.

Madonna Frozen, not that I'm into Madonna in a major way, but this is beautiful.

...and then...this happened...

Paramedics

While the para was here I helped my mother in law. She was 95% confused, so was turning taps on and off while I made soothing comments. A couple of times she giggled in her normal way and she said one or two usual things. I am hoovering, washing laundry and have washed some carpet. We now have the hamster. Back to hoovering and tidying next door. There is no perfect way of being on hand, just approximate attempts. How could I have caught this sooner? Things have to be a certain way before you can just make the 999 call. I didn't make the call myself, but said if my husband needed the para then call, irrespective of whether he thought his mother did or not. Now! Rather than at 3am.

-------
This is from last Friday/Saturday, the night of 24th/25th Oct.

Dolls = A whole can of worms

I stumbled on The Paris Review having a doll post day, then looked at some linked posts within the blog. What a big topic.

I had a stringless male puppet who I made to fall repeatedly and without any point at all down the front of my bookcase, what on earth does that imply? I'd save him, only for him to repeat the process. I think he had been Pinnochio once. I never played this game with my brother or any other girl... What on earth was I processing? And why not the stairs or plants on the patio, or up in the attic? He had a very limited life with me. He must have been moved on/binned by my mother, as I don't remember him going away.

Once I had my 2 children, sons, I saw some girls in a playground with their precious dolls, now dirty, clothes-less and with mangled hair. They were gaily sending them down a slide, all higgledy-piggledy, to land in a heap at the bottom. The girls were perfectly happy and were not doing anything bad to anyone else's dolls. They each sent their own one down the slippery slope again and again, then forgot them to laugh and lark about. The dolls were just abandoned until I suppose the girls picked them up again by an ankle or by the hair.

As a trainee breastfeeding counsellor I needed dolls for the new parents to practice various things with. I felt extremely odd buying one and choosing nice clean clothes for it. It was even worse walking along the street in Didcot holding it without a daughter next to me. There are very strict social rules around dolls. It was a relief when I moved on from all that and I forgot this precious clean doll somewhere, the one with the mobile head.

I had a collection of more second-hand looking dolls with biro on their faces, given to me by friends with daughters. They didn't cause me the angst the perfect new doll did. They just went in a big plastic bag, but the special one couldn't even be placed face down unless it seemed as if I wanted to kill her.... We never discussed all this in the tutorials, which is probably why it didn't work out for me. Not enough talking it all through.

Wow, I hadn't thought I'd get there with this post.

My father's Italian photos

Well, there are ghostly bits of the pictures on the wall opposite, so these photos show more than I planned. Never mind. I am waiting for the other 2 pictures to arrive by email from my phone/camera.

There, all done. Slightly off centre and with glare from the ceiling lights. The actual photos on my wall are peaceful to have around, a permanent background to this house. Portable though: 'Picture and book remain' as Yeats wrote. I'd include 'rugs' or 'carpets' because they mean a lot to me too.

Not happy with Solo (Library system in Oxford)

It has done it again, let me view interesting stuff (British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies), then told me I have no ability to access it. I get more satisfaction from Facebook. Bah humbug, academic institutions either kill off your interest or drive spikes into your heart so you get the bloody stuff some other way. I knew there was a catch. No such thing as a free library/lunch.

So........facebook has led me to this online journal, which does open when clicked, and provides English and Arabic, and what's more, translated by someone who has read to me in person. Much better than a cold system. The magazine is called 'Tulips', and has text as well as images.

On reflection, the benefit of not being able to access things via Solo is that I am not swamping myself further with too much to read. And I only make a supreme effort to get hold of something if I truly want it, so this situation is acting as a delaying mechanism for my naturally impetuous self.